Looking for Truth in Credentials: The WTC “Experts”

When Matthew Rothschild, editor of the online magazine The Progressive, wrote an article called “Enough of the 9/11 Conspiracies, Already”, we all knew he was not talking about the conspiracy theory that the US government sells us to justify the expanding 9/11 Wars.[1] To the contrary, in writing that article Mr. Rothschild was selling that same theory himself. What he actually meant was that people should not question the US government’s story of terror because credentialed experts have been found to support it. But the fact is that the experts found to support the official conspiracy theory of 9/11 are predominantly those who profit from doing so. That’s not to say that all of these people were “part of the conspiracy”. But they are, whether consciously or not, a part of the cover-up. And that, of course, is the greater crime.

The Bush Administration employed a number of such credentialed experts to give us multiple explanations for the unprecedented destruction of three tall steel-framed buildings at the World Trade Center (WTC). Unfortunately, all of those explanations have proven to be false, and this fact reminds us that academic credentials don’t necessarily make a person more capable of, or more likely to, tell the truth.

Exactly how they could find so many experts on the fire-induced collapse of tall buildings is not immediately clear, considering such an event had never happened before. But it did help that the questions were quickly framed as being solely matters of structural engineering, a sub-field of civil engineering, because structural engineers cannot find work without continual government approvals. A Chemistry laboratory manager like myself can work without permits or licenses, but people can’t just go out and build a bridge or a tall building on their own. The extensive paperwork necessary to complete civil engineering projects is obtained by working closely with, and staying on good terms with, local and national authorities. That fact may not be enough to ensure vocal support for the official story of “global collapse”, but it has been enough to keep most structural engineers from publicly opposing the intransigent government stance on the WTC events.

From where, then, has the vocal support come within the engineering community? Matthew Rothschild points to some interesting characters when he says that “I made a few calls myself”, including to Gene Corley and to Mete Sozen. Additionally, Rothschild says that he consulted “some of the top building design and engineering firms”, like Skidmore Owings & Merrill, and Greenhorne & O’Mara. To emphasize just how solid the government’s story is, he adds that he “also contacted engineering professors at MIT and other leading universities in the country, and none of them puts any stock in the 9/11 conspiracy theories.”

What Mr. Rothschild failed to tell us is that Gene Corley and Mete Sozen not only created the reports that he is defending, but have also, for many years, worked for the US Department of Defense (DOD) through the Blast Mitigation for Structures Program (BMSP). Since 1997, this program has provided the DOD with expertise in explosives, and has been funded at $10 million annually.[2] After 9/11, astronomical increases in DOD funding were likely to have benefited all DOD partners and programs, like DOD’s Nunn-Perry award winner, Greenhorne & O’Mara, and those involved with the BMSP. Of course, the DOD was probably already awash in black-budget funds prior to 9/11, as indicated by the missing trillions reported by the DOD on 9/10/01.[3]

Rothschild also failed to let us know that Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM), one of his independent engineering firms, is responsible for the architectural design of the new Freedom Tower. SOM gained that contract at the personal insistence of Larry Silverstein, the original owner of WTC 7 and the WTC towers’ leaseholder. Mr. Rothschild may also not be aware that William Baker, a top executive at SOM, was involved in several of the official WTC investigations and reports that have been generated. In any case it is clear that the “Freedom Tower” would not be the publicity-rich project it is today if an alternative explanation forced us to rename it the “There Goes Our Freedom Tower”.

Getting back to those experts at BMSP, we see that DOD employs a number of consulting firms to help out Corley and Sozen, in what is called the Blast Mitigation Action Group (BMAG), including ARUP, ARA, SAIC, SGH, Thornton-Tomasetti and Weidlinger Associates.[4] It should be noted that most of these firms were major contributors to the various official explanations for collapse of the WTC buildings, as well as being government contractors in fields related to terrorism. Strangely, despite their overwhelming expertise in the use of explosives, none of their explanations for the WTC events had anything to do with explosives.

That’s not to say that these characters never deal with explosives, however, as Corley and Sozen were two of the four members of the Oklahoma City (OKC) engineering investigation, along with Paul Mlakar and Charles Thornton. The work they did followed the damage estimates found within the Federal Emergency Management Administration’s (FEMA) OKC report, written by Greenhorne & O’Mara. Although none of these credentialed experts even toured the site at OKC, Corley and Sozen were able to produce an engineering report that was a highly questionable extrapolation of minimal evidence, primarily the size of a bomb crater, provided to them by the FBI.[5] Their report was created in support of the “One Guy, One Truck Bomb” political story that directly contradicted testimony given by several leading experts, including USAF General Benton Partin.

After spending 25 years dealing with explosive weaponry, General Partin independently studied the damage done to the Murrah building in the month before the evidence was destroyed, and made several strong statements to members of the US Congress. In July of 1995, General Partin wrote to Senator Trent Lott, stating, “The attached report contains conclusive proof that the bombing of the Aflred P. Murrah Federal Building…was not caused solely by the truck bomb. Evidence shows that the massive destruction was primarily the result of four demolition charges placed at critical structural points at the third floor level.” He added “No government law enforcement agency should be permitted to demolish, smash and bury evidence of a…terrorist attack without a thorough examination by an independent, technically competent agency.”[6]

When speaking about the unprecedented destruction of evidence, General Partin was referring to the demolition of the Murrah Building by Mark Loizeaux’s company, just five days after Partin made his strong statements directly to the US Congress. But Partin might as well have been talking about the WTC six years later, where much of the steel evidence was destroyed in the month before engineering investigators began inspecting the scene. It was noted by the House Committee on Science, as they reviewed early shortcomings of the WTC investigation, that, “Some of the critical pieces of steel…were gone before the first BPAT team member ever reached the site.”[7] At the time of this destruction of evidence, Gene Corley was in charge of the investigation and his OKC partner Charles Thornton’s company was in charge of the site at Ground Zero.

In any case, it is clear that Rothschild’s primary experts have a long history of involvement in US government interests, and in highly questionable engineering reports. But surely the “engineering professors at MIT and other leading universities in the country” could not all be so tied to US government interests. There must be some objective members within the group of scientists supporting the Bush Administration’s theories, and some agreement among scientists around the world.

The truth is that interpretation of the events at the WTC does include some agreement from all parties. We all agree that no tall steel-framed building in history has ever collapsed uniformly at nearly free-fall speed into a pile of rubble for any reason whatsoever, outside of demolition. And we’re in agreement that the first three occasions of such an event supposedly occurred all on the same day, all in the same place. To round out a quick agreement, we can all safely say that these improbable events were the emotional basis for the passing of legislation that had already been written (e.g. the Patriot Act), and for the invasion of several strategically-important countries, the plans for which were already in the works.

From there, however, the views of the government’s credentialed experts diverge from those who are more interested in objectively seeking the truth. The initial facts of agreement should lead any objective person to seek a detailed investigation that leaves no hypothesis un-examined. But for the government’s credentialed experts, only one hypothesis was worthy of consideration, a fire-based failure of all three buildings that jibed with the overall official version of the events of that day.

In support of that fire-based triple play, the experts gave us a progression of false stories. The media gave us the first false story, with help from PhD engineers, some of whom were contributors to the official reports. Eduardo Kausel, an “engineering professor at MIT” and contributor to the WTC report generated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), suggested to us in Scientific American that this catastrophe was probably due to the jet fuel fires melting the steel in the buildings.[8] He was joined in this early theory by a handful of other PhD engineers and professors around the country, and by the US government’s top suspect - Osama Bin Laden. The US State Department still promotes the melting steel theory by promoting the alleged confession video of the alleged Bin Laden, which Matthew Rothschild finds convincing as well. In this confession video, the credentialed expert Bin Laden said -- “Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building..."[9] Apparently Bin Laden’s plan was a complete failure after all, because even the experts now agree that jet fuel-accelerated office fires cannot melt steel (or Iron for that matter).

Another structural engineer who made early claims of melting steel, in the infamous 2002 Nova video “Why the Towers Fell”, was Matthys Levy. Mr. Levy was a principal at the BMAG consulting firm Weidlinger Associates that, later, with the help of many other PhD engineers, produced a report on the WTC disaster as part of an insurance claim by Larry Silverstein.[10] This Silverstein-Weidlinger investigation was based on extensive computer modeling and involved many of the same contractors that contributed to the government studies. Their final report told us that floor failure had nothing to do with the WTC disasters, but “that the failure of columns alone, independent of the floors, explains the collapses.”[11] At the time, Levy told us “There is no doubt left about the sequence of failure.”[12]

Unfortunately, the credentialed experts were wrong again. Until NIST’s final report came out in 2005, the “Pancake Theory” had replaced the column failure theory as the most widely accepted explanation for collapse. FEMA, along with a professor of Engineering from Northwestern, Zdenek Bazant, championed this theory of pancaking floors as the major explanation for the collapse of both towers, directly contradicting the Silverstein-Weidlinger report. This was strange, considering many of the same experts were involved in both the FEMA and Weidlinger investigations, including Gene Corley.

Amazingly enough, just last summer NIST finally admitted that the explanation could not involve pancaking floors either, by saying “NIST’s findings do not support the “pancake theory” of collapse”.[13] NIST’s findings, first reported in their final draft report of October 2004 and built over a period of several years, originally consisted of two considerably different stories for the two towers. But NIST modified this nine months later in their final, final draft report, giving just one story for both towers about “widely-dislodged” fireproofing and sagging floors pulling the external columns inward, with no mention of pancaking. Their final, final collapse initiation sequence, the essence of their report, is now known to be false in every aspect.[14]

Through the years, NIST and the other official investigators ignored the demolition hypothesis completely, as can be seen from their reports and archived presentations. That’s not surprising though, as the scientists working for FEMA and NIST, and therefore for the Bush Administration, would not likely lead their investigation toward a result that would limit or stop the 9/11 Wars. For example John Gross of NIST and Therese McAllister of Greenhorne & O’Mara, who not only co-authored the most important sections of NIST’s report, but were also primary authors of FEMA’s report, continue to act deaf, dumb and blind when it comes to evidence for the demolition hypothesis.[15] And we can imagine that all those “independent” contractors who contributed to the ever-changing story, who were also consulting firms for the DOD’s interesting Blast Mitigation Action Group, would be hard-pressed to offer an explanation that would require a less militarily focused solution.

The only supposedly independent corroboration that the Bush scientists at NIST could produce for their appalling pack of lies was from that old respected scientific institution, Popular Mechanics. This Hearst magazine is not, as most people know, a scientific publication in any way, shape or form. When they talk about Mechanics, they do not mean Quantum Mechanics or Statistical Mechanics, or even Classical Mechanics. Popular Mechanics (PM) is simply a gloss-covered advertisement for numerous consumer items ranging from ATVs to lawn mowers. You know – mechanics.

This hasn’t prevented many who cling to the official story from using PM as their scientific champion. For example, in his poorly researched hit piece against “conspiracy theorists”, British essayist George Monbiot foists Popular Mechanics upon us, saying they “polled 300 experts” to support their findings.[16] But science is not about popularity, and PM’s “poll” of “structural engineering/building collapse experts” actually consisted of only about 33 people, some of them listed as photographers, media-relations staff and spokespersons. Of those that were engineering-related, most were in some way related to OKC, FEMA, NIST or DOD, and many were responsible for the Weidlinger report, the Pancake Theory, or the NIST report.[17] It turns out that, when it comes to scientific explanations for terrorist acts, it’s a small world after all.

It's in PM’s book, “Debunking 9/11 Myths”, that we find this survey. Here they include other figures like Forman Williams, although they fail to tell you that Dr. Williams was also a member of NIST’s top advisory committee, and therefore was defending his own work. Williams is presented by PM as a disinterested academic expert, but one must wonder how disinterested Williams was when the University of California San Diego received $393 million in federal grants in 2005, the same year the NIST WTC report came out, with his own Engineering department receiving $44 million of that sum.[18] Another of PM’s disinterested experts was Engineering professor Richard Fruehan of Carnegie Mellon University, an institute that received $100 million in federal grants that same year, with Engineering and research grants accounting for approximately half of the total.

In the case of Popular Mechanics, we see people being quite openly deceptive in their strong support of the Bush Administration’s terror story. In their book they promote false claims that the government no longer supports, including the Pancake Theory. They also promote other, more ridiculous ideas including the claim that massive damage was done to the basement levels of a WTC tower by a bolus of jet fuel that meandered its way through several elevator shafts in the jogged elevator system, moving carefully around the elevators themselves and waiting all the while to explode in the sub-basements over 90 stories below. Additionally, PM repeats the false and ludicrous claim that the buildings were designed for airliner impacts, but not for jet fuel fires. In fact, John Skilling, the actual chief engineer of the WTC, made it clear in 1993 that jet fuel fires were considered in the structural design.[19]

In the forward to PM’s book, Republican Senator John McCain describes how he feels the truth behind September 11th is more mundane than “conspiracy mongers” would have us believe. Strangely, he refers us to the “banality of Nazi evil” to show that 9/11 was probably not an elaborate conspiracy. That is, according to McCain, 9/11 was probably NOT part of a simple plan by corporate-funded politicians to maintain and expand their power, but was instead the work of a small group of powerless fanatics whose plans to bring about worldwide totalitarian rule were held back only by our own cherished freedoms. That’s a tough bit to swallow, to be sure, but the idea that a Hearst publication would resort to the “banality of Nazi evil” is absolutely astounding. That’s because in writing this forward, Senator McCain joined an infamous group of Hearst publication authors, including Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering, who wrote for Hearst, the latter until 1938.[20]

Those of us fighting for the truth about 9/11 owe it to the victims of the expanding 9/11 Wars, and to ourselves, to reveal these ongoing lies from corporate criminals and their credentialed “experts”. It is becoming increasingly obvious that those giving us one false story after another, while simultaneously ignoring much of the evidence of 9/11, might have more than just a cozy relationship with this government, and more than a benign past. It seems quite possible that some among those providing these explanations are knowingly complicit in the greater crime of a 9/11 cover-up.

It is also true that, like Matthew Rothschild, many of us simply want quick and easy answers, in order to relieve ourselves of any need to think about the facts of 9/11 and the changes in worldview that might be demanded of such an examination. The problem is, the easy answers have all been wrong, while at the same time the experts have ignored one fairly simple hypothesis that is now becoming obvious to many. It should be clear that this is because the credentialed experts we’ve been dealing with are all quite well invested in maintaining the official version of events.

1. Enough of the 9/11 Conspiracies, Already, The Progressive, Matthew Rothschild, September 11, 2006 http://www.progressive.org/mag_wx091106
2. For a short description of DOD’s BMSP, see “Department of Defense Should Broaden Communication Efforts to Protect Federal and Civilian Buildings From Bomb Attacks”, The National Academy of Sciences, November 2001, http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=10230
3. Missing Trillions: Rumsfeld Buries Admission of Missing 2+ Trillion Dollars in 9/10/01 Press Conference, 911Research.com, http://911research.wtc7.net/sept11/trillions.html
4. US Army Corps of Engineers, Blast Mitigation Action Group (BMAG), Consulting Firms, https://bmag.usace.army.mil/consulting_firms.php
5. Blast Loading and Response of Murrah Building, Mlakar, Corley, Sozen, Thornton, 1997, http://www.terrorisminfo.mipt.org/pdf/forensicengineering2.pdf
6. General Partin’s letter to Senator Lott can be found in its entirety in the Final Report on the Bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, April, 19,1995, The Oklahoma Bombing Investigation Committee, Appendix, page 378-380. This letter is also reproduced here -http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/OK/PARTIN/ok8.htm
7. See Context of 'March 6, 2002: House Committee on Science Holds Hearing on WTC Collapses Investigation, Cooperative Research, http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a030602collapsehearing
8.“When the Twin Towers Fell”, Scientific American, October 9, 2001 http://www.public-action.com/911/jmcm/sciam/
9. The US State Department still appears to be promoting this first false theory by promoting Osama (Fatty) Bin Laden’s baseless statements. US State Department website: The Top September 11 Conspiracy Theories, http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=pubs-english&y=2006&m=August&x=20060828133846esnamfuaK0.2676355
10. Profile: Weidlinger Associates, Cooperative Research http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=weidlinger_associates_1
11. “Report Ties WTC Collapses to Column Failures”, Engineering News-Record, 10/25/02, McGraw Hill Construction, http://www.construction.com/NewsCenter/Headlines/ENR/20021025b.asp
12. Study Absolves Twin Tower Trusses, Fireproofing, Engineering News-Record, 11/04/02 http://enr.construction.com/news/buildings/archives/021104.asp
13. Answers to Frequently Asked Questions, August 2006, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster, http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm
14. See my essay, What is 9/11 Truth? – The First Steps, at the Journal of 911 Studies, http://www.journalof911studies.com . Also see the critique of my presentation Review of 'A New Standard For Deception: The NIST WTC Report' A Presentation by Kevin Ryan, Jim Hoffman, 911Research.com, 10/15/06 http://911research.wtc7.net/reviews/kevin_ryan/newstandard.html
15. See video of John Gross’ presentation at the University of Texas Austin, with testimonies and evidence of molten metal at the WTC. Project for New American Citizens, http://911blogger.com/node/6104
16. “A 9/11 Conspiracy Virus is Sweeping the World, But it Has No Basis in Fact”, George Monbiot, The Guardian, February 6, 2007, http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2007519,00.html
17. Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand up to the Facts, Dunbar & Reagan, Hearst Press, 2006. Note: See also Eduardo (melting steel) Kausel’s glowing review in the front cover.
18. See Fedspending.org, Grants, http://www.fedspending.org/
19. City in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center, James Glanz and Eric Lipton, (New York: Times Books, 2003), 138
20. Remembering “The Chief”, PBS’s Online NewsHour, 9/07/00, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/july-dec00/nasaw_9-7.html

keep up the great work

keep up the great work Kevin.

Thanks Keven

Good read! I enjoyed that.

One of the best articles

One of the best articles I've read about the 9/11 issue.

A big fan of your courage and work, Kevin

Hope you're victorious in your lawsuit against Underwriters Laboratories.

I predict 2007 will be a good year for both you and 9/11 Truth!

It's astonishing, that we deal

in reality with such a small number of people, who are linking each others work all the time.

It's like the Bush admin itself, in which the same old Iran-Contra-Team-B gang and PNAC'lers popped up and up again and again...

No good signs for the "Cabale", right?

Kevin Ryan


my hero!


Gary
911truthnc.org
“it is possible to fool all the people all the time—when government and press cooperate.” George Seldes - "legendary investigative reporter"

Publish this?

Kevin, this article is worthy of publication in a prestigious journal. Are all the engineering journals beholden to the government, as you show that individual engineers are? Is there any sort of peer-reviewed journal that would publish this?

Maybe some political journal or magazine, if nothing else... or muck-raking magazine, at least, such as Mother Jones???

Would the Atlantic Monthly consider it, do you suppose? They certainly are willing to expose some terrible stuff about our behavior in Iraq...

WOW Kevin Ryan...

When you blog, you blog sooooo well, beautifully in fact !!!!

A great insight into the "small circle" that really controls what is published and reported on when events like OKC and 9/11 occur.

I love naming-names, you can feel the heat from here ;-)

Such a small world...

Thanks Kevin Ryan and journalof911studies.com, you guys ROCK.

Best wishes and good luck !!!

Hmmm...

I see from 911veritas' post that this DID get published in the (peer-reviewed) J. of 911 Studies.

Good show. I still wish it could appear in the Atlantic.

I have just checked www.journalof911studies.com

and cannot see it published... It should be though...

elsewhere too...

Best wishes

Well done - thank you

These connections you describe are very important for people (like Matthew Rothschild) to understand.

I wish you the best in your lawsuit.

Would it be possible for you to post pleadings from the lawsuit to your website? I would like to see the complaint, at least. Thank you.

Show "So, what's your point, Kevin?" by Dakine

He's explaining how these experts

can come up with such patently false explanations for the "collapses."

The point is that

none of these experts is from an independent panel. They all have serious conflicts of interest. Very serious.

Show "And the "truth" movement doesn't?" by Dakine

Kevin Ryan

is gainfully employed.

Your continued transparent attacks demonstrate just how pathetically desperate supporters of the government myth are.

The truth shall set us free. Love is the only way forward.

As LeftWright said.

He's working.

This can be verified by contacting Ryan, or of course you can just go on believing what you want to believe.

http://ultruth.com/

Show "Oh, why don't you just tell me....." by Dakine

Too lazy to do your own research?

Yep. You're doing lots of guessing.

You've got a keyboard. Send him an email.

Now you're just stating things that aren't true, AFAIK.

Consider yourself blocked.

Thanks, Reprehensor

Kevin Ryan is one very straight-up guy, a humble patriot and one of my favorites in the truth movement (he reminds me of one of my brothers).

I find these personal attacks really disgusting.

Thanks for all your great work.

I hope that you and yours are well.

The truth shall set us free. Love is the only way forward.

Blocked????!!???

But I didn't get a chance to kick them!!!!!

It's not fair! *wail*

Impeachment. Accountability. A better world.

me too......

Jenny, dammit, some things are just not fair......!

but I have to add this comment by whatever he was....:

""The bottom line is that Ryan is simply not qualified to render judgment in matters that are above his ability to comprehend.""

-- insert music from twilight zone......---

Yes, the world is stranger than you can imagine..... up is down. down is up. physics ain't. mechanics ain't. The sun is black. ONLY the mystically astute officially sanctioned structural -engineers- can discern the true nature of reality. It is just too complex for the rest of us. we are but lost little lambs........

m. neuroscientist

==================================================================
"There are none so hoplessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free." (Goethe)

Oh Really?

1) Where did he fail in proper employee-employer protocols? He simply discussed the issue of steel testing internally at UL and wrote a well thought out, professional letter to Frank Gayle at NIST. Granted he did copy the letter to David Ray Griffin, but the letter was written in a personal capacity and not on behalf of UL.

2) Fiction is his area of strength? Where has he written or presented fiction? His analysis of the NIST report and the entire investigations process has been thorough and well sourced and documented. NIST could not produce any evidence for the loss of all fireproofing on all areas of multiple floors, nor could their computer simulations match the observed bowing and pull in force required through sagging floors and column foreshortening. And even the temperatures NIST talks about in the building have no physical evidence to support them. Don't believe me? Listen to the comments of the NCST Advisory Committee on the NIST report: (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/ncstmin_oct19-20.htm)

"Q: I have a problem with the statement that the steel collected for the investigation is adequate. If I were doing an accident reconstruction, I would’ve been looking for core columns that were hit by the aircraft. It may be okay from a research perspective. It should not be stated that it is adequate from an investigation point of view.
A: It would have been nice to have, but may have been very hard to find...

Q: ...NIST never had the opportunity to do this type of search.
A: The Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY) started collecting steel in October of 2001. NIST was a member of that team... Some steel had disappeared and was recycled. NIST took over 8 months before the investigation began. We did not have reconstruction in mind. That would have been extremely expensive for us to do... If we had the authority, we would have been more aggressive.

Q: The hypothesis is that core columns got above 600 ºC. It would be nice to have pieces of steel to support that hypothesis....

C: As John Barsom said, the [adequacy of steel] statement is not accurate. The validity of the model question from yesterday speaks to this issue. I do not believe that we have enough forensic evidence. It may be okay to establish steel quality. There was no effort by the Building Performance Study team to systematically look at the steel.

C: The use of the term “adequate” needs to be revisited. There is no core column test to support the hypothesis."

Even members of the NCST call into question NIST's non existent evidence. Who's writing fiction now?

3) Where did Ryan misrepresent his authority or position? He has always stated he worked as the site manager of UL Water Testing division in South Bend. He has always maintained he is a chemist, not an engineer. He has also explained his involvement in terms of verbal and written communications between himself and UL's upper management concerning the certification of steel components used in the WTC. Ryan has never said he was a fire engineer or involved in the actual floor tests so if you believe otherwise, please produce evidence of this allegation.

4) Ryan has also talked about the semantic games that UL and NIST have used in talking about the certification of steel components in the WTC over 40 years ago. Ryan has specifically mentioned that Tim Chapin of UL's fire testing division explicitly denied that UL tested the truss assemblies (ie floor assemblies) of the WTC. In contrast Ryan has indicated it is the testing of the COLUMNS which is of primary interest. At this point UL has never denied that Loring Knoblauch talked of the certification of the steel or that he was incorrect. They have also started talking about steel vs steel components and that they don't test steel. To this date, they have not explicitly denied testing the columns in the WTC, but have stated their is no evidence that the steel was tested. Ryan has never asserted that they tested floor assemblies, as his conversations with Loring Knoblauch were not specific to floor assemblies but more generally to "steel components" (ie could be floors or columns). Again, I ask you to produce evidence where Ryan has explicitly claimed floor assemblies were tested. In addition, NIST's own tests of these assemblies shows minimal sagging and no failure. NIST has yet to perform equivalent tests for steel columns in the WTC.

Thus I find your post totally lacking in any scientific or logical merit. Kevin Ryan, along with others, has presented an objective critique of the NIST report and I challenge you to find significant flaws with his research on this topic.

(applause)

I don't really have anything to add, but that effort certainly deserves at least ONE reply. ;-)

Want to figure out 9/11? Ponder the 9/11 "Mineta Stone"

Digg it

You are a brave man

I hope you continue to grace us with your knowledge...best of luck in the legal fight, if you bring this sort of tenacity and reseach to the table, I don't think you'll have any problems. I am sorry about what happened to your career, but it is inspiring to see you not giving up and refusing to be defeated. That is what makes the people of the world amazing, keeping the fight going in the face of adversity. We will win in spite of what Dark Helmet said..."Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." Not here.

Dave
Phuckinehring

Great Research!

Now I don't have time to go check on this info. But if it is all kosher, thanks for putting it out here.

The 'deniers' love to point out bs support of the gov't. bs like P. Mechanics, etc.- you can't argue, obviously they will never come around.

Funny (or sad), by the time the Truth finally comes out, most of us Truthers will be capable of writing a book on the subject because we had to go find the truth for ourselves.

Now how can we get "KNOWLEDGE" out to the people?

EXCELLENT ARTICLE! What a

EXCELLENT ARTICLE! What a bitter irony that these parrots and talking heads have wheelbarrow loads of cash heaped upon them while a good man is forced from his job.We stand with you Kevin.
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"Hope doesn't come from calculating whether the good news is winning out over the bad. It's simply a choice to take action."
- Anna Lappe

great article Kevin

I'm a Civil Engineer who was working in a metals specialty unit while I earned my PE license. Due to circumstances, I became aware of the cover up regarding OKC very early on, like by the end of the first day 4/19/95. When 911 happened I was shell-shocked but I suspected it was an explosive demolition immediately. Before Jones' paper came out, I knew it was an explosive demolition (thanks to the German Engineers!)

It really grills me when some A-hole says, well not a single structural engineer agrees with you - then I have to tell them, "oh yeah, well I AM A STRUCTURAL ENGINEER, with more metals failure experience than half of NIST"!

In the phone call by Jeff over at pumpitout, http://www.pumpitout.com/audio/danny_jowenko_022207.mp3 Danny Jowenko explains it very succinctly; if you are an engineer in the states who comes out in favor of explosive demolition, against the government's theory, "it's over"

Well anyway, thank you for all your efforts, and thank you for putting together this excellent article!!!

Nice one tahooey...

Great to have you onboard, with your valued experience and input...

Thanks and best wishes

have you contacted any of

have you contacted any of the 9/11 groups like patriotsquestion911.com? im sure they would love to add another name to the list. we need more brave professionals like yourself.

Write an article

Tahooey,

Write an article listing your experience and credentials, and we'll promote it. I got William Rice's article published on Opednews, Conspiracy Planet, and my own blog. There's also 911proof.com that has a section on engineers who have come out.

70 Disturbing Facts About 9/11

John Doraemi publishes Crimes of the State Blog
http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/

johndoraemi --at-- yahoo.com.

Don't forget Thomas Eagar

Thomas Eagar trotted out the zipper and truss failure theories on NOVA in 2002.
Here are his credentials as presented then:
Thomas Eagar is Thomas Lord Professor of Materials Engineering and Engineering Systems at MIT. He was recently nominated to serve on a National Research Council committee on homeland security.

Hmm.. a National Research Council committee funded specifically to confront the fake terrorist threat? Is this payola?

The Thomas Lord chair is endowed by the Thomas Lord Foundation which is administered by the Lord Corporation, a defense industry company.

The funny thing about the NOVA/Eagar presentation was that he was saying that the 'angle clips' failed and the trusses bowed out, but NOVA totally replaced that story that they broadcast in 2002 with one they made in 2006 that has the formerly weak angle clips holding while the perimeter columns rip apart due to lateral forces provided by the floors saging as the columns bow inwards.
A 180 degree turn.

NOVA obliterated any reference to Eagar's work on their website, so when you go there now to click through to the one they broadcast in 2002, you'll actually go to the show they broadcast in 2006. You can see this at the bottom of the 2002 archive page. Of couse, the original site is still available through archive.org, here.

I suspect they took it down due to the fantastic grilling given to that piece of steaming offal on wtc7.net and elsewhere.

You can read more about Eagar's outward bowing columns and failing angle clips in his original JOM article, and see NOVA's later presentation of just the opposite as narrated by S. Sayam Sunder here, (with audio). Click the fifth little picture icon along the top, titled, 'Collapse' to cut to the chase.

A study in rewriting history, to be sure.
~Markov

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
~George Orwell