GAITHERSBURG, Md., Aug. 21, 2008
Feds: Fire Downed WTC Building 7 On 9/11
But Critics Say There Is Evidence Explosives Were Behind Demise Of Skyscraper Next To Twin Towers
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In this Sept. 18, 2001 file photo, a red crane looms over the smoldering wreckage of World Trade Center Building 7 in New York. (AP Photo/Roberto Borea, File)
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The 47-story trapezoid-shaped building sat north of the World Trade Center towers, across Vesey Street in lower Manhattan. On Sept. 11, it was set on fire by falling debris from the burning towers, but skeptics have long argued that fire and debris alone should not have brought down such a big steel-and-concrete structure.
Scientists with the National Institute of Standards and Technology say their three-year investigation of the collapse determined the demise of WTC 7 was actually the first time in the world a fire caused the total failure of a skyscraper.
"The reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery," said Dr. Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator on the NIST team.
Investigators also concluded that the collapse of the nearby towers broke the city water main, leaving the sprinkler system in the bottom half of the building without water.
The building has been the subject of a wide range of conspiracy theories for the last seven years, partly because the collapse occurred about seven hours after the twin towers came down. That fueled suspicion that someone intentionally blew up the building in a controlled demolition.
Critics like Mike Berger of the group 9/11 Truth said he wasn't buying the government's explanation.
"Their explanation simply isn't sufficient. We're being lied to," he said, arguing that there is other evidence suggesting explosives were used on the building.
Sunder said his team investigated the possibility that an explosion inside the building brought it down, but found there was no large boom or other noise that would have occurred with such a detonation. Investigators also created a giant computer model of the collapse, based partly on news footage from CBS News, that they say shows internal column failure brought down the building.
Investigators also ruled out the possibility that the collapse was caused by fires from a substantial amount of diesel fuel that was stored in the building, most of it for generators for the city's emergency operations command center.
The 77-page report concluded that the fatal blow to the building came when the 13th floor collapsed, weakening a critical steel support column that led to catastrophic failure.
"When this critical column buckled due to lack of floor supports, it was the first domino in the chain," said Sunder.
The NIST investigators issued more than a dozen building recommendations as a result of their inquiry, most of which repeat earlier recommendations from their investigation into the collapse of the two large towers.
In both instances, investigators concluded that extreme heat caused some steel beams to lose strength, causing further failures throughout the buildings until the entire structure succumbed.
The recommendations include building skyscrapers with stronger connections and framing systems to resist the effects of thermal expansion, and structural systems designed to prevent damage to one part of a building from spreading to other parts.
A spokeswoman for the leaseholder of the World Trade Center, developer Larry Silverstein, praised the government's work.
"Hopefully this thorough report puts to rest the various 9/11 conspiracy theories, which dishonor the men and women who lost their lives on that terrible day," said Silverstein spokeswoman Dara McQuillen.
In discussing the findings, the investigator Sunder acknowledged that some may still not be convinced, but insisted the science behind their findings is "incredibly conclusive."
"The public should really recognize the science is really behind what we have said," he said, adding: "The obvious stares you in the face."
© MMVIII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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See all 192 CommentsThis means Osama Bin Ladin is innocent of all charges.
Let''s get our soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq out right now!
We need to file a class-action billion dollars lawsuit against those Civil Engineers that designed the twin towers.
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King George is an arsonist.
Posted by getoffmine
EXCELLENT IDEA. Anyone who believes this ridiculous story about fire imploding Building 7 (go watch the planned demolition pictures), also must believe the equally ridiculous government conspiracy theory about Saudi terrorists confusing the entire United States intelligence and military community.
Move along sheeple, uh, I mean people, nothing to see or read here.
Let me get this straight...the same government personnel that routinely screw up foreign policy, domestic policy, personal infidelity, etc. that cannot seem to ever get anything right somehow pull of this massive hoax at the Pentagon, WTC, Building 7 during 9/11?
Come on, think about it. I mean REALLY think about it. Name ONE government official that you think have the intelligence to come up with something so complex AND pull it off? Even Wolfowitz who cooked up the middle east strategy with Iraq got caught *** around at the World Bank.
Please.
me4prezz is the one who is in denial that the government probably planned and carried out the demolitions of the WTC. Why else would they hide the evidence, lie about the environmental effects and then not properly investigate it immediately. Grow a brain, please.
Let me get this straight...the same government personnel that routinely screw up foreign policy, domestic policy, personal infidelity, etc. that cannot seem to ever get anything right somehow pull of this massive hoax at the Pentagon, WTC, Building 7 during 9/11?
Come on, think about it. I mean REALLY think about it. Name ONE government official that you think have the intelligence to come up with something so complex AND pull it off? Even Wolfowitz who cooked up the middle east strategy with Iraq got caught *** around at the World Bank.
Please.
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Posted by mecury69
Don''t be so hard on the kookburger fringe.....
afterall these are the same people who believe the moon landing was fake, but WWF raslin'' is real. LOL
Riiight.
Maybe debunking this nutburger cr*p is something we can agree on for the moment.
Come on now .....group hug
No, I do not believe the conspiracy theories. But I do take issue with the statement that no government official is smart enough to think up something like that. There IS one man......Cheney
"Most of American society before the Pearl Harbor bombing believed in the idea of isolationism. Franklin D. Roosevelt knew this, and knew the only way in which United States countrymen would take arms and fight in Europe%u2019s War was to be an overt action against the United States by a member of the Axis Power.
On 7 October 1940, Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum, head of the Far East desk of the Office of Naval Intelligence, wrote the eight-action memo. This memo outlined eight different steps the United States could do that he predicted would lead to an attack by Japan on the United States. The day after this memo was giving to Franklin D. Roosevelt, he began to implement these steps. By the time that Japan finally attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, all eight steps had occurred."
After Churchill informs him that he has intelligence reports that indicate the Japanese are planning an attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt says,
"%u2018I will have to consider the entire problem.... A Japanese attack on us, which would result in war between%u2014and certainly you as well%u2014would certainly fulfill two of the most important requirements of our policy.%u2019 Roosevelt speaks about absenting himself from the White House on some pretext, adding, %u2018What I don''t know, can''t hurt me and I cannot understand messages at a distance''."
Public info...
you probably think that Darth Vader and Lord Voldemort are also dead, don''t you :)
bwa-ha-ha-ha
.
Everyone has to believe this. The CheneyBush regime would never lie to us!
Can you spell: W-H-I-T-E-W-A-S-H ?
How about: C-O-V-E-R-U-P ?
/
How does questioning the means of collapse of the building "dishonor" the people who died there? Sounds like an attempt to shut people up and discourage them from asking questions. I don''t know who is right in this matter, but it does seem strange to a lot of people that the building was not hit by an airplane, and yet collapsed quite a few hours after the main buildings did. I suspect we''ll never know the real truth.
Posted by cdfoxtrot2 at 05:46 PM : Aug 21, 2008"
We''ll never know the real truth about anything (unless of course you believe in an afterlife....maybe then). Conspiracy theorists realize that we are in the Matrix, and we will never know reality while we''re here --- only what "they" want us to know.
I suspect we''''ll never know the real truth.
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Posted by cdfoxtrot2 at 05:46 PM : Aug 21, 2008
I think you mean "I guarantee I will never believe any report that doesn''t support the conspiracy theories".
COVER-UP
What else could they say? There was no wiggle room and only one way for the Feds to go on this one. Telling the truth wasn''t an option!
The building dropped -perfectly- on all four corners just like a controlled demolition. Look at any video of it and you will know what I''m talking about....if you can still find one on the internet, as the government made sure to ban all footage of WTC7 after it happened.
In our AE911Truth response we will be documenting major flaws in the NIST report as well as the most serious omissions such as the collapse features of WTC 7 and the scientific forensic evidence of its explosive controlled demolition.
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20080820215910304
NIST did not test for the residue of these compounds in the steel.
ANYMORE QUESTIONS?
Posted by gunfighter51 at 06:21 PM : Aug 21, 2008
How did you know Bush and Cheney took naps?
NIST did not test for the residue of these compounds in the steel.
ANYMORE QUESTIONS?
What else could they say? There was no wiggle room and only one way for the Feds to go on this one. Telling the truth wasn''t an option!
NIST did not test for the residue of these compounds in the steel.
ANYMORE QUESTIONS?
What else could they say? There was no wiggle room and only one way for the Feds to go on this one. Telling the truth wasn''t an option!
That jsut does not happen in a fire...ever. After a plane hit the Empire State building all buildings by Code were built to withstand a direct hit from an airliner. That is a fact.
NIST did not test for the residue of these compounds in the steel.
ANYMORE QUESTIONS?
Why did NIST not consider a %u201Ccontrolled demolition%u201D hypothesis with matching computer modeling and explanation as it did for the %u201Cpancake theory%u201D hypothesis? A key critique of NIST%u2019s work lies in the complete lack of analysis supporting a %u201Cprogressive collapse%u201D after the point of collapse initiation and the lack of consideration given to a controlled demolition hypothesis.
Why did the government have to get their on NIST people to write this report? Because real civil engineers and architects would have died laughing while trying to put the pen to the lies.
What else could they say? There was no wiggle room and only one way for the Feds to go on this one. Telling the truth wasn''''t an option!
PDF] Journal of 9/11 Studies 47 August 2006/Volume 2 118 Witnesses:File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
[After being near WTC 7%u2019s collapse he%u2019s speaking to his family on the phone.] ...... explosions going on everywhere, so we decided let''s get out of here. ...
www.journalof911studies.com/articles/Article_5_118Witnesses_WorldTradeCenter.pdf - Similar pages
NIST did not test for the residue of these compounds in the steel.
ANYMORE QUESTIONS?
Why did NIST not consider a %u201Ccontrolled demolition%u201D hypothesis with matching computer modeling and explanation as it did for the %u201Cpancake theory%u201D hypothesis? A key critique of NIST%u2019s work lies in the complete lack of analysis supporting a %u201Cprogressive collapse%u201D after the point of collapse initiation and the lack of consideration given to a controlled demolition hypothesis.
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