Puzzles of 9/11

Why do people believe conspiracy

theories? asks the Hierophant’s Apprentice while presenting Rob Brotherton’s Suspicious

Minds in ‘Building a Fortean Library’ [ FT359:50]. Well, as far as 9/11 is concerned, I question the official story simply because I believe in the laws of physics, and when making extraordinary claims – that steel-framed modern buildings will collapse entirely at close to free fall acceleration after burning for several hours across a few floors, which is the official explanation from NIST (the National Institute for Standards and Technology) – one needs extraordinary evidence, evidence that the NIST report does not provide.

Anyone who has read the report will understand that it presents no answers about the mechanics of the collapse of World Trade Center 1 & 2 (NIST’s theory of the mechanics of the onset of collapse is questionable and NIST’s own experiments do not back up their model), and that the official explanation of how and why WTC 7 collapsed (a single point of failure in one beam connection due to fire) is questioned not only by thousands of qualified engineers, architects and physicists, but NIST changed their model of collapse twice, conceding partial free fall collapse (and all of the implications that entails) when their findings were questioned by physicists, and then simply stopped providing the data in their model (citing national security, desperately enough) providing only a computer animation that doesn’t resemble the actual collapse of WTC 7 in any way. In fact the NIST report is full of the kind of confirmation bias that 9/11 doubters are accused of in the piece.

Far from what was suggested, WTC 1 & 2 were not designed to collapse straight down but to withstand the impact of a fully laden Boeing 707, the largest commercial jetliner available at the time, a plane not too dissimilar to a Boeing 767.

Furthermore, it wouldn’t have necessarily taken a large team to rig the buildings with explosives, given time and access, which, assuming it was a conspiracy, the perpetrators would have had. Buildings the size of WTC 1, 2 & 7 would have had all kinds of workmen going in and out of the building all the time. Some of those who worked in WTC 1 & 2 reported strange sounds coming from empty floors and a fine dust throughout the buildings in the weeks leading up to 9/11. The planes could have been set to home in on beacons in buildings.

As for Occam’s razor – one has to ask oneself: is it more likely that “a handful of Arab fanatics” managed to bypass security and takeover four planes, happening to choose the day that NORAD and the US Air Force were all engaged in tactical training missions (involving hijacked aircraft) and managing to fly three planes into three buildings, destroying three buildings entirely (including one that wasn’t even hit by a plane) at speeds that normal aircraft shouldn’t be able to fly at the altitude they hit the buildings at, and doing a manoeuvre in a commercial plane that not only is almost impossible for most pilots but pointless unless they were deliberately aiming at the one side of the Pentagon that

had recently been reinforced. The three buildings that did collapse, did so spontaneously and fell at just under free fall acceleration (except for WTC 7 that did, for at least part of its collapse, fall at an acceleration indistinguishable from free fall acceleration) – or is it more likely that the owners of the building who are linked with figures in the military industrial complex as well as the US Government (some of whom were part of the Project for a New American Century, a group that had argued that “a new Pearl Harbor” would be required were the US to attain its goals throughout the Middle East) might decide that it’s in their best interests for a catastrophic ‘terrorist attack’? After all, it’s not even the first time the idea was floated. Operation Northwoods, a project from the 1960s, details almost exactly that, although instead of Islamic fundamentalists, the terrorist acts were to be blamed on Cuba.

If you look at the winners and losers from 9/11 you will find those self-same members of the US Government did very well, whereas those held responsible, Al Qaeda (formerly armed, trained and funded by the CIA to fight the Russians in the Cold War when they were known as the Mujahideen) and the Taliban have not done so well. One might also add that nothing anywhere near that scale has been attempted or undertaken since. Even the most devastating terrorist attacks haven’t involved anything anywhere near as complex or had anywhere close to the impact that 9/11 had.

Unfortunately, the science is with the conspiracy theorists, at least with 9/11, and the more you look the more you find. None of what I’ve said is beyond the realms of possibility. What I’ve claimed as fact is verifiable from official sources.

A lot of people comment on 9/11 conspiracy theory without having read the NIST report and without being aware of the various revisions (largely brought about by David Chandler) that it has gone through. When you have an event with so many unanswered questions, it follows that other conspiracy theories also thrive. Matt Elliott Nancy, France

Noel Rooney comments:

The point about the buildings being designed to withstand aircraft impact is not as straightforward as Matt Elliott suggests. Fuel load was not incorporated into the design parameters; plus a 767 flies faster, and is a bit heavier, than a 707, so the physics suggests the impact of a fully laden 767 would be much greater than that of a lightly laden 707. (There is a formula for impact being the square of velocity that backs this up.) There is no real consensus on the free fall question; Mr Elliott is entitled to question this, as many others have done.

The argument about fire is ongoing, but there is evidence to show that the fuel fire could have caused some supports around the impact site to collapse; this would mean that the top 10 storeys or so would fall onto the floors below, which were not designed to withstand that much weight. The buildings did not quite collapse at freefall speed, but at close to it. They fell straight down because the buildings were mostly empty space, into which material could implode.

So, while the questions are legitimate, most of them do have answers that preclude the conspiracy theory.

Robin Ramsay comments:

My view is that al Qaeda did do the plane bombings – but there remains a mystery about the buildings’ collapse, especially about building 7, which was not hit. The comparison I would make is with the Kennedy assassination. It took the JFK buffs a long time to separate the killing from the cover-up; that is, to realise that following the cover-up would not lead to the conspiracy. Everybody covered up for their own bureaucratic reasons. With 9/11, the planes and the collapse have to be separated. This implies – as has been occasionally suggested over the years – that the buildings were already wired for demolition for some other purpose: perhaps in case of emergency so they could be brought down vertically, not doing too much damage to those around them. Do I smell the dead hand of insurance companies here?