Controversies persist after 20 years
Collapse of World Trade Center buildings on 9/11 arouses doubts over official explanations
Twenty years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, controversies still persist over the collapse of World Trade Center buildings 1, 2 and 7 in New York, while many officials and analysts insist that the US “war on terror” itself is a failure.
“There are still vital pieces of evidence about the 9/11 day itself, never mind the days that followed, that are still kept secret from the people of America and from the people of the world,” said George Galloway, a former member of the British parliament, well-known for his anti-war stance.
Following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, anthrax-laced letters began appearing in the US, seemingly as part of terrorist attacks. On Feb 5, 2003, the then US Secretary of State Colin Powell showed a tube of white powder at the UN Security Council, hinting that Iraq had been using the anthrax pathogen to research and develop biological weapons, which was later described by Russian leader Vladimir Putin as “washing powder”.
But the prime suspect for the anthrax attacks, identified years later, was Bruce Edwards Ivins, a scientist working at the US military bio-lab in Fort Detrick, Galloway noted in an interview.
Ivins was found dead in 2008, before a court trial against him even began. The US’ Federal Bureau of Investigation closed the anthrax case after Ivins’ death.
“The sinister events in Fort Detrick, now closed, of course, in controversial circumstances, are amongst the many, many things we don’t yet know about 9/11,” said Galloway via video link, adding: “That’s a remarkable thing, 20 years after the event. Imagine!”
He accused the pro-war political leaders of the time of lying and conspiring against the interests of their own people.
Galloway also said it was unlikely that the prominent British expert on weapons of mass destruction, David Kelly, committed suicide in July 2003, as claimed, months after the invasion of Iraq.
And the US-orchestrated global “war on terror” after 9/11 is a “cataclysmic failure by any standards,” said the former British MP.
Recently, the US Council on Foreign Relations published an article “Seven Resources Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories” on its website.
It said the specific claims of conspiracy theories varied, citing as examples: “The 9/11 attacks were an inside job. Carefully placed explosives rather than commercial passenger jets brought down the Twin Towers. … The Bush administration knew of the impending attacks but did nothing.”
The apparent free-fall collapse of World Trade Center Building 7, a 47-storey skyscraper in the vicinity of the Twin Towers, has drawn debates among US academics and engineers for long.
WTC 7 — containing the offices of the CIA, the Department of Defense, and the Office of Emergency Management — collapsed straight down in less than 10 seconds without getting hit by any airplane hours after the Twin Towers were in ruins.
Foreknowledge by the BBC and CNN of the building’s doom on that traumatic day caused public cynicism despite the media outlets’ explanations.
The BBC in its News Update program on Sept 11, 2001, reported the collapse of the “Solomon Bros Building”, or WTC 7, about 20 minutes before its actual collapse. The program even had reporter Jane Standley deliver this piece of news live as WTC 7 stood in the background. CNN that day announced the impending collapse of WTC 7 about an hour before it occurred.
Investigators at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology have concluded that “the collapse of WTC 7 is the first known instance of a tall building brought down primarily by uncontrolled fires”, as the team said.
The abstract of the final report issued on Nov 23, 2008, said: “This report describes how the fires that followed the impact of debris from the collapse of WTC 1 (the north tower) led to the collapse of WTC 7.”
Contrary to the conclusions of NIST, the University of Alaska’s civil engineering research team found after four years of modeling that the collapse of WTC7 was caused not by fires, but by the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.
“There are 3,250 registered architects and engineers who are disturbed enough by the government’s findings to belong to Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth (AE 9-11 Truth),” a media report about the non-profit organization noted.
“Referencing videos that show the building dropping straight down in a short period of time (6.6 seconds is what is usually cited), many truthers contend that WTC 7, like the Trade Towers, was the victim of a premeditated, controlled demolition,” said another report published late last month on New York Magazine website.