Lies Six, Seven, and Eight

6. The omission of the fact that the fires in the Twin Towers were not very big, very hot, or very long-lasting compared with fires in several steel-frame buildings that did not collapse (25-26).

7. The omission of the fact that, given the hypothesis that the collapses were caused by fire, the South Tower, which was struck later than the North Tower and also had smaller fires, should not have collapsed first (26).

8. The omission of the fact that WTC 7 (which was not hit by an airplane and which had only small, localized fires) also collapsed — an occurrence that FEMA admitted it could not explain (26).

The above allegations all relate directly to the intensity of the fires in WTC1, WTC2, and WTC7. As such I have grouped these claims together, to avoid repeating the same information multiple times.

The 9/11 Report does not address any of the matters above, and indeed it does not mention the collapse of WTC7 at all. The scope of its summary is limited to the 102 minutes between the impact of AA11 on WTC1, and that building collapsing.

Before proceeding with investigating these matters, it is important reiterate that the 9/11 Commission Report was released over a year before the NIST report released its final report on the collapse of WTC1 and WTC2. NIST has not yet released their final report on the collapse of WTC7.

In 2002 NIST was given the mandate of investigating the collapse of these three buildings, and their exhaustive investigation is both comprehensive and highly technical. The NIST investigation is the official government-approved investigation into the collapse of these buildings.

The 9/11 Commission was not mandated to investigate the specific details of the collapses, nor, were it given this mandate, did it possess the expertise or resources to conduct such an investigation.

As Dr. Griffin’s book was published in 2005, it is understandable that it does not cite the final NIST report, which was not released until late 2005.

However it is not reasonable that Dr Griffin was unaware that NIST was conducting their investigation. Between May 2002 and July 2004 NIST released six interim reports containing summaries of their progress to date in their investigations.

Furthermore, it is neither reasonable, nor understandable that Dr Griffin continues to raise these specific concerns over 18 months after the release of the final report by NIST. This behaviour is one of intellectual dishonesty.

It is important at all times to bear the above points in mind, when considering the allegations raised by Dr Griffin.

6. The claim inherent in the allegations is that the fires in the Twin Towers were not very big, very hot, or very long-lasting compared with fires in several steel-frame buildings that did not collapse.

7. The claim inherent in the allegation is that, given the hypothesis that the collapses were caused by fire, the South Tower, which was struck later than the North Tower and also had smaller fires, should not have collapsed first.

8. The claim inherent in the allegation is that WTC 7 (which was not hit by an airplane and which had only small, localized fires) also collapsed — an occurrence that FEMA admitted it could not explain.

In investigating these claims, I will first assess the nature of the fires in WTC1 and WTC2 and how they contributed to the collapse of the towers. This directly addresses claims (6) and (7).

I will secondly analyse the fires on 9/11 in relation to other high-rise fires, in order to address the second part of claim (6).

Lastly, I will consider the fires in WTC7, in an effort to investigate claim (8).


In his book The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, Dr Griffin asserts:

Quote:

A second problem is that the fires, especially in the South Tower and WTC-7, were quite small. We have all seen the pictures of the giant fireball after the South Tower was hit. This fireball did not signal a raging fire inside, however, but the opposite. There was such a big fireball outside because the building was struck near a corner, so that much of the jet fuel burned up outside. There was, accordingly, not much fuel to feed the fire inside. Photographs show, in fact, that not a single floor beyond the fire’s starting location was hot enough to ignite paper or plastic or to break windows.

Griffin, D.R.; The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, pg.25

American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 were each estimated to be carrying 37,800 litres (10,000 gallons) of Jet-A fuel when they hit the towers. AA11 hit between floors 94 and 98 of WTC1, and UA175 hit between floors 78 and 84 of WTC2.

Three videos are known to have captured the impact of AA11, however these do not capture the impact clearly. In contrast, when UA175 impacted WTC2, the eyes of the world were already turned to the area. The impact was witnessed by hundreds of thousands of people in the NY/NJ area, it was broadcast live on news networks such as CNN, and it was captured in dozens of videos and photographs.

A compilation of aircraft impact videos can we watched here:



As part of their investigation, NIST used these videos and photographs in a paper calculating how much fuel was burned in the initial fireball.

Quote:

Adding up the contributions of the three fireballs and integrating over the 2.5 s that elapse before the fireballs begin to rise give an estimate of 1.6 X 10³ kg of fuel consumed, assuming the energy content of the fuel to be 43 MJ/kg. This result should be considered a lower bound on the fuel consumption in the fireball for at least two reasons. First, it assumes complete combustion of the fuel. Second, it takes no account of the additional burning that occurred after the fireballs began to rise. This result is consistent with results based on the CFD simulations displayed in Fig. 6 of [8]. These calculations reproduce the fireball shown in Fig. 4 quite accurately for assumed total fuel burns varying from 10% to 25% of the estimated fuel load of 2.8 X 10⁴ kg carried by the plane. In fact, if the time spanned was extended to 3–4 s (which ignores the increasingly important effects of fireball merging and buoyancy), then the fuel consumed in the fireballs according to this model would completely overlap the CFD based predictions of [8]. Thus, most of the fuel was available to serve as an ignitor for the fires that helped to destroy these buildings.

Source (PDF)

Allowing the higher threshold of fuel burned (25%) that still leaves over 28,000 litres of fuel to start fires in the building.

Most startling of all is Dr Griffin’s assertion that photographs show, in fact, that not a single floor beyond the fire’s starting location was hot enough to ignite paper or plastic or to break windows. The fires were located inside a steel skyscraper, hundreds of feet in the air. Every person who was in or near the area of impact for more than a matter of minutes is dead. Not a single photograph exists that was taken in or near the area of impact.

Dr Griffin’s assertion is senseless, and his claim that photographs exist to support it is an outright lie – an ironic predicament considering the topic of his Essay.

What we do have available to us is countless photographs and hours of video footage of the outside of the towers, and the ten thousand pages of NIST’s comprehensive investigation.

On pages 25 to 28 of NIST NCSTAR1, diagrams depict visual observations of fire on the four faces of WTC1. Extensive fires were observed on every floor from the 92nd to the 98th.

This itself refutes Dr Griffin’s claim that fires did not move beyond the immediate impact floors.

Images such as these:

http://www.oilempire.us/graphics/wtc29.jpg

http://www.oilempire.us/graphics/WTC_on_fire9.jpg

Further illustrate the intensity of the fires in the WTC.

Page 43 of NIST NCSTAR1 has a diagram depicting observable fires in WTC2 on every floor from the 78th to the 83rd.

Again, it is important to reiterate that these are fires observed from the outside of the building. They should be taken as an absolute minimum indicator of the extent of the fires.

It is important to remember that the design of the towers restricts the ability to determine events occurring inside. In conventional skyscraper design, the façade is not load-bearing, and is usually predominantly made of glass. In contrast, the exterior façade of the towers was comprised of tightly-spaced load-bearing steel columns, with very narrow windows between them. As a result a smaller percentage of the façade allowed a visual observation of internal fires.

Numerous first responders and civilian witnesses reported that the fires in the WTC were so intense they could feel the heat on their faces from the street below.

Further testimony of the heat of the fires is found in the NYPD’s aviation unit, which was dispatched to the WTC shortly after the impact of AA11, and nearly collided with UA175.

Quote:

As the helicopter approached the northwest corner of the WTC 1 roof, aircrew members observed that window washing machinery and equipment was in the way. Then, one of the aircrew monitoring instruments on the aircraft noted that the engine temperature suddenly began to rise. The pilot was informed, and the helicopter retreated from the approach, reporting that roof operations were not possible at that time.

NIST NCSTAR1-8 - The Emergency Response Operations, pg.51

NIST put extensive work in to determining the temperature of the fires in the World Trade Center.

Conspiracy Theorist will often make statements similar to the following in the film 9/11 Mysteries:

Quote:

A myth developed, fed by official sources through the media to a bewildered audience. Elements of the myth: the impact of the airplanes, gallons of burning jet fuel, steel melting, the buildings failing and suddenly imploding. In a mere 10 seconds, 110 stories hurtled earthward - pulverizing into dust.

9/11 Mysteries, TC:00:02:38:00

The above is a type of logical fallacy called a “Straw Man”.

Quote:

To "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw-man argument" is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent.

Source

Dr Griffin also makes this mistake in his book:

Quote:

A fourth problem is that, even had the fires been raging throughout the Twin Towers and Building 7, they would not have been nearly hot enough to melt steel, because ordinary hydrocarbon fires – such as fires based on jet fuel (kerosene) – can at most rise to 1700^o Fahrenheit, whereas steel begins to melt only at about 2770^o F.

Griffin, D.R.; The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, pg.26

NIST address the straw man argument of “melting steel” in their FAQ.

Quote:

In no instance did NIST report that steel in the WTC towers melted due to the fires. The melting point of steel is about 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,800 degrees Fahrenheit). Normal building fires and hydrocarbon (e.g., jet fuel) fires generate temperatures up to about 1,100 degrees Celsius (2,000 degrees Fahrenheit). NIST reported maximum upper layer air temperatures of about 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,800 degrees Fahrenheit) in the WTC towers (for example, see NCSTAR 1, Figure 6-36).

However, when bare steel reaches temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius, it softens and its strength reduces to roughly 10 percent of its room temperature value. Steel that is unprotected (e.g., if the fireproofing is dislodged) can reach the air temperature within the time period that the fires burned within the towers. Thus, yielding and buckling of the steel members (floor trusses, beams, and both core and exterior columns) with missing fireproofing were expected under the fire intensity and duration determined by NIST for the WTC towers.

http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm

This is supported elsewhere by the experts, such as an article for the journal of The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS):

Quote:

It is known that structural steel begins to soften around 425°C and loses about half of its strength at 650°C.

Eagar, W.T and Musso, C. (MIT)
Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse? Science, Engineering, and Speculation
JOM, 53(12) (2001) pg 8-11

And other investigations have produced similar opinions from the experts:

Quote:

"Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F," notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. "And at 1800° it is probably at less than 10 percent."

Debunking The 9/11 Myths
Popular Mechanics, March 2005

Chapter 6:10 – Thermal Environment Modeling, of NIST NCSTAR1 (starting page 121) recounts their investigation of the extent and temperature of fires in the WTC.

Using controlled experimentation techniques, NIST determined upper-limit temperatures of 1000^o C; ample temperature to drastically reduce the load-bearing capacity of the columns and truss assemblies in the towers.


As demonstrated previously, Conspiracy Theorists often present the tower collapses as being primarily or even solely a result of fire, totally ignoring important aspects of the day’s events such as the aircraft impact and shredding of fire proofing.

These are vital elements of the collapse sequence, and cannot be overlooked. These elements were quite different in each of the towers, and they help to explain why WTC2 collapse so much sooner than WTC1.

Ultimately, all building collapses are caused by gravity. When the supports holding a mass off the ground are no longer capable of resisting the force of gravity which is drawing that mass towards the earth’s surface, the supports will fail and collapse will occur.

A greater mass has greater Gravitational Potential Energy (GPE) and thus requires stronger support.

In comparing the two towers on 9/11, it is immediately clear that WTC2 had much more mass above the impact point that WTC1. There were more than twice as many floors above the impact point of WTC2 compared with WTC1. This immediately means the gravity load acting on the damaged floor area is much greater.

Another important factor to consider is impact damage in each building. The aircraft impacts contributed to the collapse by spreading jet-fuel through many floors, but they also severed columns and damaged floor trusses in the impact area.

UA175 hit the towers travelling considerably faster than AA11. A relatively simple way to illustrate the significance of speed in impact is to calculate the total Kinetic Energy released in the impact. Kinetic energy can be calculated using the formula:

KE = ½mv²

Where m = the mass of the aircraft and v = the velocity of the aircraft.

At impact AA11 weighed approximately 110,000kg and was travelling at approximately 220ms^-1 (490 MPH).

KE = 0.5 X 110,000 (220 X 220)
KE = 0.5 X 110,000 X 48,400
KE = 2,662,000,000J
KE = 2.6GJ

In contrast, UA175, also weighing approximately 110,000kg, was travelling at over 260ms^-1 (590 MPH).

KE = 0.5 X 110,000 (260 X 260)
KE = 0.5 X 110,000 X 67,600
KE = 3,718,000,000J
KE = 3.7GJ

As you can see, UA175 had 42% more energy at impact than AA11. This meant 42% more energy to sever columns and shred critical fireproofing from steel elements. It meant 42% more energy to destroy floor truss assemblies.

These factors are important as they contributed to the sequence of events that resulted in building collapse.

A further important factor in the collapse sequence was the nature of fireproofing on the steel in the buildings.

Quote:

The average thickness of spray-applied fireproofing on the trusses was ¾ inch. In the mid-1990’s a decision was made to upgrade the fire protection by applying additional material onto the trusses so as to increase fireproofing thickness to 1-1/2 inches. The fireproofing upgrade was applied to individual floors as they became vacant. By September 11, 2001, a total of 31 stories had been upgraded, including the entire impact zone in WTC 1 (floors 94-98), but only the 78th floor in the impact zone in WTC 2 (floors 78-84).

FEMA World Trade Center Building Performance Study
Chapter 2: WTC 1 and WTC 2
Page 2-12

As we have previously seen, NIST’s summary of the collapse sequence is:

Quote:

Based on this comprehensive investigation, NIST concluded that the WTC towers collapsed because: (1) the impact of the planes severed and damaged support columns, dislodged fireproofing insulation coating the steel floor trusses and steel columns, and widely dispersed jet fuel over multiple floors; and (2) the subsequent unusually large jet-fuel ignited multi-floor fires (which reached temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees Celsius) significantly weakened the floors and columns with dislodged fireproofing to the point where floors sagged and pulled inward on the perimeter columns. This led to the inward bowing of the perimeter columns and failure of the south face of WTC 1 and the east face of WTC 2, initiating the collapse of each of the towers.

NIST FAQ

It was the fire’s affect on the trusses that caused the sagging and ultimately led to the failure of the exterior columns, thus the thickness of the fireproofing on the floor trusses was a crucial element in how rapidly collapse occurred.

Steel columns perform well under compression, with the force of their gravity load applied directly along the length of the column. However as the columns were pulled inwards the load started to include a lateral load. Columns perform poorly under lateral loading. For a simple practical example of the forces at play:

Take a regular drinking straw and apply force directly along its length. Considering it is made only of thin plastic, it is surprisingly strong. Now bend the straw slightly. You will find it will fold over completely under only a small amount of force. This is a crude example of the difference.

As the floor trusses sagged more and more the steel columns were pulled further into the building, and the lateral load increased. At a critical point this lateral loading deformed the columns to the point that they were no longer capable of holding up the massive weight of the floors above.

This was further exacerbated because the aircraft impact had severed columns in the core and exterior, thus increasing the load on the remaining columns.

The bowing of the exterior columns was observed across the entire south (WTC1) and east (WTC2) face of the building, thus when the columns failed, the entire wall failed at once. The results were catastrophic.

The asymmetrical nature of the failure caused the top of the building in each case to twist. Although the columns in the buildings were large, they represented a tiny fraction of the total area of a given floor – the footprint of all of the core columns and exterior columns amounted to a little over 1% of the area of one floor. Once the top section twisted only a matter of a few inches, these columns no longer lined up, and nothing was left to hold the upper mass of floors up.

In a faction of a second the upper mass began to descend. Because the columns no longer lined up, the full impact energy was exerted on the light weight truss assembly of the first floor below the aircraft impact zone.

The floor trusses were designed only to carry the static gravity load of a single floor, not the mass of seventeen floors (WTC1) or thirty three floors (WTC2). They certainly could not resist a dynamic load that great. The enormous difference between a static and dynamic load can be easily illustrated. Take a heavy bowling ball, and place it on your foot. Then take the same bowling ball, lift it to eye height, and drop it on your foot.

The impact of the upper mass tore the floor truss free of the core and exterior columns, adding it to the mass crashing down onto the next lowest floor. As the debris fell it increased in mass and accelerated due to gravity, meaning each consecutive floor had more force impacting it than the floor above it.

Given then, the sequence of events that led to the collapse, it is obvious why WTC2 collapsed first. It suffered greater structural damage in the aircraft impact. The crucial floor trusses had only half as much fireproofing against the fires. And finally, WTC2 had a significantly larger mass bearing down on the already over-loaded crippled columns in the impact zone.


As previously mentioned, Conspiracy Theorists often compare the fires in the WTC towers to other high-rise fires, in an effort to demonstrate that the fires in the towers were minor, and should not have resulted in collapse.

Despite claiming in his essay that “several” high-rise buildings have suffered more severe longer-lasting fires without collapsing, in his book Omissions and Distortions Dr Griffin only provides one example:

Quote:

One problem is that fire has never before caused steel-frame high-rise buildings to collapse, even when the fire was a very energetic, all-consuming one, such as the 1991 fire at One Meridian Plaza in Philadelphia.

Griffin, D.R.; The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, pg.25

The United States Fire Administration’s official report into the fire at One Meridian Plaza is available online:

http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/downloads/pd...ons/tr-049.pdf

The first important factor to consider is one of scale, as it is Dr Griffin’s assertion that by comparison the fires in the WTC1 were small.

According to the USFA report:

Quote:

One Meridian Plaza has three underground levels, 36 above ground occupiable floors, two mechanical floors (12 and 38), and two rooftop helipads. The building is rectangular in shape, approximately 243 feet in length by 92 feet in width (approximately 22,400 gross square feet), with roughly 17,000 net usable square feet per floor. (pg.5)

In comparison, NIST NCSTAR1 tells us that the World Trade Center towers each had 110 floors, of square dimensions 63m by 63m, with a rectangular core of dimensions 26m by 41m.

Each floor of the WTC was almost twice the size of a floor of One Meridian Plaza. According to the USFA report the fire spread through 8 floors. The aircraft impact area alone for WTC1 and WTC2 were both larger than the entire area affected by fire in One Meridian Plaza. At the very least, the fires in each of the towers was significantly larger than the fires in One Meridian Plaza.

One Meridian Plaza did not collapse. Before determining whether this suggests the towers should not have collapsed, it is important to consider the specific details of each incident. Firstly, and most obviously, One Meridian Plaza was not hit by a jet airliner travelling at high speed. It did not suffer any structural damage at all prior to the fires starting. Secondly, while the fires in the WTC were started in large areas of multiple floors simultaneously by jet fuel, the fire in One Meridian Plaza:

Quote:

started in a vacant 22nd floor office in a pile of linseed oil-soaked rags left by a contractor. (pg.2)

Also of important consideration is the design of the buildings – as we know the structural design of the twin towers contributed significantly to their collapse. The report for One Meridian Plaza tells us:

Quote:

The building frame is structural steel with concrete floors poured over metal decks. All structural steel and floor assemblies were protected with spray-on fireproofing material. The exterior of the building was covered by granite curtain wall panels with glass windows attached to the perimeter floor girders and spandrels.

The building utilizes a central core design, although one side of the core is adjacent to the south exterior wall. The core area is approximately 38 feet wide by 124 feet long and contains two stairways, four banks of elevators, two HVAC supply duct shafts, bathroom utility chases, and telephone and electrical risers.

The building has three enclosed stairways of concrete masonry construction. Each stairway services all 38 floors. The locations of the two stairways within the building core shift horizontally three or four times between the ground and the 38th floor to accommodate elevator shafts and machine rooms for the four elevator banks.

…

The elevator shafts are constructed of concrete and masonry and extend from the first floor or lower levels to the highest floor served by the individual elevator banks. (pg. 5-6)

A significant difference is the presence of concrete and masonry in the building. Concrete and masonry are both far more resistant to fire than steel. Another major difference is revealed in the photographs in the appendix of the USFA report. While the columns for the twin towers were located solely in the core and around the perimeter, One Meridian Plaza had a more conventional design with evenly spaced columns throughout the floor area. This is of significance as it was failure of the exterior columns in the towers that initiated the collapse.

A summary of the timeline for the One Meridian Plaza fire reveals that though it burned for a long time, it did not ever reach the level of intesity Dr Griffin claims.

Quote:

February 23, 1991

2023 - smoke detector activated on 22nd floor

2027 (+4 mins) - Philadelphia Fire Department dispatches first alarm. On arrival they report fire visible in one window, and heavy smoke.

- A Staging Area is established on the 20th floor, and a Tactical Command Post on the 21st floor. An attack team begins fire fighting on the 22nd floor.

2030 – 2130 (+1 hr) -The fire spreads to the 23rd and 24th floors.

February 24

0215 (+6 hrs) - The fire has spread to the 25th floor and extending to the 26th.

0700 (+11 hrs) - A decision is made to evacuate the building after structural damage and consultation with a structural engineer led to the belief that there was a possibility of pancake collapse in the damaged floors.

-At this point the fire was under control on floor 22 to 24 and burning on floors 25 and 26, and continuing to spread upwards.

1500 approx (+19hrs) - The fire reaches the 30th floor and activates 10 sprinkler heads which put the fire out.

As the timeline suggests, and the report reveals, although the fire burned across a total of eight floors, at no time was it burning on all eight at once, and indeed, at its worst extent it spread across five floors, but took eight hours to do so.

In contrast, on 9/11 intense fires were raging on multiple much larger floors within minutes of the fires starting.

A final question to ask is what damage the fire actually did to One Meridian Plaza. Photos at the end of the report reveal a striking feature. The floor trusses in the affected floors sagged between columns – up to three feet in places. Unlike the WTC light-weight trusses, the photographs reveal the floors in One Meridian Plaza were supported by heavy steel beams. Yet despite this, they still sagged considerably.

It was the sagging of floor trusses in the towers that caused the collapse of those buildings, due to the unique design which placed all of the supporting columns on the perimeter.


As previously discussed, another building fire often cited by Conspiracy Theorists is the February 12, 2005 fire in the Windsor Tower in Madrid, Spain. I have previously demonstrated that the building had a very different design to the WTC – having a concrete core – and that the steel components of the building did suffer collapse. But what about the size of the fires?

Conspiracy Theorists will often cite photographs such as this one to demonstrate how intense fires were in the building.

However, like with One Meridian Plaza, the photographs are deceptive due to scale.

We can find out crucial information about the size of the building here.

The Windsor Tower had 32 stories, of which 29 were above ground. It stood 106 meters high, and had a total floor area of 20,000m².

Assuming that the fire burned through the entire area of all 32 floors, the total floor area thus engulfed in fire was 20,000m².

We can calculate an estimate of total volume of the fire affected area by calculating an average height per floor.

106m high divided by 29 above ground floors equals an average of 3.65m per floor. Allowing the same average height for each of the below-ground floors, this gives us a total fire volume of area x height = 20,000 x 3.65 = 73,000m³.

The diagram on page 18 of NIST NCSTAR1-1 tells us that the five aircraft impact stories of WTC1 were also each 3.65m high, and that six of the aircraft impact stories in WTC2 were 3.6m high. The 78th floor of WTC2 was 4.26m high.

Each floor of the WTC was approximately 3,900m². Thus we can determine the total volume of the aircraft impact area in each tower.

WTC1 = (3,900 x 5) x 3.65 = 71,175m³
WTC2 = (3,900 x 6) x 3.65 + (3,900 x 4.26) = 102,024m³

As we can see, the total impact area alone of WTC1 is almost as large as the entire volume of the Windsor Tower, and the impact area alone of WTC2 is considerably larger than the entire volume of the Windsor Tower. Just as with One Meridian Plaza, although the fires may seem comparably large, or even bigger, this perception is a result of the fires occurring in a building the fraction of the size of the towers.


Dr Griffin’s allegation regarding WTC7 contains the inherent claim that WTC7 collapsed. However components of this claim are that the building was not hit by an aircraft, and did not suffer significant fires.

There is also an implied claim in his allegation, which is that WTC7 should not have collapsed at all.

NIST have not completed their investigation into the collapse of WTC7. However in June 2004 they released NIST-SP 1000-5 – Progress Report on the Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center.

This included Appendix L – Interim Report on WTC7.

http://wtc.nist.gov/progress_report_.../appendixl.pdf

This Interim Report provides information on damage suffered by WTC7 due to the collapse of WTC1 and WTC2 and the extent of fires, both based on eye witness testimony. These are covered from page L-17 to L-26. They suggest significant structural damage and extensive fires.

Other independent investigations have uncovered similar information. Mark Roberts, a New York City tour guide and amateur 9/11 Conspiracy Theory “debunker”, has written an extensive paper specifically on WTC7.

World Trade Center Building 7 and the Lies of the “9/11 Truth Movement”
Online Version
PDF

This paper has collated together extensive eye witness testimonies as to the condition of WTC7 prior to its collapse, including the state of:

Quote:

The fires:

We walked over by number Seven World Trade Center as it was burning and saw this 40-plus story building with fire on nearly all floors.
–FDNY Lieutenant Robert LaRocca

Just when you thought it was over, you're walking by this building and you're hearing this building creak and fully involved in flames. It's like, is it coming down next? Sure enough, about a half an hour later it came down.
–FDNY Lieutenant James McGlynn

All morning I was watching 7 World Trade burn, which we couldn't do anything about because it was so much chaos looking for missing members.
–Firefighter Marcel Klaes

When the building came down it was completely involved in fire, all forty-seven stories.
–FDNY Assistant Chief Harry Myers

Then we had to move because the Duane Reade, they said, wasn't safe because building 7 was really roaring.
–FDNY Chief Medical Officer Kerry Kelly.

At this point Seven World Trade was going heavy, and they weren't letting anybody get too close. Everybody was expecting that to come down.
–Firefighter Vincent Massa

Building #7 was still actively burning and at that time we were advised by a NYFD Chief that building #7 was burning out of control and imminent collapse was probable. –PAPD P.O. Edward McQuade

Quote:

Structural Damage:

The major concern at that time was number Seven, building number Seven, which had taken a big hit from the north tower. When it fell, it ripped steel out from between the third and sixth floors across the facade on Vesey Street. We were concerned that the fires on several floors and the missing steel would result in the building collapsing.
–FDNY Chief Frank Fellini

2. At that time, other firefighters started showing up, Deputy Battalion Chief Paul Ferran of the 41 Battalion, and James Savastano of the First Division assigned to the Second Battalion showed up and we attempted to search and extinguish, at the time which was small pockets of fire in 7 World Trade Center. We were unaware of the damage in the front of 7, because we were entering from the northeast entrance. We weren't aware of the magnitude of the damage in the front of the building.
– FDNY Captain Anthony Varriale

[Shortly after the tower collapses] I don’t know how long this was going on, but I remember standing there looking over at building 7 and realizing that a big chunk of the lower floors had been taken out on the Vesey Street side. I looked up at the building and I saw smoke in it, but I really didn't see any fire at that time.
–Chief Nick Visconti

A few minutes after that a police officer came up to me and told me that the façade in front of Seven World Trade Center was gone and they thought there was an imminent collapse of Seven World Trade Center.
–FDNY Lieutenant William Melarango

I think they said they had seven to ten floors that were freestanding and they weren't going to send anyone in.
–FDNY Chief Thomas McCarthy

Quote:

And the FDNY’s decision to evacuate the area:

They backed me off the rig because Seven was in dead jeopardy, so they backed everybody off and moved us to the rear end of Vesey Street. We just stood there for a half hour, 40 minutes, because Seven was in imminent collapse and finally did come down.
–Firefighter Thomas Smith

Chief Nigro directed me to continue monitoring conditions at the site. Specifically to monitor number 7 World Trade Center. We were very concerned with the collapse potential there, and to do whatever I could do to ensure site safety in that no additional people became injured.
–FDNY Deputy Chief Harold Meyers

We were concerned that the fires on several floors and the missing steel would result in the building collapsing. So for the next five or six hours we kept firefighters from working anywhere near that building, which included the whole north side of the World Trade Center complex.
–Chief Frank Fellini

We made searches. We attempted to put some of the fire out, but we had a pressure problem. I forget the name of the Deputy. Some Deputy arrived at the scene and thought that the building was too dangerous to continue with operations, so we evacuated number 7 World Trade Center.
–Captain Anthony Varriale

I remember him screaming about number 7, No. 7, that they wanted everybody away from 7 because 7 was definitely going to collapse, they don't know when, but it's definitely going to come down, just get the hell out of the way, everybody get away from it, make sure you're away from it, that's an order, you know, stuff like that.
–Firefighter Edward Kennedy

If these eye witness testimonies are accurate, WTC7 suffered greater structural damage, relative to its overall size, than either of the two towers. If these eye witness testimonies, from dozens and dozens of firemen are accurate, WTC7, at 174m tall, 47 stories and 174,000m^2 of rentable office space, suffered the most extensive high-rise fire in history. Unlike other smaller high-rise fires I have previously mentioned in this paper such as One Meridian Plaza and the Windsor Tower, the fires in WTC7 raged without any fire-fighting operations conducted against it for seven hours.

The full scale of the fires in WTC7 can perhaps best be illustrated by a photograph taken by Aman Zafar. This photograph of Manhattan was taken some time after both WTC1 and WTC2 collapsed. The thick column of smoke pouring into the sky is from the fires burning unchecked in WTC7.

http://www.amanzafar.com/WTC/wtc-109_1_small.jpg

Videos such as the beginning of this one capture the enormous volume of smoke coming from WTC7.



The fires in WTC1, WTC2, and WTC7 on September 11, 2001 were not, as Dr Griffin and other Conspiracy Theorists claim, small, cool, or localised. They were, in fact, the worst high-rise fires in history.

All three buildings suffered crippling structural damage prior to the fires starting. The South Tower collapsed much sooner than the North Tower because it suffered substantially more structural damage from the aircraft impact, and because the devastated structural columns were bearing over twice as much structural mass.

The inherent claim that the fires in the Twin Towers were not very big, very hot, or very long-lasting compared with fires in several steel-frame buildings that did not collapse is rejected.

The inherent claim that the South Tower should not have collapsed first is rejected.

The inherent claim that WTC 7 (which was not hit by an airplane and which had only small, localized fires) also collapsed is partially rejected. WTC7 did collapse, it was not hit by an aircraft, however, the fires were not small or localized.

The implied claim that WTC7 should not have collapsed is rejected.

Fifth lie

5.The omission of the fact that fire has never, before or after 9/11, caused steel-frame buildings to collapse (25).

The Report makes no mention of other building collapses due to fire, either before or after 9/11. Nor does it mention that the collapse of the Twin Towers was unique.

Quote:

The claim inherent in the allegation is that fire has never, before or after 9/11, caused steel-frame buildings to collapse.

Like the previous claim, this one is easily investigated.

Quote:

More than a quarter of a million dollars worth of hay has gone up in smoke after an arson attack in the Manawatu. The fire near Feilding thwarted the best efforts of firefighters and left one man's livelihood in ruins.

The fire on Reid Line West started at just after 2am on Sunday. At its peak, four fire appliances played a part in attempts to douse the flames. The river was pumped dry trying to deal with it. Two army water tankers from Linton were brought in to help as well as another tanker from Palmerston North. Feilding station officer Glenn Davies says the flames melted the steel shed causing it to collapse onto the bales, limiting the access for firefighters.

TVNZ

Dr Griffin probably didn’t have a $60,000 steel-framed hay barn in mind when he made his statement, but it illustrates an important point about this particular common Conspiracy Theory argument. The reality is steel buildings have and do collapse due to fire, and steel buildings are vulnerable to collapse from fire. This is why building codes in all western countries require that steel structural elements are either encased in concrete or coated in fireproofing material.

Conspiracy theorists will often rephrase their claim from “steel building” to “steel high rise” to “steel skyscraper”, evolving to the extreme of “steel skyscraper in North America over 100 stories” or similar.

Using the same flawed logic, one could counter this argument by pointing out that every steel-framed skyscraper that has been intentionally rammed by a Boeing 767 airliner at high speed has suffered a global collapse.

Both the design of the Twin Towers and the events that happened on 9/11 were unique in world history. Comparing these events to other dissimilar events is misleading and dishonest.

Before looking further into other high-rise fires, it is important to understand the specific events that occurred on 9/11. The collapse of WTC1 and WTC2 was studied by a government agency called the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The study required a high degree of specialists expertise and involved extensive photo analysis, engineering testing, fire testing, and structural modelling. A study of the collapses was far outside the mandate and expertise of the 9/11 Commission.

The NIST Report on the collapse of WTC1 and WTC2 is enormous – totally about 10,000 pages when all of the technical supporting documents are included. All of their papers, including draft reports, can be accessed from their website.

It is important to take note, for this and later claims made by Dr Griffin, that the 9/11 Commission Report was released over a year before NIST released their final report on the collapse of WTC1 and WTC2. NIST’s study into the collapse of WTC7 is ongoing, with a final report expected to be released in 2007.

The first important aspect to investigate is NIST’s explanation for the cause of the collapse. The NIST Report is a large and complex document to study, however they have also provided a more accessible series of frequently asked questions.

Quote:

Some 200 technical experts—including about 85 career NIST experts and 125 leading experts from the private sector and academia—reviewed tens of thousands of documents, interviewed more than 1,000 people, reviewed 7,000 segments of video footage and 7,000 photographs, analyzed 236 pieces of steel from the wreckage, performed laboratory tests and sophisticated computer simulations of the sequence of events that occurred from the moment the aircraft struck the towers until they began to collapse.

Based on this comprehensive investigation, NIST concluded that the WTC towers collapsed because: (1) the impact of the planes severed and damaged support columns, dislodged fireproofing insulation coating the steel floor trusses and steel columns, and widely dispersed jet fuel over multiple floors; and (2) the subsequent unusually large jet-fuel ignited multi-floor fires (which reached temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees Celsius) significantly weakened the floors and columns with dislodged fireproofing to the point where floors sagged and pulled inward on the perimeter columns. This led to the inward bowing of the perimeter columns and failure of the south face of WTC 1 and the east face of WTC 2, initiating the collapse of each of the towers. Both photographic and video evidence—as well as accounts from the New York Police Department aviation unit during a half-hour period prior to collapse—support this sequence for each tower.

When considering Dr Griffin’s claim, it is important to note the key aspects of the collapse – impact causing structural damage and dislodging fireproofing, jet fuel dispersed over multiple floors, sagging floor trusses, and inward-bowing perimeter columns.

All of these are factors specific to the aircraft impact event and the unique design of the towers. In looking at other examples of skyscraper fires, it is important to ask if these same characteristics were present. The answer, in all cases, is no.

In regard to performance of multi-story steel-framed structures in fires, it is worth investigating the worst industrial fire in history. On May 10, 1993 a small fire at the Kader Industrial (Thailand) Co. Ltd. Factory spread rapidly to engulf three four storey buildings, claiming the lives of 188 workers.

This fire is a stark demonstration of how steel structural elements perform when not protected from exposure to fire.

Quote:

The fire spread rapidly throughout Building One, and the upper floors soon became untenable. The blaze blocked the stairwell at the south end of the building, so most of the workers rushed to the north stairwell. This meant that approximately 1,100 people were trying to leave the third and fourth floors through a single stairwell.

The first fire apparatus arrived at 4:40 p.m., their response time having been extended because of the relatively remote location of the facility and the gridlock conditions typical of Bangkok traffic. Arriving fire-fighters found Building One heavily involved in flames and already beginning to collapse, with people jumping from the third and fourth floors.

Despite the fire-fighters' efforts, Building One collapsed completely at approximately 5:14 p.m. Fanned by strong winds blowing toward the north, the blaze spread quickly into Buildings Two and Three before the fire brigade could effectively defend them. Building Two reportedly collapsed at 5:30 p.m., and Building Three at 6:05 p.m.

Case Study: The Kader Toy Factory fire

This isn’t the only example of steel structures failing due to fire, even without the addition of a 767 impact.

On January 16, 1967 a fire started in the McCormick Place exhibition hall in Chicago.

Quote:

The fire spread was very rapid due to the lack of compartmentalization, the large amount of fuel, and lack of means of suppression. The unprotected steel roof trusses failed early on in the fire due to the same factors.

Source

January 28, 1997 and another fire in another steel building:

Quote:

On the morning of January 28, 1997, in the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania township of Strasburg, a fire caused the collapse of the state-of-the-art, seven year old Sight and Sound Theater and resulted in structural damage to most of the connecting buildings. The theater was a total loss, valued at over $15 million.

Source

Conspiracy Theorists ignore these events, preferring to highlight other incidents. The most common incident cited by Conspiracy Theorists is the Windsor Tower fire which gutted the 32 storey building in Madrid, Spain on February 12, 2005. Although the building was internally destroyed by the fires it remained standing until it was manually torn down.

Most obviously, the Windsor Tower was not hit by a 767, and in fact did not suffer any structural damage prior to the fire starting. None of its fireproofing material was stripped off, and the fires started on one floor before spreading, rather than being started on multiple floors simultaneously as a result of spilled jet fuel.

The differences do not end there. Dr Griffin’s primary contention is that fire has not caused steel-framed buildings to collapse. However the Windsor Tower was not a steel framed building.

Quote:

The building totalled 32 storeys, with 29 floors above ground and three below. A concrete core and concrete frame supported the first 16 floors. Above that was a central support system of concrete columns, supporting concrete floors with steel perimeter columns. An additional feature was the presence of two 'technical floors' - concrete floors designed to give the building more strength. One was just above the ground level and the other at the 17th floor.

Furthermore, Dr Griffin’s assertion would suggest that the elements of the Windsor Tower that were steel would not have collapsed. Not true.

Quote:

The steel columns above the 17th floor suffered complete collapse, partially coming to rest on the upper technical floor.

Source

The reality – that fire causes steel structures to collapse, is illustrated clearly by post-fire photos of the Windsor Tower such as this one.

Quote:

The inherent claim that fire has never, before or after 9/11, caused steel-frame buildings to collapse is rejected.

Fourth lie

4. The omission of the fact that the publicly released flight manifests contain no Arab names (23).

As previously stated, the 9/11 Report identifies nineteen hijackers and allocates them to the four flights hijacked on 9/11. The report does not make any specific reference to the Flight Manifests.

Quote:

The claim inherent in the allegation is that the publicly released flight manifests contain no Arab names.

This is perhaps one of the most straight forward claims to investigate. Put simply, the flight manifests remain the property of their respective airlines, and none of the four flight manifests have ever publicly been released by the airlines.

Although this alone is enough to reject the inherent claim, to fully investigate the claim it is necessary to understand why Dr Griffin makes this allegation.

On March 30, 2006 David Ray Griffin gave a lecture entitled The Myth And The Reality at Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland, California.

Quote:

Another problem in the official account is that, although we are told that four or five of the alleged hijackers were on each of the four flights, no proof of this claim has been provided. The story, of course, is that they did not force their way onto the planes but were regular, ticketed passengers. If so, their names should be on the flight manifests. But the flight manifests that have been released contain neither the names of the alleged hijackers nor any other Arab names.²⁹

The footnote for this remark leads us to the following web addresses:

www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/AA11.victims.html
www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/UA175.victims.html
www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/AA77.victims.html
www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/UA93.victims.html

There’s a clue in the web address itself – these are lists of victims, not passenger manifests.

Furthermore, the portal to the victim list pages (which also include a page for the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon) states:

Quote:

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., and the crash of United Airlines flight 93, officials across the country are working to piece together lists of victims.

While the official number of those missing and dead will inevitably rise over the next few weeks, authorities from American Airlines, United Airlines, the Department of Defense, the New York City Medical Examiners Office and the New York City Fire Department, have released partial lists. They are linked below.

A closer inspection reveals that these lists not only exclude the hijackers (who for obvious reasons are not considered victims) but are indeed partial lists, and do not include all of the passengers.

AA77’s victim list only names 50 of the 53 passengers (excluding hijackers) onboard.
UA175’s list only names 47 of 51 passengers (excluding hijackers).
UA93’s list only names 26 of 33 passengers (excluding hijackers).

On July 31, 2006 the United States District Court Eastern District of Virginia took the unprecedented action of publishing all of the trial exhibits from United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui online at their website.

Quote:

The following web pages link to all 1,202 exhibits admitted into evidence during the trial of U.S. v. Moussaoui, with the exception of seven that are classified or otherwise remain under seal. This is the first criminal case for which a federal court has provided access to all exhibits online. The exhibits were posted on July 31, 2006.

Amongst them was Prosecution Trial Exhibit OG00010 – Presentation for Special Agent Jim Fitzgerald.

The exhibit is a flash animation constructed from the flight manifests which identifies the names and seat numbers of all of the crew and passengers on each of the flights hijacked on 9/11.

A .zip file can be downloaded from the site, or alternatively the animation can be watched at 911myths.com

Alternatively this page has still images produced from the flash animation.

The names and seat numbers of all nineteen hijackers are identified in this court exhibit.

It is clear to see that Dr Griffin’s assertion simply is not true, and his misrepresentation of the CNN lists is an example of the level of dishonesty Conspiracy Theorists will resort to in order to reinforce their theories.

For a more in depth look at the flight manifest claim, I recommend the excellent summary at 911myths.com.

Quote:

The inherent claim that the publicly released flight manifests contain no Arab names is rejected.

Third lie

3. The obfuscation of the evidence that Hani Hanjour was too poor a pilot to have flown an airliner into the Pentagon (21-22). The Report addresses the four hijacker pilots’ training in Chapter 7: The Attack Looms from page 223 to 231.

Regarding Hani Hanjour it mentions:

Quote:

In 1996, Hanjour returned to the United States to pursue flight training, after being rejected by a Saudi flight school. He checked out flight schools in Florida, California, and Arizona; and he briefly started at a couple of them before returning to Saudi Arabia. In 1997, he returned to Florida and then, along with two friends, went back to Arizona and began his flight training there in earnest. After about three months, Hanjour was able to obtain his private pilot’s license. Several more months of training yielded him a commercial pilot certificate, issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in April 1999. (p225-226)

The Report further states:

Quote:

Settling in Mesa [Arizona], Hanjour began refresher training at his old school, Arizona Aviation. He wanted to train on multi-engine planes, but had difficulties because his English was not good enough. The instructor advised him to discontinue but Hanjour said he could not go home without completing the training. In early 2001, he started training on a Boeing 737 simulator at Pan Am International Flight Academy in Mesa. An instructor there found his work well below standard and discouraged him from continuing. Again Hanjour persevered; he completed the initial training by the end of March 2001. (p.226-227)

At no point does the Report suggest that Hani Hanjour lacked the necessary skills to pilot AA77 into the Pentagon.

Quote:

The claim inherent in the allegation is that Hani Hanjour was too poor a pilot to have flown an airliner into the Pentagon.

This particular claim first emerged shortly after 9/11, during an ABC News interview with air traffic controller Danielle O’Brien. O’Brien was a controller at the Dulles Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) Centre on September 11, and was the first controller to locate AA77 after it vanished from Indianapolis Centre’s radar screens at 0854EDT.

During the interview O’Brien comments on the way the radar contact was moving:

Quote:

"The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane," says O'Brien. "You don't fly a 757 in that manner. It's unsafe."

Conspiracy Theorists often use this quote as evidence that it was not AA77 that hit the Pentagon. However they are dishonest with their quoting, leaving out the important “You don’t fly a 757 in that manner. It’s unsafe.”

Another common person cited is Marcel Bernard, the chief flight instructor at Freeway Airport in Bowie, Maryland. Hani Hanjour went to Freeway in August 2001 to rent a Cessna 172, however he showed such poor flying skills that they declined to rent him an aircraft.

The Conspiracy Theory film Loose Change has an interview with Bernard.

Quote:

BERNARD: Hello, my name is Marcel Bernard and I'm the chief flight instructor here at Freeway. Hani Hanjour, well basically what happened with him is... he showed at the airport and wanted to get checked out in the aircraft you see, he was already certified, he didn't come to us for flight training. Yeah, he already had a pilot's license. He already earned a - it was private, instrument, commercial at a school in Arizona - I don't remember the name of the school. He already had certificates in hand and we sometimes occasionally have pilots who come to us that don't want flight training, but just want to rent our aircraft.

INTERVIEWER: Which is the case of Hani Hanjour?

BERNARD: This was the case of Hani, he wanted to get "checked-out" as we call it to rent our aircraft. And our insurance requires that he flies with one of our instructors to be found competent to rent. And that was the process that he was going through. And consensus was, he was very quiet, average, or below average piloting skills, English was very poor, so, that's about the best description I can get, give you for his demeanor. At that time very uneventful from my perspective.

In this interview Bernard is not asked if he thought Hanjour could not have hit the Pentagon – somewhat surprising given this is precisely what the filmmakers who interviewed him were proposing in their film Loose Change.

Perhaps they did ask him, and didn’t like the answer. In an interview with Newsday, Bernard gives his opinion:

Quote:

Despite Hanjour's poor reviews, he did have some ability as a pilot, said Bernard of Freeway Airport. "There's no doubt in my mind that once that [hijacked jet] got going, he could have pointed that plane at a building and hit it," he said.

Certainly both the 9/11 Report and David Ray Griffin seem to be in agreement that Hani Hanjour was not an especially gifted pilot – indeed the 9/11 Report indicates that he barely managed to pass any of his certifications, and that his instructors universally considered him a very poor pilot.

But Dr Griffin is claiming more than this. He is claiming that Hanjour’s skills were so poor he could not have flown AA77 into the Pentagon. Conspiracy Theorists will often make statements such as this one:

Quote:

It is doubtful that the best trained fighter pilots could have executed the maneuver that supposedly crashed a 757 into the Pentagon. It required making a tight 320-degree turn while descending seven thousand feet, then leveling out so as to fly low enough over the highway just west of the Pentagon to knock down lamp posts. After crossing the highway the pilot had to take the plane to within inches of the ground so as to crash into the Pentagon at the first-floor level and at such a shallow angle that an engine penetrated three rings of the building, while managing to avoid touching the lawn. And he had to do all of this while flying over 400 mph. Quite a feat for a flight school flunky who had never sat in the cockpit of a jet!

The heart of this matter, then, is not so much determining the level of skill Hani Hanjour had, but determining just how difficult the manoeuvre made by AA77 was.

The above quote makes a mistake that Conspiracy Theorists repeatedly fall for. The alleged precision of the aircraft’s flight relies on the assumption that it was the pilot’s intention to perform precisely as actually occurred. This is, of course, nonsensical. There is no reason to assume the hijackers had any intention other than to hit The Pentagon somewhere. The location of impact and movement of the aircraft prior to impact are not important objectives. Indeed, as we will see, various aspects of the aircraft flight suggest a lack of expertise by the pilot.

The crucial stage of AA77’s approach is the final manoeuvre in which the aircraft descended from 8,500ft to ground level while making a wide circle south of the Pentagon.

According to the recovered Flight Data Recorder from AA77:

At 0934EDT AA77 was approximately 10km west of the Pentagon, headed directly for it, at an altitude of 8,500ft. At 09:34:01 the FDR records the beginning of a manual flight control input to the right, banking the aircraft to starboard and beginning a slow turn. At this point the aircraft’s heading was 88.6^o – almost directly east. It was travelling at 339KT (ground speed) at the time.

A full 198 seconds later, at 09:37:19EDT, AA77 levelled out at 2,200ft at a heading of about 60^o, and with a ground speed of 318KT. It completed nearly an entire circle, making a circuit that covered 330^o. The circle of AA77’s flight was about 8km across. The manoeuvre was performed at a fairly constant speed around the 300KT mark, and the aircraft’s average rate of descent was about 1,900ft per minute.

In contrast, AA77’s FDR records that the flight’s initial climb out of Dulles International to 29,000ft was achieved in 13 minutes with an average rate of ascent of 2,200ft per minute.

Given that a high rate of descent is much easier than a high rate of ascent, due to the benefits of gravity, it is clear that the aircraft’s rate of descent in its final turn, while rapid, could not by any standard be considered “aerobatic”. The pilot typically maintained between 20^o and 30^o of bank angle, with a one to two second peak of 41^o of bank angle.

Certainly such a manoeuvre would not be comfortable for passengers, however given the ultimate fate of the flight, it can be assumed that whoever was at the aircraft’s controls was not concerned with passenger comfort.

Much more extreme manoeuvres can easily be performed in large airliners when passenger comfort is not a concern. For example these two videos below:


Boeing 707 (an older larger airliner than the 757) test pilot Alvin “Tex” Johnson heralds the dawn of the Jet Passenger age by performing a barrel roll at Seafair, August 6, 1955 above a stunned crowd.


A Boeing 757-200 (same model as AA77) of No.40 Squadron, Royal New Zealand Air Force performs a high speed (350KT) low level (100ft) pass followed by a 45 degree climbout to 7,500ft.

A critical component of airframe survivability while manoeuvring is how much g-force is applied. During a turn, g-force is the force that pushes you to the outside of the circle, such as how you will tend to lean to one side as you make a sharp turn in a car. The tighter and faster the turn, the higher the g-forces. 1 g is equal to the force of earth’s gravity. So at 4 gs everything will feel four times as heavy.

Aircraft designed for high-g manoeuvres such as fighter aircraft have to be made very strong, otherwise the forces acting on them can tear them apart.

The g-forces applied to AA77 during its descending turn can be calculated fairly easily using a simple formula:

A = v² / r

Where r = the radius of the turn and v = velocity during the turn.

As previously stated, AA77’s turn was approximately 8km across, and the turn was completed at around 300KT. As the speed varied somewhat we will use a higher value of 350KT. A higher velocity will result in higher g-forces.

Converting to international units we get a velocity of 180ms^-1 and a radius of 4,000m.

A = (180x180) / 4,000
A = 8.1

A represents the constant acceleration that the turning object experiences due to centripetal force.

Acceleration due to gravity is 9.8ms², thus we can determine that the average lateral g-forces experienced by AA77 during the descending turn were 0.82 gs.

In comparison, on January 22nd, 2002 Icelandair Flight 315 (a Boeing 757-208) was involved in a serious incident during approach to Oslo airport Gardermoen. During a go-around due to an unstable initial approach, the aircraft entered an extreme manoeuvre which exceeded the aircraft’s maximum g-limits. Although passengers were alarmed, the aircraft landed safely.

According to the report into the incident:

Quote:

At this time the First Officer called out “PULL UP!” - “PULL UP!”. The GPWS aural warnings of “TERRAIN” and then “TOO LOW TERRAIN” were activated. Both pilots were active at the control columns and a maximum “up” input was made. A split between left and right elevator was indicated at this time. It appears the split occurred due to both pilots being active at the controls. The pilots did not register the aural warnings. During the dive the airspeed increased to 251 kt and the lowest altitude in the recovery was 321 ft radio altitude with a peaked load factor of +3.59 g’s.

Source

The final part of AA77’s approach is often described, as we saw above;

Quote:

leveling out so as to fly low enough over the highway just west of the Pentagon to knock down lamp posts. After crossing the highway the pilot had to take the plane to within inches of the ground so as to crash into the Pentagon at the first-floor level

There’s a number of problems with these sorts of summaries, however. As we know from AA77’s FDR, the aircraft did not level out of its descent near to the ground, but at 2,200ft. At this point AA77 was 7.5km from the Pentagon. According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)’s AA77 Flight Path Report:

Quote:

At the end of the turn, the aircraft was at about 2000 feet altitude and 4 miles southwest of the Pentagon. Over the next 30 seconds, power was increased to near maximum and the nose was pitched down in response to control column movements. The airplane accelerated to approximately 460 knots (530 miles per hour) at impact with the Pentagon. The time of impact was 9:37:45 AM.

This produces a rough average descent rate of 1m for every 11m of horizontal distance covered in the final approach to the Pentagon. Or to put it another way, the aircraft descended at a rate of 22m for every second. Although this descent rate would not have been constant, it’s very clear that the aircraft did not spend any significant period of time “within inches of the ground”.

Most people would expect an inexperienced pilot to crash an airliner within moments of coming so close to the ground. On 9/11 this is precisely what happened.

Moreover, on its final seconds of approach AA77 struck multiple tall highway lamp posts and a large generator; further evidence of poor flying on behalf of the pilot.

Some have asserted that the low approach of AA77 was in fact aerodynamically impossible, due to something called “ground effect”. One such person is Nila Sagadevan, an aeronautical engineer and qualified pilot.

He wrote a paper refuting the notion that the poorly trained hijackers could have pulled off the September 11 Attacks. He mentions in the paper:

Quote:

I shan't get into the aerodynamic impossibility of flying a large commercial jetliner 20 feet above the ground at over 400 MPH. A discussion on ground effect energy, tip vortex compression, downwash sheet reaction, wake turbulence, and jetblast effects are beyond the scope of this article (the 100,000-lb jetblast alone would have blown whole semi-trucks off the roads.)

Sagadevan’s paper is full of factual errors, far too many to delve into here (for example he claims those killed at the Pentagon were construction workers doing renovations, however renovations for that section had been completed, the offices were fully staffed, and a high proportion of those killed and injured by the impact were military personnel, as indicated by their rank). However a number of other aviation experts have stated that the attacks were well within the capabilities of the 9/11 hijackers.

Quote:

"They'd done their homework and they had what they needed," says a United Airlines pilot (name withheld on request), who has flown every model of Boeing from the 737 up. "Rudimentary knowledge and fearlessness."

"As everyone saw, their flying was sloppy and aggressive," says Michael (last name withheld), a pilot with several thousand hours in 757s and 767s. "Their skills and experience, or lack thereof, just weren't relevant."

"The hijackers required only the shallow understanding of the aircraft," agrees Ken Hertz, an airline pilot rated on the 757/767. "In much the same way that a person needn't be an experienced physician in order to perform CPR or set a broken bone."

That sentiment is echoed by Joe d'Eon, airline pilot and host of the "Fly With Me" podcast series. "It's the difference between a doctor and a butcher," says d'Eon.

Source

Quote:

In my opinion the official version of the fact is absolutely plausible, does not require exceptional circumstances, bending of any law of physics or superhuman capabilities. Like other (real pilots) have said, the manoeuvres required of the hijackers were within their (very limited) capabilities, they were performed without any degree of finesse and resulted in damage to the targets only after desperate overmanoeuvring of the planes. The hijackers took advantage of anything that might make their job easier, and decided not to rely on their low piloting skills. It is misleading to make people believe that the hijackers HAD to possess superior pilot skills to do what they did.

Source

Quote:

Again: lift from "the ground effect" happens at low, not high, airspeeds and high, not low, angles of attack. At high speeds, flow across a wing tends toward laminar, and spanwise flow is functionally negligible. Ground effect mitigates lift loss when the ground breaks up wing tip vortices from turbulent and spanwise flow over a wing caused by high angle of attack, low speed flight regime.

Source

The final word is perhaps best presented visually, in the form of an animation the NTSB produced depicting the final manoeuvres of AA77.


The inter-titles and text have been added to the animation by Conspiracy Theorists. Note the unsteady movement of the aircraft, with constant control inputs, corrections, and over corrections. These are sure signs of poor flying ability.

Additionally, a number of amateurs have made attempts to replicate AA77’s flight using highly accurate commercially available flight simulator software.




The evidence strongly suggests that AA77’s final doomed flight was well within the capabilities of someone with only the most minimal flying capabilities, and well within the skill level of Hani Hanjour who just managed to scrape through an FAA Commercial Pilot’s License.

Quote:

The inherent claim that Hani Hanjour was too poor a pilot to have flown an airliner into the Pentagon is rejected.

Second lie

2. The omission of evidence about Mohamed Atta — such as his reported fondness for alcohol, pork, and lap dances — that is in tension with the Commission's claim that he had become fanatically religious (20-21).

The report states:

Quote:

When Atta arrived in Germany, he appeared religious, but not fanatically so. This would change, especially as his tendency to assert leadership became increasingly pronounced. (pg.160)

However:

Quote:

After leaving Afghanistan, the hijackers made clear efforts to avoid appearing radical. Once back in Hamburg, they distanced themselves from conspicuous extremists like Zammar, whom they knew attracted unwanted attention from the authorities. They also changed their appearance and behaviour. Atta wore Western clothing, shaved his beard, and no longer attended extremist mosques. (pg.167)

The word “Atta” appears 293 times in the Commission Report, however there is no reference to a fondness for alcohol, pork, or lap dances.

Quote:

The claim inherent in the allegation is that Mohamed Atta had a fondness for alcohol, pork, and lap dances.

This claim immediately poses a problem as it relies on Atta’s personal opinion. “Fondness” is entirely subjective and cannot be measured. However, for the moment I will consider the claim that Atta drank alcohol, ate pork, and received lap dances.

These claims originate from a single source – an interview with Amanda Keller – an American who claimed to be Mohammed Atta’s girlfriend in Florida. The interview was conducted by Mad Cow Productions researcher Daniel Hopsicker who alleges that Atta was running a heroin smuggling operation for Osama Bin Laden. The findings of Hopsicker’s research were published in his book Welcome To Terrorland, and this appears to be the only source for the claims made about Atta.

The interview can be watched here.

It’s worth noting that Ms Keller makes no reference to pork or lap dances in this interview, and recounts that “Mohamed” frowned on her for drinking alcohol in public.

Similar general claims of drinking and un-Muslim-like behaviour were made about the hijackers. Some examples include:

The Telegraph

Mad Cow Productions

Free Arab Voice

The Boston Herald

Before the validity of these claims is examined, it is important to determine their significance. Although the allegation contains the inherent claim that Mohamed Atta had a fondness for alcohol, pork, and lap dances, it also contains an implied claim.

This is that Mohamed was not in fact, a religious fanatic as the Commission Report claims, and therefore did not carry out the September 11 attacks.

One of the flaws in this line of reasoning is that Religious Fanatics do not necessarily follow closely the religious teachings of their religion. The Qur’an states:

Quote:

Whosoever kills an innocent human being, it shall be as if he has killed all mankind, and whosoever saves the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind. (5:32)

Clearly Islamic Terrorists who indiscriminately kill hundreds of civilians are in direct violation of their religion.

We have already seen from the Report that the hijackers made a conscious effort to blend in with other westerners – dressing smartly, shaving off their beards, and distancing themselves from other Islamic extremist groups.

Such “blending in” has been a standard aspect of covert military and intelligence operations for centuries. The Romans often employed spies, who would infiltrate the communities of their enemies and live amongst them, adapting their customs.

This appears to be an idea that some Islamic Extremists have embraced:

Quote:

Atta has been associated with a sect called Al Takfir wal Hijra, run by al Quaeda second-in-command Ayman Al-Zawahiri. This is an extreme fundamentalist sect, however...

"A major element of Takfir religious practice is subterfuge. The threat of Takfir is that its cold, heartless killers could easily be the boy or girl next door. Takfir Wal Hijra members are permitted to disregard the injunctions of Islamic law in order to blend into infidel societies.

In other words, Takfirs can have sex with loose women, drink alcohol, eat pork and do whatever else they feel is appropriate to advance their mission...

Mohammed Atta, although puritanical in his behavior, was believed to be Takfiri. He's not the only al Qaeda operative you could point the finger at. Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed went to discos, drank alcohol and dated call girls. Yousef in particular is renowned for being generally unIslamic and non-observant of prayers and fasting. Although no one has suggested openly that Yousef and KSM were Takfiri, it's hardly a stretch".

Source

Other sources on paint a similar picture:

http://www.answers.com/topic/takfir-wal-hijra

http://www.norwalkadvocate.com/news/...tion-headlines

http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...182746,00.html

Some sources of evidence suggest it wasn’t just this particular extremist sect whom followed these principles:

Quote:

...In the mountain of documents left behind in al-Qaedas’ training camps in Afghanistan, one Yemeni, Khalid, wrote to his brother describing the people he had just joined:

I am in a whirlpool of contradictions. You cannot trust anyone here. Imagine that I might have to hide the copy of the Koran you gave me for fear it might get stolen like my watch. They train us here on how to mix with the Christians and how to emulate their life style. We have to learn how to drink alcohol and to shave off our beards.

Al-Majallh issue no. 1188, 23 November 2002, p. 24
cited page 20, Masterminds of Terror, Yousri Fouda and Nick Fielding

An Al Qaeda training manual recovered from the house of Nazih al Wadih Raghie by the Manchester Metropolitan Police on May 10, 2000 reflects the notion of “blending in”.

Quote:

An Important Question: How can a Muslim spy live among enemies if he maintains his Islamic characteristics? How can he perform his duties to Allah and not want to appear Muslim?

Concerning the issue of clothing and appearance (appearance of true religion), Ibn Taimia - may Allah have mercy on him - said, "If a Muslim is in a combat or godless area, he is not obligated to have a different appearance from [those around him ].The [Muslim] man may prefer or even be obligated to look like them, provided his action brings a religious benefit of preaching to them, learning their secrets and informing Muslims, preventing their harm, or some other beneficial goal."

Resembling the polytheist in religious appearance is a kind of "necessity permits the forbidden” even though they [forbidden acts] are basically prohibited. As for the visible duties, like fasting and praying, he can fast by using any justification not to eat with them [polytheist]. As for prayer, the book (Al-Manhaj Al-Haraki Lissira Al-Nabawiya)quotes Al-Bakhari that "he [the Moslem ]may combine the noon and afternoon [prayers], sunset and evening [prayers]. That is based on the fact that the prophet -Allah bless and keep him -combined [prayers] in Madina without fear or hesitation."

However the document adds:

Quote:

Though scholars have disagreed about the interpretation of that tradition, it is possible - though Allah knows best -that the Moslem spy combines [prayers ].It is noted, however, that it is forbidden to do the unlawful, such as drinking wine or fornicating. There is nothing that permits those.

The Al Qaeda Manual
Eleventh Lesson: Espionage (1) Intelligence Gathering Using Open Methods

Other high profile Islamic Terrorist plots indicate blending in may be commonplace.

Such as this article about one of the Madrid Bombers:

Quote:

Despite his reputation for fanaticism at the Madrid mosque he attended, Ahmidan also frequented discotheques and bars. He struck his Spanish neighbors as friendly and flashy. They remember him zooming by on a motorcycle with his long-haired girlfriend, a Spanish woman with a taste for revealing outfits

Source

Even the Muslim world can find possible explanations for such behaviour.

S. Abdallah Schleifer, the publisher and senior editor of TBS Journal (www.tbsjournal.com), and al Jazeeras Yosri Fouda give their thoughts here:

Quote:

SAS: My own instinct is that just as they inhabited a psychic or psychological state that convinced them they were reliving the Prophet's experiences at the very moment they were about to violate both the very strict shari'a ("Islamic law") rules governing war and the Prophet's canonic sayings condemning the killing of civilians, so they must have assumed that the purifying nature of their approaching martyrdom gave them some sort of cosmic dispensation.

YF: Speaking of dispensation and states of mind, when I was in Karachi waiting to meet up with Ramzi and Khalid, my contact called me at the hotel I was staying at to arrange a meeting time. Since it was Friday I suggested we meet in the mosque either before or after the prayer and he said to me "No, no, no! Don't leave the hotel." And I said, "But it's Friday and there are the prayers," and he said, "No, no, no! God will forgive you." But I think their sense of dispensation was derived directly from the idea that they were engaged in jihad ("holy struggle"). Now you know, in jihad there are certain liberties allowed.

SAS: You mean like not having to pray in a congregational manner if that puts the believers in danger, or being allowed to say one's prayers on horseback if on guard or patrol and not having to dismount and pray, as one usually does, on the ground.

YF: Right. Well, I believe they took the liberty of making their own interpretation of these dispensations or liberties granted to the one making jihad.

Source

It’s clearly not as simple as Dr Griffin presents it to be. Further investigation of the specific claims made about the hijackers suggests the argument may be weaker than it appears.

Soon after initial reports linking Amanda Keller and Atta, Ms Keller claimed that the man she had dated was another student at the flying school also called Mohamed.

Quote:

Keller said comments attributed to her in the Herald-Tribune on Saturday, saying that Atta lived in her apartment, were wrong. She said that it was this unidentified fifth man, also named Mohammed, that stayed in her home.

Source

Keller again changed her story for her December 2002 interview with Daniel Hopsicker, however after the interview she retracted her claims.

In September 2006 the Herald Tribune reported that the FBI had confirmed Amanda Keller had not known Atta.

Quote:

But the former Venice stripper now says her boyfriend was another flight student not connected to 9/11. And, for the first time, federal investigators say she's right.

"There's nothing there to corroborate the relationship between the two," a New York-based FBI counterterrorism agent said recently after reviewing 9/11 case files.

…

Among other things, the government checked Atta's phone records and found the two had never called each other.

Other accounts suggest discrepancies in Ms Keller’s testimony. She has stated that she only ever knew Mohamed by the name “Mohamed Arajaki” – even spelling out the name in the interview. Although the 9/11 hijackers often employed aliases, there is no evidence that Atta ever used the alias “Arajaki”, and the FBI did not list it as one of his aliases in any of their press statements.

Other eye witness accounts of Ms Keller and her partner “Mohamed” further suggest it may not have been the leader of the 9/11 plot, for example Tony and Vonnie LaConca, the couple who owned the house rented by Keller and Mohamed. They were interviewed by the Sun Herald.

Quote:

An FDLE agent working in conjunction with the FBI arrived at the LaConca home around 10:30 a.m. Thursday and questioned the couple for two hours concerning a man they knew only as "Mohamed."
The couple told the agent the man was about 25, 5 feet 10 inches, 160 pounds, had "dark, perfect" skin, and was clean cut and "very polite."
"He was a very handsome guy," Vonnie LaConca said in an interview. "He had beautiful, unblemished skin."

Is this Mohamed the 32 year old 5 foot 8 Atta? Perhaps not. The FDLE agent showed them photographs of four suspected hijackers;

Quote:

"The first photo they showed us was the pilot who crashed into the first building," Vonnie LaConca said. "It was not Mohamed or his friend. But the last picture they showed us was very close, but I could not say 100 percent that it was him."

The article also suggests this Mohamed was training for his commercial pilot’s license in 2001 – weeks after Mohamed Atta acquired his, in December 2000.

And it appears this other Mohamed may actually exist, with evidence coming – oddly enough – from Mad Cow Productions.

Quote:

A mysterious French-Arab man resurfaced last week who authorities had dubbed the ‘5th terrorist pilot’ and a ‘Second’ Mohamed in Venice, FL. In an email, he alleged that a number of eyewitnesses, including the girl who had lived with him, had all mistaken him... for Mohamed Atta.
It was he they'd known in Venice, not the terrorist ringleader, he asserted. And he suggested the confusion might owe something to their common name, "Mohamed."

There’s certainly plenty of doubt that Mohamed Atta was the man Amanda Keller knew, which would undermine accusations that he in particular enjoyed drinking, pork, and lap dances.

But what about other articles? At the head of this section we saw numerous articles recounting three of the hijackers – including Atta – enjoying alcohol and lap dances at a strip club called the Pink Pony. But what does the original article, in USA Today, say?

Quote:

MIAMI (AP) — The night before terrorists struck New York and Washington, three men spewed anti-American sentiments in a bar and talked of impending bloodshed, according to a strip club manager interviewed by the FBI. John Kap, manager of the Pink Pony and Red Eyed Jack's Sports Bar in Daytona Beach, said the men made the claims to a bartender and a patron. "They were talking about what a bad place America is. They said 'Wait 'til tomorrow. America is going to see bloodshed,"' Kap said.

There’s a number of things to note in this version of events. First, the bar manager is recounting events that other people witnessed – a bartender and another patron. This is second hand information. Secondly, in this article the bar manager makes no mention of the three men being any of the nineteen hijackers.

There are other examples of the hijackers drinking as well, such as this story from The Telegraph:

Quote:

Tony Amos, the manager of Shuckums Oyster Bar and Restaurant in Hollywood, just north of Miami, was interviewed by the FBI and he and his barman and a waitress all identified Atta and his cousin as some hard drinkers who propped up the bar last Friday.

Atta's bill for three hours of vodka drinking came to $48 (£33). When he drunkenly disputed the charge, Mr Amos intervened. "Of course I can pay the bill," Atta told him. "I'm an airline pilot."

That certainly supports the contention that Atta enjoyed alcohol, but it’s not the only version of events. The Washington Post recounted the story a little differently.

Quote:

Last Friday night, Atta, Shehhi and an unidentified man spent 3 1/2 hours at a sports bar, Shuckums, in Hollywood, Fla. While Atta played video games, the other two had about five drinks each and appeared resistant to paying the $48 tab. The manager, Tony Amos, recalled yesterday that he inquired whether they could not afford the bill. Shehhi "looked at me with an arrogant look," Amos said. "He pulled out a wad of cash and put it on the bar table and said, 'There is no money issue. I am an airline pilot.' "

The story is a little different in this version, and Atta doesn’t appear to drink at all.

We know the Commission Report didn’t mention these activities by the hijackers, but Dr Griffin’s allegation is that these things really did happen, and that by not mentioning them the Commission were lying by omission. However on closer inspection, these stories don’t seem to have much weight behind them after all.

Quote:

The inherent claim that Mohamed Atta had a fondness for alcohol, pork and lap dances is rejected.