LETTER EXCHANGE ON 9/11
Aug 6, 2006
DOUBTFUL DOINGS
Seven Days’ story on the 911 Truth march on Church St. was remarkable for openness and absence of dismissive tone. But the 911 Truth movement knows a lot more than a reader might gather from the coverage. And the primary thing it knows is that there MUST have been some level of inside involvement in the planning and execution of the day’s events. Consider only:
1. There are standard NORAD protocols for scrambling jets when aircraft go off course, protocols that have worked routinely over the years. Yet the apparatus seemed non-existent on that day. The World Trade Center and the Pentagon are in the most heavily protected air corridors in the world. A stand-down must have been effected, whether by specific order or by pre-planned diversion. No Islamic terrorist could bring off such a thing. Who did?
2. The late afternoon fall of WTC Building Seven at almost free-fall speed, and right over its own footprint was a classic example of a well-done controlled demolition. The building was not hit by aircraft or debris, and had only two small fires on lower floors. Larry Silverstein, the building owner, himself stated that the building was “pulled”. Now pulling a building takes weeks, if not months of preparation — structural analysis, planting of explosives, etc. How is it that the building was ready to be pulled so beautifully on a few hours notice? Once one asks this question, many of the more complex features of the twin towers collapse fall into place. Eye-witness testimony about explosions make sense. They too could only have been controlled demolitions. Again, no Islamic terrorists could have had such intimate preparatory access to the buildings. The steel was quickly trucked away and melted down, contravening all law concerning crime scenes.
3. The initial photos of the Pentagon, before the roof collapse, show only an 18’ diameter hole, far too small to admit the body of a 757, and with no indication of the impact of wings or tail. Further, there was no strewn wreckage such as is normally found. Given the photographic and video evidence, the official story cannot possibly be true. Minutes after the event, all footage from video cameras outside and inside the Pentagon was confiscated by the FBI, and no footage showing a 757 has been released. Why not? If it was not a 757 which hit the Pentagon, what was it? And who beside the military has the kind of missiles that can penetrate that thickness of concrete?
These three events alone (among many, many others) indicate not only an alternate story, but one which MUST involve high-level, inside work. 19 men with boxcutters could not effect such things, nor could al-Qaeda effect such post-event handling. The cui bono question is easily answered.
That most people find this difficult to believe is understandable. But before dismissing the obvious implications, the contradictions must be otherwise explained: NORAD does not stand down for no reason. Steel buildings do not melt and collapse from (short-term and partial) kerosene-temperature fires. 757s do not fit in 18 foot holes.
The implications of government and military involvement in 9/11 are immense and frightening, but must be confronted to truly explore the underside of power, and to prepare for a desperate repetition.
Marc Estrin, Burlington
REBUTTING 9/11 THEORIES
Marc Estrin [“Letters,” July 5] seems to have swallowed uncritically the smorgasbord of 9/11 suspicions laid out in the film Loose Change, Second Edition...[These] dwell on the World Trade Towers: Steel doesn’t melt at the combustion temperature of jet fuel, and only deliberately sapped buildings fall inward. An engineer might argue otherwise: (1) Steel is, after all, smelted by mere coal, and nowadays gas fires (heat can be concentrated). (2) Its strength fails long before it melts (steel buildings used to fall under the heat of their burning furniture and flooring). And (3) the Towers were designed to sway (several feet) in the wind, so weren’t likely to topple (but, weakened by burning jet fuel, couldn‘t continue to bear their thousands of tons of mass.
Again, despite “hermetically sealed” elevators (and stairwells), dozens of miles of HAC ducts were wide open. The film seems to assume that all of a plane’s fuel is in one tank (it’s in the two wings), and that it all goes up, Whoosh! as in a movie. Rather, it burns like anything else, at its interface with oxygen. In a closed space, with the oxygen exhausted, the fire draws from outside, so it burns for a while. During which, hundreds of gallons of fuel are sloshing around and no doubt draining into the ducts, falling to explode here and there down stairs and, more seriously, escaping through burst ducts to explode in the structural cores.
This is speculation and doesn’t address the rest of the film. But conspiranoia is speculation, anyway, and I think mine is reasonable enough to cast doubt on the film generally. It and Estrin’s rehash seem to be fueled by suspicion of the Bush administration. An irreverent observer, though, could wonder whether any federal administration, let alone Bush’s could engineer so complex a set of events so precisely...
Fred G. Hill, Burlington
REBUTTAL REBUTTAL
The case against the administration’s “official story” concerning the events of 9/11 is far broader and deeper than that presented in Loose Change, though the film is useful as an introduction to the story’s inconsistencies. Those interested in seeing the work of chemists, physicists, engineers, architects, photo analysts, and other 9/11 researchers might start at the website of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, st911.org, or Burlington’s own vt911.org.
One can spend many hours on minutiae and possible explanations, but at least three things are clear to all who have put in the study time:
— that the official story is impossible to correlate with the physical evidence,
— that the administration’s changing story and subsequent behavior is strongly indicative of a cover-up,
— and that much of the evidence can be explained ONLY by positing government and insider collaboration.
Fred Hill (letter, “Rebutting 9/11 Theories”] is entitled to his theory of the twin tower collapse, and this is not the place for a technical rebuttal. If he finds jet fuel confusing, I would simply ask him then to explain the fall of Building Seven, with no significant fires, or why he thinks a 757 might fit through an 18 foot hole, leaving no debris behind, or why NORAD was on that day unable to protect the crown jewels.
One of the more amazing aspects of the fierce resistance to further 9/11 investigation is that even people who see lies and secrecy deeply embedded in this administration are uniquely willing to believe its assertion that 19 Arab hijackers, using beginner pilots, could successfully conspire to bring off such events.
As to Fred’s doubt that a Bush administration “could engineer so complex a set of events...”, the fact is that it was all pretty ham-handed — or the 9/11 truth movement would not have so much to go on. Buildings that don’t fall on time, steel inexplicably sliced in pieces convenient for quick disposal, investigations that must be resisted, then manipulated, videos that must be hidden, crashes without wreckage, inconvenient firefighter testimony, too-convenient “evidence” found... the list goes on and on, with each piece crying out for real investigation. The only thing the administration did get almost right was their assumption that the public would never believe there could be government involvement. There was laughing all the way to Iraq.
Marc Estrin, Burlington