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NIST Refutes 9/11 Conspiracy Theories (National Institute of Standards and Technology)
EE Times ^ | 08/30/2006 | George Leopold

Posted on 08/30/2006 12:57:41 PM PDT by nickcarraway

The government is taking the unusual step of responding to conspiracy theories about the destruction of the World Trade Center.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, Gaithersberg, Md.), which investigated the causes of the collapse of the twin towers, said Wednesday (Aug. 30) that it has posted a "fact sheet" addressing alternatve theories about the fires and collapse. Several academics have put forth a "controlled demolition" and missile attack hypotheses for the destruction of the towers.

NIST concluded after a three-year building and fire safety investigation that the towers collapsed after being hit by separate, fuel-laden aircraft flown by terrorists. The impacts severed and damaged support columns, dislodging fireproofing insulation and dispersing jet fuel over multiple floors of each tower.

The resulting fire, which reached temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees C, weakened floors and columns, causing upper floors to collapse after sagging and pulling inward on 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 concluded.

NIST's probe rejected claims that upper floors "pancaked" on top of lower floors, causing the collapses. Other investigations pointed to huge amounts of office supplies, especially paper, as a source of fuel that significantly raised the temperature of tower fires beyond those that jet fuel would normally burn outside of an aircraft engine combustion chamber.

"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." NIST concluded.

Far more controversial are theories about explosions inside the towers. Conspiracy theorists postulate that puffs of smoke seen at the time of each collapse are evidence of a controlled demolition. Critics of the official probe also cited seismic data they claim showed evidence of explosions just before each tower collapsed. Other theories alleged missiles were fired at the doomed towers.

While both NIST and the 9/11 Commission have dismissed these theories, U.S. officials have been compelled to address allegations widely disseminated on the Internet.

"NIST respects the opinions of others who do not agree with the findings in its report on the [World Trade Center] collapses," the agency said in a statement. "However, the WTC Investigation Team stands solidly behind the collapse mechanisms for each tower and the sequences of events (from aircraft impact to collapse) as described in the report."


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Extended News; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 911; 911conspiracy; bush; conspiracies; fifthanniversary; moveon
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To: VegasCowboy

Keyword it and check for yourself......some interesting names pop up.


141 posted on 08/30/2006 3:45:06 PM PDT by american spirit
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To: american spirit

The failure in the WTC towers was not in load bearing structural steal. The Towers were internally stressed by the equivalent of guy wires, very light steel members reinforcing the concrete floors. When these lightweight members sagged there was nothing to keep the load bearing members stable.

But more specifically, there was no heavy steel supporting the floors. When the lightweight steel failed, tons of concrete pancaked onto the lower floors.


142 posted on 08/30/2006 3:47:42 PM PDT by js1138 (Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!")
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To: SauronOfMordor

What surprisd me was how they (whoever they are) thought it even possible to make such trades and not have the spotlight shined on them. In case you haven't done so keyword 'WTC7 collapse' and you'll find video showing how fast (and symmetrical) it came down.


143 posted on 08/30/2006 3:50:30 PM PDT by american spirit
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To: js1138

Check on an analysis at www.wtc7.net/articles/FEMA/wtc_ch5.htm and see how that squares with some of the other info on this........some interesting viewpoints.


144 posted on 08/30/2006 3:53:21 PM PDT by american spirit
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To: american spirit

I did, and I found this:

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/putcall.asp

Here is an excerpt:

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the "9/11 Commission") investigated these rumors and found that although some unusual (and initially seemingly suspicious) trading activity did occur in the days prior to September 11, it was all coincidentally innocuous and not the result of insider trading by parties with foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks:
Highly publicized allegations of insider trading in advance of 9/11 generally rest on reports of unusual pre-9/11 trading activity in companies whose stock plummeted after the attacks. Some unusual trading did in fact occur, but each such trade proved to have an innocuous explanation. For example, the volume of put options — instruments that pay off only when a stock drops in price — surged in the parent companies of United Airlines on September 6 and American Airlines on September 10 — highly suspicious trading on its face. Yet, further investigation has revealed that the trading had no connection with 9/11. A single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda purchased 95 percent of the UAL puts on September 6 as part of a trading strategy that also included buying 115,000 shares of American on September 10. Similarly, much of the seemingly suspicious trading in American on September 10 was traced to a specific U.S.-based options trading newsletter, faxed to its subscribers on Sunday, September 9, which recommended these trades. The SEC and FBI, aided by other agencies and the securities industry, devoted enormous resources to investigating this issue, including securing the cooperation of many foreign governments. These investigators have found that the apparently suspicious consistently proved innocuous.


145 posted on 08/30/2006 3:53:36 PM PDT by VegasCowboy ("...he wore his gun outside his pants, for all the honest world to feel.")
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To: american spirit
What surprisd me was how they (whoever they are) thought it even possible to make such trades and not have the spotlight shined on them.

See 145.
146 posted on 08/30/2006 3:56:53 PM PDT by VegasCowboy ("...he wore his gun outside his pants, for all the honest world to feel.")
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To: BeHoldAPaleHorse

Well......I did stay at a Holiday Inn once and being an independent type I tend not to go along and get along with all the MSM useful idiots on issues such as these......gotta go now....going to the store to meet SW.


147 posted on 08/30/2006 3:57:52 PM PDT by american spirit
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To: american spirit

I wasn't talking about wtc7 and haven't studied it. The twin towers were not steel frame buildings. I don't know about 7.


148 posted on 08/30/2006 3:58:16 PM PDT by js1138 (Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!")
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To: streetpreacher
I'm sure that you have researched all of this yourself though, haven't you?

Why would I waste my time with conspiracy garbage?

149 posted on 08/30/2006 3:59:51 PM PDT by Rocko (Lamont is gonna be pounded like a cheap cutlet.)
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To: american spirit
I tend not to go along and get along with all the MSM useful idiots on issues such as these...

OK, but don't go along so easily with the kook-fringe conspiracy theorists, either.
150 posted on 08/30/2006 4:00:17 PM PDT by VegasCowboy ("...he wore his gun outside his pants, for all the honest world to feel.")
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To: All

151 posted on 08/30/2006 4:01:41 PM PDT by Tinian
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To: VegasCowboy

Good info.......I'll check into that some more.


152 posted on 08/30/2006 4:02:34 PM PDT by american spirit
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To: american spirit

One other thing. I have observed a controlled demolition firsthand. As close as the public is allowed.

One of the things you don't see in videos of controlled demolition is the weeks of preparation. Support beams are cut and explosives are carefully placed. It isn't much like the "Volcano" movie, where a bunch of guys arrive on the site and pull the building down in an hour.


153 posted on 08/30/2006 4:02:48 PM PDT by js1138 (Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!")
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To: american spirit
no, I'm not an engineer but how could all the supports fail at the same time

I am an engineer (although I'm in software these days). From the Wikipedia entry:

What the twin towers may have lacked in architectural aestheticism, they made up for with engineering innovation. To solve the problem of wind sway or vibration in the construction of the towers, chief engineer Leslie Robertson took a then unusual approach — instead of bracing the buildings corner-to-corner or using internal walls, the towers were essentially hollow steel tubes surrounding a strong central core. The 208 feet (63.4 m) wide facade was, in effect, a prefabricated steel lattice, with columns on 39 inch (100 cm) centers acting as wind bracing to resist all overturning forces; the central core took the majority of the gravity loads of the building. A very light, economical structure was built by keeping the wind bracing in the most efficient area, the outside surface of the building, thus not transferring the forces through the floor membrane to the core, as in most curtain-wall structures. The core supported the weight of the entire building and the outer shell containing 240 vertical steel columns called Vierendeel trusses around the outside of the building, which were bound to each other using ordinary steel trusses. In addition, 10,000 dampers were included in the structure. With a strong shell and core such as this, the exterior walls could be simply light steel and concrete. With the massive core and lightweight shell for structural integrity, Robertson created a tower that was extremely light for its size. This method of construction also meant that the twin towers had the world's highest load-bearing walls.
You're assuming that there were support columns on the four corners of the building. There weren't. There was only the central core. When that gave way, everything went straight down. The steel columns on the exterior facade kept things in and stopped the building from tilting (as they were designed to)
154 posted on 08/30/2006 4:04:23 PM PDT by SauronOfMordor (A planned society is most appealing to those with the arrogance to think they will be the planners)
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To: streetpreacher
Do you have a reasonable explanation for why a 46 floor 600 ft tall building like WTC 7, which was shielded by WTC 5 and 6 (both of which had extensive fire damage but did not collapse), collapsed in and on itself even though it was not hit by a plane and only had minor fires on only two of it's floors?

So, what are your qualifications as an architect or as a civil engineer for evaluating the circumstances of the WTC 7 collapse?

155 posted on 08/30/2006 4:04:41 PM PDT by BeHoldAPaleHorse ( ~()):~)>)
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To: BeHoldAPaleHorse
HEADLINE: Federal agency planned plane-crashing-into-building drill ... last Sept. 11

WASHINGTON (AP) — In what the government describes as a bizarre coincidence, one U.S. intelligence agency was planning an exercise last Sept. 11 in which an errant aircraft would crash into one of its buildings. But the cause wasn't terrorism — it was to be a simulated accident. (Excerpt)

SOURCE:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-08-22-sept-11-plane-drill-_x.htm



A fictional "scenario" of multiple bomb attacks on London's underground took place at exactly the same time as the bomb attack on July 7, 2005.

Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, a private firm on contract to the London Metropolitan Police, described in a BBC interview how he had organized and conducted the anti-terror drill, on behalf of an unnamed business client.

The fictional scenario was based on simultaneous bombs going off at exactly the same time at the underground stations where the real attacks were occurring:

POWER: At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now.

HOST: To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise to see how you would cope with this and it happened while you were running the exercise?

POWER: Precisely, and it was about half past nine this morning, we planned this for a company and for obvious reasons I don't want to reveal their name but they're listening and they'll know it. And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they'd met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking and so on.

(BBC Radio Interview, 7 July 2005)

SOURCE:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050808&articleId=821

These are photos of the mock Pentagon drill on October 24-26 of 2000, about 10 and 1/2 months before 9-11:


These pictures were available at http://www.mdw.army.mil/news/Contingency_Planning.html but have inexplicably been pulled - My comments.

SOURCE: http://www.pentagonresearch.com/102.html

 

Condoleeza Rice: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." 16 May 2002 Press Conference(for complete transcript - http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RIC206A.html )

156 posted on 08/30/2006 4:07:03 PM PDT by streetpreacher (What if you're wrong?)
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To: streetpreacher

Photoshop is a wonderful thing.


157 posted on 08/30/2006 4:08:18 PM PDT by Rocko (Lamont is gonna be pounded like a cheap cutlet.)
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To: BeHoldAPaleHorse

What are yours? I rely on the evidence of others like most normal sane people when researching a topic. The problem is that the 9-11 Commission didn't even investigate WTC 7.


158 posted on 08/30/2006 4:09:53 PM PDT by streetpreacher (What if you're wrong?)
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To: SauronOfMordor

The twin towers were structurally speaking, box kites.


159 posted on 08/30/2006 4:10:54 PM PDT by js1138 (Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!")
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To: nickcarraway

If these nitwits were logical they would all live in utter fear for their own lives. Any government that could and actually did arrange the September 11th events would not hesitate to execute the "geniuses" who figured it out.


160 posted on 08/30/2006 4:11:46 PM PDT by aculeus
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