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Category: World Trade CenterRichard Gage joins The Bob Tuskin Radio Show for a discussion on the state of 9/11 truth. Richard also reveals that AE911 Truth will soon be releasing a BRAND NEW documentary.
Written by Adam Taylor
Architects & Engineers for 911 Truth
March 1, 2012
Plane Impacts, Fire Damage & Melted Steel
Editor’s note: This is Part 2 of an extensive report by researcher Adam Taylor that exposes the fallacies and flaws in the arguments made by Popular Mechanics (PM) in the latest edition of Debunking 9/11 Myths. We encourage you to submit your own reviews of the book at Amazon.com and other places where it is sold.
(Quotes from Popular Mechanics’ book are shown in red and with page numbers.)
Plane Impacts and Fire Damage
PM next turns to the issue of the plane impacts and fire damage and their roles in the WTC event. Though PM acknowledges that the fires in the buildings could not have become hot enough to melt steel, they nonetheless rehash the constantly heard argument from other defenders of the official story that the steel did not need to melt to cause collapse. According to PM, it only had to be weakened by the fires enough to cause collapse.
PM argues that “When the planes hit the buildings and plowed into their centers, a large section of the exterior load-bearing columns as well as some crucial core columns were severed.” (pg. 37-38) Though this may be true, the collapse of the Towers appears to have actually started at floors that had minimal structural damage.1 PM also discusses the theory from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that “the impact stripped fireproofing insulation from the trusses that supported 80,000 square feet of floor space.” (pg. 38) This assertion, however, is greatly flawed, as noted by UL whistleblower Kevin Ryan:
[NIST’s] test for fireproofing loss, never inserted in the draft reports, involved shooting a total of fifteen rounds from a shotgun at non-representative [structural steel] samples… it’s not hard to see that these tests actually disproved their findings. One reason is that there is no evidence that a Boeing 767 could transform into any number of shotgun blasts. Nearly 100,000 blasts would be needed based on NIST’s own damage estimates, and these would have to be directed in a very symmetrical fashion to strip the columns and floors from all sides. However, it is much more likely that the aircraft debris was a distribution of sizes from very large chunks to a few smaller ones, and that it was directed asymmetrically.2
Photo from Ground Zero shows a portion of the airplane fuselage, which contradicts the framework of NIST’s “shotgun test” for fireproofing loss in the Twin Towers
Photo from Ground Zero shows a portion of the airplane fuselage, which contradicts the framework of NIST’s “shotgun test” for fireproofing loss in the Twin Towers
Ryan’s assertion that “…aircraft debris was a distribution of sizes from very large chunks to a few smaller ones” is well grounded, as photographs show that large portions of the planes exited the Towers, and eyewitnesses who escaped from the Towers reported seeing intact portions of the plane in the building.3
PM next goes on to discuss NIST’s assertions that the fires in the buildings were sufficient to weaken the steel to the failure point. However, NIST’s own tests show no evidence of this. While PM asserts in their book that “[steel] loses roughly 50 percent of its strength at approximately 600 degrees Celsius (1,100 Fahrenheit)” (pg. 38), NIST cites no evidence that the steel in the Towers sustained temperatures anywhere near this range. The highest temperatures NIST estimated for the steel samples was only 250 °C (482 °F), according to the metallographic paint tests they performed on WTC core column specimens.4
PM attempts to make a case that the combination of the aircraft impacts and the ensuing fires were sufficient to cause both of the structures to collapse.
Conspiracy theorists point to other high-rise fires, such as the one in 1991 at the 38-story Meridian Plaza hotel in Philadelphia, as proof that fire alone cannot bring down a skyscraper. And, in a sense, they are right: Fire alone did not bring down the towers. (pg. 40)
It is important to note that the term “conspiracy theorists” is a derogatory term used here to discredit the forensic evidence of controlled demolition brought forward by technical professionals. The experts at AE911Truth do not speculate on possible theories regarding who brought down the WTC skyscrapers.
In the case of Building 7, the NIST report tells us that structural damage played no role in initiating the collapse of the building, and that its collapse was due to “normal office fires”.5
One then has to wonder why PM does not consider the 9/11 Truth movement “in a sense right” about Building 7. But that aside, it is important to quantify how the structural damage played a role in the collapse of the Towers. We previously noted that the collapse of the Towers started on floors with less damage than other floors. In the case of the North Tower, the collapse started at the 98th floor6, which had the least amount of structural damage out of all the damaged floors.7 Not only that, but the upper section of the North Tower started to collapse on the side of the building opposite to where the plane impacted.
People from around the world came together at Ryerson University in Toronto, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, to present evidence challenging the official accounts of that day. A DVD of the proceeding of the “Toronto Hearings” is nearly complete. Here is a preview.
KuwAm and Stratesec: Directors and investors that link 9/11 to a private intelligence network
Feb 25Originally posted February 24, 2012
By Kevin Ryan
The Kuwaiti-American Corporation (KuwAm), parent company of World Trade Center (WTC) security company Stratesec, had some interesting links to royalty in both Iran and Kuwait. Some of the company’s directors also had connections to U.S. intelligence agencies and at least one was associated with the CIA-funded terrorist financing network that included BCCI. Through these links we can see that the origins of the War on Terror are related to the origins of the first Gulf War, and to a private network of covert operatives that stretches back for generations.
After the 1993 bombing, a company called Stratesec was responsible for the overall integration of the new WTC security system. In the few years leading up to 9/11, Stratesec also had contracts to provide security services for United Airlines, which owned two of the planes that were destroyed on 9/11, and Dulles Airport where American Airlines Flight 77 took off.
Stratesec’s board of directors included Marvin Bush, the brother of George W. Bush, and Wirt Dexter Walker III, a distant relative of the Bush brothers.[1] Marvin Bush joined the board of Stratesec after meeting members of the Al Sabah family on a trip to Kuwait with his father in April 1993. During this trip, the Kuwaiti royals displayed enormous gratitude to the elder Bush for having saved their country from Saddam Hussein only two years earlier.
But the Bush-Kuwaiti connection went back much farther, to 1959, when the Kuwaitis helped to fund Bush’s start-up company, Zapata Off-Shore. As a CIA business asset during this time, Bush and his company worked directly with the anti-Castro Cuban groups in Miami before and after the Bay of Pigs invasion.[2]
During the 1993 trip, the royals in the United Arab Emirates showed similar gratitude to the Bush family by putting Marvin on the board at Fresh Del Monte, which was purchased by the UAE-owned company IAT in 1994. The alleged 9/11 hijackers had many connections to the UAE, and much of the funding for the attacks came through that country.
Mish’al Yusuf Saud Al Sabah, the majority owner of KuwAm Corporation, was the company’s chairman since 1982. Just after the Bush family visit in 1993, KuwAm gained a controlling interest in Stratesec.[3] The other owners of Stratesec were Walker, who along with Al Sabah joined the Stratesec board, and an entity controlled by Walker and Al Sabah, called Special Situation Investment Holdings (SSIH). KuwAm owned several other companies, including Commander Aircraft (CAC) and Strategic Jet Services (SJS), which were controlled under the Oklahoma-based company called Aviation General (AGI).
KuwAm’s aircraft companies had international clientele and Al Sabah was known to personally engage customers who purchased aircraft.[4] In 1996, Al Sabah announced that AGI sold aircraft to the National Civil Aviation Training Organization (NCATO) in Giza, Egypt, the hometown of Mohamed Atta. NCATO was in a partnership with the flight school run by Embry-Riddle University where two of the alleged 9/11 hijackers, Saeed Alghamdi and Waleed M. Al Shehri, were said to have gone to flight school.[5] Ten days after the attacks, Embry-Riddle was relieved to report that Al Shehri had turned up alive.[6] Unfortunately, the many reports that some of the alleged hijackers had turned up alive were never investigated by the FBI or the 9/11 Commission.
Like Stratesec, all three of KuwAm’s aircraft companies went bankrupt within three years after 9/11. The company blamed terrorism and the war in Iraq for a reduced demand for its products.[7] Despite the losses, the Kuwaiti royal family can be said to have benefited from 9/11 due to “The War on Terror” that removed Saddam Hussein from power. Of course, that was the second consecutive US war that Kuwait benefited from, the first being the 1991 Gulf War led by President George H.W. Bush.
The 1991 Gulf War was started on the basis of blatant lies, at least one of which involved a relative of Mish’al Al Sabah. This was a 15-year old girl named Nayirah, who was the daughter of Mish’al’s first cousin, Saud Nasser Al Saud Al Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States.[8] The girl lied about having witnessed Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of incubators and leaving them on the “cold floor to die.” It was later learned that her testimony was false and that she had been coached to tell the lies by the public relations firm, Hill & Knowlton.[9] It seems worthwhile to notice that the first Gulf War was started based on lies told by the cousin of the man who owned a WTC security company.
Needless to say, Mish’al Al Sabah is very well connected to the Kuwaiti royal family and, therefore, to the Kuwaiti government. Other first cousins of Mish’al included Salim Abdal-Aziz Saud Al Sabah, the Governor of Kuwait’s Central Bank, and Sabah Nasir Saud Al Sabah, the Head of the Engineering Department for Military Projects in the Ministry of Defence. Mish’al’s brother Ali married the daughter of Kuwaiti Emir Jabir III.
Wirt D. Walker III, CEO of Stratesec and managing director at KuwAm, was the son of a career U.S. intelligence officer and a former coworker of William Casey, who later became CIA director. Walker was also a descendant of James Monroe Walker, who ran the businesses of the U.S. deep state organization called Russell & Company.[10] Coincidentally, the brother-in-law of the original Wirt D. Walker, John Wellborn Root, was the long-time employer of Emery Roth, whose company was later the architect of record for both the WTC towers and building 7.[11]
New medical research is pointing to a mounting grim health toll
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Warga, Craig NYDN/New York Daily News
Joseph Zadroga fought for the bill that bears his son’s name. But will it cover first responders who fell ill with cancer?
The director of Mount Sinai Medical Center’s World Trade Center health program is preparing to publish a study that will show elevated risks of cancer among 9/11 rescue and recovery workers.
A leading authority on the illnesses suffered by Ground Zero responders, Dr. Philip Landrigan says that an analysis of 20,000 medical case histories revealed an incidence of cancer that is 14% higher tha expected for a population of the same profile. The most common elevations were in prostate, thyroid and blood cancers.
Landrigan’s findings add to the evidence that the toll from service on or around The Pile, bad as that toll has been, will significantly worsen with time. Research by fire department doctors previously had found a 19% higher cancer rate among FDNY members who’d been at Ground Zero than among those who hadn’t
It has been well-established that exposure to airborne toxins in the smoke and dust that shrouded Ground Zero produced respiratory, heart and gastrointestinal damage. And medical experts have feared from the start that cancers, which develop slowly, would emerge.
A Saudi Arabian accused of associating with several of the September 11 hijackers and who disappeared from his home in the United States a few weeks before the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, is in London working for his country’s state oil company.
From left: hijack pilots Mohamed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah were all said to have visited the home in Sarasota while learning to fly at nearby Venice Airport Photo: GETTY
By Anthony Summers, Neil Tweedie and Dan Christensen
18 Feb 2012
The Telegraph
Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his wife Anoud left three cars at their luxurious home in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida — one of them new — and flew to Saudi Arabia in August 2001. The refrigerator was full of food; furniture and clothing were left behind; and the swimming pool water was still circulating.
Security records of cars passing through a checkpoint at the Prestancia gated community indicated that Mr al-Hijji’s home, 4224 Escondito Circle, had been visited a number of times by Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 19-strong hijack team, who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre in 2001.
Security records of cars passing through a checkpoint at the Prestancia gated community indicated that Mr al-Hijji’s home, 4224 Escondito Circle, had been visited a number of times by Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 19-strong hijack team, who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre in 2001.
The logs also indicated that Marwan Al-Shehhi, who crashed United Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower, and Ziad Jarrah, who was at the controls of United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, had visited the house.
All three men had trained to fly at Venice Airport, which is 19 miles from Sarasota.
Written by Adam Taylor
15 February 2012
Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth
The revised version of Popular Mechanics’ book Debunking 9/11 Myths continues to defend myths that are scientifically impossible
Editor’s note: This is Part 1 of an extensive report by researcher Adam Taylor that exposes the fallacies and flaws in the arguments made by Popular Mechanics in the latest edition of Debunking 9/11 Myths. We encourage you to submit your own reviews of the book at Amazon.com and other places where it is sold.
Introduction
A decade has passed since the tragic events of September 11, 2001, and many people feel that we have still not had a real investigation into what really happened that day. Many believe that the investigations into the destruction of the three WTC skyscrapers by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) were either fraudulent or incomplete, and have joined the 1600+ architects and engineers at AE911Truth in calling for a real, independent investigation into the attacks. However, Popular Mechanics (PM) has been the primary cheerleader in the mainstream media in defense of the NIST reports ever since its book, Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up To the Facts, was published in 2006.
For the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, PM put out a second version of its book, which was updated in an attempt to dismiss new findings that corroborate the controlled demolition hypothesis. The main sections of the book that were revised are on the collapse of the Twin Towers and World Trade Center 7. This report demonstrates that PM has still not adequately explained the numerous anomalies surrounding the collapse of these three buildings that prove they were destroyed with explosives.
(Quotes from Popular Mechanics’ book are shown in red and with page numbers in the original article only)
World Trade Center Towers 1 & 2
The introduction to PM’s chapter on the collapse of the Twin Towers briefly discusses the main theory put forward by members of the 9/11 Truth movement regarding the Towers’ destruction: “The buildings were brought down intentionally—not by hijacked airplanes, but by government-planted bombs or a controlled demolition” (pg. 28). PM then goes on to give a few examples of people promoting this theory. One of the people they cite is a Danish writer named Henrik Melvang, who, according to PM, “markets his book and video claiming the Apollo moon landings were a hoax” (pg. 28). This is obviously an attempt on PM’s part to portray those who question the collapse of the Towers as conspiracy theorists who have irrational beliefs. PM also cites Morgan Reynolds, the former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor during President George Bush’s first term, as someone who believes that the Towers were destroyed through controlled demolition.