Conspiracies: The Facts * the Theories * the Evidence (30 page)

dismiss completely when closely examined.

Several observable aspects are usual y proffered as proof of

explosives. In the footage of each tower falling, filmed from multiple angles, small ‘squib’-like blasts can be seen pushing out in places up and down the height of the structures, sometimes far below the violent col apses occurring at the top. Often rejected as being merely the result of air-pressure waves passing through the buildings and pushing out office debris, it has been convincingly countered that such waves would not reach as far down as the levels at which these squibs are seen, given that the top floors are freefalling as fast as anything can travel for much of their descent; the speed of the

fal s is one of the main reasons why a process of natural col apse is so widely challenged. Demolition experts have remarked on the

near-identical resemblance of the 9/11 squibs to those created by demolition charges used to bring down old structures.

Other evidence that explosives may have been placed in the

towers is provided by firemen, rescue workers and WTC staff,

many of whom described unexplained blasts going off inside even

while the structures were still standing. The first of these appears to have taken place in the basement 30 seconds or so
before
the first plane hit, according to janitorial staff in the North Tower.

Testimonies supporting internal explosions are numerous and

convincing, yet the official 9/11 Commission report managed to

conclude that no significant accounts were recorded. Firemen

have claimed since that they have been ordered to keep quiet or

risk redundancy, while interviews with them specifical y reporting explosions in the towers, widely televised at the time, have been almost universal y edited out of later programmes or repeats.

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Luckily, the internet preserves many of the original accounts. One telling description, backed up by many other reports, was given by WTC office worker Teresa Veliz, recounting her experiences while

being evacuated from the North Tower:

There were explosions going off everywhere. I was convinced that
there were bombs planted all over the place and someone was

sitting at a control panel pushing detonator buttons . . . There
was another explosion. And another. I didn’t know where to run.

Perhaps the most obvious explosions of all can be seen in the

footage of the main ‘col apses’; many people have observed that

the tops of the towers, rather than simply falling down, in truth effectively
explode
outwards, spreading debris so far that rubble and human remains were being found several blocks away even

years later. The fact that one tower is seen to topple ominously

towards the street at one point, before mysteriously correcting

itself, suggests that material below it is simply dissolving into the air, rather than col apsing as such. Architect Richard Gage has

demonstrated that one of the key principles of the official story

– that the descending tops of the towers acted as ‘piledrivers’

crushing the floors below them – cannot be correct, as the videos clearly show that everything at the top effectively disintegrates as it fal s, with nothing left to provide such a downward force.

Some of those who claim the presence of explosives point to the

discovery of what would appear to be micro-particles of ‘nano-

thermate’ in dust sampled from the WTC remains, as researched

by physicists such as Dr Neils Harrit and Professor Steven Jones

(
see
p. 15).4 Critics have said the particles are nothing but paint, but this was examined and ruled out in the early stages of analysis.

Nano-thermate, on the other hand, can be used to generate rapid

explosions and high-temperature fires, and is commonly deployed

in the demolition industry. One tell-tale sign for it might be melted steel – precisely what can be seen in footage taken shortly before 185

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the fall of one of the towers, running down in sparkling torrents from a corner of the building. Arguing about damaged fireproofing and temperatures which might or might not have weakened steel

slightly is one thing; accepting that those temperatures went on

to reach extreme heights which actual y
melted
it is a far greater stretch. But molten steel was verifiably found by clearance workers in large amounts even weeks after the attacks, and aerial thermo-imaging revealed tremendous temperatures that could not

possibly have resulted from a simple col apse.

Some theorists reject even the nano-thermate arguments, with

researchers such as Dr Judy Wood believing that some kind of

experimental high-energy technology may have been used (
see

pp. 13, 16), while others point to micro-nuclear devices as a possibility. Certainly, not much was left from a supposed structural failure. Recovery workers remarked on the almost inexplicable

absence of telephones, filing cabinets or any other solid objects which might reasonably have been expected to be found in the

debris. Instead, all of it seemed to have turned to a fine white toxic dust (which many New Yorkers breathed in, to their long-term

detriment), powerful y suggesting something at work capable of

generating incredibly high temperatures.

Whichever way it is looked at, the evidence that there was more to the fall of the twin towers than met the eye is hard to ignore. Office workers in the WTC buildings reported unexplained mini-vans off-loading equipment, and nameless maintenance staff being ushered

into the towers in the weeks before 9/11. The weekend before the

main event, there were reports of an unusual security ‘power-down’, which saw cameras being switched off and electricity cuts instigated across parts of the buildings while some kind of unspecified ‘cabling upgrade’ was performed. Was this a mask for a more sinister kind

of upgrade? If so, who was carrying it out? Presuming that al-Qaeda was not so organized as to be laying demolition charges in one of the most important complexes in the world without raising suspicion, the conspiracy view has it that paid operatives of whoever was 186

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real y behind 9/11 were more probably at work – and had all the

security clearances they needed. Some have pointed to the fact that the firm Securicom, which was in charge of the WTC’s security, was co-owned by Marvin Bush – brother of President George W Bush –

making for another less-than-reassuring coincidence.

As for what the President himself knew, although some

truthseekers have accused him of being one of the perpetrators of 9/11, others believe he was not a major player and may not have

been told what was real y going on until later that day. One theory has it that Bush was forced to go along with an inside-job plot by shadow authorities, with an implicit threat to his safety if he didn’t.

As the President had fled into the skies aboard the aeroplane Air Force One shortly after the attacks, he would have been particularly vulnerable to a staged accident or another ‘terrorist’ strike, as a message using code words that al-Qaeda shouldn’t have known

(‘Angel is next’ – Angel being Air Force One, we now know),

allegedly received by the US authorities that day, would suggest.

Bush has certainly not been straight about his own experiences

on 9/11, and seems to have tried to cover some tracks. This is

evidenced by his later claims that he had actual y watched TV

footage of the first plane crash before he famously went into a

schoolroom to read a story to children in the face of a national

crisis. But footage of that first impact was not available for

broadcast on 11 September itself (the video still trapped in a

camera owned by the French documentary-makers Jules and

Gédéon Naudet, who were filming NYC firemen that day), so how

it was that Bush saw it, or why he simply
said
that that he saw it, is yet another of the many mysteries of 9/11.

WTC 7

Of all the enigmas, conspiracy theorists usual y point to the fall of Building Seven (WTC 7) at the World Trade Center complex

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as being the smoking gun which exposes what they see as the

obvious contrivance of all the events. WTC 7 was set back some

way from the twin towers, with Buildings Five and Six in between.

At around 5.20pm, after several hours of mayhem following the

loss of the twin towers, it hardly registered with the public when WTC 7 graceful y col apsed into its own footprint to become

just another casualty of the day. As everyone had already been

successful y evacuated, what did it matter? Yet the peculiarity of the fall of WTC 7 is that it was never struck by an aeroplane, and exhibited only a few relatively modest fires throughout the day.

The impacts and more extensive blazes at the twin towers

could be seen as reasonable justification for their demise if not thought about too much, but with no such caveats available for

WTC 7, as time went by, people began to ponder its sudden

col apse. Soon intense speculation grew that this building had also been demolished using explosives – particularly suggested by its

swift (again, in freefall for at least two seconds) and regimented descent, as remarked on by several demolition experts. If the twin towers were designed to go with maximum spectacle, this block

was seemingly wired to descend without calling attention to itself.

But if so, why go to the trouble of bringing it down at all?

It has been considered that the events of 9/11 may have been

coordinated from WTC 7 (some have suggested it as the source

of the remote control transmissions), and that the offices within it might have contained incriminating evidence that demanded

removal lest restoration workers make awkward discoveries

later. Others may also have exploited the opportunities the day

provided (which would still imply detailed foreknowledge of the

attacks), as it was of great convenience to the accused that a large number of important documents concerning the unfolding Enron

company corruption scandal were being stored in the building at

the time – all of them lost. A number of other crucial files and

precious commodities
were
reportedly removed from WTC 7 by happy chance in the days before 9/11, but not these ones.

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The authorities decry all this, stating that far more fire, spread by falling debris from the neighbouring towers, was present in the building than was visible, and that this contributed to a ‘new phenomenon’ whereby ‘global col apse’ was initiated by heat expanding the steel beams. Yet it took seven years for the official report of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to come

up with this supposedly scientific explanation, and its details are disturbingly flawed. Without plane impacts, no fire-proofing

could have been removed, thus taking away much of the rationale

which could at least be put forward for the twin towers’ col apse.

The report also fails to take into account the vital observation that concrete expands at much the same rate as steel, thus flawing its own theory that the heated expansion of the beams caused them to

break away from the concrete, snapping the shear studs holding the building together. Perhaps most damningly, assessments of the fires which the NIST says caused the high temperatures in WTC 7 were

based not on the unexceptional blazes visible in images or reported by eyewitnesses, but on
presumed
fires of much greater intensity factored into computer models. In other words, the models were

programmed to create virtual fires which might, in the most

extreme conditions, have brought such a structure down, but these did not reflect the ones that were there in reality. Researchers of 9/11 such as David Ray Griffin have severely challenged the NIST’s findings, effectively accusing it of committing scientific fraud.5

If simple fire
did
bring down a 47-storey steel-frame building

– one that contained a number of important offices for the CIA,

the US Secret Service, the mayor’s Emergency Command Center,

the US Department of Defense and the Internal Revenue Service

– then it is a mystery how such a poor design could ever have

been accepted, and even more of a mystery as to why many other

similarly constructed buildings have not been abandoned in cities across the world as a result. Oddly, no fire in a modern tower

block since – and there have been several, often burning far longer

– has ever resulted in a total col apse.

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The accusations that WTC 7 was demolished are supported

by the fact that there seemed to be a wide expectation of its fal even several hours before it came down – at a time when no

one should have considered that such a thing was possible. If it

supposedly took the NIST seven years to work out why such an

unprecedented event happened at al , why would anyone have

remotely anticipated it on the day? Yet officials were giving out warnings about WTC 7’s dangerous state even by lunchtime, and

fire crews were making very specific statements that ‘this building is coming down’ shortly before it did. BBC News even managed