Sept. 9/11 Controlled Demolition Actual Collapse Twin Towers World Trade Center

On Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacked the United States and killed almost 3,000 innocent people. A terse and information packed summary of exactly who was involved in the 9-11 2001 attacks, what they did, and what motivated them. Truly an amazing piece of research, the result of monumental effort on the part of investigators who just wouldn't let it go. The people who think 9/11 may have been an 'inside job' 22 years ago today.

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Yes its true conspiracy theory that “controlled demolition” caused one, if not all three World Trade Center (WTC) buildings to collapse on 9/11, has been steadfastly denied via various government investigations. U.S. officials have concluded the buildings collapsed due to fire-induced structural failure. Of the 2,996 deaths terror attack related deaths on Sept. 11, 2001, 2,606 were in the WTC and its surrounding area.

https://www.spingola.com/Bush_Family_Project.htm

On 11 September 2001, four passenger planes were hijacked by radical Islamist terrorists - almost 3,000 people were killed as the aircraft were flown into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. Just hours after the collapse of New York's Twin Towers, a conspiracy theory surfaced online which persists more than 22 years later.

"Is it just me?" an internet user named David Rostcheck wrote, "or did anyone else recognise that it wasn't the airplane impacts that blew up the World Trade Centre?

"I hope other people are actually catching this, but I haven't seen anyone say it yet, so I guess I will. There's no doubt that the planes hit the building and did a lot of damage. But look at the footage - those buildings were demolished," he continued. "To demolish a building, you don't need all that much explosive but it needs to be placed in the correct places... Someone had to have a lot of access to all of both towers and a lot of time to do this. This is pretty grim. The really dire part is - what were the planes for?"

Subsequent investigations made it clear that the tower structures were weakened by the inferno from the planes and felled by the weight of collapsing floors. However even now some people refuse to believe this version of events.

'Something's happened in New York'
On the day of the attacks, Matt Campbell was on holiday in Lanzarote with his wife and two young daughters. He followed the news on television in a state of shock. His brother Geoff, it transpired over the next few agonising hours, was in the World Trade Centre.

"My mother had just flown out the day before to join us for a week," he remembers.

"I recall being on the beach and I think my wife had gone up to one of the restaurants to get some food. She came down saying 'I think something's happened in New York.'

"A few calls here and there and we managed to establish that Geoff was in the North Tower. No-one had heard from him."

Geoff had moved to Manhattan a couple of years earlier. He'd recently got engaged and worked for the Reuters news agency in Midtown. He was on the 106th floor of the North Tower for a conference.

"We immediately thought the worst," says Matt.

"Over the next few days we tried to keep our hopes up. We were stranded - no flights were leaving. All we had was a kind of hazy picture on the hotel's cable TV. The news clips were being repeated showing the plane going into tower two."

The family got a flight back to the UK after a couple of days and then got onto a flight to New York.

"We went there still clinging to hope that perhaps he had been injured and was unconscious. But we called round a few hospitals and it became clear that there were very few people who were actually injured," Matt says.

Geoff was dead. He was 31. An inquest into his death would not conclude until 2013, though fragments of his shoulder blade were identified among rubble from the World Trade Centre in 2002.

By that point, Matt was beginning to question the official account of what happened. He doesn't subscribe to any one particular conspiracy theory - and online, there are many to choose from - but he's convinced that there is a cover-up which is preventing him from getting answers about his brother's death.

"It probably started at the end of October in 2001," he says. "The more I started to look at stuff over the years, the more things didn't add up."

Matt says he has submitted freedom of information requests to the FBI and other bodies which investigated 9/11.

"It's frustrating. Sometimes they say they're protected from disclosure because they could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.

"We are 16 years on now. I can't even get basic evidence from the authorities."

'Perfectly natural'
He wasn't alone in asking questions. A 2016 study from Chapman University in California, found more than half of Americans believe the government is concealing information about the 9/11 attacks. Sections of the official US government report were redacted for years - and some information is still missing.

However that doesn't mean there's any evidence for the more outlandish online conspiracy theories about the attacks. Some claim the US government was complicit - that officials deliberately let the attacks happen or were even involved in the planning. Experts say part of the reason for the persistence of such conspiracy theories is the dissonance that results when people hear that a relatively small group of men using low-tech weapons caused such cataclysmic carnage.

"It's perfectly natural when something important happens people want to have an explanation," says Professor Karen Douglas, a social psychologist at the University of Kent.

"Often, the official explanation appears quite mundane to people and not particularly satisfying.

"Conspiracy theories often emerge as a result of this need for an explanation that's proportional to the event itself."

And the reinforcing nature of the online world means that the theories have hung around for a decade and a half.

"Information doesn't necessarily spread indiscriminately the way people think it does on the internet and social media. People tend to share it with people who kind of think the same way as they do about these issues in the first place," she says.

The theories have been propelled by several books and films. David Ray Griffin, a professor of religious philosophy and theology, accused the US government of complicity in the attack in his 2004 book The New Pearl Harbour.

The first instalment in filmmaker Dylan Avery's Loose Change series was released in 2005. Vanity Fair suggested the films, which presented many of the most popular 9/11 conspiracy theories, "might be the first internet blockbuster". Millions watched them, sharing the footage on bootleg DVDs, Google Video and internet forums. It was so widely available, a digital copy was even later found in Osama Bin Laden's compound.

In 2006, a California architect called Richard Gage founded Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911 Truth) - a group of engineering and architecture professionals who questioned the official version of events.

BBC report
The confusion and chaos of 11 September 2001 has also helped the conspiracies find an audience. To take one notable example, a third tower collapsed in Manhattan on 9/11 - WTC7.

This tower has become a key focus for people who question the official account of what happened. A 47-storey building about 100 metres from the twin towers, WTC7 was never struck by an airplane. Two planes plus three towers has equalled plenty of questions - questions compounded by the BBC's own reporting of the collapse of WTC7. In the frenetic, confusing aftermath of the terror attacks, the BBC reported that WTC7 had collapsed twenty minutes before the building actually came down.

In 2007, the BBC's The Editors blog addressed the reports and traced how an on-air comment about an imminent collapse turned into reporting about the building actually falling - shortly before WTC7 did indeed fall.

Any apparent discrepancy was cleared up by a 2008 report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) which found that WTC7 collapsed after fires on multiple floors "caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a fire-induced progressive collapse that brought the building down".

But that did not change the minds of the conspiracy theorists.

AE911 Truth board member Roland Angle alleges there are significant errors in the NIST report. His organisation has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund additional research at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The conclusions of that study will be published in 2018.

"We're trying to clear up the reputation of our own profession," Roland tells me. "We can say what didn't happen that day, no matter what the government report says.

"We think there's a serious issue here." Alleged 9/11 conspirator Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sketched in a pre-trial hearing at Guantanamo

Matt Campbell's also still looking for answers. In 2016, he flew to Guantanamo to attend a pre-trial hearing of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man described by the 9/11 Commission Report as the "principal architect of the 9/11 terror attacks".

He called the trial "a bit of a farce" but said: "It's the closest I'm ever going to get to a trial into the murder of my brother.

"There were four other families there. I know one of the ladies there had signed a reinvestigate 9/11 petition back in 2003 or 2004. The other family members, from what I could gather, were pretty much in line with the official narrative.

"But I already expect this. My own experience in England, with family members, is that some people have got past wanting to know what happened. They're still dealing with the never-ending effects of losing a loved-one."

Conspiracy theories have proliferated following the attacks in the US on 11 September 2001, and over the last decade these theories have taken many twists and turns, explains Mike Rudin.

Ten years on from the attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people, conspiracy theories have continued to evolve. They now question every aspect of the official account, despite the fact that every year has provided more witnesses and evidence to bolster the official explanation.

An opinion poll, carried out by Gfk NOP for BBC's The Conspiracy Files in 2011, found that 14% of people questioned in the UK and 15% in the US did not believe the official explanation that al-Qaeda was responsible, and instead believed the US government was involved in a wider conspiracy. Among 16 to 24-year-olds that belief rises to around one in four.

Since 9/11 there have been numerous lengthy and painstaking official reports - the 9/11 Commission, congressional investigations and many inquiries by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. None has ever found any evidence of a wider conspiracy.

The myriad of conspiracy theories, on the other hand, are rarely spelt out in great detail - perhaps because when they are, they have been quickly debunked. Nor is a motive usually explained.

Underlying distrust

The starting point for 9/11 conspiracies is that many people find it hard to believe 19 young men, armed with just knives and box-cutters, could casually walk through airport security, hijack four commercial planes and then within the space of 77 minutes destroy three of the iconic symbols of America's power, in the face of the world's most powerful and technologically-advanced military superpower.

It is a shocking thought.

As with many conspiracy theories there is a distrust of anything official and disbelief that government and security forces, which are so often portrayed as invincible, can be beaten by a small group of poorly-armed men.

It is a similar argument that questions whether a lone gunman could have killed President John F Kennedy, then the most powerful and best-protected man on the earth, or how someone so special as Princess Diana could die in a car crash.

Nothing is taken on trust about 9/11. If an eyewitness, an official or an expert counters a conspiracy theory, their motives are immediately questioned.

And the theories are ever evolving. When evidence comes forward that casts doubt on a theory, one rarely hears an admission that the theory must be wrong. Instead the focus shifts to the latest "unanswered question".

"We don't know the full story of exactly what happened," says American radio talk show host Alex Jones. "We know the official story is completely unproven and a fairy tale. I'm saying that it needs to be investigated."

Controlled demolition

A number of conspiracies focus on the actual collapse of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center.

Initially many questioned how such huge skyscrapers, which had dominated the Manhattan skyline for so long, could be brought down by an hour or so of fires - alluding to the possibility of some kind of controlled demolition.

But then the official report set out a rational explanation. And it also pointed out that contrary to the conspiracy theory, controlled demolition is always bottom up and not the top down collapse of the Twin Towers.

So then the focus shifted to World Trade Center Building 7 - another huge skyscraper which also collapsed on 9/11, but which was not hit by a plane.

The theory is that tonnes of explosives and an incendiary called thermite were used in a controlled demolition to destroy the building from the bottom up.

But when it is pointed out that thermite has never been used in controlled demolition, the theory once again moves on and claims that new and secret types of explosives and incendiaries were used.

So what is the attraction of conspiracy theories? And why are they so persistent?

Writer and producer of 90s US television series The X-Files, Frank Spotnitz, offers an explanation. He argues that we live in an age of anxiety, where we do not know who to trust and what to believe in. Conspiracy theories, he says, offer "a magic key that fits all the pieces together" and makes sense of our uncertain world.

'Fantasy event'

Other conspiracy theories question whether a commercial Boeing 757 even hit the US military's Pentagon headquarters in Washington DC.

And another suggests the fourth plane, which crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, was shot down by a American military missile.

Even the death of Osama Bin Laden in May 2011 is questioned. A host of different conspiracy theories suggest he died as early as 2001 or even that he was captured by American forces some time later.

"It is utterly astonishing that we should be able to kill a man who actually died nine years earlier in this fantasy event in Pakistan," says Prof Jim Fetzer.

But judging by the BBC's opinion poll, belief in conspiracy theories about 9/11 seems set to continue for a long time to come.

Gfk NOP carried out the opinion poll for the BBC in the UK and USA in July. Both were telephone polls with 1000 adults and the margin of error is +/- 3%

Question: Attacks were made on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11th 2001, commonly known as 9/11. It is generally accepted that these attacks were carried out by 'Al Qaeda'. However some people have suggested there was a wider conspiracy that included the American Government. Do you, yourself, believe that there was a wider conspiracy, or not?

9/11 third tower mystery 'solved' ? The final mystery of 9/11 will soon be solved, according to US experts investigating the collapse of the third tower at the World Trade Center.

The 47-storey third tower, known as Tower Seven, collapsed seven hours after the twin towers.

Investigators are expected to say ordinary fires on several different floors caused the collapse.

Conspiracy theorists have argued that the third tower was brought down in a controlled demolition.

Unlike the twin towers, Tower Seven was not hit by a plane.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, based near Washington DC, is expected to conclude in its long-awaited report this month that ordinary fires caused the building to collapse.

That would make it the first and only steel skyscraper in the world to collapse because of fire.

See World Trade Center 7's location and structure
The National Institute of Standards and Technology's lead investigator, Dr Shyam Sunder, spoke to BBC Two's "The Conspiracy Files":

"Our working hypothesis now actually suggests that it was normal building fires that were growing and spreading throughout the multiple floors that may have caused the ultimate collapse of the buildings."

'Smoking gun'

However, a group of architects, engineers and scientists say the official explanation that fires caused the collapse is impossible. Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth argue there must have been a controlled demolition.

The founder of the group, Richard Gage, says the collapse of the third tower is an obvious example of a controlled demolition using explosives.

"Building Seven is the smoking gun of 9/11. A sixth grader can look at this building falling at virtually freefall speed, symmetrically and smoothly, and see that it is not a natural process.

"Buildings that fall in natural processes fall to the path of least resistance", says Gage, "they don't go straight down through themselves."

Conspiracy theories

There are a number of facts that have encouraged conspiracy theories about Tower Seven.

Although its collapse potentially made architectural history, all of the thousands of tonnes of steel from the skyscraper were taken away to be melted down.
The third tower was occupied by the Secret Service, the CIA, the Department of Defense and the Office of Emergency Management, which would co-ordinate any response to a disaster or a terrorist attack.
The destruction of the third tower was never mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report. The first official inquiry into Tower Seven by the Federal Emergency Management Agency was unable to be definitive about what caused its collapse.
In May 2002 FEMA concluded that the building collapsed because intense fires had burned for hours, fed by thousands of gallons of diesel stored in the building. But it said this had "only a low probability of occurrence" and more work was needed.
But now nearly seven years after 9/11 the definitive official explanation of what happened to Tower Seven is finally about to be published in America.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has spent more than two years investigating Tower Seven but lead investigator Dr Shyam Sunder rejects criticism that it has been slow.

"We've been at this for a little over two years and doing a two or two and a half year investigation is not at all unusual. That's the same kind of time frame that takes place when we do aeroplane crash investigations, it takes a few years."

With no steel from Tower 7 to study, investigators have instead made four extremely complex computer models worked out to the finest detail. They're confident their approach can now provide the answers. Dr Sunder says the investigation is moving as fast as possible.

"It's a very complex problem. It requires a level of fidelity in the modelling and rigour in the analysis that has never been done before."

Other skyscrapers haven't fully collapsed before because of fire. But NIST argues that what happened on 9/11 was unique.

Steel structure weakened

It says Tower Seven had an unusual design, built over an electricity substation and a subway; there were many fires that burnt for hours; and crucially, fire fighters could not fight the fires in Tower 7, because they didn't have enough water and focused on saving lives.

Investigators have focused on the east side where the long floor spans were under most stress.

They think fires burnt long enough to weaken and break many of the connections that held the steel structure together.

Most susceptible were the thinner floor beams which required less fireproofing, and the connections between the beams and the columns. As they heated up the connections failed and the beams sagged and failed, investigators say.

The collapse of the first of the Twin Towers does not seem to have caused any serious damage to Tower Seven, but the second collapse of the 1,368ft (417m) North Tower threw debris at Tower Seven, just 350ft (106m) away.
Tower Seven came down at 5.21pm. Until now most of the photographs have been of the three sides of the building that did not show much obvious physical damage. Now new photos of the south side of the building, which crucially faced the North Tower, show that whole side damaged and engulfed in smoke.

Despite strong contrary arguments, a McMaster University engineering professor steadfastly maintains the collapse of three World Trade Center buildings after the infamous 9/11 attacks can only be adequately explained if “controlled demolition” is part of the equation.

Robert Korol, a civil engineering professor emeritus and a fellow of the Canadian Society of Civil Engineering, authored a report with Steven Jones, former professor of physics at Brigham Young University, Anthony Szamboti, a mechanical design engineer in the aerospace and communications industries and Ted Walter, director of strategy and development for Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth). The report was titled 15 Years Later: On the Physics of High-Rise Building Collapses published last year in the Europhysics News journal which is a magazine for the European physics community and owned by the European Physical Society.

In the controversial paper, the authors reflect the overarching premise of the AE911Truth, which has collected 2,936 signatures from engineers and architects. Among those petition signatories are 19 who earned their respective degrees in Canada, including 15 who live here.

AE911 Truth posits: “there is sufficient doubt about the official story and therefore the 9/11 investigation must be re-opened and must include a full inquiry into the possible use of explosives that might have been the actual cause of the destruction of the World Trade Center Twin Towers and Building 7.”

The group has long been controversial and its arguments have ignited many debates. The overwhelming consensus has favoured the official explanation which states that fires burning inside the buildings weakened the structural steel and triggered their collapse. This has consistently been reaffirmed by U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) over the last 16 years.

The Europhysics News editors also recognize the controversy, publishing the article with the following note: “This feature is somewhat different from our usual purely scientific articles, in that it contains some speculation. However, given the timing and the importance of the issue, we consider that this feature is sufficiently technical and interesting to merit publication for our readers. Obviously, the content of this article is the responsibility of the authors.”

Reached at his home in Dundas, Ont., Korol shrugs off the controversy.

“I’ve been scratching my head over this one since it happened on Sept. 11, 2001,” he says. “I just couldn’t understand how those buildings collapsed. It didn’t make sense.”

While the most iconic images of that fateful day are the collapse of the twin towers World Trade Center 1 (WTC 1) and World Trade Center 2 (WTC 2) within moments of each other, following the fires started by a passenger airplane crashing into each of them, there is a third building most often cited as the smoking gun in the “controlled demolition” theory. This building, World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC 7) was not hit by any aircraft and yet it too imploded like a house of cards, says Korol and his co-authors and others note it housed CIA and Secret Service offices.

“Indeed, neither before nor since 9/11 have fires caused the total collapse of a steel-framed high-rise — nor has any other natural event, with the exception of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, which toppled a 21-storey office building,” they argue. “Otherwise, the only phenomenon capable of collapsing such buildings completely has been by way of a procedure known as controlled demolition, whereby explosives or other devices are used to bring down a structure intentionally.”

Korol, who has taken contrarian positions on other engineering-related issues, says it’s important to keep challenging the status quo because we need to know how and why the buildings collapsed in order to prevent reoccurrences.

“The fires were on the upper floors, there’s little chance the heat would have spread down and caused the steel columns, or the connectors or floor beams, to sufficiently weaken and collapse in the twin towers,” he tells the Daily Commercial News.

“Also they were treated with a fire retardant which would have insulated them.”

Further, he says, when the structures did fail they did so with such explosive force that pulverized concrete was ejected at high velocity and scattered on a debris field some 370 metres away.

The most probable explanation is a controlled explosion and mostly likely using thermite, he says, adding in the case of WTC 7 some 67 per cent of the supporting steel strength in Column 79 — pinpointed as the cause of the fatal collapse — would have to be lost before it failed and that would mean temperatures of 660C.

The paper also notes sprinkler systems would have reduced heat factors, while the overall design of the steel structure would isolate any failure and prevent a domino-effect collapse.

The NIST however maintains the heat factor triggered an expansion in floor beams, pushing them off their seats and causing the collapse when other components also failed due to thermal expansion.

Korol and other likeminded colleagues, stubbornly disagree.

“The evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that all three buildings were destroyed by controlled demolition,” they conclude “Given the far-reaching implications, it is morally imperative that this hypothesis be the subject of a truly scientific and impartial investigation by responsible authorities.”

The NIST’s 2008 report on WTC 7, however, takes direct aim at the AE911Truth theories: “Our take-home message is the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery,” NIST lead investigator Shyam Sunder told a press conference. “WTC 7 collapsed because of fires fueled by office furnishings. It did not collapse from explosives or from diesel fuel fires.”

He said WTC 7 marks the first recorded event of a 15-storey structure or more collapsing due to fire.

“What we found was that uncontrolled building fires — similar to fires experienced in other tall buildings — caused an extraordinary event, the collapse of WTC 7,” he said.

The NIST report says debris from WTC 1 sparked fires on at least 10 floors of WTC 7 at its southern and western faces. However, the fires on floors seven through nine and 11 through 13 burned out of control because the sprinklers failed when watermain supply lines were damaged when WTC 1 and 2 collapsed.

Seven hours later,“a girder on Floor 13 lost its connection to a critical column, Column 79, that provided support for the long floor spans on the east side of the building,” the NIST concluded.

“The displaced girder and other local fire-induced damage caused Floor 13 to collapse, beginning a cascade of floor failures down to the 5th floor. Many of these floors had already been at least partially weakened by the fires in the vicinity of Column 79. This collapse of floors left Column 79 insufficiently supported in the east-west direction over nine stories,” stated the NIST.

In a shot at AE911, the NIST report noted they did look at the possibility of a controlled demolition: “Hypothetical blast events did not play a role in the collapse of WTC 7.”

The NIST said “no blast sounds were heard on the audio tracks of video recordings during the collapse of WTC 7 or reported by witnesses.”

Further, they argued, even a small blast with enough energy to dislocate Column 79 would have emitted a sound level of 130 decibels (dB) to 140 dB at a distance of at least half a mile, if unobstructed by surrounding buildings.

“This sound level is consistent with a gunshot blast, standing next to a jet plane engine, and more than 10 times louder than being in front of the speakers at a rock concert,” they said noting all the recordings of the events that day do no show any spikes from explosions.

“For the building to have been prepared for intentional demolition, walls and/or column enclosures and fireproofing would have to be removed and replaced without being detected. Preparing a column includes steps such as cutting sections with torches, which produces noxious and odorous fumes.”

The investigation also looked at thermite (a combination of aluminum powder and metal oxide) as an explosive source. The NIST calculated that 100 lbs. of thermite would have been needed to damage a steel column that weighs approximately 1,000 lbs. The thermite would need to be “placed around the column, ignited, and remain in contact with the vertical steel surface as the thermite reaction took place. This is for one column, presumably, more than one column would have been prepared with thermite, if this approach were to be used,” explained the NIST.

Further, the NIST argued, it is unlikely that 100 lbs. or more of thermite could have been brought into WTC 7 and placed around the columns prior to Sept. 11 without being detected.

Editor’s Note: The beliefs of AE911Truth are solely those of its supporters and in no way reflect those of Construct Connect’s Daily Commercial News or the company.

The excuses offered by NIST play a prominent part at the end of this article, but as the late radio commentator Paul Harvey would have said, “there is more to the story.” The article reports that NIST said, “No blast sounds were heard…or reported by witnesses,” but there were over 150 people (120+ of them firemen) who did report explosions. NIST fallback position with this obvious misstatement of the facts was that there was no noise loud enough to have been an explosion taking down the building, but NIST assumes the sound level required for controlled demolition was the sound generated by the explosion of thermite, not the much quieter and more powerful nano-thermite (which independent scientists found evidence of in the dust from the site). Further, there is the evidence of what NIST didn’t do. They didn’t check for any chemical evidence of explosive materials. After deciding that there were no explosions (…loud enough…), they didn’t test for explosive residue, period. There are other weaknesses buried in the depth of NIST’s reports, most large enough to drive a truck (loaded with explosives) through; however, looking at the minutia–as the end of this column does–overlooks the most powerful pieces of evidence of controlled demolition for Building Seven: (1) it came down in a symmetrical collapse and (2) the collapsing rooftop fell at free fall acceleration for at least eight stories. Symmetry means that all 81 columns in the building would have to fail at the same time and free fall acceleration means that when they fell there was nothing in the way. NIST offered no explanation for either of these facts, even though these inconvenient truths only have one well-established explanation, they are the identifying characteristics of controlled demolition. Glad the Daily Commercial News tackled this issue, but a “Paul Harvey” view of the official explanation would have made for a much better article.

I agree with Mr. Michaels. The article says there are “strong contrary arguments.” Yet looking closely at that NIST report, again and again we find assertions, not arguments. The computer models they used rely on many assumptions chosen to make the collapse possible, but that again and again violate what was observed and the evidence that was left over.

The mystery is not that Building 7 collapsed due to fire: I don’t think anyone doubts that, in some universe, this is possible. The mystery is that three skyscrapers on the same day collapsed virtually into their own footprints due to fire. Nothing like that has ever happened before. Building 7 is especially important because unlike WTC 1 and 2, the excuse that jet fuel and the impact of a plane somehow made those happen is unavailable. Nobody argues for a minute–not even NIST–that the damage to WTC was or could have been symmetrical. Yet the building collapses in almost pure symmetry. This is why demolition experts have been among those most vocal in challenging NIST’s conclusions: they know that it is virtually IMPOSSIBLE to get a skyscraper to collapse into its own footprint without extensive planning and preparation. Had it happened once on 9/11, I’d be happy to call it that rare, one in a million chance. But three times in one day? As Aretha said, who’s zooming who?

9/11 conspiracy theories How they've evolved It may be 22 years since the attacks in the US on 11 September, but conspiracy theories have not faded over time, says Mike Rudin.

Numerous official reports have been published since the Twin Towers fell, but just when a piece of evidence casts doubt on one theory, the focus then shifts to the next "unanswered question".

Here are five of the most prominent 9/11 conspiracy theories circulating in online communities.

1. Failure to intercept the hijacked planes
The question: Why did the world's most powerful air force fail to intercept any of the four hijacked planes?

Conspiracy theorists say: The then US Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the military to stand down and not to intercept the planes.

Official reports say: This was a highly unusual multiple hijacking with violence on board, and where the transponder, which identifies the plane, was turned off or changed.

What is more, a routine military training exercise happened to be taking place that day at US air defence command.

Air traffic controller Colin Scoggins was in constant contact with the military and did not see any lack of response. There was confusion and a lack of communication between the civilian air traffic control (FAA) and the military.

The military's equipment was also outdated and designed to look out over the ocean to deal with a Cold War threat.

2. Collapse of the Twin Towers
The question: Why did the Twin Towers collapse so quickly, within their own footprint, after fires on a few floors that lasted only for an hour or two?

Conspiracy theorists say: The Twin Towers were destroyed by controlled demolitions. Theories relate to the rapid collapse (about 10 seconds), the relatively short-lived fires (56 minutes in World Trade Center 2 or 102 minutes in World Trade Center 1), reports of the sounds of explosions shortly before the collapse, and the violent ejections that could be seen at some windows many floors below the collapse.

Official reports say: An extensive inquiry by the National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded that the planes severed and damaged support columns and dislodged fire-proofing.

Around 10,000 gallons of jet fuel were spewed over many floors starting widespread fires. Temperatures of up to 1,000C caused the floors to sag and the perimeter columns to bend, causing the sounds of "explosions".

The massive weight of the floors dropped, creating a dynamic load far in excess of what the columns were designed for. Debris was forced out of the windows as the floors above collapsed.

Controlled demolition is nearly always carried out from the bottom floors up, yet this collapse started at the top.

No evidence has ever been found of explosive charges despite the extensive hand searches and there is no evidence of any pre-cutting of columns or walls, which is routinely carried out in a controlled demolition.

3. Attack on the Pentagon
The question: How could an amateur pilot fly a commercial plane in a complicated manoeuvre and crash it into the headquarters of the world's most powerful military, 78 minutes after the first report of a possible hijack and leave no trace?

Conspiracy theorists say: A commercial Boeing 757 did not hit the building but instead a missile, a small aircraft or an unmanned drone was used. But since evidence has increasingly shown that the American Airlines Flight 77 did hit the building, the emphasis has shifted to questioning the difficult approach manoeuvre. It is argued it was not under the control of al-Qaeda but the Pentagon itself.

Official reports say: Airplane wreckage, including the black boxes, were recovered from the scene and they were catalogued by the FBI.

Although some early video did not show much wreckage, there is a good deal of video and still photography which shows plane wreckage and evidence of the flight path, such as broken lamp posts.

The remains of crew and passengers on the plane were found and positively identified by DNA. Witnesses also saw the plane strike the Pentagon.

4. The fourth plane - United Airlines flight 93
The question: Why was the crash site at Shanksville, Pennsylvania, so small and why was the aircraft debris not visible?

Conspiracy theorists argue: United Airlines flight 93 was shot down by a missile and disintegrated in mid air, scattering the wreckage over a large area.

Official reports say: There are clear photographs showing aircraft wreckage and the cockpit voice recorder, which showed there had been a passenger revolt and the hijackers had deliberately crashed the plane.

Initial theories that heavy debris was scattered many miles from the main crash site turned out to be false. In fact the wind had blown light debris such as paper and insulation just over a mile.

Another theory was based on a misquote from the local coroner, Wally Miller, who said he stopped being a coroner after about 20 minutes because there were no bodies. What he also said was that he quickly realised it was a plane crash and there would have to be a large funeral service for the many victims.

In addition, the military never gave orders to the air force to shoot the commercial airliner down.

5. Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7
The question: How could a skyscraper, which was not hit by a plane, collapse so quickly and symmetrically, when no other steel-framed skyscraper has collapsed because of fire?

Conspiracy theorists say: The World Trade Center Building 7 was destroyed by a controlled demolition using both explosives and incendiaries.

Initially the focus was on the phrase "pull it" used by the owner, Larry Silverstein, in a TV interview. But in fact he was talking about pulling firefighters back. (Demolition experts do not use the term "pull it" as slang for setting off explosives.)

Now the focus has shifted to the speed of the collapse which reached near free fall for 2.25 seconds. It is argued only explosives could make it collapse so quickly and symmetrically.

Some scientists, who are sceptical of the official account, have examined four dust samples from Ground Zero and claim to have found thermitic material which reacts violently when heated up. They claim tonnes of thermite and conventional explosives were rigged inside, not just WTC7, but also the Twin Towers.

Official reports say: A three-year investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded that the building collapsed because of uncontrolled fires, started by the collapse of the nearby North Tower, and which burnt for seven hours.

The mains water feeding the emergency sprinkler system was severed. No evidence has ever been found of explosive charges and there are no recordings of a series of very loud explosions that would have been expected with controlled demolition.

Furthermore, there is an alternative explanation for the "thermitic material" the sceptical scientists found in the dust - it is just a type of primer paint. It's calculated 1,200,000 tonnes of building materials were pulverised at the World Trade Center and most minerals are present in the dust (not necessarily in a large quantity). More extensive sampling of the dust has not found any evidence of thermite or explosives, says a report from the US Geological Survey and another from RJ Lee.

The White House has said previously classified papers concerning the 9/11 attacks released on Friday show there had been no official Saudi role.

Lawmakers and victims' families campaigned for years for their publication, alleging high-level Saudis were complicit in the attacks.

The pages from the 2002 report found it likely the attackers got financial help from people inside the kingdom.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who staged the 2001 attacks were Saudi nationals.

Almost 3,000 people were killed when they deliberately flew planes they had seized into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Another hijacked plane was brought down in a field in Pennsylvania.

An independent panel completed the 9/11 Commission Report a year after the attacks.

But several sections - informally known as "the 28 Pages" - were withheld from the public for 13 years, fuelling speculation about their contents.

Campaigners who lobbied for their release argued the US government was shielding an important ally.

The released pages were still lightly redacted by the CIA. The report's original authors cautioned that some of the information contained in "the 28 pages" was uncorroborated material from the FBI.

According to the declassified document, "while in the United States, some of the 9/11 hijackers were in contact with, and received support or assistance from, individuals who may be connected to the Saudi government".

It included a possibility that money was sent from the Saudi Royal family to the hijackers, among other alleged links.

However, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the pages "don't shed any new light or change any of the conclusions about responsibility for the 9/11 attacks".

"This information does not change the assessment of the US government that there's no evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi individuals funded al-Qaida," he said.

The Saudi government said it welcomed the release of the documents.

Abdullah Al-Saud, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, said they confirmed "neither the Saudi government, nor senior Saudi officials, nor any person acting on behalf of the Saudi government provided any support or encouragement for these attacks".

The probable publication of classified parts of a 2002 congressional report into the 9/11 attacks will clear Saudi Arabia of any responsibility, CIA chief John Brennan has said.

Keeping 28 pages of the report secret has sparked speculation that the attack had received official Saudi support.

The classified pages are also central to a dispute over whether the families of 9/11 victims should be able to sue the Saudi government.

Saudi Arabia denies any involvement.

Fifteen out of the 19 hijackers in 2001 were Saudi citizens.

How strained are US-Saudi relations?

Former senator Bob Graham, who headed the Senate intelligence committee that compiled the classified report in 2002, has said that Saudi officials did provide assistance to the 9/11 hijackers.

But Mr Brennan said this was not the case.

"So these 28 pages I believe are going to come out and I think it's good that they come out. People shouldn't take them as evidence of Saudi complicity in the attacks," Mr Brennan said in an interview with Saudi-owned Arabiya TV.

Mr Brennan also described the 28-page section of the 2002 report as merely a "preliminary review".

"The 9/11 commission looked very thoroughly at these allegations of Saudi involvement... their conclusion was that there was no evidence to indicate that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually had supported the 9/11 attacks," he said.

In May, a bill to allow Americans to sue Saudi Arabia over the attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people died, was passed by the Senate and now moves to the House of Representatives.

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister has warned that the move could cause his government to withdraw US investments.

Mr Graham has said that the White House would decide whether to release the classified pages this month.

So how did the BBC report that Building 7 at the World Trade Centre had collapsed around half an hour before it did so? My earlier posting on the subject has attracted a lot of interest so we've been doing more investigating within the BBC to put together the sequence of events.

yes its 22 been years have passed so it's quite difficult to answer every outstanding question. But we do know quite a bit more than we did on Tuesday, as a result of checking the BBC archives and what other media were doing at the time. I've also read through some of the reports published after 9/11 to help put together the sequence of events.

Back to 11 September itself. The Twin Towers had collapsed. Other buildings were known to be damaged. Building 7 was on fire. But this was also a very confusing picture - remember we had started the day with reports that a light aircraft had struck the first tower, and at one stage there was talk of ten hijacked jets in the air. It's in the nature of rolling news that events unfold in front of you and confusion turns to clarity. It's important to remember that context when looking more closely at what happened between about 4.10pm (EDT) and 5.20pm when Building 7 finally collapsed.

CNN's chronology of events published at the time confirms they reported the building on fire and a clip from a CNN bulletin, widely available on the web, hears from a reporter at about 4.15pm EDT, 9.15pm in the UK, who says: "We're getting information that one of the other buildings... Building 7... is on fire and has either collapsed or is collapsing... now we're told there is a fire there and that the building may collapse as well."

Other American networks were broadcasting similar reports at this time and the reports from FEMA and NIST both make it clear the building was on fire during the course of the day.

One senior fire officer was quoted in a subsequent interview as saying there was a "bulge" in the building and he was "pretty sure it was going to collapse". During this time, our staff were talking directly to the emergency services and monitoring local and national media… and there was a fairly consistent picture being painted of Building 7 in danger of collapse. Producers in London would have been monitoring the news agency wires - the Associated Press, Reuters, etc - and although we don't routinely keep an archive of agency reports, we're sure they would have been reporting the same as the local media.

At 4.27pm, a BBC reporter, Greg Barrow, who is in New York, appears on our radio news channel, BBC Radio Five Live, and says: "We are hearing reports from local media that another building may have caught light and is in danger of collapse." He then responds to a follow-up question by saying "I'm not sure if it has yet collapsed but the report we have is talking about Building 7."

At 4.53pm, on the same radio station, the programme's presenter, Fi Glover says "25 minutes ago we had reports from Greg Barrow that another large building has collapsed just over an hour ago."

At 4.54pm, the BBC's domestic television news channel, BBC News 24, reports the same thing. Presenter Gavin Esler says: "We're now being told that yet another enormous building has collapsed... it is the 47-storey Salomon Brothers building."

And then at 4.57pm on BBC World (according to the clips available on the web) presenter Phil Hayton says: "We've got some news just coming in actually that the Salomon brothers building in NY right in the heart of Manhattan has also collapsed."

Because three BBC channels were saying this in quick succession, I am inclined to believe that one or more of the news agencies was reporting this, or at least reporting someone saying this.

At 5pm, News 24 repeated the news in its top-of-the-hour headlines sequence and then at about 5.10pm (again according to the clips on the web), Phil Hayton on BBC World says "More on the latest building collapse in NY - you might have heard I was talking a few moments ago about the Salomon building collapsing and indeed it has... it seems this wasn't the result of a new attack but because the building had been weakened during this morning's attack."

Some of the respondents to my earlier blog have suggested this must mean he had inside knowledge - that not only did he know the building had collapsed, he knew why.

Well in one sense that's true - for about an hour, it had been reported that the building was on fire and in danger of collapse. But he did qualify it by saying "it seems" and once again I think there's a danger of reading too much into what I believe was a presenter merely summarising what everyone had been saying during the previous hour.

Of course, with hindsight we now know that our live shot showed the building still standing in the background. But again I point to that confusing and chaotic situation on the ground - the CNN reporter who had talked about the building "either collapsed or is collapsing" also had it clearly in shot behind him, but he acknowledged he couldn't see very clearly from where he was standing. As we know, the building did collapse at 5.20pm, with the first pictures of that being broadcast on News 24 at about 5.35pm.

So that's what we know we reported. To me it paints a consistent (and reasonably conclusive) picture.

I should also mention the missing tapes. As you'll see from the details above, the absence of the BBC World tapes hasn't made much difference to our ability to look back at what happened. We have all the tapes of other BBC channels (and I now know that quite a few of you have your own copies of BBC World, which is an interesting discovery... ).

Some of you find it hard to believe we didn't keep the BBC World tapes... but we had several streams of news output running simultaneously on the day, both on radio and television as well as online and we have kept all the tapes from BBC News 24 and Radio Five Live, as well as all the BBC One bulletins. Obviously I wish we'd kept hold of the World tapes alongside all the others, but we didn't... and I don't know whether they were destroyed or mislaid. But as a result of this week's events, I have asked our archivists to get hold of copies of our original material from the organisations which do have them.

And just to be clear, the BBC policy is to keep every minute of news channel output for 90 days (in line with the Broadcasting Act in the UK). After that we are obliged to keep a representative sample - and we interpret that to mean roughly one third of all our output. We also keep a large amount of individual items (such as packaged reports or "rushes" - ie original unedited material), which we use for operational reasons - such as when we come to broadcast fresh stories on the subject. We do not lack a historical record of the event.

I've spent most of the week investigating this issue, but this is where we have to end the story. I know there are many out there who won't believe our version of events, or will raise further questions. But there was no conspiracy in the BBC's reporting of the events. Nobody told us what to say. There's no conspiracy involving missing tapes. There's no story here.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/03/part_of_the_conspiracy_2.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_World_Trade_Center

The 9/11 conspiracy theories are pretty well known by now. The BBC addressed them earlier this month with a documentary, The Conspiracy Files, shown within the UK. Until now, I don't think we've been accused of being part of the conspiracy. But now some websites are using news footage from BBC World on September 11th 2001 to suggest we were actively participating in some sort of attempt to manipulate the audience. As a result, we're now getting lots of emails asking us to clarify our position. So here goes:

1. We're not part of a conspiracy. Nobody told us what to say or do on September 11th. We didn't get told in advance that buildings were going to fall down. We didn't receive press releases or scripts in advance of events happening.

2. In the chaos and confusion of the day, I'm quite sure we said things which turned out to be untrue or inaccurate - but at the time were based on the best information we had. We did what we always did - sourced our reports, used qualifying words like "apparently" or "it's reported" or "we're hearing" and constantly tried to check and double check the information we were receiving.

3. Our reporter Jane Standley was in New York on the day of the attacks, and like everyone who was there, has the events seared on her mind. I've spoken to her today and unsurprisingly, she doesn't remember minute-by-minute what she said or did - like everybody else that day she was trying to make sense of what she was seeing; what she was being told; and what was being told to her by colleagues in London who were monitoring feeds and wires services.

4. We no longer have the original tapes of our 9/11 coverage (for reasons of cock-up, not conspiracy). So if someone has got a recording of our output, I'd love to get hold of it. We do have the tapes for our sister channel News 24, but they don't help clear up the issue one way or another.

5. If we reported the building had collapsed before it had done so, it would have been an error - no more than that. As one of the comments on You Tube says today "so the guy in the studio didn't quite know what was going on? Woah, that totally proves conspiracy... ?

https://history.defense.gov/Portals/70/Documents/pentagon/Pentagon9-11.pdf

So Is Sept. 9/11 Controlled Demolition Actual Collapse Twin Towers World Trade Center True ? Yes U.S.A Killed 3,000+ And Yes Its For The Greater Good !

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