911-Ownership

Controlling Interests

Ownership, Control, and Insurance of The World Trade Center

The World Trade Center complex came under the control of a private owner for the first time only in mid-2001, having been built and managed by the Port Authority as a public resource. The complex was leased to a partnership of Silverstein Properties and Westfield America. ^1   2   The new controllers acquired a handsome insurance policy for the complex including a clause that would prove extremely valuable: in the event of a terrorist attack, the partnership could collect the insured value of the property, and be released from their obligations under the 99-year lease. ³  

Ownership Change

Author Don Paul investigated this and related issues for his 2002 book, which contains the following passage detailing financial aspects and ownership changes of the complex preceding the attack.

On April 26 of 2001 the Board of Commissioners for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey awarded Silverstein Properties and mall-owner Westfield America a 99-year-lease on the following assets: The Twin Towers, World Trade Center Buildings 4 and 5, two 9-story office buildings, and 400,000 square feet of retail space.

The partners' winning bid was $3.2 billion for holdings estimated to be worth more than $8 billion. JP Morgan Chase, a prestigious investment-bank that's the flagship firm of its kind for Rockefeller family interests, advised the Port Authority, another body long influenced by banker and builder David Rockefeller, his age then 85, in the negotiations.

The lead partner and spokesperson for the winning bidders, Larry Silverstein, age 70, already controlled more than 8 million square feet of New York City real estate. WTC 7 and the nearby Equitable Building were prime among these prior holdings. Larry Silverstein also owned Runway 69, a nightclub in Queens that was alleged 9 years ago to be laundering money made through sales of Laotian heroin. 4  

In December 2003, the Port Authority agreed to return all of the $125 million in equity that the consortium headed by Silverstein originally invested to buy the lease on the World Trade Center. The Port Authority rejected a request by the Wall Street Journal to review the transaction. ⁵   A press report from November 2003 about the same transaction noted that it would allow Silverstein to retain development rights. ⁶  

The lease deal didn't close until July 24th, just 6 weeks before the attack. ⁷  

Insurance Payouts

Don Paul also documented the money flows surrounding the loss of Building 7.

In February of 2002 Silverstein Properties won $861 million from Industrial Risk Insurers to rebuild on the site of WTC 7. Silverstein Properties' estimated investment in WTC 7 was $386 million. So: This building's collapse resulted in a profit of about $500 million. 8  

The insurance money flows involved in the destruction of the original six World Trade Center buildings were far greater. Silverstein Properties, the majority owner of WTC 7, also had the majority interest in the original World Trade Center complex. Silverstein hired Willis Group Holdings Ltd. to obtain enough coverage for the complex. Willis undertook "frenetic" negotiations to acquire insurance from 25 carriers. The agreements were only temporary contracts when control of the WTC changed hands on July 24. ⁹  

After the attack, Silverstein Properties commenced litigation against its insurers, claiming it was entitled to twice the insurance policies' value because, according to a spokesman for Mr. Silverstein, "the two hijacked airliners that struck the 110-story twin towers Sept. 11 were separate 'occurrences' for insurance purposes, entitling him to collect twice on $3.6 billion of policies." This was reported in the Bloomberg News less than one month after the attack. ¹⁰  

The ensuing legal battle between the leaseholders and insurers of the World Trade Center was not about how the 9/11/01 attack on the WTC could be considered two attacks, when the WTC was only destroyed once. Rather it seemed to revolve around whether the beneficiaries thought it was one or two "occurrences." The proceedings before U.S. District Judge John S. Martin involved a number of battles over the insurers' discovery rights regarding conversations about this issue between insurance beneficiaries and their lawyers. ^11   12  

In December 2004, a jury ruled in favor of the insurance holders' double claim. ¹³  

A Parable

To put these events in perspective, imagine that a person leases an expensive house, and immediately takes out an insurance policy covering the entire value of the house and specifically covering bomb attacks. Six weeks later two bombs go off in the house, separated by an hour. The house burns down, and the lessor immediately sues the insurance company to pay him twice the value of the house, and ultimately wins. The lessor also gets the city to dispose of the wreckage, excavate the site, and help him build a new house on the site.

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References

1. Westfield Nabs Trade Center mall, ICSC.org, 6/2/2001 [cached]
2. Governor Pataki, Acting Governor DiFrancesco Laud Historic Port Authority Agreement to Privatize World Trade Center, Port Authority on NY & NJ, 7/24/01 [cached]
3. Reinsurance Companies Wait to Sort Out Cost of Damage, New York Times, 9/12/01, page C6
4. Facing Our Fascist State, I/R Press, 2002, page 38
5. MetLife Will Sell Sears Tower, Wall Street Journal Online, 3/12/04 [cached]
6. Most of WTC Down Payment to Be Returned, 11/22/03 [cached]
7. Insurers Debate: One Accident or Two?, Bloomberg News, 10/10/01
8. Facing Our Fascist State, , page 47
9. Double Indemnity, law.com, 9/3/02 [cached]
10. Judge John S. Martin Jr.'s Latest Opinion in Swiss Re v. WTC., Newsday, 09/25/02 [cached]
11. Twin Tower Insurers Win Discovery Fight, 6/20/02 [cached]
12. World Trade Center's Mortgage Holder Loses Discovery Fight, 7/8/02 [cached]
13. Jury Awards $2.2 Billion in 9/11 Insurance, United Press International, 12/6/04 [cached] 
*******

911-Construction of the buildings

Collapsing Buildings

The New Phenomenon of Steel Buildings Crushing Themselves

The seven World Trade Center buildings were in the two blue regions of the map to the right. On September 11th, all 7 buildings were destroyed. 110-story WTC 1 and 2, and 47-story WTC 7 were leveled, and WTC 3, 4, 5, and 6 were severely damaged, with large portions of WTC 3, 4, and 6 being crushed.

It is interesting that, in spite of the thorough devastation of all the buildings with World Trade Center addresses, no large buildings outside the blue zones were sufficiently damaged to warrant their demolition in the months that followed the attack. ¹   The "collapse" of Building 7 was remarkably tidy. Although it was wedged between the Verizon building and the U.S. Post Office building, it barely damaged either of them.

It is even more interesting that, prior to September 11th, no steel framed building had ever undergone total collapse due to any cause or combination of causes other than controlled demolition and severe earthquakes. Such buildings have survived hurricanes, severe fires,earthquakes, and bombings, but none have fallen down of their own weight -- an event that was portrayed as inevitable on September 11th.

Of the collapses of the three huge buildings on September 11th, the collapse of Building 7 is treated separately. If you believe the official story, then Building 7 would be the only example in history of a steel framed building undergoing complete collapse as a result of fires. It and the Twin Towers would be the only permanent vertical steel structures to have fallen into themselves instead of falling over, except in cases of demolition.

The collapses of the Twin Towers are analyzed in much more detail than Building 7 because there is more evidence, and because, whereas Building 7's fall looked like a standard building demolition, the disintegrations of the Twin Towers had many features that are not easily explained.

Collapse Features

Characteristics of the Twin Towers' Destruction and What They Show

The total destructions of the two towers were almost identical. The most apparent difference is that the top of the South Tower tipped for a few seconds before falling, whereas the top of the North Tower telescoped straight down from the start. Here are some of the principal characteristics of the destructions, based on study of the surviving evidence.

• The cores were obliterated. There is no gravity collapse scenario that can account for the complete leveling of the massive columns of the towers' cores.
• The perimeter walls were shredded. No gravity collapse scenario can account for the ripping apart of the three-column by three-floor prefabricated column and spandrel plate units along their welds.
• Nearly all the concrete was pulverized in the air, so finely that it blanketed parts of Lower Manhattan with inches of dust. In a gravity collapse, there would not have been enough energy to pulverize the concrete until it hit the ground, if then.
• The towers exploded into immense clouds of dust, which were several times the original volumes of the buildings by the time their disintegration reached the ground.
• Parts of the towers were thrown 500 feet laterally. The downward forces of a gravity collapse cannot account for the energetic lateral ejection of pieces.
• Explosive events were visible before many floors had collapsed. Since overpressures are the only possible explanations for the explosive dust plumes emerging from the buildings, the top would have to be falling to produce them in a gravity collapse. But in the South Tower collapse, energetic dust ejections are first seen while the top is only slightly tipping, not falling.
• The towers' tops mushroomed into thick dust clouds much larger than the original volumes of the buildings. Without the addition of large sources of pressure beyond the collapse itself, the falling building and its debris should have occupied about the same volume as the intact building.
• Explosive ejections of dust, known as squibs, occurred well below the mushrooming region in both of the tower collapses. A gravitational collapse explanation would account for these as dust from floors pancaking well down into the tower's intact region. But if the floors -- the only major non-steel building component -- were falling well below the mushrooming cloud above, what was the source of the dense powder in the cloud?
• The halting of rotation of the South Tower's top as it began its fall can only be explained by its breakup.
• The curves of the perimeter wall edges of the South Tower about 2 seconds into its "collapse" show that many stories above the crash zone have been shattered.
• The tops fell at near the rate of free fall. The rates of fall indicate that nearly all resistance to the downward acceleration of the tops had been eliminated ahead of them. The forms of resistance, had the collapses been gravity-driven, would include: the destruction of the structural integrity of each story; the pulverization of the concrete in the floor slabs of each story, and other non-metallic objects; and the acceleration of the remains of each story encountered either outward or downward. There would have to be enough energy to overcome all of these forms of resistance and do it rapidly enough to keep up with the near free-fall acceleration of the top

This image from the documentary Up From Zero shows the base of a core column, whose dimensions, minus the four flanges, are apparently 52 by 22 inches, with walls at least 5 inches thick.

This photograph from Ground Zero is apparently of one of the smaller core columns connected to a set of I-beams.

The Core Structures

The Structural System of the Twin Towers

Each tower was supported by a structural core extending from its bedrock foundation to its roof. The cores were rectangular pillars with numerous large columns and girders, measuring 87 feet by 133 feet. The core structures housed the elevators, stairs, and other services. The cores had their own flooring systems, which were structurally independent of the floor diaphragms that spanned the space between the cores and the perimeter walls. The core structures, like the perimeter wall structures, were 100 percent steel-framed.

The exact dimensions, arrangement, and number of the core columns remained somewhat mysterious until the publication of a leaked collection of detailed architectural drawings of the North Tower in 2007. Although the drawings show the dimensions and arrangement of core columns, they do not show other engineering details such as the core floor framing. It is clear from photographs, such as the one on the right, that the core columns were abundantly cross-braced.

Core Denial

Establishing the true nature of the core structures is of great importance given that the most widely read document on the World Trade Center attack -- the 9/11 Commission Report -- denies their very existence, claiming the towers' cores were "hollow steel shaft[s]:"

For the dimensions, see FEMA report, "World Trade Center Building Performance Study," undated. In addition, the outside of each tower was covered by a frame of 14-inch-wide steel columns; the centers of the steel columns were 40 inches apart. These exterior walls bore most of the weight of the building. The interior core of the buildings was a hollow steel shaft, in which elevators and stairwells were grouped. Ibid. For stairwells and elevators, see Port Authority response to Commission interrogatory, May 2004. ¹  

The top illustration indicates what may have been typical dimensions and thickness of the smaller core columns, about half-way up the tower. The outermost rows of core columns were apparently considerably larger, measuring 54 inches wide.

Columns

The core columns were steel box-columns that were continuous for their entire height, going from their bedrock anchors in the sub-basements to near the towers' tops, where they transitioned to H-beams. Apparently the box columns, more than 1000 feet long, were built as the towers rose by welding together sections several stories tall. The sections were fabricated by mills in Japan that were uniquely equipped to produce the large pieces. 2  

Some of the core columns apparently had outside dimensions of 36 inches by 16 inches. Others had larger dimensions, measuring 52 inches by 22 inches. ³   The core columns were oriented so that their longer dimensions were perpendicular to the core structures' longer, 133-foot-wide sides. Construction photographs found at the Skyscraper Museum in New York City indicate that the outermost rows of core columns on the cores' longer sides were of the larger dimensions. Both the FEMA's World Trade Center Building Performance Study and the NIST's Draft Report on the Twin Towers fail to disclose the dimensions of the core columns, and the NIST Report implies that only the four core columns on each core's corners had larger dimensions.

Like the perimeter columns -- and like steel columns in all tall buildings -- the thickness of the steel in the core columns tapered from bottom to top. Near the bottoms of the towers the steel was four inches thick, whereas near the tops it may have been as little as 1/4th inch thick. The top figure in the illustration to the right is a cross-section of one of the smaller core columns from about half-way up a tower, where the steel was about two inches thick. The bottom figure shows the base of one of the larger core columns, where the steel was five inches thick. The bases of the columns also had slabs of steel running through their centers, making them almost solid.

Column Arrangement

The exact arrangement of the columns and how they were cross-braced is not apparent from public documents such as FEMA's World Trade Center Building Performance Study. The arrangement of box columns depicted in Figure 2-10 of Chapter 2 (pictured to the right) seems plausible, even though it contradicts other illustrations in the report showing a more random arrangement. It depicts the top floors of a tower and does not indicate the widths of the columns on a typical floor.

Cross-Bracing

Construction photographs show that the core columns were connected to each other at each floor by large square girders and I-beams about two feet deep. The debris photograph below shows what appears to be one of the smaller core columns surrounded by perpendicular I-beams approximately three feet deep. In addition, the tops of core structures were further connected by the sloping beams of the hat truss structures.

The Perimeter Walls

The Structural System of the Twin Towers

The towers' perimeter walls comprised dense grids of vertical steel columns and horizontal spandrel plates. These, along with the core structures, supported the towers. In addition to supporting gravity loads, the perimeter walls stiffened the Towers against lateral loads, particularly those due to winds. The fact that these structures were on the exterior of the Towers made them particularly efficient at carrying lateral loads. Richard Roth, speaking on behalf of the architectural firm that designed the Towers, described each of the perimeter walls as essentially "a steel beam 209' deep." ¹   Regardless, it is clear that the core structures were designed to support several times the weight of each tower by themselves.

 

As the diagram and photograph illustrate, the perimeter wall structures were assembled from pre-fabricated units consisting of 3 column sections and 3 spandrel plate sections welded together. Adjacent units were bolted together: column sections were bolted to adjacent columns above and below, and spandrel plate sections were mated with adjacent sections on either side with numerous bolts.

There were 59 perimeter columns on each face of the towers, and one column on each corner bevel, making a total of 240 perimeter columns in each tower.

Like the core columns, the thickness of the perimeter columns tapered from the bottom to the top of the towers. The illustrated cross-sections represent columns near the top, and near the mid-section of the towers.

This diagram shows horizontal sections of the Twin Towers' perimeter columns. The leftmost figure shows a section of a column, its enveloping insulation, and the aluminum cladding with window frame conections. The left and middle figures show sections of a column near a tower's tops, where the steel was thinnest. The rightmost figure shows section of a column in the lower part of a tower, where the steel was much thicker.

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References

1. City in the Sky, Times Books, Henry Hold and Company, LLC, , page 134-136

The Floors

The Structural System of the Twin Towers

This illustration from FEMA's report shows a section of the flooring system. The main double trusses, of which two are pictured, are perpendicular to the view plane.

The floors of the Twin Towers completed the structural system whose main elements were the core structures and the perimeter walls. The floor diaphragms were annular structures that spanned the distance between the core structures and the perimeter walls, providing large expanses of uninterrupted floor space. The cores had their own flooring systems, which were structurally independent of the surrounding floor diaphragms.

The floor diaphragms consisted of lightweight concrete slabs poured onto corrugated steel pans, which were supported by trusses. Primary double trusses were interwoven with transverse secondary trusses -- a fact ignored by the truss failure theory. The primary trusses were 900 mm deep, and spaced on 2.04 m centers.

The 10 cm thick concrete slabs were apparently a lightweight form of concrete typically used in high-rises. Its density and exact composition remain unknown, but such lightweight concrete is typically 60% as dense as concrete used in roads and sidewalks. The floors were the only major part of these mostly steel buildings that contained concrete.

Some Floors Had More Than Trusses

FEMA's report implies that the floor diaphragms were supported only by the webbed trusses described here. It gives no indication of other structures that may have helped transfer the substantial lateral forces due to wind loading between the perimeter walls and core structures, and it provides no detail on the flooring system in the towers' cores, which were apparently supported by heavy steel I-beams. This idea that all the floors were undergirded only by trusses is a prerequisite to the truss-failure theory, which blames a chain-reaction of failures of the trusses for the building collapses. There is evidence, however, that certain floors had solid steel-frame support structures rather than light open trusses, such as the following passage from the Engineering News-Record:

On the 41st and 42nd floors, both towers will house mechanical equipment. To accommodate the heavy loads, the floors are designed as structural steel frame slabs. All other floors from the ninth to the top (except for 75 and 76, which will also carry mechanical equipment) have typical truss floor joists and steel decking. ¹  

This illustration from Multi-Storey Buildings in Steel gives a three-dimensional view of a floor section.

Truss-to-Column Connections

Most variants of the truss-failure theory blame the detachment of the truss ends from the perimeter walls for the pancaking of floors, and eventual total collapse of the buildings. It has been asserted that only one or two bolts connected the truss ends to the perimeter walls. However, according to both of the official government reports, the truss ends rested on steel plates that were both welded and bolted to the top chords of the trusses and attached via bolted damping units to their lower bottom chords.

This illustration from FEMA's report shows details of truss-to-column connections.

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References

1. World's Tallest Towers Begin to Show Themselves on New York City Skyline, Engineering News-Record, 1/1/70 

The Hat Trusses

The Structural System of the Twin Towers

This photograph shows the top of the hat truss of one of the towers during its construction.

The fourth primary structural subsystem in each tower was the hat truss -- a lattice of large diagonal I-beams that connected the perimeter walls to the core structure between the 107th floor and roof. This structure was also known as the "outrigger truss system."

The hat truss structure strengthened the core structure, unified the core and perimeter structures, and helped to support the large antenna mounted atop the North Tower. The hat truss, which contained both horizontal and sloping I-beams, connected core columns to each other, and connected the core to the perimeter walls. Most the beams connected core columns to each other, while a set of sixteen horizontal and sloping beams spanned the distance the core and perimeter walls. Eight of these, the outrigger trusses, connected the corners of the core to the perimeter walls, while another eight connected the centers of the core's periphery to the perimeter walls.

The hat trusses are central to the "probable collapse sequence" described by NIST's Final Report on the Twin Towers. It blames the hat truss for transferring "column instability" between the core structures and the perimeter walls. In other words, it asserts that reinforcing structures caused the Towers to self-destruct. Its section entitled "Results of Global Analysis" describes the "structural deterioration" of the North Tower as follows:

This schematic from Chapter 2 of the FEMA Report provides some detail on the geometry of the hat truss.

6.14.2 Results of Global Analysis of WTC 1

After the aircraft impact, gravity loads that were previously carried by severed columns were redistributed to other columns. The north wall lost about 7 percent of its loads after impact. Most of the load was transferred by the hat truss, and the rest was redistributed to the adjacent exterior walls by spandrels. Due to the impact damage and the tilting of the building to the north after impact, the south wall also lost gravity load, and about 7 percent was transferred by the hat truss. As a result, the east and west walls and the core gained the redistributed loads through the hat truss.

Structural steel expands when heated. In the early stages of the fire, structural temperatures in the core rose, and the resulting thermal expansion of the core was greater than the thermal expansion of the (cooler) exterior walls. About 20 min. after the aircraft impact, the difference in the thermal expansion between the core and exterior walls, which was resisted by the hat truss, caused the core column loads to increase. As the fires continued to heat the core areas without insulation, the columns were thermally weakened and shortened and began to transfer their loads to the exterior walls through the hat truss until the south wall started to bow inward. At about 100 min, approximately 20 percent of the core loads were transferred by the hat truss to the exterior walls due to thermal weakening of the core; the north and south walls each gained about 10 percent more loads, and the east and west walls each gained about 25 percent higher loads. Since the hat truss outriggers to the east and west walls were stiffer than the outriggers to the north and south walls, they transferred more loads to the east and west exterior walls.

The inward bowing of the south wall caused failure of exterior column splices and spandrels, and these columns became unstable. The instability spread horizontally across the entire south face. The south wall, now unable to bear its gravity loads, redistributed these loads to the thermally weakened core through the hat truss and to the east and west walls through the spandrels. The building section above the impact zone began tilting to the south as the columns on the east and west walls rapidly became unable to carry the increased loads. This further increased the gravity loads on the core columns. Once the upper building section began to move downwards, the weakened structure in the impact and fire zone was not able to absorb the tremendous energy of the falling building section and global collapse ensued.
¹  
[emphasis added]

This illustration from Page 11 of NIST's Final Report of the National Construction Safety Team on the Collapses of the World Trade Center Towers (DRAFT) shows the hat truss.

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References

1. Final Report of the National Construction Safety Team on the Collapses of the World Trade Center Towers,nist.gov, , page 144-5 (PDF pages 194-5)

The Bathtub

The Deep Basement Containing the Twin Towers' Foundations

The bathtub contained the footprints of the Twin Towers and Buildings 3 and 6.

About half of the superblock that the World Trade Center occupied contained a deep basement, the so-called bathtub. It was a skewed rectangle with sides about 980 and 520 feet, and a depth of about seven stories. ¹  

The bathtub is the 9-block area of the World Trade Center site that is excavated down to bedrock and hard soils and ringed by the slurry wall. The bathtub was created to enable the building of the Twin Towers' foundations, and was ultimately filled with seven stories of basements housing the parking garage, mall, and building services. Since the ground water level at the World Trade Center site was just a few feet below the surface, while bedrock was about 70 feet below the surface, creating the bathtub required first building a 7-story dam below the water level of the adjacent Hudson River -- the slurry wall. Ground excavated to make the bathtub was deposited west of West Street to make the land on which the World Financial Center and Battery Park now stand: 1,000,000 cubic yards moved in 100,000 truck loads filled a 700- by 1400-foot area, creating $90,000,000 worth of land. ²  

Four of the World Trade Center buildings -- the Towers and Buildings 3 and 6 -- rested on foundations entirely within the bathtub.

This illustration shows a cross-section of the bathtub tall. The diagonal lines represent the post-tensioned tie-backs: cables that resist pressure pushing inward on the bathtub.

Construction

Essentially, the bathtub was built underground and underwater. Construction crews would dig a section of trench three feet wide and down to bedrock level. As the trench was dug, it was filled with a bentonite slurry, which prevented the inflow of river water by filling the trench and sealing the adjacent soil. Once the section of trench was completely excavated, a pre-fabricated steel framework, weighing 22 tons, was lowered into it. Then concrete was poured through a pipe into the bottom of the trench while the lighter bentonite slurry was sucked from the top. The entire wall was built using 152 22-foot-long sections.

Each steel framework contained a set of guides for tiebacks -- cables that would pass through the walls and secure them to the ground outside the bathtub. The tiebacks were installed as the material inside of the bathtub was excavated, preventing the pressure of the soil and groundwater outside the bathtub from pushing the walls inward. The sub basement structures, once constructed, provided additional bracing of the walls.

Damage on 9/11/01

Damage to the slurry wall was a concern in the wake of the attack. A breach in the wall and flooding of the bathtub would not only complicate rescue and recovery efforts; it might flood other adjacent below-grade structures, such as the Path tunnels that passed into the bathtub. Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers (MRCE) took a leading role in compiling information about and assessing the condition of the slurry wall. Inspection of different portions of the wall began as soon as access was possible, and monitoring continued with the instrumentation of the wall with inclinometers, survey points, and monitoring wells.

This photograph shows the bathtub wall after most of the rubble from the 9/11/01 attack was removed. Portions of basement floors are visible in the right-hand side of the photograph.

Most of The central portion of the wall's south side (bordering Liberty Street) was unsupported by intact sub-basement walls or debris, and it had moved inward more than 10 inches. This and other portions of the wall were re-habilitated as necessary. The tieback tendons were replaced throughout most of the southern half of the wall.

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References

1. World Trade Center 'Bathtub': From Genesis to Armageddon, The Bridge, spring 2002
2. Rise and Fall of an American Icon, History Channel, 

911- Other Fires

Mandarin Oriental Hotel Fire

Skyscraper-Turned-Torch Remains Standing

Mandarin Hotel fire in early stages, showing sparks from fireworks Fire moving down the tower's sides Fire after further development The building after the fire Top of the building's facade after the fire, showing fire-induced distortions of parts

On February 9, 2009, in the middle of the Lunar New Year, the distinctive 40-story Mandarin Oriental hotel in Beijing's Television Cultural Centre (TVCC) erupted in sparks and flames that consumed the building from top to bottom in an intense fire lasing for several hours. Blamed on a ground-based fireworks display gone afoul or illegal fireworks operations inside of the building, the fire started around the tower's top and proceded downward around the tower's sides while fireworks continued to burst dramatically above the blaze. ¹  

The spectacular torching of the Mandarin tower further underscores the anomalous nature of the official explanation of the total collapse of the Twin Towers and WTC 7 -- an explanation that primarily blames fires for causing the "global collapse" of those structures. It is yet another example of a severe fire that failed to induce even the partial collapse of a skyscraper. Although less similar to the WTC towers than other skyscrapers ravaged by fires, the Mandarin tower is notable for the magnitude of the fire it withstood -- a fire that dwarfed the fires that preceded the "collapses" of each of the the WTC skyscrapers.

Coming exactly 2711 days after 9/11/2001, the burning of the Hotel Mandarin Oriental, which was unoccupied pending its completion, killed one firefighter.

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References

1. China state broadcaster apologizes for hotel fire, AP, 

The Windsor Building Fire

Huge Fire in Steel-Reinforced Concrete Building Causes Partial Collapse

The Windsor Building after the fire was extinguished

On the night of February 12, 2005, a fire started in the Windsor building in Madrid, Spain, a 32-story tower framed in steel-reinforced concrete. At its peak, the fire, which burned for almost a day, completely engulfed the upper ten stories of the building. More than 100 firefighters battled to prevent the uncontrollable blaze from spreading to other buildings. ¹  

During the night the building shedded larged pieces, which crashed to the ground. ²  

The fire apparently caused the collapse of the top floor spans surrounding the still-standing core structure of the ten uppermost floors. As in the case of the other large skyscraper fire since 9/11/01, fears of total building collapse in the case of the Windsor fire were widely reported. ³   Those fears would again prove unfounded.

Because the Windsor fire produced a partial collapse, some have argued that it validates the official account of the collapses of WTC Buildings 1, 2, and 7. Because the same fire was so massive and did not produce total collapse, others have cited it as evidence disproving that account.

Steel Versus Steel-Reinforced Concrete

In fact, comparisons between the Windsor tower and the WTC Towers are limited because of the very different structures of these buildings. The Twin Towers and Building 7 were both 100% steel-framed, with large wide-flange columns and box columns, some measuring over four feet wideand fabricated of steel up to five inches thick. Severe fires in other skyscrapers which, like the WTC Towers, were 100% steel-framed, have not produced even partial collapses.

In contrast to the WTC Towers, the Windsor building was framed primarily in steel-reinforced concrete, with columns of concrete reinforced by thin sections of rebar. ⁴   The concrete pillars in the Windsor building are clearly visible in the photographs showing the intact core exposed by the collapsed facade. The very light construction of the perimeter, described below, makes it clear that the core was the main load-bearing component of the building.

Compare these photographs of the Windsor building fire to photographs of the Twin Towers' fires and Building 7's fires

Before examining the partial collapse of the Windsor building more closely, we note that steel-framed and steel-reinforced-concrete-framed structures behave very differently in fires.

• Steel is a good conductor and concrete is a poor conductor of heat. Thus in a fire, a steel frame will conduct heat away from the hotspots into the larger structure. As long as the fire does not consume the larger structure, this heat conductivity will keep the temperatures of the frame well below the fire temperatures. The same is not true of steel-reinforced-concrete structures, since concrete is not a good thermal conductor, and the thermal conductivity of the rebar inside the concrete is limited by its small mass and the embedding matrix of concrete.
• Fires can cause spalling of concrete, but not of steel. This is because concrete has a small percentage of latent moisture, which is converted to steam by heat. Thus, a large fire can gradually erode a concrete structure to the point of collapse, whereas a fire can only threaten a steel-framed structure if it elevates steel temperatures to such an extent that it causes failures.

Windsor Building Partial Collapse

The observation that the Windsor Building is the only skyscraper to have suffered even a partial collapse as a result of fire suggests that the use of steel-reinforced-concrete framing was responsible. A closer look at the incident shows reality to be more complex. The portion of the building that collapsed consisted of the outer portions of floor slabs and perimeter walls throughout the upper third of the building (the 21st through 32nd floors). The outer walls consisted of steel box columns arranged on 1.8 meter centers and connected by narrow spandrel plates. The columns had square cross-sections 120mm on a side, and were fabricated of C-sections 7mm thick welded together. (these had a fraction of the dimensions, and were spaced about twice as far apart as the perimeter columns of the Twin Towers.) The perimeter columns lacked fireproofing throughout the upper third of the Windsor building. ⁵  

The Windsor Building fire engulfed the upper third of the building, but also spread downward as low as the fourth floor. A report by two fire safety experts in Japan highlighted three causes for the very wide extent of the fire:

• The lack of a sprinkler system
• Incorrect installation of spandrels
• The lack of fire prevention regulations in Spain

⁶  

The Windsor Building fire demonstrates that a huge building-consuming fire, after burning for many hours, can produce the collapse of parts of the building with weak steel supports lacking fire protection. It also shows that the collapse events that do occur are gradual and partial.

Estimated time frame of collapses

Time	Collapse Situation
1:29	East face of the 21st floor collapsed
1:37	South middle section of several floors above the 21st floor gradually collapsed
1:50	Parts of floor slab with curtain walls collapsed
2:02	Parts of floor slab with curtain walls collapsed
2:11	Parts of floor slab with curtain walls collapsed
2:13	Floors above about 25th floor collapsed Large collapse of middle section at about 20th floor
2:17	Parts of floor slab with curtain walls collapsed
2:47	Southwest corner of 1 ~ 2 floors below about 20th floor collapsed
2:51	Southeast corner of about 18th ~ 20th floors collapsed
3:35	South middle section of about 17th ~ 20th floors collapsed Fire broke through the Upper Technical Floor
3:48	Fire flame spurted out below the Upper Technical Floor
4:17	Debris on the Upper Technical Floor fell down

⁷  

These partial collapse events, spread over several hours, contrast with the implosion of WTC Building 7 in 7 seconds, and the total explosive collapses of each of the Twin Towers in under 17 seconds.

9-11 Anomalies

Anomalies of the September 11th Attack, Its Run-Up, and Response

Accepting the official story of the 9/11/01 attack requires one to accept a long series of anomalies -- extremely improbable events, amazing coincidences, and contradictions. This page lists many such anomalies. The Top Anomalies page focuses on the more salient ones. The anomalies described on this page are organized into the following topics:

• Run-up to the attack
• Hijacking scenario
• (Lack of) military response
• World Trade Center destruction
• Pentagon attack
• Death toll
• Coincidences in service of incompetence
• Government response
• Means, motive, and precedent

Run-Up to the Attack

Numerous incidents preceding the attack indicate many people had advance knowledge of the attack.

• Put Options
  Stock trades bet on the fall in share values for the two airlines whose planes were used in the attack.
  • Put options purchases on United Airlines and American Airlines stock rose to four and 25 times normal levels in the days preceding the attack. ^1   2  
• Avoidance of the Airlines, the WTC, and the Pentagon
  Government officials and executives avoided the targets of the attack.
  • Pentagon officials canceled travel plans on September 10th. ³  
  • San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown received a warning not to fly on September 10th. ⁴  
  • Scotland Yard prohibited Salman Rushdie from flying on September 11th. ⁵  
  • Two employees of Odigo, the instant messaging service, received e-mail warnings of the attack two hours before the first assault on the WTC. ⁶  
  • Business executives, some of whom worked in the WTC, were in Nebraska to attend a meeting at Offutt Air Force Base hosted by billionaire Warren Buffett on the morning of September 11th. The same base would be visited later that day by George W. Bush. ⁷  
  • Attorney General Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial airlines in the summer of 2001. ⁸  

Hijacking Scenario

The attack scenario was irrational on the part of the alleged hijackers, and its execution is incomprehensible in light of their behavior. There is little or no credible evidence that Arab hijackers were involved in the September 11th attack, except in the takeover of Flight 93.

• Attack Plan
  By flying from remote airports and going far out of their way, the attack planners exposed their plan to almost certain ruin, had the air defense system operated normally.
  • The originating airport for Flights 11 and 175 was Boston Logan instead of any of several airports near New York City. This created about 40 minutes of exposure to interception for each flight.
  • Flight 77 flew to the Midwest before turning around to return to Washington D.C.. It was airborne an hour and 23 minutes before allegedly attacking the Pentagon. That would provide ample opportunity for interception even if the air defense system were mostly disabled.
  • Flight 93 flew to the Midwest before turning around to fly toward Washington D.C. Had it reached the capital, it would have been airborne for more than an hour and a half. The odds of escaping interception with that plan would be infinitesimal under standard operating procedures.
• Behavior of Villains
  The behavior of the alleged hijackers preceding the attack is inconsistent with skill and discipline needed to have a hope of pulling off such an attack.
  • Mohammed Atta allegedly barely caught Flight 11, a key flight in the event that he was supposedly planning for years.
  • The alleged hijackers partied at topless bars and drank alcohol, despite being portrayed as fundamentalist Muslims, for whom such behavior would be surprising, to say the least. ⁹  
• Evidence Void
  There is no hard evidence that any of the alleged hijackers were on any of the doomed flights, and substantial evidence that some weren't involved.
  • No video of any of the 19 hijackers at any of the three originating airports of the four flights has been made public, except for a video allegedly showing hijackers of Flight 77.
  • At least six of the alleged hijackers have turned up alive since the attack.
  • None of the four flight crews radioed Air Traffic Control about hijackings in progress.
  • None of the four flight crews punched in the four-digit hijacking code. ¹⁰  
  • No public evidence indicates that the remains of any of the hijackers was identified at any of the crash sites.
  • None of the contents of any of the black boxes have been made public.
  • The only 4-1/2 minutes of the phone call from Flight 11 Attendant Betty Ong made public describes a stabbing but does not provide any details indicating that Arab hijackers were on board.
• Phenomenal Success
  The success with which hijackers allegedly took over four jets with knives and then piloted the jets to small targets is simply miraculous.
  • None of the four flight crews were able to stop the alleged hijackers, in spite of several of the pilots being Vietnam veterans.
  • None of the alleged hijackers were good pilots, yet the three buildings were hit with phenomenal precision.

(Lack of) Military Response

Despite normal intercept times of between 10 and 20 minutes for errant domestic flights, the airliners commandeered on 9/11/01 roamed the skies for over an hour without interference.

• Failures to Report
  According to NORAD's timeline the FAA reported errant airliners after inexplicable delays.
  • The FAA took 18 minutes to report Flight 11's loss of communication and deviation from its flight plan.
  • The FAA took 39 minutes to report Flight 77's deviation from its flight plan.
• Failures to Scramble
  Interceptors were only scrambled from distant bases after long delays.
  • Despite the fact that Flights 11 and 175 were headed for New York City, no interceptors were scrambled from nearby La Guardia, or from Langley, Virginia.
  • Despite NORAD's having received formal notification of the first hijacking at 8:38, no interceptors were scrambled from Andrews to protect the nearby Pentagon until after it was hit at 9:37.
• Failures to Intercept
  Once in the air, interceptors flew at only small fractions of their top speeds, assuring they would fail to intercept the airliners.
  • The two F-15s scrambled from Otis AFB to chase Flight 11 flew at an average of 447 mph, about 23.8% of their top speed of 1875 mph.
  • The two F-16s scrambled from Langley to protect the capital flew at an average of 410.5 mph, about 27.4% of their top speed of 1500 mph.
• Failures to Redeploy
  Nearby fighters on routine patrol duty were not redeployed to intercept the airliners, nor were fighters that belatedly reached Manhattan sent to defend the capital.
  • Two F-15s flying off the coast of Long Island were not redeployed to Manhattan until after the second Tower was hit.
  • The two F-15s scrambled from Otis AFB to protect Manhattan could have reached the capital in 9.6 minutes once they arrived over New York City. That was still 34 minutes before the Pentagon was hit.

World Trade Center Destruction

On 9/11/01 three skyscrapers were totally destroyed, with structural collapse primarily due to fires given as the explanation. Fires and bombings have never before or since caused steel-frame buildings to collapse.

• Building 7 Building 7 imploded late on 9/11/01. It was not hit by an aircraft.
  • Building 7 experienced total collapse, allegedly because of fires, when no steel-frame building before or since has ever collapsed, totally or even partially, due to fires. Building 7 was an over-engineered 47-story steel-frame skyscraper, standing over 350 feet from the nearest of the Twin Towers. Public evidence documents only small fires in it on September 11th.
  • Building 7 collapsed in a nearly perfectly vertical fall, producing only minor damage in the Verizon and Post Office buildings only 60 feet on either side of it.
  • Building 7 collapsed into a remarkably small rubble pile of mostly pulverized remains, when no steel building falling for any reason has ever pulverized itself.
  • Building 7 contained a 15-million-dollar emergency command center, but instead of using it for its ostensible purpose, then-Mayor Giuliani evacuated his team to a makeshift command center as soon as the September 11th attack started. ^11   12  
  • The emergency command center was destroyed along with the rest of the building, even though it was constructed as a bomb-hardened shelter.
  • The remains of Building 7 were rapidly removed and the steel recycled, evidently without any on-site and only extremely limited off-site examination. The rapid disposal operation proceeded despite the fact that no one was believed buried in the rubble, and the tidy rubble pile was not blocking adjacent roads.
• Twin Towers
  The Twin Towers exploded into dust and shattered steel, a behavior inconsistent with the known behavior of steel structures outside of explosive demolition.
  • The South Tower was struck 17 minutes after the North Tower, and in a less damaging manner, and it had less severe fires, yet it collapsed 29 minutes before the North Tower.
  • The South Tower's core structure was largely undamaged by the off-centered jet impact, unlike the North Tower, yet it collapsed sooner.
  • The South Tower had much less severe fires than the North Tower, and yet collapsed sooner.
  • Smoke from the fires in the South Tower became progressively darker up to the time of its collapse.
  • A stream of glowing molten material flowed from the South Tower minutes before its collapse.
  • Firefighters reached the crash zone of the South Tower and described controllable fires.
  • Both Towers started to disintegrate at regions above and below the crash zones in the first seconds of their falls.
  • Both Towers fell straight down, through themselves, following the path of maximum resistance, a behavior never before observed in spontaneous collapses of any type of vertical structure.
  • The collapses of both Towers exhibited features never otherwise seen except in controlled demolitions: sudden onset accompanied by thunderous bangs, visible explosions ringing their perimeters, energetic ejections of dust at regular intervals, and copious production of dust.
  • Both Towers exploded outward and were shredded and pulverized -- a pattern of destruction much more destructive than normal controlled demolitions, yet this result was supposedly produced without the added energy of explosives.
  • So thorough and consistent was the destruction of the Twin Towers, that no remains of the distinctive web trusses are clearly recognizable in hundreds of photographs of the rubble in various stages of excavation.
  • Intense heat persisted in the rubble completely unlike anything produced by known structure collapses and/or fires.
  • Settled dust from the Twin Towers was shown to contain residues of aluminothermic reactions, and active thermitic pyrotechnics.

Pentagon Attack

The Pentagon attack defies expectations that this prime terrorist target would have been defended, and that a terrorist would have hit the front side in a simple maneuver, rather than the back side in an extreme precision aerobatic maneuver.

• Wide-Open Target
  The Pentagon -- the heart of the military establishment of the world's greatest super-power -- was hit after ample warning without being protected by any defensive action.
  • The 9:37 strike was well over an hour after the first signs of a hijacking and 34 minutes after the South Tower strike confirmed that an attack was underway.
  • The Pentagon is within 11 miles of Andrews Air Force Base, which apparently had two combat-ready fighter wings on 9/11/01.
  • The attack plane was monitored on radar as it approached the capital.
• Unlikely Super-pilot
  Alleged Flight 77 pilot Hani Hanjour was not up to the task.
  • The spiral dive approach to the Pentagon was such an extreme maneuver that experienced air traffic controllers thought it was military jet. ¹³   The tree-top final approach skimmed objects in the yard and crashed the plane into the first floor of the building. Experienced pilots have wondered if any human pilot could have executed the maneuver.
  • Hani Hanjour was considered incompetent by his flight school instructors, and was denied rental of a single-engine plane. ¹⁴  
• Evidence Vacuum
  Authorities systematically confiscated or destroyed the evidence.
  • Video recordings from adjacent businesses were seized by the FBI shortly after the attack and have never been seen since.
  • Only two video segments have been released by the Pentagon from all the security cameras that monitor its periphery. Neither clearly shows the attack aircraft.
  • Investigators were not allowed access to the crash site until well into October.
• More Than Just a Crash
  Was the crash engineered?
  • Eyewitnesses reported the smell of cordite.
  • Several eyewitnesses reported that the jetliner exploded before reaching the facade of the Pentagon.
  • Portions of the facade where the wing ends and tail of a 757 would have collided show little gouging. Were these parts shredded by explosives before they reached the facade?

Death Toll

The death toll of the attack, though horrific, was much lower than it would have been if not for numerous aspects of target selection and timing.

• Flights
  All four flights were unusually empty.
  • Flights 11, 175, 77, and 93 were only at 51%, 31%, 20%, and 16% occupancy, respectively.
• World Trade Center
  The Towers were attacked before most people had arrived, and were hit high enough to allow most people to escape.
  • When Flight 11 hit the North Tower at 8:46 AM, the World Trade Center buildings were at less than half the occupancy of a typical mid-day.
  • The first Tower to be attacked was hit just 15 stories below the top, and trapped people mostly between the 95th and 110th floors.
  • The second Tower to be attacked was hit only 30 stories below the top, and the plane missed the core, allowing people to evacuate from above the impact zone. The 17 minutes that elapsed since the first hit allowed many people to escape the second Tower while the elevators were still working.
• Pentagon
  125 people were killed in a building with 20,000 people.
  • The portion of the Pentagon that was attacked, the West Block, was in the process of being renovated, and so was at low occupancy.
  • No high-level Pentagon officials were killed in the attack.

Coincidences in Service of Incompetence

Many decisions and events in the days and months preceding the attack helped to make the incompetence theory more plausible.

• War Games
  Several war game exercises were being conducted on 9/11/01.
  • Operation Northern Vigilance redeployed northeast sector air defense resources to northern Canada and Alaska. ¹⁵  
  • Operations Vigilant Warrior and Vigilant Guardian, which simulated hijackings and involved live radar "injects," may have confused military and civilian personnel monitoring aircraft. ¹⁶  
  • The National Reconnaissance Office, which monitors satellites and airborne objects, was evacuated while the attack unfolded because it was conducting a plane-into-tower crash drill. ¹⁷  
  • The Tripod II biowarfare exercise, scheduled for 9/12/01, resulted in the deployment of FEMA to Manhattan before the attack. ¹⁸  
• Rules Changes
  Procedural changes would limit the ability of pilots and military commanders to respond to hijackings.
  • Military orders stripped commanders in the field of autonomy in responding to hijackings.
  • The FAA banned firearm possession by commercial pilots two months before the attack.
• Out to Lunch
  Top officials were not available until after the attack was over.
  • President George W. Bush remained at the publicized location of Booker Elementary School until about a half-hour after the news of the attack went on TV worldwide, first reading My Pet Goat to second-graders, and then holding a press conference.
  • Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff allegedly remained in a meeting with Senator Max Cleland until nearly the time the Pentagon was hit.
  • Brigadier General Montague Winfield had Navy Captain Charles J. Leidig, Jr. -- a rookie -- assume his watch as Deputy Director for Operations for the National Military Command Center (NMCC) at 8:30 am on 9/11/01, and relieved him after the attack was over. ¹⁹  

Government Response

Despite the worst failure in history of the military to protect American civilians, and the worst alleged engineering failures in history, there were no consequences for the responsible authorities, and no honest investigations.

• Air Defense Failures
  No one was held to account for the numerous unprecedented failures in air defense.
  • General Richard Myers, Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on September 11th, was confirmed as Chairman on September 13th in spite of being unable to provide any meaningful answers to questions regarding the air defense failures.
  • General Richard Eberhart, commander of NORAD on September 11th, was promoted to head the newly created NORTHCOM. ²⁰  
  • NORAD's press release contradicted early statements by high-ranking officials that no interceptors had been scrambled on 9/11/01.
  • NORAD's vague timeline raises far more questions than it answers, yet officials have never been required to give a full account.
  • The 9/11 Commission advanced a new timeline which contradicts NORAD's earlier timeline and the testimony of military officials to the commission itself.
• Building Collapse Inquiry
  The total collapses of WTC 1, 2, and 7 were the three largest engineering failures in history (based on the official story). How were they investigated?
  • FEMA was given the sole authority to investigate the collapses even though it is not an investigative agency.
  • The investigative team assembled by FEMA consisted of unpaid volunteers.
  • The investigators were not allowed access to Ground Zero.
  • The investigators were not provided with the blueprints of the buildings.
  • FEMA's report states the causes of the collapse "remain unknown at this time". (By the time the report was released the steel had been entirely disposed of.) The fact that Building 7 (supposedly) failed in a way that contradicts 100 years of engineering experience makes it the largest and least understood structural failure in history.
  • The 9/11 Commission Report failed to even mention the existence of Building 7.
  • The 9/11 Commission Report denied the existence of the Twin Towers' core structures.
  • NIST's report on the collapse of the Twin Towers purports to provide a "probable collapse sequence" for each Tower but truncates its timelines before the collapses even begin.
  • NIST avoided even mentioning the earlier findings of sulfidated and evaporated steel, then described then by the New York Times "the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation".
  • NIST's Final Report on the collapse of Building 7 abandones the earlier official claims of severe structural damage and diesel-fueled fires, and blames the swift straight-down collapse on a house-of-cards chain reaction triggered by a single beam breaking loose of its connections due to thermal expansion -- a completely novel failure mechanism with no supporting evidence.
  • NIST proffered disingenuous arguments for failing to test for explosive residues, which it continued to repeat even after responding directly to public comments and correspondence pointing out the fallacies of those arguments.

Means, Motive, and Precedent

The preceding list is far from complete. It does not include consideration of facts pertaining to the means, motive, and precedent for the crime. The official account's blaming one organization, while ignoring others with much more to gain and possessing tools and access better suited to the commission of the crime is arguably a vast anomaly. This subject is addressed by 911Review.com:

• Means
• Motive
• Precedent

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NOTE: For more complete sources, visit the pages linked to.

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References

1. Profiting From Disaster?, CBSNews.com, 9/19/01
2. Prices, Probabilities and Predictions, OR/MS Today, 
3. Bush: We're at War, Newsweek, 9/24/01
4. Willie Brown got low-key early warning about air travel, SFGate.com, 9/12/01
5. , London Times, 9/27/01
6. Odigo says workers were warned of attack, HAARETZ.com, 
7. Franklin unit rebuilds after 9/11 tragedy, San Francisco Business Times, 2/1/02
8. Ashcroft Flying High, CBS News, 7/26/01
9. Manager: Men spewed anti-American sentiments, AP, 9/14/01
10. The Day the FAA Stopped the World, time.com, 9/14/01
11. Giuliani Improvises After Command Center Gets Hit, Washington Technology, 10/08/01
12. Terrorism and Anti-Terrorism, Gotham Gazette, 9/12/01
13. 'Get These Planes on the Ground', ABCNews.com, 11/24/01
14. A Trainee Noted for Incompetence, New York Times, 5/4/02, page 10
15. The scene at NORAD on Sept. 11: Playing Russian war games ... and then someone shouted to look at the monitor, Toronto Star, 12/9/01
16. Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror, 2004
17. Agency planned exercise on Sept. 11 built around a plane crashing into a building, AP, 8/21/02
18. Tripod II and FEMA: Lack of NORAD Response on 9/11 Explained, FromTheWilderness.com, 2004
19. Statement of Capt Charles J. Leidig, Jr., 9-11commission.gov, 6/17/04
20. Eberhart To Head NORTHCOM, afa.org, 8/02 [cached] 
*******

Top Anomalies

Selected Anomalies in the Official Account of 9/11/01

Many researchers have compiled lists of problems with the official account of the 9/11 attack. One example is the 9/11 Anomalies page on this website. The summary assembles some of the more glaring anomalies, making no attempt to be comprehensive.

• Indications of Foreknowledge
  • Pre-attack put option surges anticipated post-attack stock declines:
    • Put/call ratios on American Airlines and United Airlines stock increased five-fold and twenty-fold.
  • High officials avoided the attack targets:
    • John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial.
    • Salman Rushdie, Willie Brown, and Pentagon officials were warned not to fly on the eve of the attack.
    • On 9/11/01 Warren Buffett, an investor in unmanned aerial vehicle maker MITRE, hosted a breakfast meeting of WTC CEOs at Offutt AFB, where President Bush later landed that day.
  • The World Trade Center and Pentagon were anticipated terrorist targets:
    • War game scenarios targeted the WTC and Pentagon.
    • The use of jetliners as weapons was anticipated.
• Military's Non-Response
  • The official story posits a long series of improbable failures:
    • The official timelines blame the FAA for inexplicably long delays in notifying the military, after originally claiming to have been notified sooner but without specific locations.
    • Jets were not scrambled from nearest bases.
    • Jets in the air were not vectored to intercept jetliners.
    • According to NORAD and 9/11 Commission timelines, military jets flew at small fractions of their top speeds.
  • Claims that hijacked jetliners couldn't be tracked contrasts with ability of the FAA to land over 4000 aircraft at different destinations in two hours.
  • At least four simultaneous war game exercises were being conducted on 9/11/01:
    • The NRO exercise involved a plane-crash-into-building scenario.
    • Operations Vigilant Warrior and Vigilant Guardian used scenarios involving hijacked passenger planes.
  • After presiding over the worst air defense failure in US history, the commander of NORAD, head of the Joint Chiefs, and Secretary of Defense were awarded with promotions and budget increases.
• Pentagon Attack Anomalies
  • The Pentagon was left undefended until after being hit at 9:38:
    • The Pentagon should be the best-defended building in the world.
    • The Pentagon was hit more than 80 minutes into the attack.
    • It is 10 miles from Andrews Air Force Base.
    • Cheney watched the attack plane approach from 50 miles out.
  • The attack targeted Wedge 1 of Pentagon's west wing:
    • Wedge 1 was sparsely occupied, nearing completion of renovation.
    • Wedge 1 was the only one that had blast-hardened walls.
    • The top brass was in the opposite side of the Pentagon.
  • The alleged suicide pilots lacked the requisite piloting skills:
    • The attack maneuver required extreme piloting skill.
    • None of the alleged hijackers had flown jets.
    • Hani Hanjour, alleged pilot of Flight 77, was a notoriously bad pilot.
• Total Collapse of WTC Building 7
  • Is the only case of total collapse of large steel-framed high-rise building blamed on fire.
  • The collapse had all of the features of a controlled demolition implosion:
    • It fell straight down with precise radial symmetry.
    • Its rapid fall was within 10 percent of gravitational free-fall speed.
    • It collapsed into a tidy rubble pile mostly within the block that the building occupied.
• Total Destruction of the Twin Towers
  • Symmetry and thoroughness of destruction rules out natural processes.
  • Dozens of firefighters described explosions and likened the falls of the Towers to controlled demolitions.
  • Destruction exhibited main features of controlled demolitions:
    • The destruction was total, leaving no parts of the Towers intact.
    • The falls began precipitously after loud explosions were heard.
    • Energetic jets of gas and dust emerged from the facade.
  • Destruction was more thorough than conventional demolitions:
    • The explosions of Towers were up to 800 feet in diameter.
    • The rubble was shards of metal and dust.
    • More than 1000 bodies were "vaporized".
    • Extreme temperatures persisted in the rubble for three months.
  • Dust contains residues of explosives:
    • Abundant minute iron-rich spheroids match the structure and chemical composition of thermite by-products.
    • Chips consistently found in samples are a nano-engineered thermitic material the the physical structure, chemical composition, and thermal behavior of a high-tech pyrotechnic with high explosive power.
• Suppression and Destruction of Evidence
  • The World Trade Center steel was systematically destroyed:
    • Controlled Demolition Inc's plan for recycling steel was submitted 11 days after the attack, and approved.
    • Most of the steel was shipped to Asia for recycling.
    • Investigators were barred from the crime scene, and saw little of the steel.
  • Scores of videos from around Pentagon were confiscated and never released.
  • The NTSB was not allowed to investigate crashes.
• Overt Omissions in Official Reports
  • The 9/11 Commission made hundreds of glaring omissions:
    • The Report makes no mention of Building 7.
    • It called the structural cores of Twin Towers "hollow steel shaft[s]."
    • It did not mention the privatization of the World Trade Center six weeks before the attack.
  • NIST avoided the core issue of the 'collapses':
    • It did not consider events beyond when the Towers were "poised for collapse."
    • It did not demonstrate that computer models predicted "collapse initiation."
  • NIST disingenuously evaded calls to test for explosive residues.