New WTC 7 Findings: NIST manipulated computer input data; explosions and extreme heat ignored; key videos cut short

By: Joel van der Reijden | Date: June 6, 2015 | Updated: November 11, 2016 | 9/11 STUDY CENTER
Note: Architects and Engineers for 9/11 "Truth" has tried to recruit this author, if only I "reconsider" certain aspects, such as the Barry Jennings (BS) story. Richard Gage's "truth" group is NOT to be trusted. Here's why.

Contents

1.	Intro: WTC 7 as separate from the Twin Towers
2.	Follow structural engineer Tony Szamboti
3.	NIST far more sensitive than 9/11 Commission
4.	Understanding NIST's WTC 7 "collapse initiation model"
5.	Key NIST omissions: 1 inch of seat width, stiffeners, lateral support beams
6.	Missing shear studs? The original debate
7.	Confirmed: NIST also omitted shear studs
8.	The day NIST cried: admitting WTC 7's free fall collapse
9.	Fire damage inconclusive
10.	Unexplained extreme heat post-collapse
11.	Major explosions around 11:00 a.m. ignored, despite potentially ordinary explanation
12.	Ignored explosions in the afternoon and at collapse
13.	Barry Jennings and Michael Hess: simply trapped by collapsing towers
14.	BBC psywar: Barry Jennings, Frank Papalia, etc.
15.	Problematic duo: Richard Gage and Dr. William Pepper
16.	Summary of NIST failures and omissions
17.	Article summary: a collapse that seems to make sense, yet it doesn't
18.	WTC 7 debate of Tony Szamboti vs rent-a-skeptic Mick West
19.	Notes

"The web stiffeners shown at the end of the girder in Frankel drawing #9114 prevent web crippling. The [theoretical] structural analyses of WTC 7 did not show any web crippling failures. Therefore, the web crippling plates did not need to be included in the models/analyses. Again, we apologize for the length of time [19 months] it took to get this information back to you."

October 25, 2013 email reply of NIST Public Affairs Office representative Michael Newman to David Cole, an ally of Tony Szamboti at Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. NIST is admitting criminal negligence here. They're also lying, because in this case the web stiffeners at the end of crucial girder A2001 were mainly there to prevent lateral walk-off failure. If NIST had included them in the model, they couldn't have caused the initial collapse initiation failure. This is just one problem with the NIST investigation no media outlet is willing to touch.

 

"[T]here was a rumble [coming from WTC7, which was captured on video a second before collapse initiation]. ... Pop! Pop! Pop! was all you heard until the building sunk into a rising cloud of gray."

2002, Chris Bull and Sam Erman, Editors, 'At Ground Zero: Young Reporters Who Were There Tell Their Stories', p. 97 (words of New York Daily News reporter Peter DeMarco, later of the Boston Globe)

 

"We were watching the building [WTC 7] as it was on fire - the bottom floors of the building were on fire. And we heard this sound that sounded like a clap of thunder. We turned around and we were shocked to see that the building was, what looked like a shockwave ripping through the building and the windows all busting out [as the penthouse crashed through the building]. It was horrifying. And then, you know, about a second later the bottom floor caved out and the building followed after that."

New York University medical student with the name Daryl, interviewed on 1010 WINS NYC News Radio immediately after the collapse of WTC 7.

This article was originally meant to be part of ISGP's paper Whatever happened: Belief in WTC explosives widespread on 9/11 -- until authorities denied it; evidence of huge explosions, rapid flashes, and liquefied steel requires new investigation. It has been published separately instead, because in many respects the collapse of World Trade Center 7 should be seen as an event deserving its own investigation. Building 7 may have been part of the World Trade Center complex, with similar evidence of explosives and extreme heat, but at the same time WTC 7:

The official reasons provided for the collapses of the Twin Towers and WTC 7 are quite different, so mixing the two can be very confusing. At the same time a confirmation by the government that explosives were used to bring WTC 7 down would be less earth-shattering than would be the case with the Twin Towers. No one died, the collapse looks different in the sense that it began at the bottom, and for some strange reason it appears officials were already contemplating to bring the building down. That having been said, the admission that WTC 7 was brought down with explosives, would be a huge breakthrough, this for various reasons:

I highly recommend people listen to interviews with structural engineer Tony Szamboti, certainly after reading this article. In my opinion, he's the best of all the engineers affiliated with Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth in explaining all the flaws in the NIST report about the Twin Towers and Building 7. He's also very straightforward, very down-to-earth, and doesn't seem to particularly care about the whole 9/11 "truth" circus (haven't heard any no-plane theories yet) - which I just love. It can be hard to follow his interviews, however, because beforehand one really needs to be familiar with:

• the World Trade Center site layout;
• the WTC 7 design features;
• NIST's arguments regarding the WTC 7 collapse initiation;
• terms as web, flange, seat, stiffener, and shear stud;
• some of the relevant documentation.

While Szamboti does his best, it remains tough during interviews to paint a clear picture in people's minds of the building and all its components. His 2014 white paper is excellent, but is also focused on persons already quite familiar with the official NIST investigation. Certainly to me it made a world of difference listening to Szamboti's interviews and reading his white paper after learning the above points. I now find myself nodding along in agreement on pretty much every point he makes while before I went: "Wait, stiffener plates? How crucial are those?" Well, very crucial, and NIST had every reason to leave them out of their computer model. This article will allow anyone to reach that conclusion by themselves in the shortest amount of time possible. And then they should go back and listen to Szamboti.

If it isn't clear at this point, none of this is my own research. I just looked at what persons as Tony Szamboti or a David Chandler said and went to gather and check up on all the relevant data. For many the molten steel, extremely high temperatures and some of the other evidence are enough to doubt the official story regarding the World Trade Center collapses, but realizing how utterly incompetent NIST has been in trying to come up with plausible explanations should add a whole new dimension to suspicions that there indeed was something in those buildings that was not supposed to be there.

On top of that, if we can demonstrate that NIST made crucial "mistakes" in their analyses of the building collapses (which we can), then it will be much easier to force a new investigation. It will also make it a bit safer for the mainstream media to cover the story, because all they have to do is point out these mistakes. At that point no one can accuse the journalists in question of being "conspiracy theorists" - the stigma everybody is afraid of.

That having been said, it is clear that the NIST report on the WTC collapses is much more sensitive than the 9/11 Commission report on intelligence failures and the extreme incompetence of President Bush, secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, and General Mike Canavan of the FAA. While especially the first two individuals have received a degree of criticism over their irrational behavior on the morning of 9/11, no one in the media, mainstream and to a large extent even alternative, has dared to point out the glaring problems with the NIST report. NIST leaving out the stiffeners in their collapse initiation analyses should have made headlines around the world. But, as expected, nobody dared to touch it.

The NIST investigation of the World Trade Center 7 collapse is even worse than the Twin Towers. Not a single piece of steel was retained for analysis; not even the reported "vaporized" steel FEMA recommended additional analysis on. As a result, the NIST computer model for WTC 7 is 100 percent theoretical. Now, if this model behaved realistically and answered our questions, that would be one thing. But it's actually so bad that it's hard not to get physically upset when watching NIST's WTC 7 collapse model. After a single failure, which happened with fireproofing fully intact and relatively little damage to the building, the entire interior of WTC 7 just flows apart like a waterfall. It's as if NIST forgot to insert all input data for the steel connections between the columns and floors throughout the building. The animation looks utterly disturbing and seems to make little sense. How can the entire core of the building fail while leaving the exterior fully intact? Unsurprisingly, when pressured with a FOIA, NIST blatantly refused to release the vast majority of its crucial files:

"We are, however, withholding 74,777 files (approximately 80% of all responsive records). The NIST Director determined that the release of these data might jeopardize public safety. This withheld data include remaining input and all results files of the ANSYS 16-story collapse initiation model ... all input and results files of the LS-DYNA 47 story global collapse model, and all spreadsheets and other supporting calculations used to develop floor connection failure modes and capacities." 1

To understand the manipulations in the NIST investigation of the WTC 7 collapse, one first needs to be familiar with the floor plan and the impossible-to-dispute collapse progression of the building. On video we hear a loud boom, which, of course, is ignored by NIST. A second later the eastern end of the penthouse on top of WTC 7 falls through the building. For a few seconds nothing happens. Then the rest of the penthouse starts to sag from east to west. As soon as the west corner of the building visibly loses support, WTC 7 comes down in rapid fashion, even reaching free fall speed. The building disappears from view in about 6 seconds.

Now, look at the layout of the building. The eastern end of the penthouse sat right on top of column 79. This means that the NIST team was forced to find an explanation why column 79 failed first (or at least a column close to it). Then they had to explain, without resorting to explosives, why the rest of the building came down. For years theories involving structural damage and diesel fuel tanks inside the building made the rounds as being responsible for the collapse. However, NIST eventually was forced to conclude that "fuel oil fires did not play a role in the collapse of WTC 7" 2 and even that the structural damage, as had been argued by persons from the 9/11 Truth community from the beginning, was relatively insignificant:

"Other than initiating the fires in WTC 7, the damage from the debris from WTC 1 had little effect on initiating the collapse of WTC 7. ... Even without the structural damage, WTC 7 would have collapsed from fires." 3

In addition to this, NIST's computer models showed that with fireproofing fully intact, none of the steel columns heated up to more than 300°C (570°F), at which point steel still maintains at least 97% of its strength. Certain beams did theoretically heat up to 600°C (1,100°F) in certain areas, but with the columns at full strength it was impossible to argue that weakening of the steel played an important role in the collapse.

NIST finally settled on thermal expansion at relatively low temperatures as being the reason for the collapse initiation. They did this by claiming fire expanded the relatively long-span 50-52 foot beams G3005, A3004, B3004, C3004 and K3004 (red beams on drawing above, top to bottom), pushing girder A2001 off its seat at column 79 and to an extent also at exterior column 44.

"Due to the effectiveness of the SFRM [fireproofing], the highest column temperatures in WTC 7 only reached an estimated 300°C (570°F), and only on the east side of the building did the floor beams reach or exceed about 600°C (1100°F). The heat from these uncontrolled fires caused thermal expansion of the steel beams on the lower floors of the east side of WTC 7, primarily at or below 400°C (750°F), damaging the floor framing on multiple floors. The initiating local failure began the probable WTC 7 collapse sequence was the buckling of Column 79. This buckling arose from a process that occurred at temperatures at or below approximately 400°C (750°F), which are well below the temperatures considered in current practice for determining fire resistance ratings associated with significant loss of steel strength." 4

When girder A2001 fell off its seat, the heat-mangled beams G3005, A3004, B3004, C3004 and K3004 came tumbling down with it. Because the fire had also weakened several floors below them, this segment of floor 13 managed to smash through the floors below it, all the way down to a reinforced floor 5. Lateral support for column 79 was removed over a eight story stretch due to this local collapse, resulting in the column buckling and a subsequent failure of floors all the way up to the penthouse. At this point rapid "progressive collapse" of the entire building set in. In the words of NIST:

"Floor 13 collapsed onto the floors below, causing a cascade of floor failures down to Floor 5. The floor failures left Column 79 laterally unsupported and it buckled, which was quickly followed by the buckling of Columns 80 and 81. The buckling of Column 79 was the initiating event that led to the collapse of WTC 7, not the floor failures. If column 79 had not buckled, due to a larger section of bracing, for instance, the floor failures would not have been sufficient to initiate ... global collapse." 5

As is the case with the Twin Towers, this "global collapse" is not explained by NIST in any additional detail. That's just something their model, with all its secret input data, "reveals". NIST really only focuses in detail on the "collapse initiation sequence", which in their opinion began with the failure of girder A2001. Thus it should be clear why a credible scientific explanation as to how girder A2001 could have been pushed off its seat is absolutely essential to the credibility of the NIST investigation.

Unfortunately for NIST, after a successful FOIA request in 2011 for the shop fabrication drawings of Building 7, NIST was found to have omitted crucial data from its computer simulation model in order to (barely) reach enough lateral displacement for girder A2001 to have fallen off its seat. With one or more of this crucial data included, it appears to have been impossible for the girder in question to have failed, meaning that NIST would have to start its investigation all over again.

NIST assumed that the crucial column 79 seat, on which girder A2001 was resting, was 11 inches wide. Assuming there were no stiffeners at the end of girder A2001, NIST argued it would have failed after a lateral displacement of 5.5 inches, with the bottom flange curling upward and the girder sliding off the seat. According to NIST, at 600°C (1,100°F) the thermal heat expansion of beams G3005, A3004, B3004, C3004 and K3004 (red beams on drawing above, top to bottom) would have been 5.5 inches, theoretically just enough to initiate failure. Thus NIST assumed a 600°C temperature with a 5.5 inch thermal expansion, leading to girder A2001 sliding off its seat, followed by "global collapse". Case closed. But maybe not, because:

To summarize, it appears that at some point NIST scientists determined that girder A2001 must have failed and then began to manipulate their computer model by strategic omissions in order to make this failure happen:

• a little less seat width here;
• a couple of stiffeners less there;
• take out those lateral support beams;
• crank up that temperature;
• and stretch the thermal expansion to its absolute theoretical maximum.

And voila, we have a failure!

Of course, this is not how things work. Considering the whole purpose of a computer model is to simulate real word processes that are too complex for humans to calculate by hand, one simply cannot leave out crucial building components at will. The job of the human being is to include as much relevant data as possible and let the computer sort out the results. We see the same thing happening with NIST's simulation of the Twin Tower collapses. They use isolated computer simulations with different input data, much of it secret and some of it fictional, and if they see something that supports the official story then they'll just use that. The adding of a fictional lateral force to simulate the bowing in of perimeter columns is probably the best example of that. 15

Early on in its investigation, NIST generally assumed that shear studs could be found on all beams and girders of WTC 7, including girder A2001. In its 2005 report on the entire WTC complex, NIST wrote: "Most of the beams and girders were made composite with the slabs through the use of shear studs." 16 By the time the final report on WTC 7 came out, in 2008, NIST's position had changed to: "In WTC 7, no studs were installed on the girders (Cantor 1985)." 17 This change resulted in a degree of skepticism, even more so after it was found out that NIST left out crucial stiffener plates and lateral support beams in its computer model, and also forgot an inch of seat width for the seat on which girder A2001 was resting.

However, NIST did appear to have a point on this issue. To support their argument, NIST relied on the 1985 structural design drawings of Irwin Cantor, as well as the related building erection drawings of Frankel Steel. We have access to these drawings due to a 2011 FOIA request and, looking at them, we have to conclude that they do not show shear studs on girder A2001. Below the reader can see the Cantor drawing S-8 for floors 8 to 20 and 24 to 45. The amount of shear studs per beam are listed between "< >". Whatever the reason for this decision, all beams contain these shear studs, but not girder A2001.

When we look at Frankel Steel WTC 7 erection drawing E12-13 for floors 12 and 13 of that same year - which was already depicted in the previous section of this article - we also can't find any shear studs on girder A2001. The crucial aspect of this drawing has been reproduced below:

Persons in the 9/11 Truth community have pointed to a number of sources to make the case that girder A2001 may possibly have contained shear studs. The first is the same Frankel E12-13 drawing, which at the bottom talks about "shear studs, field applied", indicating that shear studs were added or could have been added after girder A2001 was fabricated and had arrived on location. However, as the reader can see above, this same erection drawing does not list shear studs for girder A2001, so based on this information we have to conclude that they were not present.

Secondly, researchers have pointed to the revised 10th floor framing plan of the Cantor drawings (S-8-10: 10th floor) that reveals a number of modifications to the ordinary framing plan (S-8: 8th-20th, 24th-45th). In this drawing we find 30 shear studs listed for girder A2001, along with a slightly increased number of shear studs for all the surrounding beams. Apparently these modifications were made to compensate for increased floor loads, but this hardly matters because floor 10 is not floor 13. In the Cantor drawings we also find modifications to the 19th and 20th floor, but also here no shear studs are listed for the girder in the same location as A2001 on the 13th floor. In other words: still no serious evidence of shear studs on girder A2001.

Members of the 9/11 Truth movement have also looked at the floor framing plans in a 1986 paper of John Salvarinas, Frankel Steel's project manager for WTC 7. It was published by the Canadian Structural Engineering Conference. Figure 5 of his paper, labeled "typical floor framing", reveals 30 shear studs throughout the building in the location of girder A2001 (above and below it). This is the same amount of shear studs listed on the Cantor S-8-10 modified structural drawing for floor 10, so one would think that it was at least considered as an option to put this amount of shear studs on the girders in the same location as A2001. But has this happened? When we look at the Salvarinas drawings it's easy to see that they are much simplified versions of the earlier-discussed structural drawings of Cantor and Franklin Steel. We can't rely on them and thus are forced to conclude that the situation is inconclusive as to whether or not shear studs were present on girder A2001. Of course, it would have been nice if NIST had included a basic reservation in its report instead of outright assuming there were no shear studs, but it's impossible to really start an argument here without additional data.

At this point there are only two conclusions we certainly can reach on potential shear studs on girder A2001:

1. NIST should have conducted interviews with WTC 7 project leaders and steel workers to confirm the presence or absence of shear studs. The fact that they didn't is rather suspect and really should be considered another instance of criminal negligence.
2. The steel should never have been destroyed so quickly. If the steel was retained, not only could we have checked for shear studs, we would also have a better idea of the temperatures in this area of the building and the effects that they had. Unfortunately, all we are left with is a computer model.

Note: This section is a January 2016 update on the shear stud issue, based on a tip from Tony Szamboti - whom, by the way, I never conversed with before finishing this article and praising his work.

The fact that NIST did not include a basic reservation in its final WTC 7 report as to whether or not shear studs were present on girder A2001 is very suspicious, because the situation was not resolved at all. As it turns out, NIST had good reason to make it look as if the shear studs were not present, because actually, they were.

If we go back to the earlier-discussed Frankel E12-13 drawing for WTC 7's 12th and 13th floor and look at the bottom, we see the byline: "For additional studs see cust. dwg. S8 Rev. I."

A curious problem is that this Revision 1 drawing was not included in the 2011 FOIA release of the Cantor and Franklin drawings. It's equally strange that no public discussions were going on about it by this time, because structural engineering professor Colin G. Bailey of the University of Manchester in England had already been aware of the omitted shear studs for years. In an April 5, 2010 signed court statement on behalf of a group of corporate plaintiffs against 7 World Trade Center Company, Bailey wrote:

"Evidence discovered after June 15, 2009 revealed that, contrary to the information I had reviewed prior to that date, some shear studs were ultimately installed on each floor on the girder running between columns 79 and 44. This was done to increase the ability of this part of the structure to support an additional 10 psf load above the original design load. As a result, only 30 shear studs were installed..."

Further down in the court document "Cantor Drawing S-8 Revision I" is mentioned as the source of this information. 18 Engineer Ronald H. Brookman, who earlier received the Cantor and Franklin drawings through FOIA request, had also become aware of the existence of this drawing by March 19, 2012, when he wrote the following very rational words to NIST's FOIA & Privacy Act Officer Catherine S. Fletcher:

"Copies of the following drawings were obtained from the NIST FOIA office: "- Irwin G. Cantor P.C., Structural Engineers (1985). Structural Design Drawings, 7 World Trade Center "- Frankel Steel Limited (1985). Erection Drawings, 7 World Trade Center "- Frankel Steel Limited (1985a). Fabrication Shop Drawings, 7 World Trade Center "Specific [additional] questions include the following: ... "1. ... Figure 5 of [the 1986 John Salvarinas paper] clearly shows 30 shear studs equally spaced along the girder at typical floors including floor 13. How did NIST confirm that shear studs were in fact omitted from the girder at floor 13? "2. Frankel Steel drawings E8/9 through E20 and E24 through E44/45 all note: "FOR ADDITIONAL STUDS SEE CUST. DWG. S8 REV. I." Cantor sheet S-8 released by the NIST FOIA office includes revision H but not revision I. Sheet S-8-10 revision I shows 30 shear studs on the girder. ... Was sheet S-8 revision I included in the construction documents for this building?" 19

I've not seen a photocopy of Frankel S-8 Revision I, but it seems very safe at this point to assume that the 1986 John Salvarinas paper and the original 2005 NIST report were accurate about the fact that 30 shear studs could be found on girder A2001. So, in addition to a reduced seat width, removed stiffeners and omitted lateral support beams, we now also have confirmation that NIST excluded 30 shear studs in its model for WTC 7. Is this another innocent mistake? It's getting increasingly hard to believe.

As one would expect, professor Colin Bailey and the Arup engineering firm he was working with came to the conclusion that girder A2001 would have collapsed anyway, largely focusing their theory on the failure of these shear studs due to flutes of WTC 7's metal decking not being filled with fire-proofing. However, discussing the Arup report here will only cause confusion. The important thing to remember here is that Arup proves NIST - which ran the only official investigation into the collapse of WTC 7 - wrong on the shear studs. And not just that, it also provides evidence that girder A2001 could not have been pushed off laterally (although Arup, of course, still claims girder A2001 collapsed during the cooling down phase). Those interested in the details might want to look up comments Tony Szamboti has been making on this study here and there.

One of the better known issues related to the WTC 7 collapse is that it partly came down at free fall speed. Back in 2008 when the final NIST report was about to be published, and years before we found out about missing stiffeners and the like, it was already clear that NIST scientists were doing their absolute best to obfuscate this fact. The reason is obvious. As NIST's Shyam Sunder inadvertently admitted: "free fall time would be an object that has no structural components below it." 20 How is this possible? A building, especially a steel one, should always put up resistance during a collapse. They shouldn't be coming down at roughly 85 kmh / 50 mph as if there is nothing underneath them. Free fall means that WTC 7 came down at a similar speed as when one would have thrown a nickel or block of concrete from the top of the building. While technically it doesn't absolutely rule out some sort of structural anomaly we haven't figured out yet, free fall is most definitely very compatible with explosives having been used to take out several floors worth of columns, beams and girders.

Here's how the story of free fall evolved: Somewhere around 2007 the NIST computer model predicted a collapse time of 5.4 seconds for the top 18 floors of WTC 7 to fall down. NIST scientists then picked a less-than-ideal video of the collapse and managed to calculate a 5.4 second collapse time, thus verifying their own model. The video in question is the one below on the left.

Subsequently NIST's arguing was that free fall of WTC 7 would have taken 3.9 seconds, thus with 5.4 seconds the building descended only at 40 percent (38.5 percent) of free fall speed. This bizarre position was absolutely untenable, however. In its August 2008 draft report NIST was "assuming that the descent speed was approximately constant." Even a 7-year-old can see that the descent speed is not constant. It's also clear to anyone who takes a brief look at the WTC 7 collapse that it came down in phases. And those who look really well can see that the collapse progresses from east to west. Only when the last section of the building loses structural support, the north-west corner, is there a sudden increase in the descent speed. In other words, it only makes sense to calculate the speed of each stage individually. But NIST refused to do that until major controversy erupted with the publication of its draft report on WTC 7.

Leading NIST investigators John Gross and Shyam Sunder were confronted about the free fall issue at an August 26, 2008 briefing on the WTC 7 draft report. Incredibly, both were stuttering and stammering to the extreme when asked to explain their positions. They simply couldn't rationalize their position and hardly even made eye contact with the audience when trying to answer these questions. Here's John Gross' response to the simple question of Dr. Steven Jones why the draft report stated about the WTC 7 collapse "that the descent speed was approximately constant" :

"Force of gravity ob- obviously is, uh, uh, the acceleration of gravity is, uh, what's, uh, at the driving force and, uhm, ah, our calculation was, uh, based on the amount of time from the, uh, top of the parapit, uh, to fall til it, uhm, ah, disappeared from view between the two buildings, uh, seen in the, uh, video. Uh, that, uh, time was established from the, uh, video, uhm, uh, by single frame, uhm, uhmmm, in search of the, uh, time that was down to 1/30 of a second, uhm, and then we do the same thing for when the top of the parapit disappeared. We found that, uh, that time, uhm, to be 5.4 seconds." 21

David Chandler of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 then asked Shyam Sunder the following question:

"Any number of competent measurements using a variety of methods indicate the north-west corner of WTC 7 fell with an acceleration within a few percent of the acceleration of gravity [free fall]. Yet, your report contradicts this claim - claiming 40 percent slower than free fall based on a single datapoint. How can such a publicly visible, easily measurable quantity be set aside?"

Sunder's first response? "Can you repeat the question, please?" It gets read out loud again. When the camera switches back, Sunder seems beyond nervous. He shifts about nervously, looking down without making eye contact with the public. His incoherent reply:

"Well, uhm, the, uh, first of all, gravity is the loading function that applies to the structure, at, applies, uh, applies to everybody, all bodies on, uh, on this, uh, particular, on, uh, this planet. Not just in Ground Zero. Uhm, the analysis shows there's a difference in time between free fall time and - free fall time would be an object that has no structural components below it. And if you look at the analysis of the video, it shows that the time it takes for the 17, uh, for the roofline of the video, to collapse down to 17 floors, that you actually can see in the video--below that you can't see anything in the video--is about 3.9 seconds. What the analysis shows, and the structural analysis shows, the collapse analysis shows, is that the time it took for that structural model to come down from the roofline all the way for those 17 floors to disappear, is 5.4 seconds. It's but 1.5 seconds, or roughly 40 percent more time for that free fall to happen. And that is not at all unusual to happen, because there was structural resistance that was provided in this particular case and you had a sequence of structural failures that had to take place in which not everything was instantaneous." 22

By November the whole collapse progression of World Trade Center 7 was overhauled. The 5.4 second constant descent at 40% the rate of free fall, was replaced by a three stage descent in which the middle stage consisted of a "free fall drop [which] continued for approximately 8 stories (105 ft), the distance traveled between times t = 1.75 s and t = 4.0 s." 23 As can be seen below, I completely agree with a stage 1 collapse of 1.75 seconds in which the building descents only a few feet and still seems to have a degree of structural support. The 5.4 seconds for the 18 story descent to me really seems to be more like 4.9 seconds, but with the admission of free fall this really isn't that important an issue anymore.

While it is an absolute breakthrough that NIST admits that WTC 7 fell down at free fall speed, indicating there was absolutely no structural support from below, it still appears as if NIST is trying to hide the real implications of their calculations. First of all, they don't discuss these implications. And second, their model is giving the impression that WTC 7 followed some sort of natural progression towards free fall collapse. The only way they can maintain this position is by their use of a single datapoint near the center of the building's roof. This point is falling slightly while the north-west corner is still providing support to the rest of the building. What NIST should have done instead is measure the north-west corner separately. This would have revealed an almost sudden acceleration towards free fall speed. In the NIST graph below 24, I've added separate curves for the north-west corners of the penthouse and the WTC 7 roof. One can see the descent of WTC 7 was much less smooth than depicted by NIST.

I made this graph before watching the remainder of David Chandler's presentation on WTC 7's free fall. Turns out, he made the exact same observation: free fall took place suddenly, right after the last section of the building gave way. I'm quite sure that most readers will reach the exact same conclusion after a bit of measuring.

Maybe we should corner Shyam Sunder or John Gross once more and ask them where this sudden lack of structural support came from. If they have an explanation, they didn't put it in their final report.

As already discussed at length, according to NIST, Building 7 fell at free fall rate because in its north-east corner floor 13 collapsed all the way down to floor 5, taking the floors in between with it. This led to a loss of lateral support for column 79, initiating "global collapse". Allegedly, the reason these additional floors were unable to resist the collapsing floor 13 was because they also had been weakened by fire. Here's how NIST explained things:

"The fires thermally weakened Floors 8 to 14. As Floor 13 fell onto the floor below, a cascade of floor failures continued until the damage reached the massive Floor 5 slab, leaving Column 79 without lateral support for nine floors." 25

In the full 800-page NIST report on WTC 7 just about every known photo revealing fire on various lower floors of the building is listed. The two pictures above, some of the best around, were shot around 4 p.m., roughly 1 hour and 20 minutes before the collapse of the building at 5:20 p.m. One of the more interesting observations to make is that there appear to have been no fires at floors 9, 10 and 11, at least not in the north-east corner where the collapse initiated from. The main fire was on floors 12 and 13, which had all windows busted out with frequent fire being seeing. Fire was also slowly migrating to the north-east corner of the 8th floor. The window in the corner here was not busted out by fire, however. This had been done by Barry Jennings around 10:30 a.m. Michael Hess, the person who was with him, was filmed screaming for help from this window. Both were saved around noon.

It appears that shortly after 4 p.m. no one was allowed close to the building anymore, because what we see above is basically the last close-up footage of the north-east corner. That leaves us with quite a gap in which, of course, a lot can happen. For example, further analysis reveals that by 4:39 p.m. fire is also moving towards the north-east corner on floors 9 and certainly 11, having advanced from the center close to column 44, which is where girder A2001 at that point is still attached to on floor 13. The picture below reveals this progression:

Moving on in time, on the left in the compilation below the reader can see a shot of the north-east corner of Building 7 taken at 5:09 p.m., just over 10 minutes before collapse. It is included in NIST's full WTC 7 report, but for some strange reason at this point NIST ceased to identify specific floors and columns. It actually took me a while to verify that in the picture on the left we're indeed looking at the north-east corner (see picture on the right, shot during collapse initiation), because this is also not clear from the text describing the contents of the photo. The report talks about relatively unimportant aspects, such as the observed fire moving westward and a vehicle fire in front of the building. One would think that what is of primary importance to NIST is the absence of visible fire in the north-east corner. NIST included a still from the same angle in its report taken at 5:19 p.m., immediately before collapse. This one also doesn't show fire in the north-east section, with once again NIST forgetting to include data on columns, floors or the exact location. The report simply keeps talking about "a video shot from a building to the northwest of WTC 7", which is rather confusing. 26

This is basically all the video and photographic evidence available when it comes to fire in the crucial north-east corner of Building 7. While certainly not non-existent, but at the same time we're not dealing with a raging inferno either, like the ones we witnessed in Madrid in 2005 and Beijing in 2009. The Madrid tower partially collapsed; the hotel in Beijing remained fully intact. The fact that Building 7 collapsed in seconds, symmetrically, and with only a fraction of the fire remains a little odd to say the least.

In case of WTC 7, the fire just slowly migrates around on each floor, busting windows out as it goes. NIST doesn't discuss fire on the east-side of the building, except for a period between 2:10 and 2:30 p.m., which reveals fire on the 12th and 13th floor in about half of the windows. The 11th floors also briefly experiences intense fire in two windows. Even at the time of collapse this east section produced by far the most smoke, but we have no evidence of simulteneous multi-floor infernos here. Everything is really obscured by thick black smoke.

Of course, these are exactly the angles NIST computer models calculated a relatively uniform fire spreading out from the south-east corner (fires were initiated in the south-west corner where the WTC 1 impacts occurred) around 3:30 p.m., heating up the crucial floor beams in the north-east corner at floors 8, 9, 11 and especially 12 and 13.

It's almost too perfect to be true. Maybe it is. Or, maybe it isn't. It's next to impossible to say how accurate these models are, certainly now that we have so much evidence that NIST has been manipulating them to get the results it wants. We can't look inside the building for the most part and we have virtually zero footage of the east and south sides of the building.

Ultimately one has to conclude that NIST's theory of multi-floor long-span beams thermally expanding at relatively low heat in the north-east corner of Building 7 is the only thing that fits with the available evidence. It conveniently allows NIST to sidestep typical red flags such as the fact that there:

• wasn't a huge inferno;
• wasn't a tremendous amount of heat;
• wasn't any stripping of fireproofing;
• wasn't any major structural damage.

At the same time it doesn't explain:

As with the shear studs, specifically on the fire issue I'll give NIST the benefit of the doubt. On many other issues, however, there's little reason to do that.

An article about the physical evidence for controlled demolition regarding World Trade Center 7 really wouldn't be complete without discussing the molten steel with "more than 2,800 degrees F [1,540°C]" 27 temperatures underneath the rubble of World Trade Center 1, 2 and 7. Strangely, WTC 3, 4, 5 and 6, while taking catastrophic damage and burning for hours, did not experience these anomalies. The fire was gone in hours; the smoke cleared within one or two days. But WTC 1, 2 and 7 kept suffering from these giant underground fires which lasted for months. The damage pattern to the buildings is also highly irregular. The following photograph, taken 6 days after 9/11, basically summarizes everything:

Close to 40 different reports on molten steel and extreme heat, many from firefighters and other 9/11 rescue workers, have been gathered in ISGP's original article Whatever Happened: Belief in WTC Explosives Widespread on 9/11 -- Until Authorities Denied It; Evidence of Huge Explosions, Rapid Flashes, and Liquefied Steel; NIST Report Based on Pure Fraud. WTC 7 is only rarely addressed separately from the Ground Zero site as a whole. But it has happened. For example, in Matt Siegel's 2002 documentary Three Nights at Ground Zero we hear:

"They've begun using heavy equipment to haul away the wreckage of Building Number 7, regardless of the fact that it is still burning. At the canteen we hear some of the truck drivers complaining that some of these girders are so hot they cause the beds of the dump trucks to crack and split open."

How hot do these girders have to be to cause this damage to the beds of the dump trucks? Hard to say. Was girder A2001 among them? Another good question. We don't know. While the July 2008 BBC documentary The Third Tower forgot to mention the "more than 2,800 degrees F [1,540°C]" temperatures and liquefied steel, it nevertheless did drop this minor bomb shell about WTC 7:

"When a NASA airplane flew over Ground Zero the temperatures recorded were remarkably high, the highest within Tower 7's footprint with 727 degrees Centigrade [1,350°F] [near the surface], yet this was five days after 9/11 and firemen had been spraying huge amounts of water on the site. And there are reports of red hot metal in the debris [shows video of a bright yellow/white glow in WTC 7 debris]."

The irrationally skeptical BBC documentary doesn't even attempt to explain this anomaly, without a doubt meaning they couldn't come up with one. As already discussed, according to the final NIST report, released a few months after this documentary:

"The highest column temperatures in WTC 7 only reached an estimated 300°C (570°F), and only on the east side of the building did the floor beams reach or exceed about 600°C (1100°F)."

There's no indication that with "exceed" NIST ever meant anything close to 727°C (1,350°F), certainly not beyond a few very isolated pockets. So how do we get these temperatures five days after collapse with well over 100,000 gallons of water sprayed on top of the rubble? And that's only the surface. Even the BBC documentary showed a brief clip of something glowing bright yellow underneath the surface of the rubble, most likely being one of these pockets of molten or formerly molten steel.

I recommend readers take a look at the quotes gathered about the WTC's molten steel and the extreme heat. It's definitely one of the most enigmatic aspects of the World Trade Center collapses that no one in the media or NIST has come up with a decent explanation for. Almost universally the phenomenon is ignored. The heat must have been generated around the time of collapse, because there's no visible evidence of it beforehand, apart from what appears to have been molten steel flowing down the side of the South Tower a few minutes before collapse.

In its final WTC 7 report NIST actually tries to dispel rumors that the building was demolished with explosives. However, it does this in complete cover-up fashion. For example, NIST doesn't discuss:

In this section we'll focus on this last point. When it comes to evidence for explosives, NIST, as usual, took a completely theoretical approach and ignored all practical evidence. They started out by calculating that the minimum charge to sever a column of WTC 7 would have needed to be 9 lb of RDX, producing noise levels of 130-140 decibels. Subsequently NIST scientists claimed they were unable to find evidence for a blast this loud or windows being shattered by these explosions. Here is how they summarized the issue in their full WTC 7 report:

"NIST concluded that blast events could not have occurred and found no evidence of any blast events. The minimum explosive charge (lower bound) required to fail a critical column (i.e. Column 79) would have produced a pressure wave that would have broken windows on the north and east faces of the building near Column 79. Such a blast event would have resulted in a sound level of 130 to 140 decibels ... at a distance of at least half a mile (if unobstructed by surrounding buildings, for example, along Greenwich Street). There were no witness reports of such a loud noise, nor was such a noise heard on audio tracks of videotapes that recorded the WTC 7 collapse. ... "In summary, the minimum charge (lower bound) [9 lb] required to fail a critical column (i.e., Column 79) would have produced a pressure wave that would have broken windows on the north and east faces of the building near Column 79. The visual evidence did not show such a breakage pattern on any floor of WTC 7 as late as about 4:00 p.m. or above the 25th floor at the time of the building collapse initiation. Views of the northeast corner at the time of the collapse were obstructed by other buildings. ... Furthermore, for a shaped charge with an explosive weight equivalent to or higher than 9 lb (detonated in a single delay), the noise level at a distance of 1/2 mile would have been on the order of 130 dB to 140 dB..." 28

This theoretical approach is really wonderful, except that NIST is lying when it claims loud explosions like these were not heard or captured on video. They most certainly were, but it appears that NIST and the mainstream media have been suppressing this material. First of all, there were reports about various post-collapse explosions in the media. For example, Dan Rather of CBS stated:

"And then at 10:28 AM Eastern time, the second tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. Then there was a fourth explosion; a fourth counted big explosion rocked the collapsed remains of the World Trade Center. That was at about 10:38 AM Eastern time." 29

Around 11:00 a.m., 30 minutes after the collapse of the second tower, NBC news reported the views of fire chief Albert Turi, who at the time was of the opinion that bombs had aided in the collapse of the towers. The NBC host added:

"Now we are continuing to hear explosions. We are continuing to hear explosions here downtown. And what we've been told by some of the fire officials is that there are some gas lines that occasionally are exploding down there..." 30

MSNBC reporter Ashley Benfield, primarily known for her observation at the time of the WTC 7 collapse at the end of the afternoon, was already at Ground Zero when the towers came down. Around 11:15 a.m., 45 minutes after the second tower had come down, she told her listeners from West Broadway, roughly 400 meters from WTC 7, that she'd heard no less than 4 explosions which sounded like car bombs:

"Yeah, hi, I'm just about 5 or 10 blocks north of the site where these two towers actually came down. We're obviously having a bit of trouble right now maintaining our location as we just heard one more explosion. That's around the 4th one we've heard. The police are telling us they're either car bombs or they are simply cars that have overheated that are exploding. But every time that happens, there's a flurry of activity and more emergency vehicles that come down this road."

While maybe not very well known, these reports are absolutely accurate. We know this from videos that are even less well known than these, the most important being one of Richard Peskin, who was shooting from his high-rise apartment building roughly 650 meters (700 yards) north of Ground Zero. His tape for WTC 7 starts just before 11:00, right after he heard a major explosion and noticed a new cloud of smoke rise from WTC 7's east side, where later in the day the collapse initiated from. In the minutes after that he captures what appear to be four additional explosions and reports on at least one other he failed to record. So we're talking at least 6 loud potential explosions in the minutes before and after 11:00 a.m. which NIST hasn't addressed. Peskin:

"[Start video; Peskin zoomed in to east corner of WTC 7:] A blast, explosion, or something, because now there is a lot of police activity and sirens and more smoke rising from the ground. [Smoke is rising from the side of WTC 7's east corner, but not exactly clear which smoke cloud Peskin means.] New smoke. So there was some kind of additional explosion, but I don't know what it was. Definitely. Smoke is rising from the ground. Maybe it was a federal building or something like that. Okay. Okay, sweetie, I'll call you later. "[New take:] It's now 11 o'clock. We're still continuing to hear explosions. [Another crack or explosion can be heard.] I don't know what it is. A lot of smoke. ... [Another crack or explosion can be heard.] ... There's a fire [away from of WTC 7]. Maybe a car on fire. [Another crack or explosion can be heard.] ... "[New take:] [Very loud crack/explosion and echo] It's another explosion. [Seems to be not much after 11:05, judging by the shadows.] ... [New take:] It's now a little bit after twelve."

The initial explosion right next to WTC 7, or possibly inside it, which Peskin failed to capture, appears to have been picked up by at least four other cameras that we are aware of. These cameras were operated by 9/11 "filmmaker" Gedeon Naudet, independent journalist Lucia Davis, firefighter Steve Spak and another unknown camera man. Possibly they picked up different explosions, but at the very least they were all captured in the same period around 11:00. We know this for a variety of reasons.

Naudet, still embedded with the Fire Department, survived the collapse of the North Tower. After helping to rescue a victim of the collapse, he sought shelter in a cafeteria. Within minutes he walks out again to find his brother, Jules, but is turned away by local police. After a couple minutes of walking to the north-west, roughly 500 meters (550 yards) away from WTC 7, he captures a loud blast and echo, despite having his camera aimed in the opposite direction.

Firefighter Steve Spak was on the opposite side of Naudet at the time of this explosion. He was standing right behind St. Paul's Cathedral, aiming his camera to a mountain of smoke coming from Ground Zero. While the smoke obscured WTC 7, this is the direction he was looking in when a very loud explosion was recorded coming from somewhere in this vicinity.

Lucia Davis was located immediately in between Steve Spak and Gedeon Naudet when this explosion occurred. Located on the corner of Murray Street and West Broadway, she was also the closest, only being roughly 150 meters (165 yards) north of WTC 7. As a result, she also captures the blast with incredible intensity. Interestingly enough, at this moment Davis is filming police officers at a phone booth. One of the officers comes walking towards them right after the explosion and says: "We gotta get back. Seven's exploding." The explosion also comes from the location of WTC 7, with everybody looking in that direction.

The account of Lucia Davis was broadcasted by NBC News. She filmed the North Tower collapse from West Broadway where she soon was forced to hide from the smoke inside the Elixir Juice Bar at no. 95. After the dust began to clear, she walked towards Ground Zero, capturing on video burning cars from roughly 100 meters (110 yards) north from WTC 7. This put her right at the spot where this huge blast was captured, but, predictably, NBC News did not broadcast this segment! We only know about it because somehow the clip ended up on Youtube. The clip was also used in the relatively obscure documentary 9/11: Stories From The City, but the blast is partly muted here due to a voice-over.

The Lucia Davis clip can be timed by the angle of the shadows (see image below, upper left). My own estimate is an azimuth of about 135-135.5°, which, according a Naval Observatory calculator for September 11, 2001 in New York City would correspond with a time of about 10:53 a.m. 31 This first perfectly with the video of Richard Peskin, who reported an initial loud explosion on the east side of WTC 7 minutes before 11:00 a.m., followed by several additional explosions.

The azimuth/time calculation also came in wonderfully useful with timing the Barry Jennings interview (above, remaining pictures), recorded roughly 300 meters (330 yards) north of WTC 7 at the north-west corner West Broadway and Chambers Street. A basic calculation reveals it was recorded in the minutes surrounding 12:30 p.m. 32, roughly 15 to 20 minutes after Jennings and Hess had been rescued from WTC 7. 33 Looking at his description of having been trapped for about an hour after an explosion inside the building 34, with Hess placing it at about one and a half hour 35, one has to conclude that it is quite compatible with the recorded and reported explosions around 11:00. More about Jennings later.

This use of the sun's position also turned out to come in handy with other video clips. A clip from an unknown news station which recorded a loud explosion reveals pretty much the same azimuth, proving it was either same explosion or one that followed quickly thereafter.

Having said all that, it most certainly is possible that the explosions were caused by burning fuel tanks that exploded. If these are largely empty and therefore filled with gas, this is a distinct possibility. We know that many cars, including a number of busses, were on fire immediately to the east of Building 7 right after the North Tower collapsed. NIST assumes that a "substantial numbers of burning sources capable of igniting fires" reached the ground in this area and set both the cars and Building 7 on fire. 36

This conclusion of NIST sounds very reasonable. Why then do they ignore the loud blast noises that emanated from this area? On the few pictures available I don't see evidence of high explosives going off. Windows in the neighborhood all seem to be intact and there appear to be no circular debris fields. It can even be argued that Richard Peskin captured smoke rising from the street and not from a window in the east section of Building 7. The destruction by fire is still incredible though. None of the surviving firefighters trapped in the dust cloud talked about being surrounded by burning particles. It's still possible though. So maybe we should have the testimonies of the persons operating the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) bus, which was located here at the corner of West Broadway and Barclay Street. Mayor Giuliani and his aides were literally trapped a few feet away at 75 Barclay Street. They may also shed a little additional light on what exactly was going here at the time of the North Tower collapse.

We can basically speculate forever without more information. From the available videos we can't tell precisely where the blasts originated from and whether they were explosives or gas tanks (or gas lines, or maybe even water pipes being targeted with explosives, wherever all of these were located). High explosive detonations tend to have an unusually deep base sound and quite literally vibrate the whole inside of your body when they go off. It can be a very intimidating experience. Then again, how many people ever specifically heard a fuel tank explode/deflagrate? I certainly never heard the latter. And while it's possible in theory, I never heard about it happening either, apart from the movies.

One thing we can say for certain is that NIST did the public a disservice by ignoring these loud explosions that occurred around 11:00 a.m. They should have asked witnesses about them and try to pinpoint the exact source.

More explosions actually occurred in the afternoon, after burning cars in the neighborhood were put out. For example, another explosion is captured just outside WTC 7 as firemen are walking away north, one of them responsing to the noise with "Keep your eyes on that building. It's gonna blow up." Looking at the projection of shadows, this event transpired around 14:45 p.m., assuming the workers were walking north along Greenwich Street. 37 Interestingly, it is at this point that fire chief Daniel Nigro instated a collapse zone around the building. 38 The boom is less loud than the one caputured by Lucia Davis.

Finally, as we end up at the moment WTC 7 collapses, at 5:20 a.m., it appears more explosions have been suppressed by the media. Almost all videos of the collapse contain no sound or start with the collapse already in progress. There's one major exception to this, the CBS video analyzed below. It reveals a loud explosion literally one second before the penthouse on top of WTC 7 collapses through the building.

The above video is absolutely incredible. The initial bang is louder than the collapse itself. Does it meet the 130-140 dB treshold of NIST? Hard to say, but it is beyond suspicious, of course, that NIST has refused to even mention this explosion in its report. After a little analyzing and cross-referencing with another video, it can also be said for certain that it is this same exact explosion that was caught on the live MSNBC broadcast of Ashleigh Banfield, who was filming from a slightly greater distance on the north-eastern end of the building. She was about 350 meters (400 yards) away.

The calculated time of 8.1 and 8.7 seconds between the loud boom and collapse initiation between respectively the CBS and MSNBC videos isn't a whole lot, considering how tricky it can be to determine the exact moment of the collapse initiation from different angles and with shaky cameras, apart from a small difference in distance that the sound needs to travel. It's quite safe to say that it is certain that the noise picked up by Banfield is the same as the CBS camera.

Until now we have only discussed the explosion initiating collapse. While this is quite a stunning revelation already, there may actually have been more of these explosions at the time of collapse, although they appear to have been somewhat softer. For example, the following collapse video (left) is very popular on Youtube. The camera is located right next to the "CBS dub5 09" one that can be seen above, which loudly captured the initial explosion before the penthouse went down. Strangely, while this camera was located on a stand with a much more sensitive microphone for background noise, for some strange reason it seems it only began to film the collapse by the time it was already in progression, rendering it useless for analysis. Or maybe not. Rewatching the video 9/11: The Filmmakers of the Naudet brothers, it turns out that the clip most likely originated from this documentary. But in this documentary, the audio track of the clip actually seems to begin a second before it fades over into the actual video shot. And in this unseen but certainly heard preceding second it appears as if we can hear a double explosion. Just click on the image below to watch the video:

Behind the image on the right another video clip can be found that captures the collapse of WTC 7 from very close by, from right in front of the building. It was shot by Mike Hernandez of CBS news. Bizarrely, also in this case the video starts when WTC 7 is already in full collapse. Even if we look at the whole FOIA release on Youtube, it appears Hernandaz only began to film when WTC 7 was already coming down. How likely is this, considering the camera seems to have been in position from the very first frame with notification having been given on numerous occasions that the building was about to come down. In any case, from this angle we don't hear a continuous collapse. Instead we hear some kind of metallic-sounding "Clug! Clug!" followed by: "Kaboom!" Because the building is coming down, one can always argue that this is simply the noise of the collapsing building, but to honest, I'm far from sure. Certainly if this huge, deep "kaboom" at the end was softer or equal to the explosion that initiated the collapse, it seems obvious why this sound is covered up. On top of that, the metallic-sounding "Clug! Clug!" noise is quite reminiscent of the metallic "Rooom!" noise initiating the collapse of the South Tower in the Sorensen video.

Unfortunately, pretty much no witness accounts have been written down from the hundreds of people close to WTC 7 when it collapsed. Witnesses who came out later, primarily first responder Kevin McPadden, who spoke about a count-down, I tend to distrust. We basically only have two interesting accounts that appear to be reliable. The first is from a person with the name Daryl, interviewed live on 9/11 by 1010 WINS NYC News Radio immediately after the collapse of WTC 7. He described the initial "clap of thunder" captured on video, but also appears to have had a good view on the bottom floors of WTC 7 right at collapse initiation. To this day, we don't have available a video showing the collapse initiation at the lower floors. Mike Hernandez was in a good position to capture it, as well as anyone around him, but somehow apparently everyone here only began filming with the collapse already in progress. In any case, Daryl talked about how "the bottom floor caved out and the building followed after that", but without another interview and without video we all have to use our imagination as to what exactly he meant (how fast the progression, which floors exactly, and how violent):

"We were watching the building [WTC 7] as it was on fire - the bottom floors of the building were on fire. And we heard this sound that sounded like a clap of thunder. We turned around and we were shocked to see that the building was, what looked like a shockwave ripping through the building and the windows all busting out [as the penthouse crashed through the building]. It was horrifying. And then, you know, about a second later the bottom floor caved out and the building followed after that."

The second account that is very interesting comes from Peter DeMarco, a journalist for New York Daily News and later for the Boston Globe. He seems to imply controlled demolition took place. It was not captured live on 9/11, but recorded in the 2002 mainstream book At Ground Zero: Young Reporters Who Were There Tell Their Stories, p. 97:

"[T]here was a rumble [coming from WTC7, which was captured on video a second before collapse initiation]. ... Pop! Pop! Pop! was all you heard until the building sunk into a rising cloud of gray."

If his "Pop! Pop! Pop!" sound is the same as what I describe as "Clug! Clug! Kaboom!" based on the Mike Hernandez video remains to be seen. It's a total travesty that witness accounts were not gathered en masse immediately after the WTC 7 collapse. And it's completely bizarre that we have no video of the WTC 7 collapse in its entirety, complete with proper audio recording. Of course, it's quite possible that this has been prevented on purpose.

Earlier, based on the stance of the sun, we demonstrated that Barry Jennings' first interview with the media on 9/11 took place within minutes of 12:30 p.m. This was at the intersection of West Broadway and Chambers Street, roughly 300 meters (330 yards) north of World Trade Center 7. This fits perfectly with Jennings, along with Giuliani's chief lawyer Michael Hess, having been rescued from this building 15 minutes earlier, around 12:15 p.m.

For those not familiar with the story of Jennings and Hess, when interviewed live on 9/11 both independently explained that some kind of explosion happened around the 8th floor of World Trade Center 7, trapping them inside the building. On 9/11, Jennings explained: "We made it to the eight floor. Big explosion. Blew us back into the eight floor. ... I took a fire extinguisher and busted a window out. ... They couldn't get to us for an hour, because they couldn't find us." 39 Hess added: "I walked down to the 8th floor and there was an explosion and we've been trapped on the 8th floor with thick smoke all around us for about an hour-and-a-half." 40 The firefighter who stayed back with Jennings for the interview (a group of firefighters could be seen in the clip returning to WTC 7) made things even more enigmatic when he stated: "Both staircases, the backside was blown away. There was no way to access. We couldn't get to them." 41

Obviously, most people looking at these statements would like to have a little clarification, not just because an explosion around the the 8th floor of Building 7 is not supposed to have happened, but especially because of widespread suspicions that explosives and thermate were used to bring down the three World Trade Center towers. When we look a little deeper in the case, however, it appears there's not a whole lot of mystery here.

For starters, Jennings' later claim that he arrived at WTC 7 around 9:00 a.m. 42, even before the second plane impact, appears to be a blatant lie. There's every indication that Jennings and Hess entered Building 7 around the time of the Pentagon impact at 9:37 a.m. The timeline is a little vague on this (quite possibly on purpose), but there's every appearance that within roughly 2 minutes of this event OEM deputy director Richard Rotanz was informed of a potential third plane in the air heading for New York City. 43 He immediately ordered an evacuation of WTC 7's OEM bunker, the only location in the building still staffed at that point. Within minutes the third plane turned out to be false alarm, but the OEM bunker was not reactivated at the 23rd floor. Instead, a temporary OEM command center and triage was set up in the lobby 44, with an OEM bus soon operating at the north-east corner of WTC 7, on Barclay Street, right next to 75 Barclay, where mayor Giuliani was operating from. 45

The reason that Hess and Jennings must have entered the building around this time, is because by the time they got up to the OEM bunker on the 23rd floor the doors were locked. When they got back up, with security opening the door for them, they find out that the persons who were there had left in a hurry: hot coffee and half-eaten sandwiches could be found at desks. They stayed for at least a few minutes, with Jennings making a few calls to his superiors. He's told the bunker was evacuated and he needs to get out too. Before they get to the elevators, there's an "explosion" with the lights in the building flickering. The elevators refuse to work from that point on, so Hess and Jennings take the stairs to get back down. 46

Meanwhile, the dust cloud of the South Tower broke the glass facade of Building 7's lobby and buried it in several feet of rubble and dust. People had to run for their lives here, but, according to EMS chief John Peruggia, of the 45 people left in the lobby at that point, everybody got out alive. 47

The biggest anomaly in the account of Hess and Jennings is that it apparently took them a full 30 minutes to descend just 15 to 17 floors. Part of the explanation might be that Jennings' wasn't the slimmest person in the world and Hess not the youngest. Another piece of the puzzle might be contained in the account of a security officer who descended the building at the same time from the 30th floor, apparently in WTC 7's other stairwell. When he got to the 7th floor, he couldn't see or breathe anymore. Like Jennings and Hess, he eventually moved to the north side of the building to call for help, only one floor lower and in the center of the building. 48 If one stairwell was so clogged up with dust that it was impossible to breathe for a seemingly quite fit security officer (voluntarily walked up all the way to the 30th floor), then it's quite likely that the same was true for the other stairwell. The dust could have slowed the movement of Jennings and Hess and quite possibly stalled it by the time of the second collapse.

The fact that Hess and Jennings interpreted the collapse of the South Tower and North Tower as explosions is not that unusual. Having read about 100 detailed survivor accounts of firefighters, it was quite common for those going up the North Tower or walking in any of the other buildings when the South Tower collapsed, to think that one or more massive bombs were going off, or that another plane impacted the World Trade Center complex. For example, here's the account of firefighter John Malley, whose team probably wouldn't have survived if they'd been send to the South Tower a few seconds earlier. It just happens to be the latest example I ran across:

"We got our assignment to work the 75th floor and above of the South Tower. ... As we walked through those revolving doors [of the Vista Hotel towards the South Tower], that's when we felt the rumble. I felt the rumbling, and then I felt the force coming at me. I was like, what the hell is that? In my mind it was a bomb going off."

Jennings and Hess were interviewed literally 15 minutes after they were rescued, only got to talk for a few seconds, hardly could believe they were still alive, so they didn't really have a chance to analyze their experiences. They heard a loud noise, followed by tons of debris hitting their building, and a WTC 7 lobby and stairwell being hit even harder with dust and debris than during the first collapse. Their misinterpretation is quite understandable.

It should actually be quite easy to confirm the views of Jennings and Hess after they had some time to integrate their experiences with what they learned through the media happened that day. NIST conducted interviews with Hess and Jennings in 2004, but never released the transcripts. Strangely, while especially researchers affiliated with Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth have successfully filed a number of FOIA requests, no one has apparently gone after these interviews. We only have a summary in the full NIST report which describes the above version of events. 49 Granted, Hess was interviewed by the BBC in 2008, but this interview did not clarify a number of key questions. More on this in the next section.

BBC psywar: Barry Jennings, Frank Papalia, etc.

Undoubtedly the most bizarre aspect of the whole Barry Jennings saga transpired in 2007 and 2008. First, in a June 2007 interview, Barry Jennings is lying to Alex Jones and the Loose Change crew that he was already on the 23rd floor of WTC 7's Office of Emergency Management (OEM) at the time the second plane hit at 9:03 a.m., at which point he notices that the "bunker" has already been hastily evacuated. That's simply impossible considering the described timeline of events and the fact that the primary people underway to activate the OEM bunker, FDNY captain Abdo Nahmod and EMT Richard Zarrillo, are still underway - driving west on the Brooklyn Bridge - when the second plane impacts. They park their car, walk over to WTC 7 over Vesey street through bodies and debris, and go up WTC 7. They join people who actually already have activated the bunker in the mean time, but are forced to evacuate within 10 minutes because it is thought that a third plane is inbound.

We also have the account of their immediate superior John Peruggia, who was driving north through the Battery Tunnel when the second plane impacted at 9:03 a.m. Perrugia parks his car some distance from the WTC complex, puts on his gear and walks up West Street towards the WTC complex. He talks to Chief Ganci in front of WTC 1 and by the time he arrives at WTC 7, the OEM bunker of Zarillo and Nahmod already is in the process of being evacuated over the reports of a third plane.

NYFD Captain James Yakimovich has told the exact same story. Yakimovich aided police officers and EMT workers with the treatment and evacuation of citizens wounded from debris coming down with the second plane impact. Soon after, he ran into Peruggia in front of WTC 1, who allowed him to go up to OEM because Yakimovich had experience here. Upon arrival at the 23rd floor of OEM, the evacuation order had just been given. Yakimovich went out, joined Engine 10, and barely survived to collapse of the South Tower soon after. 50

So here we have very clear and very trustworthy information that rescue workers were entering and activating the OEM bunker until an evacuation order was given some time after 9:30 a.m. Looking at a good number of other firefighter accounts and statements of the director and deputy director of OEM, this warning was spread around 9:35-9:45 a.m., depending on how far back witnesses were located in the line of communication. So why on Earth was Jennings (as well as Hess) claiming that the bunker had already been evacuated before the second plane impacted at 9:03 a.m.? That absolutely makes no sense and doesn't fit with any other account that we know of. Yes, tenants and employees were allowed to leave, and certainly were ordered to do so after the second impact, but this had nothing to do with the firefighters and other rescue workers coming into the scene.

That's not all. Jennings talks about the power going out around the time of the second plane impact (not reported by anyone else), going down via the stairwell (with Hess), only to get trapped inside the building after an explosion on the 6th floor (earlier he talked about the 8th floor) takes out the stairwell. All this supposedly happened before the first collapse of the WTC towers, because Jennings specifically describes how the firefighters who attempted to rescue him ran from the scene twice as each building came down. 51 This makes no sense at all, because A) at the approximate time he gives, rescue workers either were still moving up to the OEM bunker or, after a brief evacuation, reactivating the OEM operation at the lobby of WTC 7 (around 9:45-9:50 a.m.). Let's face it, there's absolutely no doubt at this point that Jennings (as well as Hess) was lying. This is even clearer when we look at Jennings' statement that he had to walk over dead bodies in the lobby when he was finally rescued by firefighters later in the day. The fact is: no one died at WTC 7. Really the only remaining question here is: Why did Barry Jennings lie?

According to disinformative no-planers Alex Jones and the Loose Change crew, Jennings is threatened by his bosses that he will get fired, or worse, if the interview is released. It is decided not to include the material in the Loose Change: Final Cut version, but soon the BBC's Guy Smith learns about the interview Jennings has given and decides to interview him for a new documentary he his working on: The Third Tower, which is eventually released in mid 2008. Alex Jones and Dylan Avery (Loose Change) are confronted with statements Jennings makes to the BBC. 53 All of a sudden Jennings doesn't believe in a government conspiracy anymore and, because no one died at WTC 7, tries to take back his claim that he walked over dead bodies. 54 When it comes to the collapsing stairwell, it is simply not clear what precisely happened. His description is just too vague, but certainly when he says "When I reached down to the 6th floor, there was this eerie sound, the whole building went dark, and the staircase that I was standing on gave way," it seems to indicate there wasn't a bomb underneath the stairwell. Bombs don't make an eerie sound. The collapse of the North Tower outside did, at least that's how many people described the sound.

All in all, Jennings is very vague about his experiences, with the BBC team who made The Third Tower possessing some of the worst investigative skills possible. The gaps in logic that can be spotted in the 58 minute documentary are considerable. What follows is a partial list:

There doesn't seem to have been any other purpose of the BBC documentary besides discouraging the belief that explosives may have been used to bring down Building 7. It's manipulative and superficially researched. It's pure psywar, actually, also in the sense that it allows for debate to continue forever. The aim is not to convince by fact, but by intimidation. This is especially clear at the end. Skeptic after skeptic is brought on stage to dismiss the conspiracy point of view from all kinds of different angles. After NIST's lead scientist Shyam Sunder, it's the turn of the Hardfire people, who are filmed stating:

Ronald Wieck: "It's purely faith. In other words, there is simply no evidence that you could show them." Mark Roberts: "It's a religious faith. ... It's picking little anomalies out. Some of them are big anomalies, the way they see them, but not connecting them in any coherent way. There's no coherent hypothesis and we keep asking for one: How does this fit in to any larger theory?"

They're clearly reversing the facts here, certainly when looking at the additional evidence that we have today about the stiffeners, lateral support beams, shear studs, seat width, admission of free fall, explosion during collapse initiation, extreme heat, etc. I'd never heard of these Hardline people before this, but soon after watching the BBC documentary I ran into one of their programs. Here they brought in NASA scientist Ryan Mackey to debate structural engineer Tony Szamboti. Literally the only thing they wanted to talk about was the flawed theoretical paper of Zdenek Bazant on which NIST relies to explain the collapse of the Twin Towers beyond the "collapse initiation." Their game is hopelessly transparant. They know the paper is flawed, so they try to argue from authority: NASA physicist beats quite prestigious structural engineer, so people are expected to believe the former. In between Wieck is reading up questions from the James Randi forum. Randi, of course, has been financed in the past by the superclass-ran and government-linked MacArthur Foundation, has been accused of homosexual pedophilia, loves to hang out with MKULTRA-linked scientists at the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, is at the epicenter of the irrational skeptics movement through the biannual The Amazing Meeting, and used to have a stage assistant in the form of William Rodriguez, who, like Jennings, has changed his 9/11 testimony to (falsely) indicate bombs in the basement (really falling elevators) and who for some strange reason has been given massive amounts of media attention. 57

Unsurprisingly, Wieck's colleague Mark Roberts gave a speech at Randi's The Amazing Meeting in January 2008. His speech was actually interrupted by a group of JREF members pretending to be hecklers yelling "Mark Roberts is part of the CIA!" or linking him to "freemasonry" and the "occultic". The heckler who uploaded the two-part video to Youtube childishly refers to 9/11 truthers as "9/11 twoofers", meaning "truther" but sounding retarded. Roberts presentation is basically some kind of childish carnival of ridicule, which normally is the last thing one would expect from mature, educated men. It certainly makes me wonder even more to what extent JREF is a recruiting ground for intelligence assets. The behavior of these people simply makes no sense. 58

Next up in the BBC documentary after Hardfire is anti-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, an old protege of George Shultz, James Baker and Morton Abramowitz, who today works under arch-neocon James Woolsey, a person who is supposed to be his arch enemy. Clarke explains:

"People who believe in conspiracy theories and particularly this one about WTC 7 don't understand government and clearly have never worked in government. Anyone who has ever worked in government will tell you two things: that the government doesn't have the competence to do a large-scale conspiracy like this; and number 2, that it can't maintain secrecy. There's almost nothing that I know of in 30 years of having top secret clearances that hasn't come out in the Washington Post and the New York Times. So there is no way that this conspiracy of knocking down of knocking down WTC 7 could have happened."

Interesting detail: Richard Clarke is the one who let Osama bin Laden escape from Sudan to Afghanistan in early 1996. It's on his advice that national security advisor Sandy Berger overruled secretary of state Madeleine Albright to bring Osama bin Laden in for trial. 59 Maybe the BBC should have mentioned that. Instead, it bizarrely makes time for an old clip of Nixon, who states, "There can be no whitewash at the White House." Didn't Nixon make that statement only after he was caught lying on various serious issues? Inserting this clip makes little sense.

After Richard Clarke and Nixon, the BBC switches back to firefighter Frank Papalia, the one about whom they forget to mention that he works for the Global Security Group of accused former DEA-Mossad liaison and accused Afghan heroin smuggler David Katz. Papalia:

"I was there. I've heard people talk about it who come from Cincinatti, and California, and wherever else they come from. I was here, you weren't. I think they have no respect for the friends of mine that I lost, of all the people that died that day. It's like a slap in their face."

Amidst sad music and mourning people, the narrator continues: "The man who was in charge that day hopes that the official report on WTC 7 will finally end a painful chapter in America's history." Nigro then closes off with the words:

"Conspiracies can always be more exciting than the real thing, because you can always add to them. It makes for great fiction. And I enjoy great fiction myself, but when it comes to real life I think we have to know that one side of the page is real life and one side of the page is fiction and draw the line between them."

Nigro, of course, in 2002 was invited to the Terrorism Preparedness Taskforce with former CIA director James Woolsey, Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit, and JASON Group and Rockefeller scientist Joshua Lederberg. 60 It's hard to imagine these people would work with Nigro if he could not be fully trusted to keep his mouth shut.

In the first half of this article we often discussed William Pepper's letter about NIST's computer model missing stiffeners and lateral support beams, as well as the fact that NIST reported the wrong seat width in its final report for girder A2001. Having developed a kind of sixth sense for spotting people who are not who they claim to be, I looked into the background of Pepper. Turns out, he earlier represented James Earl Ray, the killer of Martin Luther King, thinking Ray has been framed by the government (something the King family believes too, but the fact remains that Ray was on the scene with a gun). In 1998-1999 he represented the King family in the rather questionable trial against Loyd Jowers. Then Pepper went on to represent Sirhan Sirhan, locked up for killing Bobby Kennedy. He claims conspiracy, something even RFK Jr. has done, but the fact of the matter is that Sirhan, an Arab immigrant, shot RFK - by himself. In contrast to the JFK assassination, all the talk about a second assassin simply is complete disinformation. Hence, we can already tell that Pepper is involved in 9/11 "Truth" to help control the movement. In line with this, Pepper was invited to Coast to Coast AM - which features nothing but disinformers - in 2011 and 2012 to talk about these "truth" efforts of his.

So yes, it very strongly appears that Pepper has been hired by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth to help control the 9/11 "Truth" movement. In the past ISGP already raised questions about the founder of this organization, Richard Gage, who has been backing bizarre Pentagon plane flyover theories with various prominent members of his Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth promoting no-plane-at-Pentagon theories. On the BBC's The Third Tower Gage was videotaped suggesting that the WTC towers and Building 7 maybe were already rigged with explosives when they were built in the 1970s and 1980s. That's just one of many insane theories floated around the internet to help discredit the movement, similar to Kennedy's driver turning around and shooting the president. While he doesn't have a whole lot of room to maneuver, to me it appears Gage simply founded Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth to help control the 9/11 Truth movement. Him hiring a person as William Pepper to represent his group doesn't surprise me the least. He has worked with worse people.

Pepper doesn't seem to spin the facts regarding stiffeners, lateral support beams, and seat widths, but always be careful. Never believe anyone in any kind of conspiracy movement simply on his word.

When it comes to WTC 7, NIST:

The bizarre thing with the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is that on the surface of it, it makes no sense whatsoever that it was a controlled demolition, especially when one doesn't pay attention to the physical evidence. For instance, how could any potential conspirators know for certain that the collapse of the North Tower would result in damage to Building 7 and fires breaking out here?

Or, how could potential conspirators know beforehand that Building 7 would be damaged in its "low zone", meaning below floor 21? The primary water supply for the sprinkler system of the high and mid-level zone were large water storage tanks. Only if these ran out, these zones would switch to the city's water mains. The low zone, however, was not connected to water tanks and relied solely on the water mains. The problem on 9/11 was that the collapse of the North Tower took out WTC 7's primary water supply, located underneath Washington Street. As a result, the sprinkler system on the lower 20 floors was disabled, while fires in the upper half of the building never spread and were put out within an hour or so. 61

Also, one would have to acknowledge that the east side of World Trade Center 7, at floors 12 and 13, experienced the most intense fires in the afternoon, with that whole section, at least theoretically, by looking at the floor plans, being vulnerable to thermal expansion.

I have to admit, it's a perfect fit. But then one looks at the sudden symmetrical collapse at free-fall speed, one or more explosions, the extreme heat in the aftermath, some of the witness testimony, the manipulative statements of Barrry Jennings about when he entered the building, and NIST resorting to heavy manipulations to explain the details of the collapse, and it's impossible to conclude that the investigation is over.

This article is not going into who might be involved in the destruction of the building. That's reserved for ISGP's article The Supranational Suspects Behind 9/11.

On January 12, 2018, on the "JB Podcast" 62, structural engineer Tony Szamboti had a lengthy debate with Mick West, an increasingly prominent rent-a-skeptic who runs the websites metabunk.org and contrailscience.com. Much of West's increase in prominence is due to appearances on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. As usual, West generally sticks to easy-to-debunk conspiracy theories such a chemtrails, fighting over these issues with other national security trolls on the conspiracy side of the spectrum.

Ordinarily Szamboti and his claims about the World Trade Center are left alone by rent-a-skeptics, because his work simply cannot be debunked. West took the challenge, however, and it might be important to see here to what degree West was able to shoot holes in the claims of Szamboti - and with that, this article.

During the opening sequence of the debate, Szamboti showed a number of 3D images of the situation surrounding column 79 and beam A2001, which NIST explicitly identified as the initiating cause of the collapse of WTC 7: girder A2001 was pushed sideways, off its seat at column 79, resulting in a cascade of floor failures, the buckling of column 79, immediately followed by the destabilization of columns 80 and 81. In light of some of West's remarks that we'll list below, keep in mind that this is the central and only theory the NIST WTC 7 report is focused on. It also makes sense that column 79 went first, because the eastern end of the penthouse on top of WTC 7 sat right on top of column 79 and was the first to collapse. As already cited and sourced in the Understanding NIST's WTC 7 "collapse initiating model" section:

"Other than initiating the fires in WTC 7, the damage from the debris from WTC 1 had little effect on initiating the collapse of WTC 7. ... Even without the structural damage, WTC 7 would have collapsed from fires. ... "The floor failures [after the collapse of girder A2001] left Column 79 laterally unsupported and it buckled, which was quickly followed by the buckling of Columns 80 and 81. The buckling of Column 79 was the initiating event that led to the collapse of WTC 7, not the floor failures. If column 79 had not buckled, due to a larger section of bracing, for instance, the floor failures would not have been sufficient to initiate ... global collapse."

It remains absolutely shocking that NIST pushes the idea that one failing connection in the entirety of WTC 7, would have been able to completely bring it down in a matter of seconds at free fall speed. It just doesn't make any sense. This means that one shaped charge or one trashcan put on fire at the point in question could have caused the catastrophic WTC 7 collapse that we saw.

As Szamboti pointed out during the beginning of the debate, NIST had to resort to rather extreme cheating by even making it theoretically possible that girder A2001 was able to slide off its seat at column 79. In order to make its computer model work, NIST:

• shortened the seat width from 12 to 11 inches;
• removed the stiffener plates on girder A2001 that prevented the bottom flange from curling up if it slides off-center;
• removed all shear studs from girder A2001;
• removed three additional stabilizer beams close to girder A2001 that would have further limited the walk off, and;
• hid the input numbers for the rest of the building.

Except for newer calculations showing that WTC 7's floors couldn't have collapsed, all the points brought up here by Szamboti have been discussed in detail in this article. Subsequently, it's Mick's turn. He thinks Szamboti brings up "great points", but for the rest doesn't produce any meaningful counter-arguments:

• "[So this is] the position of 9/11 Truth," is Mick's first comment, automatically putting all of 9/11 Truth in the same basket (not bad in this case) and downgrading Szamboti's very factual points to something that is open to debate.


• "It shows just how difficult it is to get a definitive answer in a complicated situation like this," again downgrading Szamboti's factual points without going into specifics.


• "We couldn't really see what was happening on the inside," making excuses for NIST and instilling doubt with the listeners without going into specifics.


• "There are three different results coming from three different studies [including Szamboti's]," again instilling doubt and evading Szamboti's factual statements without going into specifics.


• "Floor structure failures AROUND column 79 to 81, which, as you know, is ALL the interior east side of the building," once again walking around Szamboti's points, in the process completely misrepresenting the NIST which fingered column 79 - and column 79 alone - as the initiating cause of columns 80 to 81 failing.


• "You are just focusing on this ONE connection. ... There's two collapses at the same time over here." Again, Mick is doing the same thing, being completely wrong in the process.


• "This isn't really up to debate." Indeed, it isn't. Mick is 100% wrong.


• "That's what came out of those simulations. ... I would like to verify [the parameters for the simulations] too, but it's unfortunate that we can't, but that's what we gotta go with." Mick telling the audience to accept the NIST cover up and ignore Szamboti's points or any reasonable outside calculations.


• "You gotta take into account this study was done nearly 10 years ago. ... If we were to do the study now, it would probably come up with a somewhat different result [due to less] limitations then to computing power..." Mick admitting that the computer model he prefers to focus on is probably flawed, but still refuses to focus on the factual points of Szamboti.


• "You just do a hand calculation and show it to people and then that proves it's controlled demolition." Mick resorting to ridicule and exaggeration, although it is very close to the truth.


• "We would all like that [a new WTC 7 investigation], but the question is: can we spent millions of dollars doing that? What is the actual basis for that? A few errors like this in one small aspect?" Mick's counters keep getting more bizarre. He is just told in great detail what the basis is and that they are the furthest thing from a "a few errors" in "one small aspect".


• "We should look about whether that is actually possible, that it can go off it's seat or not. And it is possible that it did not. That is something that should be looked into. However, that doesn't invalidate the entire study, because the actual simulations that they did not use that as a necessary component." Mick completely contradicting himself compared to when he stated a new WTC 7 investigation wouldn't be justified. Once again completely wrong with his statement that girder A2001 and column 79 weren't "necessary components".


• "Well, you are kind of implying a conspiracy there where there could be a better explanation. .. "They cheated, so they must have conspired." Unless you think that it's one person who did that." Mick once again resorting to ridicule.


• "[Just a] government employee." Mick making excuses for NIST for not replying to Szamboti's team for 1.5 years.


• "They [NIST] are refusing [to reply] because they feel it has been sufficiently looked at. And I encourage people to go and read the NIST report, because there is a long reservation that you are just not talking about. You are talking about ONE thing." Mick upholding official authority and disinforming and essentially ridiculing with his "one thing" comment.


• "There is all kinds of criticism, man. Do we have to discuss like beams from space? YOU think that YOUR critisism is very reasonable..." Mick once more resorting to generalities and ridicule.

This basically constitutes the entire spectrum of replies Mick provided to Szamboti on WTC 7. Mick kept moving from subject to subject to avoid being pinned down on the facts. However, on a few instances Mick "cracked" and acknowledged that Szamboti's arguments actually are valid:

"I agree with that - your analysis of that ONE connection [note: key connection] is pretty good ... And you did identify a number of things like the stiffener plates that were missing and the differences in the width of the plate. Other things, like the amount of thermal expansion. That's all valid. And in that LIMITED case [note: not limited at all] does actually make a difference [note: interesting way to described failure and collapse vs non-failure and no collapse]. But you have got to look at the actual global case. [note: meaning theoretical computer model we don't have the parameters of]"

Clearly, the fact that Mick couldn't come up with any better counter-arguments than the ones he gave is additional strong evidence that WTC 7 was demolished with explosives and thermite - and subsequently covered up. A 10-year-old will understand that, but rent-a-skeptics like Mick West will always pretend to unable to do so.

There are only two occasions in this debate that I agree with Mick. The first is that burning debris most definitely could have set fires in WTC 7. The lower south-west corner of WTC 7 sustained considerable damage at relevant floors during the collapse of the North Tower. The damage itself did not play a role in the collapse, but that is another debate. It could have taken considerable time for this fire to become visible, because it had to travel to the north face of the building; the south face was obscured by smoke from the collapsed towers.

The second thing I agree with Nick is that "there are people within Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth who think that planes did not hit the Pentagon." Szamboti responds by saying: "There's nobody talking for A&E for 9/11 Truth that talks about that. ... [Our CEO] did not say anything about the Pentagon and most of us leave that alone, because we're not sure." As already discussed, A&E founder Richard Gage is a world class disinformer and most definitely a (closet) supporter of no-plane-at-Pentagon theories, with a number of prominent members as David Ray Griffin, Dr. Robert Bowman and Dr. Niels Harrit having more consistently done so. The "We're not sure" argument also is way too tame for me, because all evidence for Flight 77 not hitting the Pentagon has been extremely heavily manipulated. This no-plane-at-Pentagon support has always been the primary reason why I prefer that Szamboti takes over Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, but Gage and the others just mentioned are always discrediting 9/11 Truth with their disinformation.

As of this writing, the usual synchronicities are hitting me again. The above section on the Szamboti-West debate is based on roughly the first hour of the debate. Only now am I listening to the rest of it. Hilariously, at 1:15:20 Szamboti is referring to "Noël or something" of "ISGP studies" as a good source to get background information on WTC 7 and the controversies surrounding it, with Mick West possibly looking up this site on the internet as Szamboti is giving his reference.

Notes

---

1. January 6, 2010, NIST letter to a FOIA request pertaining to WTC 7: "This letter is the final response to your November 13, 2008, Freedom of information Act (FOIA) #09-11 request to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in which you requested "a complete 'Certified' legitimate copy of the Computer Models used by NIST to come to the conclusions it reached in the investigation of events of September 11, 2001." On November 18, 2008 you clarified your request to include "only the model in question that was released on NIST's website in reference to World Trade Center (WTC) 7 demise." ... We are, however, withholding 74,777 files (approximately 80% of all responsive records). The NIST Director determined that the release of these data might jeopardize public safety. This withheld data include remaining input and all results files of the ANSYS 16-story collapse initiation model ... all input and results files of the LS-DYNA 47 story global collapse model, and all spreadsheets and other supporting calculations used to develop floor connection failure modes and capacities." Click here for photocopy.
2. November 2008, NIST WTC 7 summary report, p. xxxvi.
3. Ibid., p. xxxvii.
4. Ibid., p. 21.
5. Ibid., p. 39.
6. December 12, 2013, William Pepper letter, on behalf of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, to Todd Zinser of the Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Commerce. Click here for PDF version. Note: WIlliam Pepper is a Coast to Coast AM visitor involved in legal affairs surrounding the MLK and RFK assassinations. He appears to be a bit questionable, just like A & E head Richard Gage. The information regarding WTC 7 seems correct, however.
7. November 29, 2014, Structural engineer Tony Szamboti interviewed by The Mind Renewed podcast. Link.
8. November 2008, NIST WTC 7 summary report, pp. 53, 59.
9. February 15, 2010, Professor Colin G. Bailey, 'Response of WTC7 to Standard Office Fires and Collapse Initiation', pp. 14-16 (as used in court case 11-4403, Document 76-3, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit): "At column 44 the girder is restrained from lateral movement when it hits the inside flanges of the column since the girder spans onto the column's web. However, at column 79 the girder is supported off the column's flange and there is no resistance to lateral movement [apart from a side plate]. ... As the girder continues to expand during heating it will hit the columns 79 and 44. The gap between the end of girder and the columns is a total of 3.5in and the length of the girder is 537in. Therefore the temperature of the girder (assuming uniform temperature distribution) when it hits the columns is given by: 1.4E-5 × 537 × (T-20) = 3.5 Therefore, T = 485°C. The girder must reach 485°C before it hits the columns. Once the girder hits the columns its thermal expansion is restrained. Compression forces are induced into the girder and it effectively becomes wedged between the columns. As the temperature of the fire increases the secondary beams framing into one side of the girder will push the girder laterally (Figure 13) as they expand. Until the girder has expanded sufficiently longitudinally to hit columns 79 and 44 the lateral restraint to expansion of the secondary beams provided by the girder 79-44 is significantly less than the restraint provided by the external columns. ... To push the girder off the seat it will need to move laterally 5.5in during the heating phase. To reach 5.5in the secondary beams will need to be heated to 650°C (assuming all the movement is pushing the girder and the secondary beams do not deflect). At this temperature the girder is compressed between columns 79 and 44 and vertical support will continue to be provided, to some extent, by the 2in plate fixed across column 79. It is therefore unlikely that the girder was pushed off the seat laterally at column 79 during heating. If failure did occur during the heating stage of the fire it would be due to flexural (strength) failure of the secondary beams and girder 79-44 and not by pushing the girder 79-44 off its seated connection. However, once the girder starts to cool, and contract, the girder is no longer wedged between the columns and plate will not offer any vertical support. As the structure begins to cool the girder 79-44 will contract from a plastic state and will be simply 'skating about' on the seated connections. The secondary beams will also contract from a plastic state which, together with twisting, will cause the girder to be pulled off the seat at column 79 (Figure 14) during cooling and thus initiate collapse."
10. December 12, 2013, William Pepper letter, on behalf of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, to Todd Zinser of the Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Commerce. Click here for PDF version.
11. November 29, 2014, Structural engineer Tony Szamboti interviewed by The Mind Renewed podcast. Link.
12. December 12, 2013, William Pepper letter, on behalf of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, to Todd Zinser of the Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Commerce. Click here for PDF version.
13. July 11, 2014 letter of Jim Schufreider, director of the Congressional and Legislative Affairs Office, Unites States Department of Commerce, representing NIST, to Ms. Madeline Peare.
    - Click here for photocopy of page 1.
    - Click here for photocopy of page 2.
14. November 2008, NIST NCSTAR1-9, full report on WTC 7, p. 353.
15. See ISGP's article that mainly deals with the Twin Towers.
16. 2005, NIST report, NCSTAR1-1, p. 14.
17. November 2008, NIST NCSTAR1-9, full report on WTC 7, p. 346.
18. United States Court of Appeals, Southern District of New York, case 11-4403-cv, document 76-I, date February 14, 2012, photocopies of the relevant pages (front page and Colin Bailey letter):
    - Page 1
    - Page 2
    - Page 3
    - Page 4: Colin Bailey: "However, the main girder from Column 79 to 44 [A2001] was not designed and constructed as restrained. The girder did not have a sufficient number of shear studs [2]... [2:] Evidence discovered after June 15, 2009 revealed that, contrary to the information I had reveiwed prior to that date, some shear studs were ultimately installed on each floor on the girder running between columns 79 and 44. This was done to increase the ability of this part of the structure to support an additional 10 psf load above the original design load. As a result, only 30 shear studs were installed, which, in my opinion, was not sufficient to transfer thermal thrusts. For a fully composite girder a total of 96 shear studs would be required, which would have transferred the thermal thrusts."
    - From same court document: February 15, 2010, Professor Colin G. Bailey, 'Response of WTC7 to Standard Office Fires and Collapse Initiation', p. 16: "Both the secondary beams and girder have shear studs, which to some extent provide restraint to longitudinal thermal expansion to beams/girders. The girder is designed for partial interaction and has minimal studs (30 total, as per Cantor Drawing S-8 Revision I) which will have a maximum slip before fracture (assumed 6mm). The temperature of the studs and thus strength and ductility of the studs (together with the surrounding concrete) will be dependent on the filling of the flutes with SFRM. In WTC7 the flutes were not filled with SFRM, as required, resulting in high temperatures in the studs which will cause them to fracture earlier in the fire."
19. March 19, 2012, Ronald H. Brookman's FOIA letter to NIST about shear studs and the seeming impossibility of lateral walk-off of girder A2001. Click here for PDF.
20. 2008, Youtube, 25 minute discussion of David Chandler, affiliated with Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, about NIST's WTC 7 free fall admission. Link.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. November 2008, NIST WTC 7 summary report, p. 45.
24. Ibid., p. 46.
25. November 2008, NIST WTC 7 summary report, p. 54.
26. November 2008, NIST NCSTAR1-9, full report on WTC 7, p. 214.
27. May 17, 2002, EHStoday.com, 'Safety Professionals Recount Time Spent at Ground Zero': "Within hours of the 9/11 terrorist attacks the Safety, Health and Environmental (SH&E) professionals for the Bechtel Group found themselves at the door of hell, the World Trade Center (Ground Zero) ... Thermal measurements taken by helicopter each day showed underground temperatures ranging from 400 degrees F to more than 2,800 degrees F [1,540°C] due to the ongoing underground fires."
28. November 2008, NIST NCSTAR1-9, full report on WTC 7, pp. 357, 614.
29. September 11, 2001, CBS News Transcripts, 'Planes crash into World Trade Center and Pentagon'.
30. September 11, 2001, NBC News Transcripts, 'Attack on America, 11:00 AM'.
31. aa.usno.navy.mil: "Astronomical Applications Dept. U.S. Naval Observatory. ... New York, New York. ... Altitude and Azimuth of the Sun, Sep 11, 2001, Eastern Daylight Time, Altitude Azimuth (E of N): ... 10:00 | 37.0° [Altitude] | 121.5° [Azimuth] ... 10:10 | 38.6° | 123.9° ... 10:20 | 40.2° | 126.5° ... 10:30 | 41.7° | 129.1° ... 10:40 | 43.1° | 131.9° ... 10:50 | 44.5° | 134.7° ... 11:00 | 45.8° | 137.8°..." My own estimate is about 135-135.5°, which would have been about 10:53 a.m.
32. aa.usno.navy.mil: "Astronomical Applications Dept. U.S. Naval Observatory. ... New York, New York. ... Altitude and Azimuth of the Sun, Sep 11, 2001, Eastern Daylight Time, Altitude Azimuth (E of N): ... 11:30 | 49.2° | 147.6° ... 12:00 | 51.8° | 158.7° ... 12:20 | 52.9° | 166.6° ... 12:30 | 53.3° | 170.7° ... 12:40 | 53.5° | 174.9°." 170.8° was my own personal estimate before looking up this table, which would put the Barry Jennings interview at 12:30, roughly 15-20 minutes after leaving WTC 7, according to NIST. Shadows around Jennings and the fireman are pointing directly to the north-west corner of the street, maybe even slightly before it (putting the interview a few minutes after 12:30 a.m.)
33. October 17, 2008, BBC Conspiracy Files, 'Timeline: WTC 7': "1210 to 1215 Nist says that: "Fire fighters found individuals on floors 7 and 8 and lead them out of the building. No fires, heavy dust or smoke were reported as they left floor 8". Although fire is seen "along west wall on floor 7...no heavy debris was observed in the lobby area as the building was exited, primarily white dust coating and black wires hanging from ceiling areas was observed." (NIST interim report on WTC 7. Appendix L.1.8) Emergency responder, Barry Jennings escapes the building around this time."
34. Barry Jennings original story when he was interviewedlive on 9/11 by an ABC reporter (Youtube): "[Reporter:] For the past couple of minutes it has been clear from this space back on Chambers [West Broadway, less than 300 meters / 330 yards / 5 minutes from WTC 7] and that area. So now they [a large group of firemen who seem to have rescued Jennings and Hess] are walking back toward the World Trade Center as we keep letting you hear the personal stories, the survivor stories, of exactly what happened inside the World Trade Center when that first plane went in and, of course, the collapses since then. We're gonna bring more of those to you now. Barry Jennings, you were on the 8th floor. You work for the City Housing Department. Explain to me the moment of impact. [Jennings:] We made it to the eight floor [of WTC 7; reporter thinks he's talking about WTC 1 or 2]. Big explosion. Blew us back into the eight floor. And I turned to Hess and said: "This is it. We're dead. We're not gonna make it out of here." I took a fire extinguisher and busted a window out. This gentleman here heard my cry for help. ... This gentleman right here. He kept saying, ''Stand bye, somebody is going to get you.'' They couldn't get to us for an hour, because they couldn't find us. I thought we were dead. I thought that was it. I started praying to Allah. That's it, we're gone."
35. Michael D. Hess phone interview by Frank Ucciardo for UPN 9 News on September 11, around noon (Youtube): "[Ucciardo:] I'm sitting here right now just off Broadway by City Hall with Michael Hess [which is less than a 400 meter / 440 yard / 7 minute walk]. ... Mr. Hess, I believe you were trapped inside, I believe, 7 World Trade Center. Go ahead, Sir. [Hess:] Yes, I was. I was up in the Emergency Management Center on the 23th floor and when all the power went out in the building another gentleman [Barry Jennings] and I walked down to the 8th floor and there was an explosion and we've been trapped on the 8th floor with thick smoke all around us for about an hour-and-a-half. But the New York Fire Department, as terrific as they are, came in and got us out. ... I don't know myself [where the mayor is located now]. As I said, I was trapped inside 7 World Trade Center for the past hour-and-a-half." Hess has been filmed on 9/11 as he is screaming for help from the position he and Jennings were trapped in.
36. November 2008, NIST NCSTAR1-9, full report on WTC 7, p. 194.
37. aa.usno.navy.mil: "Astronomical Applications Dept. U.S. Naval Observatory. ... New York, New York. ... Altitude and Azimuth of the Sun, Sep 11, 2001, Eastern Daylight Time, Altitude Azimuth (E of N): ... 14:40 | 46.3° | 220.8° ... 14:50 | 45.0° | 223.9°." 222° is my own personal estimate, which would show workers walking away from the building around 14:45, around the time a collapse zone was instated around the building.
38. October 17, 2008, BBC Conspiracy Files, 'Timeline: WTC 7': "Around 1500 Chief Daniel Nigro of FDNY takes the decision to make an evacuation zone around Tower 7 in case of collapse. Everybody is pulled away and rescue efforts in this zone are stopped, Nigro later says: "The biggest decision was to make an evacuation zone around building seven, to pull everyone away to stop the rescue efforts that were going on which was very difficult to do because there were people trapped still and to step back, to step back and wait.""
39. Michael D. Hess phone interview by Frank Ucciardo for UPN 9 News on September 11, around 12:30 p.m. (Youtube): "[Ucciardo:] I'm sitting here right now just off Broadway by City Hall with Michael Hess [which is less than a 400 meter / 440 yard / 7 minute walk]. ... Mr. Hess, I believe you were trapped inside, I believe, 7 World Trade Center. Go ahead, Sir. [Hess:] Yes, I was. I was up in the Emergency Management Center on the 23th floor and when all the power went out in the building another gentleman [Barry Jennings] and I walked down to the 8th floor and there was an explosion and we've been trapped on the 8th floor with thick smoke all around us for about an hour-and-a-half. But the New York Fire Department, as terrific as they are, came in and got us out. ... I don't know myself [where the mayor is located now]. As I said, I was trapped inside 7 World Trade Center for the past hour-and-a-half." Hess has been filmed on 9/11 as he is screaming for help from the position he and Jennings were trapped in.
40. Barry Jennings original story when he was interviewed live on 9/11 by an ABC reporter, around 12:30 p.m. (Youtube): "[Reporter:] For the past couple of minutes it has been clear from this space back on Chambers [West Broadway, less than 300 meters / 330 yards / 5 minutes from WTC 7] and that area. So now they [a large group of firemen who seem to have rescued Jennings and Hess] are walking back toward the World Trade Center as we keep letting you hear the personal stories, the survivor stories, of exactly what happened inside the World Trade Center when that first plane went in and, of course, the collapses since then. We're gonna bring more of those to you now. Barry Jennings, you were on the 8th floor. You work for the City Housing Department. Explain to me the moment of impact. [Jennings:] We made it to the eight floor [of WTC 7; reporter thinks he's talking about WTC 1 or 2]. Big explosion. Blew us back into the eight floor. And I turned to Hess and said: "This is it. We're dead. We're not gonna make it out of here." I took a fire extinguisher and busted a window out. This gentleman here heard my cry for help. ... This gentleman right here. He kept saying, ''Stand bye, somebody is going to get you.'' They couldn't get to us for an hour, because they couldn't find us. I thought we were dead. I thought that was it. I started praying to Allah. That's it, we're gone."
41. Firefighter who helped save Barry Jennings, original words when he was interviewed live on 9/11 by an ABC reporter, around 12:30 p.m.: "It was pandemonium. I mean, it was something out of a Bruce Willis Die Hard movie. He was there and he was crying, and there was another gentleman that was crying, for help. We couldn't get to them. We went through the building. We were lost. Both staircases, the backside was blown away. There was no way to access. We couldn't get to them. And finally, one of the Fire Department teams found them, but we didn't think they were going to make it."
42. June 2007, Loose Change interview, Barry Jennings (emergency coordinator and later deputy director of the Emergency Services Department, NY City Housing Authority) (Youtube): "I received a call shortly after the first plane had hit. I got there - I had to be inside on the 23rd floor when the second plane hit. ... I took a fire extinguisher and broke out the windows. The firefighters came to the window, because I was gonna come out on the fire hose. I didn't wanna stay there any longer. I mean, it was too hot. ... They came to the window. They started yelling: "Do not do that. It won't hold you." And then they ran away. See, I didn't know what was going on. That's when the first tower fell. ... Then I saw them come back. Now I saw them come back with more concern on their faces. Then they ran away again. The second tower fell. As they turned and ran the second time, the guys turned and said, "don't worry, we'll be back for you." And they did come back. This time they came back with ten firefighters."
43. Determining the exact time when OEM deputy director Richard Rotanz gave the order to evacuate WTC 7 is hard to nail down, but happened around the time of the Pentagon impact at 9:37 a.m. Examples of how this puzzle was pieced together:
    *) See the testimony of EMS division chief John Peruggia (note 44) who arrived at WTC 7 a considerable time after the second WTC impact and upon arrival was informed by OEM deputy director Richard Rotanz and his subordinates EMT Richard Zarrillo and NYFD Captain Abdo Nahmod that the WTC 7 evacuation order had just been given.
    *) See the testimonies of EMT Richard Zarrillo and NYFD Captain Abdo Nahmod (note 50) that they were told to evacuate the OEM bunker within 10 minutes of arriving here about 15-30 minutes after the second plane impact.
    *) See the testimony of Captain James Yakimovich (note 50) that upon his arrival at OEM at the 23rd floor of WTC 7 immediately before Peruggia that the evacuation order had just been given. At that point Yakimovich also had experienced the impact of the second plane roughly 30 minutes earlier.
    *) April 7, 2004, OEM director Richard Sheirer, 9/11 Commission testimony summary: "Riche ordered OEM to evacuate 7 WTC right after he told me of report of additional planes. This turned out to be a great call. OEM bus at West Broadway and Barclay became our command post."
    Note: In his later May 18, 2004 opening statement to the 9/11 Commission, Sheirer stated or implied that he had given an evacuation order immediately after the second plane impact of 9:03 a.m. There's no indication from any other account (except the fraudulent one of Barry Jennings) that this is true. What is true about this account, is that the order came after his deputy Richartd Rotanz had informed him of a potential third plane. The fact is that either Rotanz informed Sheirer of the third plane 30 minutes after the second impact or Sheirer did not act on this information for 20-30 minutes. I assume it's the former. More confusion can arise from Sheirer's statement that WTC 7 was already evacuated at the time of the second impact. This only involves tenants and employees - not rescue / OEM personnel.
    *) 2008, OEM deputy director Richard Rotanz in the BBC's The Third Tower documentary, 8:45: "[Narrator talks about the OEM evacuation order.] Police department, and intel and FBI, they were telling us, "Yeah, we had a plane hit us in the Pentagon." And we now realized, it had taken too long to realize we were now under attack. It could have been a target [Building 7]. I felt at the time because of where we were, it could have been a serious target. And plus the other federal agencies in that building."
    *) December 26, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with firefighter Peter Fallucca: "There were guys in suits up there on the 23rd Floor. Guys were telling me there were -- the CIA's got offices on the 23rd Floor. ... They had a lot of information, these guys were giving us. They had told us that the Pentagon was hit. This was while we were sitting on the 23rd Floor. The Pentagon is hit. They hit another place in Washington. They shot a plane down, and as we were on the 23rd Floor taking a break, they telling us, fellows, we just got a report of a third plane headed this way, so when the building shook, like that, I figured we got hit with another plane, but we found out later that was the first building, Tower 2."
    *) January 9, 2002, World Trade Center Task Force interview with firefighter Joseph Casaliggi: "There were police officers talking about a third plane coming into the area. Then a few minutes passed. I was standing under the bridge. We had heard a loud rumble, and people just started running in our direction from the Trade Center toward us."
    *) October 24, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with deputy chief of department Daniel Nigro (who became chief on 9/11): "The only thing I do remember and I didn't hear it over the radio, I don't think, was that a third plane was heading in the direction, I assumed was heading in the direction of the Trade Center, that there was a third plane, then a little later on somebody told me about the plane that hit the Pentagon. I don't know who told me that. The third plane was -- I don't think it came over the handy talky. I think somebody walked up to me and told me, somebody of some credibility, that it wasn't just a person on the sidewalk, but someone either with us or the police or EMS that I knew, because I recall taking it as a serious issue." *) October 23, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Battalion 1 chief Joseph Pfeifer: "Correct [that I initially was the highest ranking officer present in the North Tower, before the second impact]. Shortly after I was there, the division came in. ... Then the plane hit the second tower, the south tower. At that point Chief Donald Burns and Battalion Chief Orio Palmer went into the second tower and I took command of that. ... There was also later on the possibility of a third plane. Again, we just heard somebody say it and we tried to confirm it. We could not confirm it with any law enforcement people. We all [briefly] ran out at that point."
    Note: 9/11: The Filmmakers extensively shows Chief Pfeifer in the North Tower lobby, including the moment of the second plane impact (no one is running out at that point), reports of a third plane (exact time is not clear from the film), and eventually the collapse of the South Tower.
44. *) October 25, 2001, New York Times 9/11 interviews archive, interview with EMS division chief John Peruggia: "As I was passing through the Battery Tunnel, probably around midway through the Battery Tunnel, I heard the report come over the radio that a second plane had struck the second tower. ...
    I parked my car immediately on the western side of northbound West Street between Rector and West. I'm going to mark that on the map with a number one. I put my boots on. I put my EMS safety coat on, my helmet, grabbed the radio and a pad and began to walk my way up West Street. ... I made a verbal contact with Chief Ganci and Chief Nigro. I advised them that I was en route to 7 World Trade. OEM was active. ... At that point I made contact with Captain James Yakimovich [who I sent to OEM]. ...
    [Around 9:37 a.m.] I reached 7 World Trade Center. We walked into the lobby and we were going up the escalators to the main level. I checked in at the security desk. As we reached the top of the escalators, there were lots of people running down the escalator on the promenade. I spoke to one of the Deputy Directors and as I was speaking with him, I believe it was Deputy Director [Richard] Rotanz, who is a Fire Department Captain on detail over there, Captain Nahmod and EMT Zarrillo approached as well. They had indicated that the building was being evacuated. ...
    There were reports of a third plane that had been hijacked. It was unidentified, the location, and they thought it may be coming in for an additional strike. Therefore, they were evacuating the building. We proceeded down to the lobby where the various agency representatives were present. We collectively started to set up in the lobby and try to think of strategies to where we could move the inter-agency cooperation effort. ... As we were having discussions in the lobby as to what to do with OEM, a number of people came in the lobby as patients. Captain Nahmod and EMT Zarrillo started to look at them, put them off to the side and talk to them. At that point I stepped outside. I was going to request some EMS resources... There is also an overhead pedestrian walkway that connects the World Trade Center plaza to the lobby of number 7. There was people coming down both exits. So it was a good position for us to find people who may require medical attention and get them into a secured area of the lobby. ...
    Again, the lobby of number 7 is all glass facade. I was concerned that if something should come off the building, go through the glass or hit the glass, we would have an extraordinary amount of patients in addition to what was already being seen. Further we took everyone from OEM and moved them to what would be the most southeasterly corner inside that first floor entrance of the 7 World Trade. There is a big granite or marble security desk and we started to establish around that as we were trying to figure out what we were going to do. ..."
    *) October 11, 2001, New York Times 9/11 interviews archive, file no. 9110061, interview with NYFD captain Abdo Nahmod: "We were advised by the staff at OEM that we were to vacate the building, that they believed there was another possible plane on its way, and proceeded down the stairwell of 7 World Trade all the way down to the ground floor. Upon getting outside to 7 World Trade, I saw Chief Peruggia and Captain Stone... At this point, we were trying to establish a command center, as well as treatment and transport sector. I believe Chief Peruggia was trying to establish communication, and I was directed to move down to the garage area of the 7 World Trade where there were four bays, one having a truck in it and three that were open... I'd say within 20 minutes to a half an hour of being down there or trying to set everything up, all of a sudden a loud noise, rubble, and sand, and dust -- everything just started toppling down."
    *) October 25, 2001, New York Times 9/11 interviews archive, file no. 9110161, interview with EMT Richard Zarrillo: "I'm an EMT working in fire operations as the special event coordinator. ... Captain Nahmod and I started heading down Vesey Street towards where we thought the command post would be. At that time we had received a page per Chief Peruggia to go into OEM [Office of Emergency Management] at No. 7 World Trade and activate our post in OEM. ... Abdo and I went into No. 7, activated OEM, placed calls to EMS Citywide, RCC, to tell them we were there and we were activated. Maybe five, ten minutes, not even ten minutes later, a rep from OEM came into the main room and said we need to evacuate the building; there's a third plane inbound. That was the only thing I really heard because I said, Abdo, we've got to go, and we made it down to the lobby of the building, street level, met up with Chief Peruggia in the lobby of the building. He said that there was no third plane but we needed to re-establish OEM right there so we can coordinate what was going on. ... We were really trying to establish OEM and a treatment sector in the lobby of the [WTC 7] building because there were people coming around us. Again, times are a little fuzzy initially for me. A few minutes later, John came to me and said you need to go find Chief Ganci and relay the following message: that the buildings have been compromised, we need to evacuate, they're going to collapse. I said okay. I went down Vesey Street towards West. [The first tower collapsed 15 seconds after he informed Ganci.]"
45. April 7, 2004, OEM director Richard Sheirer, 9/11 Commission testimony summary: "Riche ordered OEM to evacuate 7 WTC right after he told me of report of additional planes. This turned out to be a great call. OEM bus at West Broadway and Barclay became our command post."
46. *) 2007, Loose Change interview, Barry Jennings (Deputy Director of Emergency Services Department, NY City Housing Authority) (Youtube): "I was asked to go and man the Office of Emergency Management at World Trade Center 7 at the 23rd floor. As I arrived there, there was police all in the lobby. They showed me the way to the elevator. I got up to the 23rd floor. Me and Mr. Hess [Senior Managing Director of Giuliani Partners], whom I didn't know was Mr. Hess at the time, we got to the 23rd floor. We couldn't get in. We had to get back down. Then security and police took us to the freight elevators. They took us back up and we did get back in. Upon arriving into the OEM/EOC, we noticed that everybody was gone. I saw coffee that was on a desk. The smoke was still coming off the coffee. I saw half eaten sandwiches. And only me and Mr. Hess were up there. After I called several individuals, one individual told me to leave and leave right away. Mr. Hess came running back in. He said, "We are the only ones up here. We need to get out of here." He found a stairwell."
    *) Michael D. Hess phone interview by Frank Ucciardo for UPN 9 News on September 11, around 12:30 p.m. (Youtube): "I was up in the Emergency Management Center on the 23th floor and when all the power went out in the building another gentleman [Barry Jennings] and I walked down to the 8th floor and there was an explosion..."
47. October 25, 2001, New York Times 9/11 interviews archive, interview with EMS division chief John Peruggia: "I had no direct communications with my boss [Chief Ganci] at that time, which is one of the reasons I needed to send EMT Zarrillo with that message [that the Twin Towers were about to collapse], which I felt was very significant, to the command post. ... Some amount of time passed by, probably not long, again, I wasn't checking my watch. ... when I heard a sound I never heard before. I looked up and saw this huge cloud. ... I pushed [a person] towards the direction of where we were all in the south corner [of WTC 7] and there was a little doorway behind that desk which led into the loading bays. Everybody started to run through that. Never made it to that door. The next thing that I remember was that I was covered in some glass and some debris. Everything came crashing through the front of number 7. It was totally pitch black. Yes, I saw some stuff had fallen on me. I didn't believe that I was injured at that time. I discovered later on I was injured. I had some shards of glass impaled in my head, but once I was able to get all this debris and rubble off of me and cover my face with my jacket so that I could breathe, it was very thick dust, you couldn't see. We heard some sounds. We reached out and felt our way around. I managed to find some other people in this lower lobby. We crawled over towards the direction where we thought the door was and as we approached it the door cracked open a little, so we had the lights from the loading bay. We made our way over there. The loading bay doors were 3 fourths of the way shut when this happened, so they took a lot of dust in there, but everyone in those bays was safe and secure. We had face to face contact with Chief Maggio and Captain Nahmod. They told me -- I said do whatever you need to do, get these people out of here. Go, go towards the water. They proceeded to evacuate that group along with some secret service people. ... I knew that everyone that we had in the lobby, or we thought everyone was accounted for. Again, there was a lot of rubble in the lobby, probably a few feet. The facade was all broken. Me and Phil grabbed some hand lights and the people who were still there at ground level, we directed them to the door where there were guys who were going to lead them out. Some Port Authority and some secret service, you know, they were housed at number 7. Captain Nahmod and Battalion Chief Maggio, they were going to lead that group of people. Probably in excess of 30 or 40 people out of the building. Me and Phil then proceeded up the escalators You know the level where the foot bridge connects, whatever? We found maybe a half dozen or so people out there."
48. November 2008, NIST NCSTAR1-9, full report on WTC 7, pp. 298-299 (based on NIST interviews 2041604 and 1041704, spring 2004, which are not available to the public). "As all of the emergency responder restructuring operations were underway, three people became temporarily trapped inside WTC 7. Two New York City employees had gone to the OEM Center on the 23rd floor and found no one there. As they went to get into an elevator they were attempting to catch no longer worked, so they started down the staircase. When they got to the 6th floor, WTC 1 collapsed, the lights went out in the staircase, the sprinklers (at un unspecified location) came on briefly, and the staircase filled with smoke and debris. The two men went back to the 8th floor, broke out two windows, and called for help. Fire fighters on the ground saw them and went upstairs. A security officer for one of the business in the building headed back up to a floor in the 40s after WTC 2 collapsed to see if all his personnel were out of the building. He was accompanied by a police officer, but the police officer had trouble breathing around the 10th floor and exited the building. The security officer had reached the 30th floor when the building shook as WTC 1 collapsed, and the stairwell became dark. He began to descend and stopped at the 23rd floor to see if anyone was on the OEM floor He opened the door to check for staff that might have been present and saw that the area was filled with smoke. He made it down to the 7th floor, where he stopped because he could not see or breathe at this point. He broke a window near the center of the north face to yell for help."
49. Ibid.
50. *) For the account of EMS division chief John Peruggia, see note 44.
    *) October 25, 2001, New York Times 9/11 interviews archive, file no. 9110161, interview with EMT Richard Zarrillo: "I'm an EMT working in fire operations as the special event coordinator. ... While sitting at my desk, probably just after the first plane had hit the tower, Chief Ganci had come running across the hall yelling something about a plane hitting the twin towers. Most of us thought he was joking until we looked out the window... I placed a call to Chief Peruggia to ask him his location. ... He thought I was joking. He cursed at me and hung up. Captain Nahmod was sitting next to me and he said we need to get some equipment... I spoke with Chief Peruggia. He called me back and said maybe you and Abdo, Captain Nahmod, need to head into the city to be part of command, runners or administratively, whatever we can do to help out. ... Chief Ramos was bringing us downstairs to get a pool car, so I think Commissioner Drury happened to be walking in at the wrong time and we asked him to drive us into the city. I'm not sure of the exact time, but I believe as we were coming over the Brooklyn Bridge was when the second plane hit the second tower. ... Captain Nahmod and I started heading down Vesey Street towards where we thought the command post would be. At that time we had received a page per Chief Peruggia to go into OEM [Office of Emergency Management] at No. 7 World Trade and activate our post in OEM. ... Abdo and I went into No. 7, activated OEM, placed calls to EMS Citywide, RCC, to tell them we were there and we were activated. Maybe five, ten minutes, not even ten minutes later, a rep from OEM came into the main room and said we need to evacuate the building; there's a third plane inbound. That was the only thing I really heard because I said, Abdo, we've got to go, and we made it down to the lobby of the building, street level, met up with Chief Peruggia in the lobby of the building. He said that there was no third plane but we needed to re-establish OEM right there so we can coordinate what was going on."
    *) October 11, 2001, New York Times 9/11 interviews archive, file no. 9110061, interview with NYFD captain Abdo Nahmod (doesn't specify the moment of the second impact, as Zarrillo did, but it clearly happened before he was present on-site or he would have mentioned it): "We went to the window. We looked and sure enough we saw visible flames coming from the top of the World Trade Center. Many people began to respond in different vehicles, and at one point, I responded with EMT Richard Zarillo, the special events coordinator, with Mr. Drury from BITS in his vehicle to get down to the World Trade Center. At this point, I communicated with Chief Peruggia via the land line, and we were directed to report to 7 World Trade to set up OEM [Office of Emergency Management]. Both myself and EMT Zarrillo went to the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade and began to log onto the terminals, as well as inform the citywide dispatch supervisor that we were activating OEM at this time, and operations were to begin. Moments thereafter, we were advised by the staff at OEM that we were to vacate the building, that they believed there was another possible plane on its way, and proceeded down the stairwell of 7 World Trade all the way down to the ground floor. Upon getting outside to 7 World Trade, I saw Chief Peruggia and Captain Stone..."
    *) December 4, 2001, New York Times 9/11 interviews archive, file no. 9110244, interview with NYFD Captain James Yakimovich: "When the second impact happened, everyone went running. A lot of civilian injuries... I assisted a couple of PD with [the injured].
    Got back and the I walked north on Church Street to Barclay. Barclay to Washington and at Washington Street I proceeded south to Vesey and that's where I went to OEM, because I figured since I worked there before I could give them a hand. I met Chief Peruggia, who said, see if you can get to the 23rd floor to staff the Office of Emergency Management, being the Fire Department respresentative.
    When I got to the 23rd floor they told me they were evacuating the building and I proceeded to the lobby and from that time I don't recall what happened, but I did get to 10 Engine and 10 Truck. ...
    I was approximately at the western end of 2 World Trade Center [with 10 Engine] when 2 World Trade Center collapsed."
51. June 2007, Loose Change interview, Barry Jennings (emergency coordinator and later deputy director of the Emergency Services Department, NY City Housing Authority) (Youtube): "I received a call shortly after the first plane had hit. I got there - I had to be inside on the 23rd floor when the second plane hit. ... I took a fire extinguisher and broke out the windows. The firefighters came to the window, because I was gonna come out on the fire hose. I didn't wanna stay there any longer. I mean, it was too hot. ... They came to the window. They started yelling: "Do not do that. It won't hold you." And then they ran away. See, I didn't know what was going on. That's when the first tower fell. ... Then I saw them come back. Now I saw them come back with more concern on their faces. Then they ran away again. The second tower fell. As they turned and ran the second time, the guys turned and said, "don't worry, we'll be back for you." And they did come back. This time they came back with ten firefighters."
52. *) May 2008, Alex Jones on his radio show (Youtube clip: '9_11 Key Witness Murdered'): "They were told "Get out of the building!" with a phone call. They get out. There's explosions that have gone off. He's stepping over dead bodies. And this is before either North Tower or South Tower, the 110 story towers, had fallen. ... Now, suddenly he gets threats. They threaten to fire him. All this stuff happens. And so even though he agrees that we can use it [and] it would be important to get out, we didn't put it out. I was one of the executive producers of Loose Change: Final Cut. Then the BBC backtracks who it is, the Guy Smith guy, who came to interview me for this hit piece, a previous hit piece on 9/11... Then about a month ago I was on BBC radio debating him and he said he was involved in this Building 7 piece that is coming out and they interviewed Barry Jennings for it. And we've seen the trailer. Basically, they edit craftedly and Jennings has been pressured. And he says, "Well, it looked like bodies. I thought it was bodies. It might not have been bodies. I meant the stuff on the floor was like bodies.""
    *) September 2008, Alex Jones on his radio show (Youtube clip: '9_11 Key Witness Murdered'): "Now we interviewed him for Loose Change: Final Cut. Word got out about it. He begged us, saying he'd been threatened. Saying his pension had been threatened. His job had been threatened. And other threats. Wouldn't specify what those threats were. That he needed to shut up. Then he didn't really recant: "Yes, there were explosions before the towers fell in Building 7." And he said, "Well, it could have been bodies." But earlier he said it were bodies on the ground. Then his boss just came out in the last few weeks and was interviewed by the BBC, saying "I never saw explosions," though the had said that on news that day, along with Mr. Jennings. Very suspicious that he is dead at 53. ... The problem is, he's credible, because he's the deputy emergency manager for that area. So that's why they had to get rid of him. And I have no doubt they killed him. It's a 95 percent chance, espcially now that they're being very secretive. ... Especially now they won't say what caused it... He was 53. He could have had a heart attack, maybe 5 percent chance. Right around the NIST report coming out. ... This was all coming out. There was talk of subpoeing him. That they're about to have enough signatures to have him on the ballet for a New York investigation of 9/11, calling him before a grand jury."
    *) Barry Jennings died on August 19, 2008. His apparent daughter-in-law Dominique (from the Bronx) has explained (in a series of the most horrendously written and illiterate forum messages) that he died of leukemia.
    topix.com/forum/city/port-jefferson-ny/T9LKD3E7G5MD8QH9K (accessed: November 11, 2016): "Feb 5, 2009: hey first of all barry jennings didnt die because of the government ok i seen everything u guys didnt see anything so if u want to right about him mack shore its the truth not a lie ok i go out with his son barry jennings jr we both seen everything and we no everything that happend we both stand by his fother sid when he was sick and when he died so talke what u no and not what u dont no. ...
    May 27, 2014: ... first of berry jennings sr is my father in law 2his son Barry jennings jr is his son I ben with him for 8 years 3 I us to go to his house when I was going out with barry jennings sr son Barry jennings jr they lived n Medford NY that's all u need to know n his wife name is Sheba jennings ...
    barry jennings sr died of cancer he was sick at home his son barry jennings jr took him to the hospital he died then no one new he was sick ...
    you don't need no confirmation about mi damn father in law he died of cancer that's all you need to know he lived in Medford with his son Barry jennings jr and his wife Sheba jennings he was from the city yall just trying to get more info about him ...
    he died of cancer the red blood cells spread so it was to laight he died he was brayed at pinelawn ...
    ok I haven't ben on hear for years people saying this in that who am I im Barry jennings sr daughter in law I go out with his son Barry jennings jr his young son witch lived with him in helped take care of his mother he got sick after the hole thing happened with the twin towers he died in 08 after his son graduation at Bellport high school he was sick had cancer brayed at pine lawn grave and died at stony brook hospital so for yall saying this get yr facts right yall don't no Barry jennings sr life he has more then one kid he has kids yes more then one more then two anymore info just ask don't try to assume what mi father in law has In his personal life so please let my fiancé father rest n peace he still is hurt we all hurt specially me and his son just had a child in 2011 he didn't get to meet ...
    and Jerel is his other son as well and barry jennings ..."
    The fact remains that Jennings lied and it makes one wonder if possibly he didn't know about this already by the time he talked to Alex Jones and the Loose Change crew.
53. Ibid.
54. 2008, Jennings in the BBC's 'The Third Tower' documentary: "[Narrator:] When he reaches the Office of Emergency Management, he is shocked by what he sees. [Barry Jennings:] To my amazement, nobody is there. I saw coffee that was still hot, still smoldering. It had screens all over the place. The screens were blank. So I didn't know what was going on. At that time I received a phone call from one of my higher ups. And he said, "Where are you?" And I said, "You know, at the Emergency Command Center." A long pause. And he came back and said, " Get out of there. Get out of there now." [Narrator:] At 9:59 a.m. the South Tower collapses. Debris and dust are thrown over a huge area and Tower 7 doesn't escape. These are some of the only pictures of Building 7 at that moment. Just over a minute later, the fire alarm in Tower 7 is triggered. Because it's on test, there's no information on where the fires are. [Brian Jennings:] I wanted to get out of that building in a hurry. So instead of taking one step at a time, I'm jumping landings. When I reached down to the 6th floor, there was this eerie sound, the whole building went dark, and the staircase that I was standing on gave way. [Narrator:] At 10:28, the North Tower collapses in just 11 seconds. ... When we got to the 8th floor, I started walking to one side of the building. That side of the building was gone. ... The first explosion that I heard was when I was on the stairwell landing, when we made it down to the 6th floor. Then we made it back to the 8th floor and heard some more explosions. Like a boom. Like an explosion. Yes [more than one]. ... I could smell the fire. You know, I could smell the smoke. And I felt the heat. It was intense. ... When we get outside, a police officer says: "You have to run. We have more information of bombs. So you have to run." ... All this time, I didn't know it, all this time somebody had called my wife, told her I'd died in the building. Whose voice comes over the TV set? It's mine. And my sister said, "Wait a minute, that's Barry right there." So my wife comes flying back down the stairs and says, " Wait a minute, is this live? Because we were told he was dead." And a little caption in the corner, the left-hand corner of the TV set, said it was live. [documentary switches to a clock at 12:20 p.m.] ... [Narrator:] There's no evidence that anyone died in Tower 7 on 9/11, but did Barry's interview suggest something else? [Dylan Avery:] The amount of detail Barry gave in this interview is unreal. He said he was stepping over dead bodies in the lobby. [Narrator:] Trouble is, Barry Jennings himself disagrees with their interpretation of his words. [Jennings:] I didn't like the way, you know, I was portrayed. They portrayed me as seeing dead bodies. I never saw dead bodies. [Narrator:] But Dylan Avery has a recording of his interview and is unrepentant. [Dylan Avery plays Jennings interview:] ... and the firefighter that took us down kept saying: "Do not look down." And I kept saying, "Why?" He said, "Do not look down." And, we were stepping over people. And you know you can feel when you are stepping over people." [Dylan Avery:] I didn't take anything out of context. [Barry Jennings:] I said it felt like I was stepping over them. And that's the way they portrayed me. And I didn't appreciate that. So I told them to pull my interview. ... Do I think that our government would do something like that to its people. No, I honestly don't believe that. All I know is that I was in there, heard what I heard, saw what I saw. "
55. Mid 2008, Michael D. Hess to the BBC (Youtube): "When we got [down] exactly to [floor] 6, all of a sudden, at the same instant, five different things happened. The first was: the lights went out; the emergency lights went out. So we were in total darkness. Second, the stairwell filled up with a tremendous amount of smoke and dirt and soot, much more than it had been before. Previously, you could breathe for about three flights down, but at that point you couldn't breath at all. So the second thing was the soot. The third thing was the sprinklers went on. So all of a sudden we were in the dark, no emergency lights, and the water was pouring down on top of us. At the same instant, and the last two things were the scariest, the building began to shake and it was as if you were in an earthquake. I've never really been in an earthquake, but it's what it felt like. The whole building was shaking. And then the last thing was that the stairway ran into a wall. All of a sudden, as you were going down on the sixth floor, you hit a wall. ... While it was shaking we just stood there and after, I don't know, five seconds or 10 seconds the building stopped shaking. And in my mind I had assumed that there had been an explosion in the basement. I don't know why it hit me that way, but we couldn't go anywhere. The wall was blocking it. It was pitch dark. I was nervous, but once the building stopped shaking, then I calmed down. Yes, I figured, there was an explosion in the basement, maybe, but it stopped. No, nothing [else we heard regarding explosions]. You heard two things: a tremendous wind and you heard a tremendous number of sirens. And I look out the window and no. 1) this ash is flying around. Papers, computer papers, are flying around. And again, I was looking north and west, and the World Trade Center towers were south, so I couldn't see in that direction. And in my mind they were just still on fire. ... I position, and I'm quite firm on it, there were no explosions. Did I feel the building shake? Absolutely."
56. See ISGP's 'The Supranational Suspects Behind 9/11' for details and sources.
57. Information on James Randi gathered in his biography of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.
58. *) January 29, 2008, MitchLampert channel, 'Hecklers at TAM 5.5, Part 1' (Mitch Lampert is filming here as someone yells): "Mark Roberts is part of the CIA. [laughing] [Roberts:] They always say I'm part of the CIA. They never say FBI, who would really be the ones investigating them in this country. The FBI is not spooky enough I guess, so they call me CIA all the time. [Heckler:] You're covering up for that traiter and mass murderer Larry Silverstein. You'll figure it out wen you're besides him on the scaffolding. I am citing this email as evidence for your trial. {Roberts gives basic explanation]. [Another heckler about Roberts needing to identify himself.] [Roberts:] This was a dicussion on Wikipedia They were trying to decide if I was a human being [laughing] and the idea being that no one can know so much about 9/11, so I must be either a machine of part of some sort of consortium. [Yet another irrational heckler]." Military, ex-special forces, freemasonry, occultic forces, and wanting to kill Mark Roberts are all brought up by audience members pretending to be hecklers. Most of the heckling is done with very little emotion, but people are all laughing each time.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gtS3ecwIXQ
    *) Uploaded January 29, 2008, MitchLampert channel, 'Hecklers at TAM 5.5, Part 2': ""Wowbagger" [Lampert] interrupts the 9/11 expert, Mark Roberts, at the end of his presentation at The Amazing Meeting 5.5, on January 26, 2008. Includes brief intro. (TAM 5.5 was hosted by James Randi) Thanks to John Huntington for holding the camera!"
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMD4QSkMgyw
59. December 5, 2001, Mansoor Ijaz for the Los Angeles Times, 'Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize'. See ISGP's 'The Supranational Suspects Behind 9/11' for details.
60. September 4, 2002, New York Times, 'New Task Force Will Evaluate Fire Dept.'s Technical Readiness'. See ISGP's 'The Supranational Suspects Behind 9/11' for details.
61. *) 2008, BBC, 'The Third Tower', 14:35, firefighter with last name Miller, live on 9/11: "There's no way to put the fire out. We've got all kinds of water problems. The two trade buildings took out the mains. We just got hit with just about everything. This is beyond [looks away in frustration]... [Narrator:] Eventually fire boats were used to pump what water they could from the Hudson River."
    *) November 2008, NIST NCSTAR1-9, full report on WTC 7, pp. 73, 629: "The primary water supply for WTC 7 was provided by the 12 in. water main beneath Washington Street. Fire department connections (FDCs) were located on the south, east, and west sides of the building. A 3 m3/min (750 gal/min) manual fire pump that served the entire building was located on the ground floor. ... Low zone. A 2m3/min (500 gal/min) automatic fire pump, located on the ground floor, supplied the sprinkler and dual standpipe systems from the ground floor through the 20th floor. ... The standpipe and automatic sprinkler systems were divided into three zones. As prescribed by the NYCBC, each zone had a primary and secondary water supply: - The primary water supply for fire protection for the high zone (Floors 40 through 47) and mid-level zone (Floors 21 through 39) was from two water storage tanks on the 46th floor. The secondary supply was pumped from the city water main. - The primary water supply for the fire protection for the low zone, floors 1 through 20, was a direct connection to the city water mains. The secondary supply was from an automatic fire pump, which was connected to the city water main as well. Since the city water main had been compromised as a result of the collapses of the two towers, there was no water supply to control the fires on the 7th through 13th floors."
62. JB podcast link: youtube.com/watch?v=u1CZmtR8gno (accessed: January 17, 2018).