Film Revisits 9/11 Conspiracies

By David A. James, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
April 7, 2007

The new film “Improbable Collapse,” which recently showed in Fairbanks, purports that the failure of World Trade Center Building 7 on Sept. 11, 2001, was the result of a planned explosion. This movie joins a growing body of films, books and Web sites claiming that the truth about what occurred that day has been systematically covered up.

These works, mostly produced by fierce critics of the president, spring from the ludicrous notion that the attacks were orchestrated by the Bush administration as a catalyst for plunging the nation into war. These theories, though easily refuted, are being accepted by an increasing number of well-intentioned but extremely gullible people.

In an effort to counter this nonsense, Popular Mechanics published a March 2005 piece titled “Debunking the 9/11 Myths”. The article, since expanded into a book, is based on exhaustive interviews with specialists in a range of fields who eviscerate the conspiracy theories.

One of the primary claims of the theorists is that fire alone cannot destroy steel-framed structures. Popular Mechanics explains that at temperatures of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, steel loses 50 percent of its strength, while at 1,800 degrees it maintains less than 10 percent of its integrity.

As the magazine points out, “while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) reports that pockets of fire hit 1,832F.” (NIST documents pertaining to the event are archived at www.wtc.nist.gov.)

The steel needed to only weaken, not melt. Once the integrity of the inflamed and severely structurally damaged sections failed, the weight of the above portions overwhelmed the remaining carrying capacity of the buildings, triggering the collapse. The engineering report explaining this is included in the Popular Mechanics book.

Conspiracy theorists raise questions about the collapse of Building 7. This building had a unique structure that resulted in its support columns carrying an unusually heavy load. The magazine quotes the NIST finding, which states that “What our preliminary analysis has shown is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors, it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so that the entire section comes down.”

Building 7 absorbed thousands of tons of debris that fell on it when the other buildings collapsed. Fires then raged within it for seven hours. As Popular Mechanics notes, “WTC 7 might have withstood the physical damage it received, or the fire that burned for hours, but those combined factors — along with the building’s unusual construction — were enough to set off the chain-reaction collapse.”

Claims are also made that thermite, an explosive used in controlled demolitions, was found on building remains. In a document available at the Journal of Debunking 911, Brent Blanchard, director of field operations at Protec Documentation Services in New Jersey, a specialist in building demolitions whose company documented the removal of debris from Ground Zero, writes that “no demolition personnel at any level noticed telltale signs of thermite’s degenerative ‘fingerprint’ on any beams during the eight months of debris removal.”

A recent letter writer to the Daily News-Miner complained that “the possibility that the buildings were brought down by demolition has never been officially investigated.” This is because there is absolutely no scientifically credible evidence to prompt such an investigation.

Building implosions, as Blanchard and Popular Mechanics both explain, begin at the bottom and work upward. Video footage clearly shows the Twin Towers collapsing downward from their impact points. Furthermore, preparing a skyscraper for implosion requires weeks of work by full crews who need complete access to the building. If this took place in three of the World Trade Center structures, certainly someone from security would have noticed.

The official account of the events of 9/11 that the conspiracy theorists are so quick to deride is the cumulative story assembled by thousands of reporters, researchers, engineers and investigators, as well as experts in the fields of terrorism, aviation, demolitions and more. All of these people have to be deliberately hiding numerous facts if indeed the American people are being lied to.

There are plenty of good reasons to criticize the Bush administration for its failure to prioritize terrorism before 9/11 as well as its mishandling of the issue since. But to falsely accuse it of complicity in the attacks is not simply dishonest. It is unforgivable, for it showers contempt upon all the victims of that horrible day.