NIST's study of the Destruction of Twin Towers Found Wanting

Daniel Ellsberg: “Secrets ... Can Be Kept Reliably ... For Decades … Even Though They Are Known to THOUSANDS of Insiders”

Washington's Blog

Judges, prosecutors and journalists all know that collusion happens every day. As I noted last year:

Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme was a conspiracy. The heads of Enron were found guilty of conspiracy, as was the head of Adelphia. Numerous lower-level government officials have been found guilty of conspiracy. See this, this, this, this and this.

Time Magazine's financial columnist Justin Fox writes:

Some financial market conspiracies are real ...

Most good investigative reporters are conspiracy theorists, by the way.

Indeed, conspiracies are so common that judges are trained to look at conspiracy allegations as just another legal claim to be disproven or proven by the evidence.

As I pointed out in 2009:

Federal and all 50 state's codes include specific statutes addressing conspiracy, and providing the punishment for people who commit conspiracies.

***

Conspiracy is a very well-recognized crime in American law, taught to every first-year law school student as part of their basic curriculum. Telling a judge that someone has a "conspiracy theory" would be like telling him that someone is claiming that he trespassed on their property, or committed assault, or stole his car. It is a fundamental legal concept.

Obviously, many conspiracy allegations are false (if you see a judge at a dinner party, ask him to tell you some of the crazy conspiracy allegations which were made in his court). Obviously, people will either win or lose in court depending on whether or not they can prove their claim with the available evidence. But not all allegations of trespass, assault, or theft are true, either.

Proving a claim of conspiracy is no different from proving any other legal claim, and the mere label "conspiracy" is taken no less seriously by judges.

Indeed, even Obama's information tzar - who advocates using the power of the state to shut down talk of conspiracies - admits:

Some conspiracy theories, under our definition, have turned out to be true ... The Watergate hotel room used by Democratic National Committee was, in fact, bugged by Republican officials, operating at the behest of the White House. In the 1950s, the CIA did, in fact, administer LSD and related drugs under Project MKULTRA, in an effort to investigate the possibility of 'mind control.'” [This post isn't going down the rabbit hole of mind control.]

Can't Hide It

Those accusing Goldman Sachs, Dick Cheney or some other powerful people of conspiring to enrich their interests are often met with the argument that "someone would have spilled the beans" if there had really been a conspiracy.

But famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg explains:

It is a commonplace that "you can't keep secrets in Washington" or "in a democracy, no matter how sensitive the secret, you're likely to read it the next day in the New York Times." These truisms are flatly false. They are in fact cover stories, ways of flattering and misleading journalists and their readers, part of the process of keeping secrets well. Of course eventually many secrets do get out that wouldn't in a fully totalitarian society. But the fact is that the overwhelming majority of secrets do not leak to the American public. This is true even when the information withheld is well known to an enemy and when it is clearly essential to the functioning of the congressional war power and to any democratic control of foreign policy. The reality unknown to the public and to most members of Congress and the press is that secrets that would be of the greatest import to many of them can be kept from them reliably for decades by the executive branch, even though they are known to thousands of insiders.

History proves Ellsberg right. For example:

One hundred and thirty thousand (130,000) people from the U.S., UK and Canada worked on the Manhattan Project. But it was kept secret for years
A BBC documentary shows that:

...

http://911blogger.com/news/2011-05-25/daniel-ellsberg-secrets-can-be-kept-reliably-decades-even-though-they-are-known-thousands-insiders

Journal of 9/11 Studies 38
April 2007

PROOF THAT THE THERMAL AND GRAVITATIONAL ENERGY
AVAILABLE WERE INSUFFICIENT TO MELT STEEL IN THE TWIN
TOWERS AND 7 WORLD TRADE CENTER ON 9/11/01

By Terry Morrone.
Professor Emeritus of Physics, Adelphi University

In this communication I shall show that only explosives could have produced
the large amounts of molten steel found at the site of the World Trade Center (WTC)
in the days following 9/11. There is universal agreement by scientists in and out of
government that the temperatures reached in the fires were much lower than the
melting point of steel. (1-3) Steel could have only have melted (assuming no
explosives were used) if it gained additional energy in falling. I shall show that this
gravitational energy is insufficient to cause melting.

Steven E. Jones has made a strong case that some molten steel (or iron-rich
metal) was observed pouring from high up in the South Tower (4). In that case
gravity was not a factor. However, much more molten steel was probably found in
the rubble than was observed pouring out of the buildings, and the purpose of this
report is to show that gravity could not have played a significant role in its formation.
Although there are some technical points involved in my arguments, I will
describe, in an elementary way, all the scientific concepts involved. This report will
also provide references showing that molten steel was indeed found.

Unit of Energy
I will use the joule, the unit of energy in the metric system. One joule per
second is a watt. We're all familiar with watts since light bulbs are rated in them. For example, a 100 watt light bulb uses up energy at a rate of 100 joules per second.
Another common unit is the calorie. One calorie is 4.186 joules. This is not the
calorie used in rating foods, which are rated in kilocalories or Calories (calories with
a capital C). A human uses up about 2000 Calories a day which is approximately
equivalent to the rate of energy usage of a 100 watt light bulb.

Journal of 9/11 Studies 39 April 2007

Heat of Fusion

Suppose you start off with a solid at room temperature and you add energy to
it by putting it in an oven. The temperature will increase until you reach the melting
point. Then as the solid melts the temperature will stay constant until the all solid has
changed to the liquid. Then the temperature will begin to increase again. An example
of this occurs when you take an ice cubes out of the refrigerator and put them in a
glass. The ice cubes heat up and then start to change to liquid water. This occurs at
32 degrees Fahrenheit or 0 degrees Centigrade. Then, after the ice has melted, the
water heats up to room temperature. The melting point of steel is at about 1535
degrees C. The energy required to change steel from solid to liquid is called the heat
of fusion and it's about 272,000 joules per kilogram. (5)

Heat Transfer
Energy flows from hot to cold. It never flows the other way. Thus it is
impossible for a steel bar, initially with the same temperature throughout, to, by
itself, transfer energy so that one end is hotter than the other. Thus in spite of the
large fires in the WTC, no steel could melt unless the temperature rose above the
melting point. And according to tests conducted by NIST, no WTC steel samples saw
temperatures of 600 C, which is well below the melting point of steel. (6)

Specific Heat
This is the amount of energy required to raise a unit mass of a substance, one
degree. For example at room temperature the specific heat of iron is 0.45 joules per
gram per degree Centigrade. (7) The temperature has to be specified since the
specific heat varies with temperature. The specific heat of iron is about the same as
the specific heat of steel. It increases with temperature, reaching a value of about
0.72 Joules per gram at 1400 degrees C. (8)

Energy Acquired by a Falling Body

A falling body is accelerated by the force of gravity. This is, according to one
of Newton's Laws, equal to the mass times the acceleration of gravity, which in the
metric system is 9.8 meters per second per second. Actually when a body falls, it is Journal of 9/11 Studies 40 April 2007
also acted on by the force of friction. In the spirit of giving the official theory every
possible chance, we shall neglect friction. The energy acquired by a falling body is
equal to the product of the force multiplied by the distance through which the force is
applied. Thus the energy acquired by a body of mass m falling a distance h is m*g*h,
(meaning m times g times h). The energy acquired by a 1 kilogram object falling
from the top of one of the twin towers is thus 1* 9.8*411 = 4028 joules. (The height
of the twin towers was about 1350 feet or 411 meters.)

Energy Needed to Melt Steel
Now let's first calculate the energy needed to raise the temperature of one
kilogram of steel from an initial temperature to the melting point temperature. The
NIST (1) report on page 30 states that the temperature of insulated steel in a fire
never gets above 350 degrees C, while uninsulated steel can reach a temperature of
800 degrees C. According to the official theory much insulation (which is used in all
steel frame buildings) was knocked off the steel beams by the impact of the planes.
Of course, 7 WTC was never hit by a plane and molten steel was found in its
wreckage. The actual temperature of the steel was probable never higher than 250
degrees C (3), but let's be conservative and use the 800 degree number. The average
specific heat between 800 degrees C and the melting point (1536 degrees C) is about
.65 joules per gram per degree C or 650 joules per kilogram per degree C. (Note the
energy is proportional to the mass, so a kilogram needs a thousand times more
energy to raise its temperature a degree as a gram.) Thus the energy needed to raise
the temperature of a kilogram of steel from 800 degrees to the melting point is
(1536 – 800)*650 = 478,400 joules.

The energy needed to melt one kilogram of steel is 272,000 joules as described
above. Thus the total energy needed to melt one kilogram (or per kilogram) is
272,000 + 478,400 or 750,400 joules.

Let's be generous and assume that all the energy of motion of the falling steel
is converted to heat in the steel. Then the gravitational energy available as shown
above is at most 4028 joules. This is a lot less than the 750,400 joules needed to melt
the steel. In fact the gravitational energy is too small by a factor of 750,400 divided
by 4028, or 186. The factor is probably much larger because, for example, all the
molten steel probably did not fall from the top floor and in the case of WTC 7, the Journal of 9/11 Studies 41 April 2007
building height is about half that of the towers. A more realistic number would be
over a thousand.

How the Steel Was Melted

Steven E. Jones, obtained several samples of once melted steel (or iron-rich
material) from the WTC (4,9). He had it analyzed and it contained mostly iron but
also Sulfur and other metals indicating that it was produced by the reaction of
thermate and steel. Thermate is a variation of thermite, which can be an incendiary or
explosive depending on the fineness of the powders comprising the mixtures. Ultrafine powders (less than about 100 micron particle size) are needed for the explosive
form. Thermite analogs can be used in building demolitions. (10) When thermite is
ignited a chemical reaction takes place that produces molten iron and lots of heat.
Sulfur is added to enhance the melting of steel by the molten iron product.

Sulfur
was also found, independently, in steel from WTC 7 by J.R. Barnett. (11)
D.P. Grimmer showed that a few inches of thermite applied to the outside of
any column in the twin towers would contain enough energy to melt through the
column; enough could be used to bring the buildings down. (12)

Evidence That Molten Steel Was Found in the WTC Debris
In James Glanz's New York Times 11/29/2001 Article “A Nation Challenged:
The Sight; Engineers Have A Culprit in the Strange Collapse of 7 World Trade
Center: Diesel Fuel.” The next to last paragraph reads “A combination of an
uncontrolled fire and the structural damage might have been able to bring the
building down, some engineers said. But that would not explain steel members in the
debris pile that appear to have been partly evaporated in extraordinarily high
temperatures, Dr. Barnett said.”

In the website
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/moltensteel.html
several references to reports of molten steel are cited. Here are a few examples:
A report by Waste Age describes New York Sanitation Department workers moving
“everything from molten steel beams to human remains.”
Journal of 9/11 Studies 42 April 2007
A report on the Government Computer News website quotes Greg Fuchek, vice
president of sales for LinksPoint Inc. stating: In the first weeks, sometimes when a
worker would pull a steel beam from the wreckage, the end of the beam would be
dripping molten steel.
A Messenger-Inquirer report recounts the experiences of Bronx firefighter “Toolie”
O'Tolle, who stated that “some of the beams lifted from deep within the catacombs
of Ground Zero by cranes were dripping from molten steel.” See also:
http://www.pnacitizen.org/john_gross_nist_pnac.php
Conclusions
Since there was molten steel in the wreckage of the World Trade Center,
and since the temperatures of the fires were insufficient to melt steel, and since
the gravitational energy was shown to be very much smaller than the energy
needed to melt steel, the Twin Towers and 7 WTC could only have been brought
down by explosives or cutter charges.

[References available at,]

http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/ProfMorroneOnMeltingWTCsteel.pdf

The Ghost in the Machines: Evidence of Foreknowledge
in the WTC Hard Drive Recoveries

by Michael Fury

Many are aware of the surge in put options purchased on American and United Airlines
as well as several major tenants of the WTC in the days preceding 9/11, purchases the
9/11 Commission Report waves away in a footnote on pg. 499 as having no connection
with the events of 9/11 because the unnamed "institutional investors" responsible had "no
conceivable ties to al Qaeda". More obscure, and nowhere mentioned in the Commission
Report, are the facts of the WTC computer data recovery operation undertaken in late
2001 by Convar GmbH, a German firm. Under conditions of hermetic secrecy, Convar
used its proprietary technology to salvage data from the damaged hard drives of WTC
tenants, as reported in December 2001 by Reuters and CNN.
http://www.rediff.com/money/2001/dec/17wtc.htm
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TECH/industry/12/20/wtc.harddrives.idg/
From the Reuters article:
"The suspicion is that inside information about the attack was used to send financial
transaction commands and authorisations in the belief that amid all the chaos the
criminals would have, at the very least, a good head start," said Convar director Peter
Henschel."

"Richard Wagner, a data retrieval expert at the company, said illegal transfers of more
than $100 million might have been made immediately before and during the
disaster."
"There is a suspicion that some people had advance knowledge of the approximate time
of the plane crashes in order to move out amounts exceeding $100 million," Wagner said.
"They thought that the records of their transactions could not be traced after the
main frames were destroyed."
"Henschel said the companies in the United States were working together with the FBI to
piece together what happened on September 11 and that he was confident the destination
of the dubious transactions would one day be tracked down."

read on at,

http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2008/GhostWTC.pdf

Structural Steel

Destruction of the Towers' Steel Remains

The only constituents of the Twin Towers that survived the "collapses" in the form of recognizable pieces of any size were their metal parts, such as pieces of structural steel and aluminum cladding. 1 Virtually all the non-metallic parts of the towers and their contents were converted to microscopic dust particles or small unrecognizable fragments.

Building 7, though also reduced to a short pile of rubble, was not as thoroughly pulverized as the towers. Large sections of the building's perimeter wall could be seen on the rubble pile.

The surviving fragments of steel from the Twin Towers, most of them between 10 and 30 feet in length, and the larger remaining steel sections from Building 7, were essential to any serious investigation of the collapses. These catastrophic failures were at least as deserving of careful study as other rare events that are studied intensively, such as the aviation disasters investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Normally, great care is taken in preserving the evidence from structural failures and crime scenes.

No such effort was made to preserve the evidence of the unprecedented and unexplained collapses of skyscrapers WTC 1, WTC 2, and Building 7 in lower Manhattan -- easily the three largest and least understood structural failures in World history. Indeed the evidence was destroyed with remarkable speed and efficiency.


http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/steel.html