Independent Investigators Release Suppressed Blueprints of Destroyed World Trade Center Tower

The most recent version of the official explanation has been supplied by the three-year multi-million-dollar study of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which abandoned the earlier truss-failure-based "pancake" theory proposed by FEMA's 2002 Building Performance Study in favor of a theory of "global collapse" induced by a chain of events including impact column damage, dislodging of fireproofing, floor sagging, and "column instability".

Although NIST's 2005 Final Report (PDF) did not explain how collapse initiation led to global collapse, in 2006 it responded to some aspects of the demolition theory in a Frequently Asked Questions sheet. NIST blamed the speeds of the failures on the momentum of the falling top portions of the buildings, stating that "the momentum . . . so greatly exceeded the strength capacity of the structure below, that it was unable to stop or even to slow the falling mass. The downward momentum felt by each successive lower floor was even larger due to the increasing mass."

Dr. Steven Jones, Kevin Ryan, Jim Hoffman, and others responded to the FAQ on websites and via emails, but received no more communication from NIST.

The release of the blueprints is believed to be the first public presentation of a significant number of detailed architectural drawings of the destroyed skyscrapers. In 2002, lead FEMA investigator Gene Corley of the American Society of Civil Engineers was denied access to the plans by the Port Authority until he agreed to sign a waiver stating that his group would not use the blueprints to sue the agency. Corley and other officials testifying before a House Science Committee inquiry into the collapse drew angry comments from members of Congress regarding the withholding of the blueprints and the removal and scrapping of approximately 80% of structural steel from the debris pile without examination by any fire experts.

Another expert at the hearings, Glenn Corbett, a fire science expert from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, stated, "The lack of significant amounts of steel for examination will make it difficult, if not impossible, to make a definitive statement as to the specific cause and chronology of the collapse." Investigators at the time stated that they did not have the authority to preserve the wreckage as evidence.

Public access to blueprints of the three destroyed skyscrapers - the Twin Towers and WTC Building 7 - has been a long-standing goal of the 9/11 research community. The inability to access data on the structural design of the buildings has been an impediment to further investigation of the theory, these researchers say. One goal they have is to remodel the collapses and see if NIST's findings can be replicated.

"A key element of the scientific method is reproducibility - can others repeat the experiment and get the same results?" Jim Hoffman said, investigator and creator of wtc7.net . "Without the original data, findings cannot be examined scientifically. Even the most prominent scientists and engineers in history have made mistakes. But without the ability to try to replicate others' findings, we might keep on making the same mistakes over and over."

Groups releasing the plans cite support for the demolition theory in their organizations and elsewhere by a variety of professionals including structural and civil engineers, architects, and physicists. Supporters point to several features which they say cannot be explained by a gravity-driven collapse, including the speed, symmetry, explosiveness, thoroughness of pulverization, and totality of these events, and numerous reports of molten metal pools in the debris piles.

The research of physicist Steven E. Jones has focused on the molten metal pools found in basement areas under rubble piles of the Twin Towers and Building 7. He states in his paper "Why Indeed Did the World Trade Center Buildings Completely Collapse," that the observations of molten metal "are consistent with the use of high-temperature cutter charges such as thermite . . . routinely used to melt / cut / demolish steel."

Neither of the government-sponsored engineering studies of the Twin Towers' destruction - FEMA's and NIST's - disclose core column dimensions - dimensions now apparent in the blueprints. Hoffman believes these studies minimized the strength of the cores and their structural role, as did the Commission Report. "The Commission Report denied the existence of the core columns," he says, "describing each Tower's structural core as 'a hollow steel shaft.'"

Hoffman says that the newly released blueprints show what analysis of independent investigators have long held on the basis of construction photographs and scattered reports in journals, such as the Engineering News Record, from the era of the Towers' construction: "The Towers contained 47 large core columns, more than a dozen of which retained dimensions of 54 x 22 inches through the 66th floor, and tapered in stages on higher floors. The core columns around the South Tower's crash zone were about twice as heavy as those in the North Tower's crash zone."

Hoffman's associate editor, Gregg Roberts, sees the NIST Final Report as a whitewash. "The refusal by NIST to fully disclose its computer models, its assumptions, and the conflicts of interest of the many defense contractors who assisted in this whitewash of an investigation reveal the true intentions behind the Report."

Groups investigating the Towers' destruction also cite the case of the collapse of WTC Building 7. In 2004, during the 9/11 Commission hearings, the 9/11 Family Steering Committee asked of the Commission, "On 9/11, no aircraft hit WTC 7. Why did the building fall at 5:20 PM that evening?"

The group formed in the fall of 2001 to demand an independent investigation into the attacks. However, 70 percent of the questions were either not sufficiently addressed or not addressed at all by the Commission. NIST has not yet released a final report on the proposed cause for the collapse of WTC 7, nor did the Commission mention that building in its Final Report. The newly released blueprints do not include WTC 7, built 10 years after the main World Trade Center complex.

Jones has described the type of investigation he would like to see. He states in his paper, "A truly independent, cross-disciplinary, international panel should be formed. Such a panel would consider all viable hypotheses, including the pre-positioned-explosives theory, guided not by politicized notions and constraints, but rather by observations and calculations, to reach a scientific conclusion."

Critics of the Bush Administration's secretive policies have claimed that the alternative accounts of the attack have thrived in part because of the lack of information such as the WTC blueprints.

Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice (stj911.org)
9-11 Research (911research.wtc7.net)
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (ae911truth.org)

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