The Smoking Gun - That the BBC refuse to consider. Remember Building 7?

While these intelligence failures suggest at least the reasonable possibility of U.S. government complicity in 9/11, there is a mountain of physical evidence that directly implicates high-level government knowledge and participation in the planning and execution of September 11. Perhaps the most damning evidence lies in the bizarre collapse of WTC7 Anyone familiar with the story of 9/11 knows about the collapse of the WTC North and South Twin-Towers. But a third high rise also fell that day. At 5:20 p.m., the massive 47-story steel frame Building 7, untouched by the hijacked airplanes, imploded in the exact manner of a professionally engineered demolition - at near free-fall speed, straight down, and with scientific precision into a compact pile of rubble, barely damaging any of the surrounding buildings.

The official explanation for the collapse is fire - as in fire weakened the building's structural support steel to the point where it could no longer hold its own weight upright. The magazine Popular Mechanics has tried to posit the theory of lethal structural damage caused by the falling debris of the North Tower as reason for Building 7's collapse. But no existing public photographs, nor videos, show anything near their claim that 1/3 of Building 7's façade was gouged out. Furthermore, even if structural damage was significant, this would not account for Building 7's eventual symmetrical, box-like collapse, where all four corners, and all four facades of the building fell simultaneously straight to the ground. And most significantly, the official government explanation is still fire. So this essay will stay with fire as the stated cause.

Flames were visible on 3-4 floors of the building, having been apparently ignited by falling debris and ruptured diesel tanks at the base of the structure. And while relatively minor in severity, these fires were apparently responsible for the building's demise. But fire as the cause for collapse poses a number of significant problems - problems that break fundamental laws of nature. Firstly, fire from diesel fuel and building debris does not remotely approach the necessary temperature required to weaken and melt steel. Steel is melted and forged in sophisticated blast furnaces at incredibly high temperatures. Secondly, even if fire did cause the necessary weakening of the buildings steel support beams, each of those more than 50 beams would have had to weaken and fail at the exact same time to account for the symmetrical downward trajectory of the collapse. A wildly contentious scenario. Dr. Steven Jones, Professor of Physics at BYU who specializes in the fusion of metals, has comprehensively and scientifically debunked the possibility of Building 7 collapsing due to fire (or the minor damage to the building's façade from the falling debris of the North Tower).

In the spring of 2007, Professor Jones published his second major paper on 9/11 -
Professor Jones' meticulous research explains why no other steel frame building has ever suffered a total collapse anywhere on the planet before or after 9/11 due to fire (remember, Building 7 was NOT hit by an aircraft). Including WTC 4, 5, and 6, which were more intensely pelted by debris from the Twin Towers' collapse, and had fires of equal intensity burning for many more hours than the adjacent Building 7. (For more examples of other intense high-rise building fires that did not cause collapse, which did not result in total structural collapse. This 32-story high rise burned fiercely for 20 hours, with flames shooting hundreds of feet into the air, gutting the entire building. And while significantly more severe than the fires of Building 7, which burned for only a few hours on only a few floors, the Windsor Building flames did not bring the building down. The damage from the fire did produce a partial collapse, and this collapse behaved exactly in line with the laws of physics and nature. Part of the building fell in an isolated collapse into the street below, leaving a huge, gaping wound in the middle of the high-rise with exposed rebar and debris hanging hundreds of feet into the air. The inferno did not produce a symmetrical, straight down, box-like, virtual free-fall total collapse witnessed in the fall of Building 7. Strategically planted, well-timed explosive devices are what weaken steel symmetrically and create coordinated downward implosions. Not random fires scattered throughout a building.

Another, and perhaps stronger, piece of evidence for controlled demolition of Building 7 is the speed at which the structure fell. It was a 576-foot tall building, and a conservative estimate of available video evidence shows that it fell in 6.5 seconds. A marble, with nothing but wind resistance in its path, would fall to the ground from the same height in roughly 6 seconds. Somehow, the top of this building fell to the ground in a perfectly symmetrical downward trajectory, with 47 floors of steel, concrete, and thousands of tons of upright standing debris in its path providing huge amounts of vertical resistance, at virtually free-fall speed. Allegedly because of random fires on a few floors. .

It is important to note that even if Popular Mechanics is right in its assertion that damage to Building 7 from falling debris of the Towers caused its collapse, this still does nothing to explain the impossible speed at which it fell. Only controlled demolition, as Dr. Kuttler states at the end of his computation, resolves the observed rate of collapse. Because in a controlled demolition, waves of progressive explosions from the top down would remove sections of resistant columns and supports, providing the vacuum-like pocket needed to account for the 6.5-second collapse. No other hypothesis, including the premise narrated in the 'official story', accounts for this speed.

Because all available evidence points to this controlled demolition as the most logical reason for Building 7's particular collapse pattern, serious questions now need answering. To wire a building of that size for implosion requires weeks of careful study and planning. Which means whoever wired the explosives knew far in advance of the September 11 plot. So who? And why? Perhaps Larry Silverstein has an answer. In July of 2001, 2 months before the attack, the new leaseholder of the Twin Towers and Building 7 took out a huge insurance policy on his buildings. In it, there was a special clause 'in case of terrorist attack'. For the collapse of the Twin Towers, which he also owned, Silverstein argued in court that he should be compensated twice because two separate airplanes flew into his two separate buildings. And this, according to his argument, constituted two terrorist attacks. He won this argument, and was awarded $7 Billion for the Towers' collapse, quite a return for his initial investment.

A short time after September 11, Silverstein further implicated himself when he made a grave verbal blunder in an interview for a PBS special where he admitted that he and the fire authorities decided to 'pull' (implode) Building 7 on the afternoon of 9/11 as a way to avoid incurring more loss of life. But a last minute decision to 'pull' by Silverstein and the authorities would have been flatly impossible because of the weeks required in the planning and planting of explosives. When asked to explain these strange, incriminating comments, Silverstein refused, for two years, to clarify. Until finally his office released a statement claiming that what Silverstein meant by 'pull' was to pull the firefighters out of the building before it collapsed. But this is another in a long line of nonsensical statements made by principals in the 9/11 debacle. Silverstein and the 'officials' to whom he was speaking knew that firefighters had been evacuated hours before the alleged conversation and subsequent collapse took place. For further analysis on this subject. It is worth noting that on the morning of 9/11, all of the buildings making up the WTC complex not owned by Larry Silverstein managed to remain upright, despite equally heavy fire and structural damage.

Perhaps a government official from the CIA, Department of Defense, the IRS, the SEC branch investigating the infamous Wall Street corporate fraud cases, the Secret Service, or New York City's Office of Emergency Management (OEM) knows something about Building 7's odd collapse. All of those agencies strangely had offices in building7 The presence of OEM is particularly disturbing. They occupied a recently reinforced bunker-like space on the 23rd floor. Equipped with bulletproof windows, bomb-proof walls, and hurricane resistant windows, the office housed a sophisticated command center with top of the line military communication and logistical equipment. Perhaps Building 7 was a command center of a different kind, used as the true Ground Zero for the operation carried out on 9/11. A command center that became a crime scene after 8:46 a.m. that morning. A command center that needed to be destroyed.

Perhaps this OEM department could also explain the miraculously coincidental fact that on September 10, FEMA officials, in conjunction with NYC authorities, had arrived in the city and set up a command post near the World Trade Center for an extensive simulated terrorist attack operation to be carried out on September 12. Perhaps Mayor Rudolph Giuliani could shed some light on this subject. He confirmed this miraculous coincidence in his own testimony to the 9/11 Commission, all of which, unsurprisingly, never made it into their 'official' Report. "... the reason Pier 92 was selected as a command center was because on the next day, on September 12, Pier 92 was going to have a drill, it had hundreds of people here, from FEMA, from the Federal Government, from the State, from the State Emergency Management Office, and they were getting ready for a drill for biochemical attack. So that was gonna be the place they were going to have the drill. The equipment was already there, so we were able to establish a command center there, within three days, that was two and a half to three times bigger than the command center that we had lost at 7 World Trade Center. And it was from there that the rest of the search and rescue effort was completed."

How in the world is this wild coincidence not front-page news of every newspaper in the country? Why in the world was FEMA in NYC, down on Pier 92 near the WTC, on the night of September 10th ready to 'go into action' on the morning of September 11th? Did certain leaders in the U.S. government know full well what was about to happen? Can this 'terror drill' possibly be a random coincidence? Did they send in good men and women from FEMA and other emergency services under the guise of a prospective 'terror drill' to be at the ready to quickly clean up their mess? Did they orchestrate the entire operation, and then swoop in, fully armed and prepped, to prove and prop themselves up as the ready saviors they have spent the last five years reminding us they are? And if Giuliani becomes President, what grounds, what lasting image do we suppose he will be using to bolster his campaign?

Perhaps this is just wild conjecture. Perhaps there is a simpler answer to the questions raised by Building 7's collapse. But ultimately these questions are not an investigator's responsibility to answer. They are the responsibility of the investigator to raise. The responsibility in answering those questions lies with the official storytellers. They are responsible for plugging any holes in their narrative. Questions that arise regarding Building 7 are simply part of the natural speculation inevitably aroused by its suspicious collapse. They are important questions. They are the type of questions that, as stated before, the 9/11 Commission was formed to answer. But, incredibly, the Commission did not even allude to the existence, nor the absurd collapse, of Building 7.

It would seem logical that the collapse of a massive 47-story building (which is as big as the Bank of America Building in San Francisco), the first steel frame high rise in history to collapse solely from fire, which also housed the offices of important government agencies in downtown Manhattan, would warrant an investigation. Or at least a citation by the government commission assigned to thoroughly investigate the events of 9/11. It would seem logical to think that structural engineers, chefs, and wood-burning stove owners around the world would be interested to know that steel has suddenly become susceptible to fire. It would be logical to think that the tell-tale shock wave, 'squibs', internal box-like implosion, freefall speed, and neat footprint rubble pile clearly pointing to a controlled demolition of Building 7 would interest those investigating its collapse. But the 9/11 Commission Report does not even mention its existence. Nor does NIST, the government agency assigned to investigate the collapse of the Twin Towers. Like the 9/11 Commission, they did not mention its existence, its collapse, nor the bizarre specifics of that collapse - which so contradict official accounts.

 

Only FEMA has officially reported on Building 7's demise. And while their report hints at fire as the cause of the building's fall, even they admit the inherent weakness of that premise. "That the necessary evidence to further investigate Building 7's collapse, (i.e. the steel beams, trusses, and support girders) was quickly and illegally cleared, shipped overseas, and recycled - before photographs could be taken or qualified investigators and explosives experts could be called in to sift through the evidence - only deepens the efficacy of the hypothesis that a well-planned, high-level intentional demolition caused the collapse of WTC Building 7.

It should again be noted here that Popular Mechanics magazine has tried to debunk some of the issues raised by the 9/11 Truth community - both in a feature article in March of 2005, and a recent 2006 book. Besides the inherent absurdity of a magazine tackling the research that should be undertaken by Congress and an independent Special Prosecutor with full subpoena power, their work is riddled with the same inconsistencies and conveniently isolated and selected bullet points they claim undermines the very research they are attempting to debunk. For a comprehensive and specific critique of their work,

Update: In an extraordinary development, a 9/11 blogger has uncovered live BBC news video footage from the afternoon of 9/11 showing its reporters detailing the collapse of WTC7 (the Salomon Brothers Building) 23 minutes before that building actually collapsed. The following video is a recap of some of that footage. Notice the extraordinary fact that as the female reporter speaks, the scrolling text at the bottom of the screen confirms what the male lead reporter had been saying for the first 15 minutes of the broadcast, namely that the Salomon Brothers Building (WTC 7) had collapsed, and that very building is standing wholly upright directly over the reporter's shoulder!

 

How is this possible? Who knew what when? "We might reasonably guess that before making its way to the BBC by whatever means, the information originated among the authorities in New York. And that is the question here: Who was the original source of the information? Did the source also phrase the event in the past tense? How was the source certain the building would collapse?" This is not a suggestion that the BBC was 'in' on the conspiracy. They are just passing on a report. So where did that report originate? And how could the sources of that report possibly know a giant building with some peripheral fires was about to fall? There is no historical precedent for that. It is a clairvoyance beyond any reasonable explanation.

For a more detailed, written analysis of this story,  It should be noted that the BBC has given an absurd response to 911truth.org in regards to this strange string of events. And to no one's surprise, the archival video library in which this massive blunder was discovered has removed the clip in question from its stacks.