OK sundial, I've finished an extensive review on 9/11 collapses with an emphasis on the links you provided and a lot of Googling around. My apologies for taking so long but I actually do take this as serious. While at the time it was only speculation, at the time I thought all 3 buildings were consumed in the same manner, by fires fueled by jet fuel or diesel (#7) whose temperatures weakened the supports to the point of collapse. WTC 7 seemed to have a slightly greater component of impact provided destruction that was important to the collapse, but now it seems that wasn't so.

I'm glad to some small degree that this thread popped up or I wouldn't have seen data from 7 years later that has locked it all down. There turned out to be no evidence that diesel was a contributing factor since the amounts burned were contained to relatively small areas and burned for less than 10 minutes. The impact damage though substantial was not a major factor, nor was simple weakening of supports, at least initially. The latest NIST findings that I found (2008) took seven years to run extensive tests and run computer models have resulted in a rather startling conclusion. WTC #7 would likely not have come down if the fall of the other two had not broken the water mains that fed many of WTC 7's mitigation sprinkler system. This is why that building continued to burn for so long though I could find no credible evidence stating that the rubble continued as long or as hot as you stated.

In the case of WTC #7 it appears that due to it's very different construction, especially long unsupported spans depending on large lateral beams, it was not vertical integrity that was compromised but rather that such long beams expanded enough to break couplings tying the structure together into a system, made worse by a design that was very strong vertically but had no concern for horizontal stresses. So WTC #7's collapse was apparently inevitable once the one-two punch of office furniture fires and lack of sprinkler suppressant combined to break a few joints resulting in a progressive internal collapse. Once the interior was gutted the main external structure could no longer support the building on it's own and down it came. That :free fall" btw was painstakingly measured by marking a pixel on the films and clocking it's progress and there were 3 phases of which only one got quite close to free fall which makes total sense.

I have no idea how married you are to the conspiracy so whether or not you will actually read this but the NIST report is a highly sophisticated and thorough study and a wrap-up can be found here - --- 2008 NIST Findings on WTC 7 ---

Just FTR it gives me no pleasure to find I am satisfied with the "Official Report". For one thing I would like to see much of the whole Homeland Security legislation repealed and a conspiracy would likely go a very long way to inciting increased revulsion and distancing. However, as always, personal agenda aside, I have to go with the Science. Religious zealots convinced of US evil and their impending "sainthood" trained to fly fully loaded jets into the 2 towers and reap whatever destruction would follow as a warning that even the mighty US can be felled "by a boy skilled with a sling".

The construction of #7 was much more typical – glass-faced, etc. #1 and #2 had a very different outer sheathing consisting of metal plates attached using spandrel plates. However, this was of course made necessary by the fact that these would be the tallest buildings ... in New York City ... and would also have to be prepared to withstand ... greater potential impacts. (Yes, the possibility of an airplane impact must always be considered for buildings that tall. A bomber ran into the Empire State Building, once.)

Perhaps it is for this reason that it is far more obvious that #7 simply had to be controlled demolition, because its demolition looks like other pull-downs of similarly constructed buildings. #1 and #2 were much stronger, contained much more steel, and (based on the streams of molten iron that NIST documented streaming from them for some time before their collapse), obviously more intricate "jobs" overall.

But, as USGS arial surveys confirm, all three had improbably high surface and underground temperatures ... including removal of molten metal many weeks after the incidents took place. Thus, we must conclude that similar very-exotic demolition techniques were, in fact, used in all three. "Occam's Razor" prevails.

As for #7's collapse somehow not being controlled demolition, I repeat: "Use your eyes, and then use your head." Put a tape of its collapse side-by-side with any number of controlled demolitions of similar structures (as the videos that I presented do), and "no, there is no difference between them."

Also note that #7 was nowhere near "gutted." Fire and smoke were not pouring from every pore. However, #5 was, and it did not collapse. Neither did #6. Both had to be brought down. We have documented cases where (hotel) buildings taller than #7 were completely burned ... all floors ... and after the fires had all been put out the steel frames just stood there. There is nothing inside a steel-frame building that is hot enough to affect the frame. (That's why the buildings were proudly called, "fireproof," as they began to replace brick structures.)

Building #7 was engineered so that you could remove every-other floor, if a tenant needed a taller space. And, let us not forget that it also contained the city's "anti-terrorism response center." And, do you seriously think that the entire City of New York suffered "low water pressure" on that day?

Only three steel-framed buildings have ever been (claimed to be) "destroyed by fire." All three fell in the same city on the same day, 9/11, in the same way.

Believe me, I would love to be able to accept "the official story," or to blame someone that I knew (such as the leaseholder), but I think that the truth is deeper than this. However, there is one story that I know is not the truth, and that is: "the official one."

As I've said, we are all looking through a glass, darkly. We can see that three buildings were demolitioned using exotic materials. But we also see several airliners simultaneously hijacked – two of them basically as a diversion for the fact that rivers of molten iron have suddenly started pouring out of the buildings, in several places well-below the impact zone, accompanied by white smoke. (The black-smoke fires from the impact had obviously begun to burn themselves out.) But we also have a still-unexplained attack on the Pentagon, and other hijacked planes (destinations unknown) that apparently were shot down. (And with obvious reasons.)

On December 7, 1941, the USA was suddenly and deliberately attacked in an act of War. On September 11, a totally different and in some ways far more devastating act of War occurred, as well.

Ok you obviously didn't read the NIST report and continue to state things as fact, like 'molten metal" which was not in evidence, and harp on how it looked despite the fact, whether charges were present or not, Gravity is the active force in all collapses regardless of cause so how it looked would not change - no visually discernible difference, etc etc etc so I will now bow out permanently as the case has been made and people can decide for themselves what standards they should apply to alleged evidence and verified evidence. As you stated, your mind was made up from TV coverage on 9/11 and will never be changed no matter what. Regards.

Enorbet, you really are a fan of "Official Stories." Obviously, I did read the NIST report, and it documents the flow of molten metal ... although it says that it's aluminum (which is gray), but "mixed in" with paper and office debris to make it look orange. (Uh huh. Sure.) Molten metal was found in very-considerable quantity under all three buildings, and it "melted firefighter's boots" for months afterwards.

"Appendix C" of that report is especially interesting in that it documents very high concentrations of sulfur. But, what else did NIST say in its own official report?

- - - - -

In the actual, official, Government Report, it is fairly obvious that the authors understood that they were "officially muzzled," but that they wanted to save face among their professional colleagues by including cryptic comments such as saying that their report:

... such as the fact that the upper 30-odd floors of the South Tower started to roll-over as a block (as we saw in a "demolition fail" video, where a section of a building rolled down the street), before inexplicably (heh ...) de-materializing as a unit in mid-air. Disclaimers such as the above are clearly "government-speak" for: "yeah, we're writing this garbage but we're not stupid. We saw it, too."

And, in fact, FEMA said so: (emphasis added)
(The authors perfectly-well knew that the word, "and," makes absolutely no sense in this sentence.)

"I could go on" ... and on and on and on ...

- - - - -

"Gravity" is the enemy of every human construction, no matter how tall, and buildings are very-sturdily built for this reason. A building cannot fall "into its own footprint" unless the path of least resistance is ... straight down. And YouTube is filled with examples of where a demolition did not go according to plan: buildings literally rolling down the street, partial collapses, and so on. But these three did.

Truly, the list of damning evidence in this case cannot be denied.

Truly, there just comes a point where it becomes nonsensical to deny the accumulation of evidence, which closes-in on all sides and points to exactly one thing.

There is, in fact, exactly one scenario, and type of explosive material, which easily accounts for all of what we have, with our very own eyes, observed. The manner of falling, the resulting footprint, the pyroclastic flows, the un-extinguishable fires. Everything.

Everything ... except one thing.

What we do not know – what we cannot fathom, when greater things such as the hijackings and a still-very-mysterious (guided missile?) attack on the Pentagon are included – is: "Who? Why?"

Enorbet, good sir, I am absolutely certain that you have not yet read this ...

Perhaps you should. And with an open mind.

Did the promoters of this story, at the time, "have an agenda?" Did they have a purpose? Did they have "a story to sell you," gambling that you would never stop to consider such a thing, at such an awful time?

Did they, in short, "have a motive?"

Why, yes they did:

Well nobody ever said finding Truth is an easy task and it is made even worse by any manner of deception, whether intended or accidental. I find Kevin Ryan to be a perplexing enigma. On one hand he seems to stand up for the Scientific Method, and he makes a valid and disturbing point most in the apparent fact that NIST weill not release it's computer modeling data. That is disturbing (if not absolutely counter-productive to a cover up) but what is perplexing about Mr. Ryan is that he routinely jumps to conclusions apparently believing his interpretation of "what must have occurred" can be the only one with zero evidence ruling out other distinct possibilities.

While it is at least possible that NIST is bending to political pressure it is just as possible that any deception was to deflect embarrassment for some event totally unrelated with the collapses, say, misappropriation of funds or failure to do one's official duty. It is also utterly common for people in power to assume "you can't handle the truth" for the most mundane and silly reasons and events.

At this point, until yet further investigation and possibly the passage of time for new evidence to be discovered or revealed, it appears there are unanswered questions that might possibly never be revealed or resolved BUT that likelihood of maintaining a covert story is made exponentially more difficult and unlikely in direct but exponential proportion to the number of conspirators, including those not originally involved but those testers hushed for a time.

Unfortunately a serious obstruction to getting so-called "truthers' the credibility they need to present a strong case to re-opening investigation is that there actually are some large number of wild-eyed, delusional fanatics for every remotely scientific inquirer like Mr. Ryan purports to be. The crazy connotations that come with "conspiracy theory" exists for good reason and those that fill that bill make it harder for actual, serious dissenters.

Frankly I find it a major fault of our government that it so routinely tends to botch investigations and intelligence gathering. Why haven't they learned that lesson from all of the Keystone Cops blunders of the JFK investigation? If they can't tie up minor, mundane details in an investigation after the fact, how can they hope to pull off a cover up let alone an incident they think deserves one? It reminds me of hack recording "engineers" who actually believe they "can fix a bad performance in the mix" and never learned the simple truth of "Garbage In == Garbage Out".

Enorbet, it might feel strange for me to be, in this case, "coming to the defense of our Government," but": "the totality – the total pure evil – of '9/11' is obviously so-much bigger than New York City."

It's not simply three skyscrapers that were demolitioned. It's also multiple airliners which were hijacked – and which had multiple targets, including the Pentagon. [i](It appears to some people that other airliners might have actually been shot down, by what otherwise would have been "friendly fire," to prevent them from attacking other targets ... the Capitol? ... the White House?)

What we are ultimately left with, IMHO, is something that simply cannot be characterized as, say, "an unscrupulous real-estate investor's insurance play." (As if such an investor could possibly have arranged for airliners ...) Instead, we are faced with something truly incomprehensible (IMHO) in its total apparent extent.

"An Act of War," IMHO, "obviously ..." and yet an "act of War" unlike any and every other. An "Act of War" which seems to make the entire notion of "Standing Armies, Navies, and Air Forces" ... obsolete?!?!

I don't know. I don't profess to know. However, in this case I do vaguely comprehend the need for ... State Secrecy.

Mind you, I'm not happy about it. Not at all. My rational mind – just like everyone's – begs for justice and closure. For ... some sense of rationality in the totally-incomprehensible and thus totally-terrifying thing that I perceive has actually happened in our midst. Not just in New York City, but simultaneously throughout the surrounding areas of the United States.

It seems to me that in order to be STATE secrecy it means a majority of govt. officials know and accept if not approve. Otherwise it is just a niche group at best. Even if it was just the majority of just one party can you imagine so many risking their careers, livelihood, family, freedom, legacy etc etc if the opposing party ever got even a faint whiff? I can accept that 9/11 could involve a conspiracy beyond simply that of Al Queda (Saudi Arabia, perhaps?) but I find it extremely unlikely that any sizable number of govt. officials (like more than 2 or 3) could have involvement and gotten away with it so cleanly. Conspiracies are by nature messy and vulnerable.

Sundial, you really must at least accept that your conclusions are based on instinct or preconceived notions as there really is no smoking gun, and by smoking gun I mean you're there in person, see and hear the gun fire and afterwards check the firearm against the projectile and plot out the trajectory to rule out a remote sniper with excellent aim and timing. That doesn't mean wrong or even inaccurate. It just means unproven and each must judge likelihood which is a theory at best and far more likely, mere speculation. I'm confidant that if you were on trial for your life you wouldn't accept any lower standard for admittable evidence. I wish you'd apply that more often but of course that is your prerogative.

If the true scope and nature of the attack is as I think it was, then it is entirely plausible to consider that the investigation of the total event would be ##CLASSIFIED##, and I'm actually not disturbed by that idea. The incident would be investigated, but the results of that investigation would not be made known to the public. A cover-story would be circulated, improbable though that story might be. (Portions might be intentionally deceptive ... mis-information.)

"The controlled demolition of three buildings in New York City" is only one part of everything that happened that day. I don't think that blame can be laid at the feet of an unscrupulous landlord, or, for that matter, desert bedouins. And, in any case, totality is much bigger than this, including multiple simultaneous hijackings, compromise of the cockpit, flight training, and it included some kind of direct attack on a military installation – the Pentagon. (But there wasn't a crashed commercial airplane lying on the front lawn ...) The mysteries go on and on. Maybe they should remain mysteries.

I can't fathom how all of the pieces actually fit together. I hope that someone does. But, I don't necessarily want the full details to be made known to the general public, if those details are of the nature that I suspect: "Loose Lips Sink Ships™" and all of that. If this caper is what I think it was, "Knowledge is Power™," and it's a power that could be used against us – or someone else, somewhere else, anywhere else in the world – again.

Part of me wants public closure. Of course. But: Part of me does not. Anything that the perpetrators can learn from public disclosure is, to them, a debriefing. Lessons learned. And, I don't want them to "learn" a damned thing.

I also don't want the public(!) to know more than they "Need To Know™" about the whys and wherefores of processes that are intended to help secure them. When you are walking, through, an airport – or even down a public street – you don't know and don't need to know everything that is actually going on around you. (Sometimes, "you need not to know.")

For instance, it was not well-known that the capacity existed to get every(!) aircraft out of the sky in about an hour – a so-called "national ground stop" – until they did so. That sort of thing ...

It is one thing to suppress sensitive details and quite another to manufacture a complete hoax substitute. It's interesting to compare Pearl Harbor, in which the attackers were well known and some 2000 soldiers and civilians were killed, to 9/11 where it took time to identify the conspirators in a plot hat killed some 3000 civilians and "soldiers". During the Pearl Harbor attack few assumed FDR was somehow complicit even though he very much wanted a reason to declare war in a resistant Congress and populace. Later, though, some conspiracy theorists proposed exactly that. Yes, the motivation existed but so did the calculated estimation that sooner or later the aggressors would make some move that would be sufficient to create that motivation in enough to swing the vote, with zero risk of complicity. I think the similarities extend even to that with 9/11.

Please note that psychopaths and sociopaths, including serial killers, Stalin and Hitler for examples (and I think any American that would even contemplate such a brazenly horrific attack as demolition of WTC to start a war qualifies as a psychopath) don't commonly start out so big and bold and most of them are relatively invisible average citizens as compared to corporate officers and/or government officials. Ted Kennedy may have been responsible for Mary Jo Kopechne's death, but he didn't plan nor murder her and they were entirely alone on that bridge. There were NO eye witnesses or videos, yet being a public figure the event still came to light. I' feel confidant that Lee Harvey Oswald was smart enough to realize that despite his invisibility, the odds of getting away with murdering a president were slim to none, yet he chose to be involved at whatever level you imagine he was, taking that risk because he felt justified.

Whether LHO actually fired the kill shot or not doesn't change the odds much that he would be caught and punished. Nobody ever involved in such a public conspiracy of such immense historical importance has ever gotten clean away to my knowledge. It is at least possible, assuming LHO didn't act alone (for the sake of argument) that some few did get away with it but those odds are woefully bad and generally only favor those very few at the top. Now consider who would take such odds, not to gather resources alone in one day to murder one man publicly, but to involve a multitude of helpers and supplies (heavily monitored supplies, I might add, assuming as you apparently do at military grade explosives)over weeks if not months of time and not at some side street in Dallas, Texas but downtown but in one of THE most densely populated commercial hubs on Planet Earth.

I can't say it did not happen, but I can say it is highly unlikely, especially that nobody, not one person of such a hypothetical conspiracy has ever been identified, let alone caught after almost 20 years. The Yellowcake Hoax was far less risky yet it came to light. Consider the odds.

I think that, at this point, both of us are fairly reduced to speculation.

However, if this "event" is as I think it is, "nothing remotely like this has ever happened before." And it truly is a game-changer on the entire subject of "[world] war." This sort of attack renders "armies and navies" quite useless – obsolete, as it were. It somehow sailed right through quite a phalanx of defenses that many people had very-carefully planned and believed to be sound, including the utter defeat of a "anti-terrorism response center."

Your natural, instinctive response – if told that such a thing had been done – would be to conclude that you simply must be reading a science-fiction story. That such a thing as this could not possibly ever happen in real life.

But the reality, of course, is that it did. That all of it somehow did. (Including, possibly, things that the public never knew about ...)

A decision to clamp down "state secrecy" with regards to this matter is, in my view, entirely plausible, and entirely appropriate, if my hypotheses were to prove correct. And furthermore, it would also be a secret that this decision to impose secrecy had been made. If such a decision was made, it will have been within the appointed authority and responsibility of the official(s) who decided to do it ... and I think that they will have done the right thing.

But it is entirely speculation that my hypothesis is or isn't correct. I know that no one will ever say. And I don't really want them to.

It is true that no evidence locks it down 100% so it is indeed speculation and odds assessment. Some odds are very high though. What we both, and everybody else, knows for certain is that...

1) Almost all defenses were pointed outward
2) Bad intel and lack of cooperation between agencies resulted in the right hand not knowing what the left was doing (again)
3) Radical Islamic Members of Al Queda trained under our noses, met with some high profile Saudis, and hijacked 4 planes of which 3 hit their targets with nearly full jet fuel tanks.

Incidentally if I understood you correctly I think you undermine both your conclusions and your argument by repeating "truther" garbage absolutely proven fabricated or delusional. One example is the idea that there was no plane wreckage at the Pentagon. That is verifiably untrue even though much of the aluminum fuselage and wings were shredded. The tail section was complete and completely recovered, as were crew uniforms and much more. The engines and landing gear did considerable damage as they are the toughest parts in commercial jets.

Considering how much data gets routinely redacted whenever documents are "declassified" I don't see why 9/11 can't be nailed down without further compromise to security. Our government officials are supposed to be representatives, not parents, of the masses.

All it proves is that there IS no defence against such extreme acts!!

"Generally, that might be true – but we learn fast."

Certainly, no one anticipated that a military strike would take this form. It's pretty damned impossible to wrap your head around what did happen (of what we civilians are aware of ...), and even more ludicrous-sounding to "prepare for it." After all, a command center was constructed in Building 7 at very great expense and with good faith that it was a proper thing to do.

Enorbet, I yield to your greater knowledge of what was and was not recovered at the Pentagon site. I have not studied this particular aspect too closely. ("I could be mistaken." After all, I thought that I was wrong once before, but it turns out that I was wrong about that. )

Nevertheless – this was not just a civilian attack: it was clearly military. And it was an attack concept completely unlike anything that the world had ever before seen, anywhere. Furthermore, it was largely successful. It hinged upon a complete compromise of security, in a great many diverse areas and for a very long period of time. (Thus, it revealed keen awareness of just what those security practices were.)

9/11 was not simply about the controlled demolition of three buildings in New York City – incomprehensible though this statement alone already is. It was obviously much more ... such that, I think, official secrecy about the details (and, indeed, of just what those "details" might be ...) is called for in this case.

I personally don't see this as the government trying to be anyone's daddy. Official secrecy, in a situation such as this, is actually a form of public protection. "Do you need to know?" If the answer is "no," then you don't, because maybe "you need not to know." That is to say, "the public's interest is best served, against this most-uncommon and dastardly sort of public enemy, if this information is not generally divulged."

If this caper merely consisted of "some bastard 'pulled' three buildings in NYC with thousands of people inside," then that might deserve a public criminal investigation. But that was only a small piece of it, and that was only the events of one day. How big was it? Maybe none of us actually knows. And, maybe none of us actually should.

Yeah, I want closure, too. I want to know, too. But ... this is "a military enemy" the likes of which we have never before seen, and against which we were not prepared. (But, how could we have been, really?)

Yes people do have the right to know.
If it was pre-known by the government then they have to answer for the deaths which could have been prevented.
If it was an attack then the public need to know so they can at least look out for similar attacks and perhaps prevent them or lessen the effects.