POLITICS-US: Bush Had No Plan to Catch Bin Laden after 9/11

WASHINGTON, Sep 29 (IPS) - New evidence from former U.S. officials reveals that the George W. Bush administration failed to adopt any plan to block the retreat of Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders from Afghanistan to Pakistan in the first weeks after 9/11.

That failure was directly related to the fact that top administration officials gave priority to planning for war with Iraq over military action against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

As a result, the United States had far too few troops and strategic airlift capacity in the theatre to cover the large number of possible exit routes through the border area when bin Laden escaped in late 2001.

Because it had not been directed to plan for that contingency, the U.S. military had to turn down an offer by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in late November 2001 to send 60,000 troops to the border passes to intercept them, according to accounts provided by former U.S. officials involved in the issue.

On Nov. 12, 2001, as Northern Alliance troops were marching on Kabul with little resistance, the CIA had intelligence that bin Laden was headed for a cave complex in the Tora Bora Mountains close to the Pakistani border.

The war had ended much more quickly than expected only days earlier. CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks, who was responsible for the war in Afghanistan, had no forces in position to block bin Laden's exit.

Franks asked Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek, commander of Army Central Command (ARCENT), whether his command could provide a blocking force between al Qaeda and the Pakistani border, according to David W. Lamm, who was then commander of ARCENT Kuwait.

Lamm, a retired Army colonel, recalled in an interview that there was no way to fulfill the CENTCOM commander's request, because ARCENT had neither the troops nor the strategic lift in Kuwait required to put such a force in place. "You looked at that request, and you just shook your head," recalled Lamm, now chief of staff of the Near East South Asia Centre for Strategic Studies at the National Defence University.

Franks apparently already realised that he would need Pakistani help in blocking the al Qaeda exit from Tora Bora. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld told a National Security Council meeting that Franks "wants the [Pakistanis] to close the transit points between Afghanistan and Pakistan to seal what's going in and out", according to the National Security Council meeting transcript in Bob Woodward's book "Bush at War".

Bush responded that they would need to "press Musharraf to do that".

A few days later, Franks made an unannounced trip to Islamabad to ask Musharraf to deploy troops along the Pakistan-Afghan border near Tora Bora.

A deputy to Franks, Lt. Gen. Mike DeLong, later claimed that Musharraf had refused Franks's request for regular Pakistani troops to be repositioned from the north to the border near the Tora Bora area. DeLong wrote in his 2004 book "Inside Centcom" that Musharraf had said he "couldn't do that", because it would spark a "civil war" with a hostile tribal population.

But U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin, who accompanied Franks to the meeting with Musharraf, provided an account of the meeting to this writer that contradicts DeLong's claim.

Chamberlin, now president of the Middle East Institute in Washington, recalled that the Pakistani president told Franks that CENTCOM had vastly underestimated what was required to block bin Laden exit from Afghanistan. Musharraf said, "Look you are missing the point: there are 150 valleys through which al Qaeda are going to stream into Pakistan," according to Chamberlin.

Although Musharraf admitted that the Pakistani government had never exercised control over the border area, the former diplomat recalled, he said this was "a good time to begin". The Pakistani president offered to redeploy 60,000 troops to the area from the border with India but said his army would need airlift assistance from the United States to carry out the redeployment.

But the Pakistani redeployment never happened, according to Lamm, because it wasn't logistically feasible. Lamm recalled that it would have required an entire aviation brigade, including hundreds of helicopters, and hundreds of support troops to deliver that many combat troops to the border region -- far more than was available.

Lamm said the ARCENT had so few strategic lift resources that it had to use commercial aircraft at one point to move U.S. supplies in and out of Afghanistan.

Even if the helicopters had been available, however, they could not have operated with high effectiveness in the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border region near the Tora Bora caves, according to Lamm, because of the combination of high altitude and extreme weather.

Franks did manage to insert 1,200 Marines to Kandahar on Nov. 26 to establish control of the airbase there. They were carried to the base by helicopters from an aircraft carrier that had steamed into the Gulf from the Pacific, according to Lamm.

The marines patrolled roads in the Kandahar area hoping to intercept al Qaeda officials heading toward Pakistan. But DeLong, now retired from the Army, said in an interview that the Marines would not have been able to undertake the blocking mission at the border. "It wouldn't have worked -- even if we could have gotten them up there," he said. "There weren't enough to police 1,500 kilometres of border."

U.S. troops probably would also have faced armed resistance from the local tribal population in the border region, according to DeLong. The tribesmen in local villages near the border "liked bin Laden," he said "because he had given them millions of dollars."

Had the Bush administration's priority been to capture or kill the al Qaeda leadership, it would have deployed the necessary ground troops and airlift resources in the theatre over a period of months before the offensive in Afghanistan began.

"You could have moved American troops along the Pakistani border before you went into Afghanistan," said Lamm. But that would have meant waiting until spring 2002 to take the offensive against the Taliban, according to Lamm.

The views of Bush's key advisers, however, ruled out any such plan from the start. During the summer of 2001, Rumsfeld had refused to develop contingency plans for military action against al Qaeda in Afghanistan despite a National Security Presidential Directive adopted at the Deputies' Committee level in July and by the Principles on Sep. 4 that called for such planning, according to the 9/11 Commission report.

Rumsfeld and Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz resisted such planning for Afghanistan because they were hoping that the White House would move quickly on military intervention in Iraq. According to the 9/11 Commission, at four deputies' meetings on Iraq between May 31 and Jul. 26, 2001, Wolfowitz pushed his idea to have U.S. troops seize all the oil fields in southern Iraq.

Even after Sep. 11, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney continued to resist any military engagement in Afghanistan, because they were hoping for war against Iraq instead.

Bush's top secret order of Sep. 17 for war with Afghanistan also directed the Pentagon to begin planning for an invasion of Iraq, according to journalist James Bamford's book "Pretext for War".

Cheney and Rumsfeld pushed for a quick victory in Afghanistan in NSC meetings in October, as recounted by both Woodward and Undersecretary of Defence Douglas Feith. Lost in the eagerness to wrap up the Taliban and get on with the Iraq War was any possibility of preventing bin Laden's escape to Pakistan.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

Source

Anthrax Links to 9-11

The author is a Senior Military Affairs Journalist, and former White House Policy Analyst and Special Assistant to the Assistant to the President in the first Reagan Administration. Ms. Honegger is the author of the 9/11 expose “The Pentagon Attack Papers” http://physics911.net/pdf/honegger.pdf and October Surprise (Tudor, 1989), the first book to reveal the true origins of the Iran side of the Iran/Contra scandal.

By insisting that Bruce Ivins, a biowarfare scientist then with the Army’s Ft. Detrick laboratory, was behind the anthrax attacks, the Bush Administration has officially acknowledged that those attacks were perpetrated by a U.S. Government insider — and not by bin Laden or by Iraq.

Likewise, compelling evidence (1) has demonstrated that the mass murders of 9/11 themselves were perpetrated or enabled by U.S. Government insiders. And while it is well known that President Bush has admitted Iraq was not behind Sept. 11, it is less widely known that bin Laden has never been wanted by the FBI for 9/11 on the agency’s ‘Most Wanted Terrorists’ web page. FBI Director Mueller and his chief investigative spokesman, Rex Tomb, have publicly stated that the reason bin Laden isn’t officially wanted for 9/11 is because there is “no hard evidence” linking him to the Sept. 11 plot. (2)

Because the Administration has thus admitted the anthrax attacks were perpetrated by a U.S. government insider — and Sheila Casey and Barry Kissin have shown in the Sept. 2008 issue of The Rock Creek Free Press that they were a true inside job by the CIA (and DIA) and its contractor Battelle Memorial Institute, not a ‘lone nut’ rogue (3) — if significant evidence links the insider anthrax attacks to 9/11, we can reasonably infer that the same government/military insiders were behind both mass crimes.

So what is the evidence linking anthrax to Sept. 11?

1) Whatever insiders wrote the letters mailed with the anthrax wanted you to believe they were linked to 9/11. As is well known, the date hand written on the anthrax letters is Sept. 11, 2001. Though the official story — that the first letter, to Florida photo journalist Bob Stevens, wasn’t mailed until after 9/11 and so anthrax wasn’t part of the actual 9/11 plot — it’s clear that whoever wrote and dated the letters and added the super-weaponized (3) U.S. military anthrax wanted you to believe there is a direct connection, and that Islamic foreigners were responsible for both.

2) Superweaponizing anthrax was one of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s top priorities. Two days before 9/11, on Sept. 9, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) held a rare press conference in which it revealed that on his first day as Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld ordered the DIA to take Project Jefferson, a secret and illegal anthrax weaponization program (probably using the Ames strain contained in the anthrax letters) to the next level of lethality and that it had achieved ‘success’ earlier that month in a classified field test. The mainstream press reported this event on Sept. 10, the day before 9/11.
3) Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) preplanned a bio/chem-terrorism exercise likely involving an anthrax scenario for which personnel were in New York City on 9/11, and Giuliani’s just-recent OEM director urged White House staff to go on anti-anthrax Cipro on Sept. 11. Giuliani testified to the 9/11 Commission that his Office of Emergency Management (OEM) had scheduled a bio/chem-terrorism response exercise, called TRIPOD II, to begin the day after 9/11, Sept. 12. But personnel who were to take part in the exercise were already in New York City on Sept. 10th and OEM personnel were cleared out of their WTC7 offices on Sept. 11 and moved to the exercise command center on a New York pier and thus conveniently out of the building when it was brought down by military-grade thermate explosives on 9/11 — controlled demolition charges that required weeks to pre-place, the very weeks the exercise was being planned. New Jersey’s Ft. Monmouth, an Army base just across the water from the Twin Towers, also held a ‘II’ exercise, called TIMELY ALERT II, on 9/11 (4), almost certainly coordinated with Giuliani’s TRIPOD II, further evidence that the latter was also scheduled to begin on Sept. 11.

The then recent director of Mayor Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management, Jerome “Jerry” Hauer — a bio-warfare expert and one of the signers of the pre-9/11 Project for a New American Century manifesto calling for “a new Pearl Harbor” (such as 9/11) who had been a central player in scripting the TRIPOD II bio-chem attack scenario exercise — was an expert in the response to building collapses (5) and managing director of Kroll Associates before and on 9/11, the company that managed the WTC7 OEM ‘bunker’ and provided ‘security’ for the World Trade Center, including all three buildings brought down by controlled demolition that morning. He thus oversaw personnel with the complete access needed to pre-place explosive charges. It was Hauer who had advocated, despite the 1993 terrorist attack on WTC1, that Giuliani locate his OEM, from which a response to an expected follow up attack on the WTC would need to be orchestrated, next door in WTC7 (6). The new OEM opened on the 23rd floor of WTC7 in June 1999, where Hauer, its director, had his office. Hauer became a National Security Adviser to the National Institutes of Health on Sept. 10, the very day TRIPOD II personnel arrived in New York City, from which new NIH post he managed the Bush Administration’s ‘response’ to the imminent anthrax attacks, which falsely pointed the finger at Iraq and diverted attention from the true insider anthrax killers. Indeed, it was Hauer who zealously pushed the ‘bin Laden did it and just planes-and-fires brought down the Towers’ official story on CBS News on 9/11 in the immediate aftermath of the attacks before anyone not on the inside could have possibly determined the actual cause of the collapses, taking pains to insist that explosives were not involved, when they were. And according to mainstream press reports and a lawsuit by the conservative government watchdog group Judicial Watch, it was Hauer who personally advised the White House to take anti-anthrax Cipro antibiotics on 9/11 (7). [Other reports state White House personnel were put on Cipro nearly a month before the attacks (8). Did Hauer recommend that White House personnel be put on an anti-anthrax antibiotics on 9/11 because he had reason to believe the 9/11 attacks would also involve anthrax and/or because he had advance knowledge there would be subsequent imminent anthrax attacks?

4) The FBI had been told the 9/11 attacks would involve anthrax. On Sept. 11, Janette MacKinlay lived in a fourth floor apartment overlooking what was soon to become ‘the pit’ of the World Trade Center. Her neighbor and close friend Bruno told her later that day or early the next morning that he had been pulled off the street into a bank lobby next to the WTC towers by an FBI agent on the morning of Sept. 11 to protect them from the dust cloud from the collapsing tower, and was told by the agent that “We were told this was going to happen and that it would involve anthrax.” Another FBI agent told a woman about to enter the NBC Bldg. that she should leave immediately because “there are explosives in the building as well as in the WTC.” Clearly, the FBI had been pre-alerted because their own offices were in the WTC -- in WTC7 -- which, like WTC1 and WTC2, was pre-wired for a controlled demolition take down that day. MacKinlay had the presence of mind to collect the dust from the cloud that poured into her apartment overlooking the ‘pit’, and it is this dust that physicist Prof. Steven Jones has analyzed and in which he found military-grade thermate as well as other high explosives, proving the presence of pre-placed charges throughout the towers to which ‘Al Qaeda’ could not have had access to set.

Though no anthrax has been reported in the dust -- though it may not have yet been tested for -- if TRIPOD II were at least in part on an anthrax attack scenario, it wouldn’t have used actual anthrax, but an anthrax simulant -- an anthrax-like powder that would disperse through the air in a way similar to the real thing. Experts should be consulted for the chemical composition of anthrax simulants and the dust from the WTC collapses tested for these simulants.

5) In the minds of the insider scriptwriters for the Sept. 2001 New York City TRIPOD II emergency response exercise, an attack on the World Trade Center was already associated with bio/chem terrorism. According to respected New York Times science writer William Broad, the plan for the 1993 attack on WTC1, for which alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheihk Mohammed’s nephew Ramzi Yousef is in prison for life, involved a plot to push cyanide into New York City. This is reported in Germs, Broad’s book co-authored with Judith Miller. Though the latter’s credibility has been compromised, Broad remains a respected journalist.

6) Rudolph Giuliani bought the Florida-building crime scene of the first anthrax attack. Anthrax was found throughout the American Media, Inc. (AMI) building in Boca Raton, Florida where the first anthrax letter victim, Robert Stevens, worked -- as confirmed by AMI employees whose desks were near Stevens’ whom I have interviewed. A ‘don’t cross’ line was put around the building by the FBI, which had been “told 9/11 was coming and that it would involve anthrax.” AMI was forced to move to another location and put the building up for sale. According to The New York Times, this first anthrax attack crime scene with evidence still in place was then bought (at an anthrax sale price) by former NYC Mayor Giuliani, overseer of the Sept. 11/12 TRIPOD II bio/chem-terrorism probable-anthrax-scenario exercise, who formed a partnership with a decontamination expert qualified to decontaminate the building. Giuliani thus controlled and oversaw the destruction of evidence at both the New York crime scene of the 9/11 attacks, the WTC, ordering the steel containing traces of controlled demolition explosives to be removed, and the crime scene of the first anthrax attack, America Media, Inc, in Florida.

The FBI had already joined the conspiracy to obstruct its own investigation of the anthrax attacks by “agreeing to the request” of Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine in Ames, Iowa to destroy its ‘library’ of over 100 vials of the Ames strain gathered since 1928 necessary for a definitive match against the anthrax in the mailed letters, which library was destroyed on Oct. 12, 2001, one week after Bob Stevens became the first victim. (9)

This Florida anthrax is critical because, according to press reports on Ivins’ alleged involvement, the anthrax in the mailed letters -- but not the ‘first’ anthrax sent to Stevens (the FBI claims no letter was found in connection with the anthrax recovered from Stevens’ computer keyboard but assumes a ‘missing’ letter) was traced back to a flask in Ivins’ laboratory. The Stevens anthrax is thus key to proving that Ivins, if he was involved at all, did not act alone, as it does not trace back to his flask, and because it’s the closest in time to 9/11 and so most likely to be directly linked to Sept. 11.

Based on the above, a reasonable case can be made that Giuliani’s Sept. 11/12 TRIPOD II bio/chem. terrorism response exercise was at least in part on an anthrax scenario, using an anthrax simulant; that the letters mailed slightly later with real anthrax may have been written or the text drafted for that exercise; and that Giuliani’s former Office of Emergency Management director and close friend Jerome Hauer advised White House staff to take anti-anthrax Cipro on 9/11 because he was afraid the anthrax attack exercise scenario might be about to ‘go live’ just as both the NORAD hijacked-plane ‘exercise’ and the NRO plane-crashing-into-tower ‘exercise’ had already just ‘gone live’ earlier the morning of Sept. 11 as parts of their 'game' scenarios suddenly turned horribly real.

If the Florida anthrax doesn’t link back to Ivins’ Ft. Detrick flask and Ivins, who worked on vaccines (bio-defense) and not its weaponization (bio-offense) wasn’t behind the attacks -- and neither, the government now claims, was Steven Hatfill whom the Bush Administration just agreed to pay millions of dollars to settle his case -- then who was? As detailed in the September issue by Casey and Kissin, the key suspects are CIA/DIA contractor Battelle Memorial Institute (BMI); and, individually, William Patrick and Ken Alibek.

Battelle, a bio-defense contractor located in West Jefferson, Ohio, has exclusive control of the Ames strain contained in the mailed anthrax letters (10) and, in partnership with the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, ran Project Jefferson, the government’s covert bio-weapons program whose goal was to develop hyper-weaponized anthrax like that contained in the mailed letters (11) and which Rumsfeld ordered developed to the next level of lethality on his first day as Secretary of Defense.

William Patrick, a former top bio-scientist at Ft. Detrick and close colleague of former Giuliani OEM Director Jerry Hauer, was the mentor of initial FBI ‘person of interest’ in the anthrax attacks Steven Hatfill. Patrick holds five classified patents and trade secrets, including on how to hyper-weaponize anthrax to the 1 trillion spores per gram contained in the letters mailed to Democratic Congressional leaders Senators Daschle and Leahy (12). After leaving Ft. Detrick, he was contracted by Battelle to research and write a report on howmailed letterscould be used as the vector for dispersing weaponized anthrax. (13) On Sept. 9, two days before 9/11, Battelle contractor DIA announced the ‘success’ of Project Jefferson’s anthrax hyper-weaponization program. Following the Sept./Oct. 2001 letter mailings, some of which were reported to contain anthrax at 1 trillion spores per gram, a footnote in Patrick’s report stating that “We have now arrived at the point where we can purify [anthrax] to the extent of 1 trillion spores in a gram” was removed from publicly available copies. (13)

William Patrick worked with his close colleague and friend, former Soviet bio-weapons expert Ken Alibek, at Battelle, which also ran Project Clear Vision, a secret CIA program to reverse engineer dry-powder anthrax bombs produced by the former Soviet Union. Patrick and Alibek were the FBI’s first suspects in the anthrax attacks, but the initial FBI investigative team was taken off that focus and replaced by a new team that diverted attention to Hatfill. Director Mueller himself assured a Senator that the FBI “was not investigating, nor intending to investigate, anyone with, or formerly with, BMI [Battelle]." (14) Battelle is also a contractual partner with BioPort and Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC), and directs the anthrax production and experimentation program at the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, the second ‘home’ in addition to Ft. Detrick of the Ames strain contained in the letters. Hauer and Hatfill worked together at SAIC. (15)

The inside job anthrax attacks were then used as a pretext for the illegal secret domestic wiretap program and assault on the Constitution.

Given the timing, it is now almost certain that the U.S. government insider anthrax attacks were used as the pretext for President Bush’s illegal warrantless domestic wiretap program for which he signed the first ‘authorization’ on Oct. 23, 2001 – right in the middle of the anthrax terror (16). Senator John McCain had just gone on ABC TV, on Oct. 18, to push the disinformation that a nonexistent bentonite additive, purportedly marking the anthrax as coming from Iraq, meant that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks. To this day, the White House still refuses to provide Congress with this Oct. 23, 2001 presidential authorization for its warrantless inside-the-U.S. surveillance program, and for obvious reason. This is the alleged authorization that we now know, from a footnote referring to it in another now-released document, contains Bush’s shocking claim that the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures do not apply to U.S. military operations conducted inside the United States.

The fact that the Administration continued its secret and illegal domestic spying program long after its was publicly known that the anthrax attacks were the work of one of its own inside military facilities is strong evidence the perpetrators were the same high level officials who used the attacks to justify their illegal surveillance program – the White House itself. Exposing the inside job anthrax mailings as the false pretext for the illegal warrantless domestic wiretap program is thus critical to bringing President Bush and his administration to account for its Reichtag Fire-like attack on Congressional Democratic leaders Daschle and Leahy then pushing for an investigation of the 9/11 attacks and resisting the president’s railroading of the Patriot Act — the analog to Hitler’s Enabling Act passed in the wake of the Reichtag Fire — through Congress, as well as for the mass murders of Sept. 11.

We have seen the Terrorists, and They are U.S. It’s time for under oath pre-impeachment hearings — and pre-court martial hearings — to interrogate these suspects, and all others who worked with them, to expose who wears The Scarlet A.

—————–
Notes
1 The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Expose, by David Ray Griffin, Interlink Books, Sept. 2008.
2 http://www.twf.org/News/Y2006/0608-BinLaden.html
3 “FBI Sweeps Anthrax Under the Rug,” Rock Creek Free Press, Sept. 2008 issue, pp. 1 and 2.
4 http://www.amc.army.mil/amc/pa/oct01.html
5 New York Times, July 27, 1999
6 http://truthmovecom.blogspot.com/2008/07/jerome-hauer-911-suspect-await
ing.html
7 http://www.judicialwatch.org/1967.shtml
8 Crossing the Rubicon, by Michael Ruppert, pp. 505-506.
9 http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/Bioter/theamesstrain.html
10 http://alexconstantine.blogspot.com/2008/08/project-anthrax-cover-up-p
art-five.html
11 The FBI recently held a ‘science’ briefing for reporters on the Ivins evidence in which it made a 180-degree reversal from the results of lab analyses of the anthrax reported by Ft. Detrick and other scientists and officials in the first year following the attacks. Those early analyses showed the spores in the letters to Senators Leahy and Daschle to be super-weaponized: they were found to be highly uniform, extremely small in size, extremely concentrated at 1 trillion per gram, electrically charged, and with a silica coating. At its ‘science’ briefing, the FBI absurdly claimed that mail processing machines caused the additional powderizing and electrical charge found in the samples — both coincidentally common results of weaponization.
12 http://www.strike-the-root.com/columns/rarey/rarey3.html; “Terror Anthrax Linked to Type Made by U.S.,” by William Broad, New York Times, Dec. 3, 2001.
13 Ibid. (Broad, New York Times, Dec. 3, 2001).
14 http://www.worldnewsstand.net/news/anthrax.htm
15 www.tetrahedron.org/articles/anthrax/open_letter_mueller.html;

www.tetrahedron.org/articles/anthrax/anthrax_espionage.html 16 Further confirmation that the insider anthrax attacks were used by the Bush Administration to justify creating the secret illegal warrantless domestic wiretap program is in “Conflict Over Spying Led White House to Brink,” Washington Post, Sept. 14, 2008, by Barton Gellman. Note [6] at the end of this article reveals that the very first memorandum giving the purported legal rationale for the wireless domestic taps, by John Yoo, was dated Oct. 4, 2001 – just after published reports of the first anthrax victim, Bob Stevens, and only one day before his death on Oct. 5. This is contained in Shannen Coffin’s letter to Senator Leahy of Aug. 20, 2007 on the subject of this and other of Yoo’s ‘Top Secret-Codeword’ documents, still not released to Congress.

Source

The "Smoking Gun" Of 9/11

Recently, Kevin Fenton posted an update to the timeline available at http://www.historycommons.org/ entitled, "United 93, 9/11 Commission – Additions to the 9/11 Timeline as of September 21, 2008." In it, he stated that "as the commission was just beginning its work in early 2003, Executive Director Philip Zelikow had already completed an outline of its final report." When I read that entry, I was floored. As you'll read below, Kean, Hamilton, and Zelikow decided to keep this outline a secret from the 9/11 Commission staffers because it might be seen that they, "had predetermined the report's outcome." Now why on Earth would they think something ridiculous like that?

This is just another of many slaps in the faces to the people that lost loved ones that day, Americans, and the rest of the world. As I pointed out in my article about the allegation that the 9/11 Commission was bribed, Philip Zelikow was "someone who tried to insert false information into the 9/11 Report, someone who may have taken direction from Karl Rove, someone who was given a nice cushy job with his old friend Condoleezza Rice."

Why do we do what we do? Aside from wanting truth, accountability, and justice for the 9/11 attacks, why is it that we do what we do? Could it be that one of the reasons we do what we do is because the 9/11 Commission that was mandated to give a "full and complete accounting" of the 9/11 attacks failed miserably, and because of that, we are forced to take a stand, and point out the fact that we have been lied to, and that there are a multitude of cover-ups regarding the 9/11 attacks? Would we be here if they had done their job? I think not.

As I wrote back in 2006, "a lot of us within the 9/11 Truth Movement spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out the crime that took place on 9/11. We want to figure out who, what, when, why, and where. Simply put, no one within this movement has the proper access to the information we need in order to do that. We don't have access to classified documentation, the Air Traffic Controllers, the pilots, the NORAD officers on duty that morning, the individuals within the PEOC, and many other facets that would need to be looked at in order to solve this crime."

The people that did have the "proper access," failed to make use of it, and now BECAUSE OF THEIR FAILURE, we are here today fighting for truth, accountability, and justice for the 9/11 attacks. Therefore, I believe that the 9/11 Commission itself, is the "smoking gun" of 9/11.

Ask yourself, if you lost a loved one to murder, would you accept an investigation like the one performed by the 9/11 Commission? Why do the 2,973 families affected by that day, Americans, and the rest of the world have to?

The following are excerpts from pages 388-389 of Philip Shenon's latest book, "The Commission":

After he was approached by Kean and Hamilton in January 2003 about running the investigation, Zelikow immediately telephoned May to discuss whether he should take the job. May was at home in Cambridge, Massachussetts, not far from his office on the Harvard campus, and he remembered that the call lasted more than an hour, with two men agreeing that it was an extraordinary opportunity to try to produce a "professional-quality narrative history" of a watershed moment in American history, "on par at least with Pearl Harbor."

After Pearl Harbor, both men knew, there had been no similar effort to explain the disaster to the public. There was an effort at accountability in the Pearl Harbor investigations--the navy's fleet commander in the Pacific and his army counterpart were both relieved of their commands in disgrace--but there had been no effort to put the 1941 attacks in historical context and explain the forces that had led the Japanese to launch a surprise attack and why the military had left itself so vulnerable. As a historian, it was exciting, May remembered, to think of producing a report that would remain the reference volume on the September 11 attacks and that would be "sitting on the shelves of high school and college teachers a generation hence."

Zelikow initially wanted May's advice on how the final report should be structured, and they went to work, secretly, to prepare an outline. May was given a desk in Zelikow's office on K Street in Washington, which he used on his occasional visits from Harvard. By March 2003, with the commission's staff barely in place the two men had already prepared a detailed outline, complete with "chapter headings, subheadings, and sub-subheadings."

He and May proposed a sixteen-chapter report that would open with a history of al-Qaeda, beginning with bin Laden's fatwa against the United States in 1998. That would lead to chapters about the history of American counterterrorism policy. The White House response to the flood of terrorist threats in the spring and summer of 2001 were left to the sixth chapter; the events of September 11 were left to the seventh chapters. Zelikow and May proposed that the tenth chapter he entitled "Problems of Foresight--And Hindsight," with a subchapter on "the blinding effects of hindsight."

Zelikow shared the document with Kean and Hamilton, who were impressed by their executive director's early diligence but worried that the outline would be seen as evidence that they--and Zelikow--had predetermined the report's outcome. It should be kept secret from the rest of the staff, they all decided. May said that he and Zelikow agreed that the outline should be "treated as if it were the most classified document the commission possessed" Zelikow came up with his own internal classification system for the outline. He labeled it "Commission Sensitive," putting those words at the top and bottom of each page.

Kean and Hamilton were right to be wary. When it was later disclosed that Zelikow had prepared a detailed outline of the commission's final report at the very start of the investigation, many of the staff's investigators were alarmed. They were finally given copies of the outline in April 2004. They saw that Zelikow was proposing that the findings about the Bush Administration's actions before 9/11 would be pushed to the middle of the report, which meant that readers would have to go searching for them past long chapters of al-Qaeda history. Many assumed the worst when they saw that Zelikow had proposed a portion of the report entitled "The Blinding Effects of Hindsight." What "blinding hindsight"? They assumed Zelikow was trying to dismiss the value of hindsight regarding the Bush administration's pre-9/11 performance. A few staffers began circulating a two-page parody of Zelikow's effort entitled "The Warren Commission Report--Preemptive Outline." The parody's authorship was never determined conclusively. The chapter headings included "Single Bullet: We Haven't Seen The Evidence Yet. But Really. We're Sure."

Source

Scientists, Scholars, Architects & Engineers respond to NIST

via Electronic Mail: wtc@nist.gov
WTC Technical Information Repository
Attention: Mr. Stephen Cauffman
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Stop 8610
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8610

September 15, 2008

Re: Public Comments on WTC 7 Draft Reports

Dear Mr. Cauffman,

I am writing on behalf of a group of scientists, scholars, engineers and building professionals who are dedicated to scientific research regarding the destruction of all three high-rise buildings (WTC 1, 2 and 7) on September 11, 2001. We have examined the draft reports recently released by NIST purporting to explain the demise of WTC Building 7 (collectively referred to herein as the “Report”). We have found many areas that need to be revised and re-examined by NIST personnel before they release a final report on this matter. We have provided our names and affiliations at the end of this document, in accordance with the guidelines for submittal of comments promulgated by NIST at (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/comments2008.html).

At the outset, we would like to call attention to the fact that we requested a reasonable extension of time for the public to submit comments. Given the rate at which we were finding incorrect or contradictory statements in the Report, we would likely have found many more areas NIST needs to re-examine before issuing a final report. As we pointed out in our original correspondence with you requesting the extension, the original three week deadline was completely unreasonable. First, it took NIST more than three years to compile this 1000+ page Report. Why, then, were members of the public only given three weeks in which to comment? Moreover, NIST lists ten authors and dozens of contracted and employed staff, which over the three year investigation would yield somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 man-hours of labor. How did NIST expect members of the public to match or even come close to NIST's labor expenditure in three weeks? This first reason alone was enough to warrant a significant extension in the deadline for public comment.

Second, in NIST’s "Questions and Answers" page (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_qa_082108.html), NIST has attempted to refute many of the points that members of our group and others have made regarding the WTC 7 destruction. However, NIST did not provide any references to sections of the Report that support its alleged refutations. How is a member of the public, then, able to verify NIST’s refutation without reading through the entire 1000+ page Report? Our comments are directed to many of the areas addressed in the "Questions and Answers" page, and without citations directly to the Report itself, it was extremely difficult and time consuming for us see whether our main criticisms of the NIST theory of collapse have been adequately addressed in the Report. This is especially true in light of the fact that this latest draft Report is the third different story NIST has come up with.

Your response to our request was dismissive, based primarily on your belief that a six-week comment period on the 10,000 page report NIST issued for the Twin Towers was reasonable. You also saw no problem with NIST’s failure to provide any references in its Questions and Answers page to the 1000 page Report itself, apparently satisfied with NIST committing the logical fallacy of appeal to authority. As things stand right now, your position in this matter can be seen as nothing less than a deliberate attempt to hamstring the public’s ability to review and comment on NIST’s work in this extremely important area of research.

Nevertheless, we have been able to spend some time reading and analyzing the report, and have already found numerous problems that severely undermine its veracity and usefulness. Our comments on the Report are detailed below. Note that we declined NIST’s invitation to comment only on the summary report, NCSTAR 1A. These comments are all regarding the more detailed NCSTAR 1-9 document. Of course, once NCSTAR 1-9 is revised according to these comments, the summary report NCSTAR 1A will need to be revised as well.

Based on our comments below, it is readily apparent that the NIST collapse explanation relies solely on extremely suspect computer models. Furthermore, at each juncture where NIST was given the opportunity to input data into each subsequent model, NIST has chosen to use those inputs which would cause the highest temperatures and the most amount of structural damage. Therefore, the submitters of these comments hereby call on NIST to publicly release its models and modeling data so that members of the scientific community can test whether other, more reasonable, assumptions will also result in global collapse of the structure. After all, a scientific hypothesis cannot be widely accepted unless it is repeatable by others.

Chapter 9: Fire Simulations

Contradictions between Floor 12 Fire Simulations and Other Evidence

Figure 9-11 from NCSTAR 1-9 (page 383) depicts the upper layer air temperatures on the 12th floor fire simulation. As can be seen therein, significant fires are present across at least half of the north face of the building at 5:00pm.

This part of the fire simulation presents two problems. First, it contradicts an earlier report issued by NIST regarding the fires on floor 12. Second, it contradicts NIST’s own photographic evidence of the fire activity on floor 12.

COMMENT: Appendix L to NIST’s June 2004 “Progress Report on the Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center” contains NIST’s “Interim Report on WTC 7”. (See http://wtc.nist.gov/progress_report_june04/appendixl.pdf) On page L-26 of this interim report, NIST states that “Around 4:45 p.m., a photograph showed fires on Floors 7, 8, 9, and 11 near the middle of the north face; Floor 12 was burned out by this time.”

REASON FOR COMMENT: The contrast between NIST’s prior assertion that floor 12 was “burned out” by 4:45pm, and NIST’s current computer model, that shows a raging inferno at 5:00pm, could not be more apparent. This discrepancy calls into question the veracity of the Report.

SUGGESTED REVISION: This discrepancy must be acknowledged and explained in the Report. Furthermore, the photographic or other visual evidence NIST relied upon for its statement in Appendix L that floor 12 was burned out by 4:45pm must be included in the final version of its report.

COMMENT: To support NIST’s assertion that there was indeed fire present on floor 12 at 5:00pm, NIST has provided a single photograph from an “unknown source” (Figure 5-152, NCSTAR 1-9, p. 237), that was purportedly taken at around 5:00pm, and shows fire in the two windows that comprise the northwest corner. NIST contends that it has determined that this photograph was taken at approximately 5:00pm, with a margin of error of “at least 10 minutes,” using shadow analysis.

REASON FOR COMMENT: We find it unlikely that NIST could estimate the time the “unknown source” photograph in Figure 5-152 was taken with such accuracy.

SUGGESTED REVISION: NIST must explain how it was able to estimate the photograph’s time using shadow analysis to a margin of error even close to 10 minutes.

COMMENT: The following graphic is excerpted from Figure 9-11, and purports to describe the state of the fires on the 12th floor of WTC 7 at 5:00pm:

As can be seen, this graphic depicts raging fires across at least half of the north face of the building. However, when compared with Figure 5-152, which only shows a small fire in the extreme northwest corner, clearly the computer model is not representative of reality.

REASON FOR COMMENT: It appears that NIST’s computer fire simulations are not representative at all of the fires actually occurring in WTC 7.

SUGGESTED REVISION: NIST needs to describe why (assuming Figure 5-152 accurately describes the floor 12 fires at about 5:00pm) the computer models show significant fires across at least half of the north side of the building at 5:00pm. NIST should clearly explain why its fire simulation models of the 12th floor should be accepted by the public as an accurate representation of the fires actually occurring in WTC 7.

Separately submitted by Chris Sarns and Richard Gage is a graphic that compares NIST’s computer model fire data for floor 12 with actual pictures of the fires in WTC 7. It is attached hereto as Exhibit A. They present a more realistic depiction of what a computer model for the floor 12 fires should look like if it were to agree with the available visual evidence. NIST should take this into consideration when they are re-running their computer models based on these public comments, and revise their Report to use computer models that are more representative of reality, which would look more like the depictions contained therein.

Combustible Fuel Loading on Floors 11 and 12

COMMENT: This comment relates to NIST’s assumptions regarding combustible fuel loading for the 11th and 12th floors. In NCSTAR 1-9, at p. 375 (para. 1, sent. 7-9) NIST states:

NIST assumed that the combustible mass of furniture was about the same in an office as in a cubicle. Since the loading of other combustibles was reported to have been high on the 11th and 12th floors (Chapter 3), NIST assumed that the total combustible mass in an office was double that of a cubicle. Thus, the average combustible fuel load on the 11th and 12th floors was estimated as 32kg/m2.

However, Chapter 3 tells us that, contrary to NIST’s assertions in Chapter 9, the loading of other combustibles was not reported to have been high on the 11th and 12th floors. On page 55 (para. 6, sent. 1) of NCSTAR 1-9, NIST reports that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission occupied the 11th and 12th floors and the north side of the 13th floor. On page 56 (para. 1, sent. 1) NIST further reports that American Express occupied the southwest sector of the 13th floor. On the same page, NIST reports that the “combustible load in the offices was described as high by interviewed American Express managers.” (NCSTAR 1-9, p. 56, para. 4, sent. 3)

REASON FOR COMMENT: Recall that American Express occupied only the southwest sector of the 13th floor. How, then can NIST credibly claim that the combustible load on the entirety of the 11th and 12 floors, both occupied solely by the SEC, was reported to have been high? Were American Express managers given regular access to the SEC offices, such that they would be qualified to comment on the combustible fuel load there? Moreover, are American Express managers qualified to give an opinion on the quantity of combustible fuel load as compared to offices in the Twin Towers?

SUGGESTED REVISION: Clearly American Express personnel are competent to provide information only on the state of the American Express offices, which were confined to the southwest sector of the 13th floor. NIST must provide real support for its assertion that the combustible load on the 11th and 12th floors was high in order to merit any increase in estimated average combustible fuel load on these floors. If it cannot provide such support, it should re-run its computer models with the lower combustible fuel load on these floors and report those results to the scientific community and the American public.

Combustible Fuel Loading on Floor 13

COMMENT: This comment is regarding NIST’s treatment of the combustible fuel load of the 13th floor. On page 375 of NCSTAR 1-9 (para. 1, sent. 8, 9) NIST states as follows: “The density of combustibles on the 13th floor was varied and not well known. The average value [for the 13th floor] was assumed to be the same as the 12th floor.” Here again, the only reported description of the combustible load on the 13th floor was from American Express managers, who were competent to comment only on the southwest sector of the 13th floor. In Chapter 3 of NCSTAR 1-9, page 57 (para. 2, sent. 2, 3) NIST reports that in the SEC occupied sections of northern perimeter of the 13th floor were “a hearing room and multiple testimony rooms facing it. There were additional testimony rooms on the northern portion of the east and west sides of the floor, and a storage room at the northwest corner.”

Importantly, NIST reports that the “testimony rooms were sparsely furnished, with just a table and a few chairs.” (NCSTAR 1-9, p. 57, para. 2, sent. 4) Furthermore, an examination of the schematic diagram of floor 13 (Figure 3-8, p. 57) reveals that the hearing room appears similar to a court room. Court rooms are also sparsely furnished, with a few tables and chairs. Finally, it is doubtful that there was any appreciable level of additional combustibles present in these testimony and hearing rooms.

REASON FOR COMMENT: NIST has apparently greatly overestimated the fuel loading on the 13th floor.

SUGGESTED REVISION: NIST must justify its use of the higher combustible fuel load on the 13th floor in Chapter 9 of the Report with more than just bare assertions. NIST clearly had more information available to it regarding the layout and make up of floor 13, as reported in Chapter 3, than it lets on in Chapter 9. This discrepancy must be reconciled.

Combustible Load Sensitivity Tests

COMMENT: NIST claims that it did sensitivity tests to determine whether these exorbitant combustible fuel loads adversely affected the outcome of its simulations. However, the fact that NIST even performed the sensitivity tests brings up the question of why NIST went to the trouble of increasing the fuel load in the first place if it would have a negligible effect on the simulation. That point aside, Chapter 9 contains statements that directly contradict the results of these alleged sensitivity tests.

On page 381 of NCSTAR 1-9 (para. 3, sent. 3) NIST flatly states that, in its fire simulations for the 12th floor, “[t]he [fire] spread rate was about one-third to one-half slower than that on the lower floors due to the higher fuel load [on the 12th floor simulation].” NIST goes on to report that the burn time across the north face in the simulation was longer than observed in the visual evidence. (NCSTAR 1-9, p. 381, para. 3, sent. 4) NIST then rejects the possibility that this could have resulted from the fuel load being too high, citing the sensitivity analysis in Section 9.3.3. (para. 3, sent. 4-8)

In Section 9.3.3, we find the referenced sensitivity analysis. Here, NIST reports that doubling the fuel load on the 8th floor resulted in the fires moving distinctly more slowly than in the visual evidence. (NCSTAR 1-9, p. 382, para. 5, sent. 1-3) Confusingly, NIST also reports that decreasing the fuel load by more than one-third on floor 12 “showed little effect on the rate of fire progression.” (Id., para. 6, sent. 1-3)

REASON FOR COMMENT: NIST’s contradictory statements raise the question of why reducing the fuel load by more than one-third would show no appreciable effect on the fire rate of progression on the 12th floor, when doubling the fuel load on the 8th floor did result in an appreciable change.

SUGGESTED REVISION: NIST should explain here exactly what the differences in the fire progression rate were in each case and let the public judge whether the effect was “little”. More important, however, is the direct contradiction between NIST’s statement that the “spread rate was about one-third to one-half slower than that on lower floors due to the higher fuel load” (NCSTAR 1-9, p. 381, para. 3, sent. 3) with its statement that decreasing the fuel load to a value equal to that of the lower floors “showed little effect on the fire rate of progression.” (NCSTAR 1-9, p. 382, para. 6, sent. 1-3) Surely NIST can see this direct contradiction. On page 381, it is claimed that higher fuel load slows down the fire spread rate. On page 382, it is claimed that a lower fuel load will not speed up the rate of fire progression. This contradiction must be reconciled.

Fire Simulations for Floors 11 and 13

NIST used the data generated by its 12th floor fire simulation for floors 11 and 13. (NCSTAR 1-9, p. 382, para. 1, 3) The 13th floor simulation used the 12th floor data delayed by one-half hour because visual evidence indicated that the 13th floor fire followed the 12th floor fire. (Id., para. 3, sent. 5) The 11th floor simulation used the 12th floor fire data delayed by 1 hour, although the visual evidence indicated that the 11th floor fire was delayed from the 12th floor fire by 1.5 hours. (NCSTAR 1-9, p. 382, para. 1, sent. 5)

COMMENT: Our first comment in this regard simply notes the discrepancy between the visual evidence that the 11th floor fire was delayed from the 12th floor fire by 1.5 hours, yet in its fire simulations for the 11th floor, it was only delayed from the 12th floor fire by 1.0 hour.

REASON FOR COMMENT: This represents yet another discrepancy in the Report that needs to be rectified.

SUGGESTED REVISION: NIST must explain why the visual evidence was not relied upon for inputs on the 11th floor, when it was relied upon for inputs on the 13th floor. The computer models should be re-run with the 11th floor fire delayed by 1.5 hours, not 1.0 hour, and the results reported accordingly.

COMMENT: Our second comment concerns both the 11th and 13th floor fires. As we demonstrated above, the 12th floor fire simulation is not representative of reality, and likely grossly overestimates the fires that were present there. By using its grossly overestimated 12th floor fire data on both the 11th and 13th floors, it has magnified this error three-fold.

REASON FOR COMMENT: By magnifying an obvious error by three times, the results of all of NIST’s subsequent computer models are again called into question.

SUGGESTED REVISION: The computer models should be re-run for the 12th floor using more realistic fire scenarios, and if NIST can still justify using the 12th floor data on the 11th and 13th floors, it should use that more realistic data on both floors. The results should then be reported accordingly.

COMMENT: Our third comment concerns the propagation of error through NIST’s approach to using a purely computer model driven approach. On page 382 of NCSTAR 1-9 (para. 1-3, sent. last) NIST acknowledges that its computer models for the fires on floors 11 and 13 “could have led to a mild overestimate of the heating on the north side of the floor.”

REASON FOR COMMENT AND SUGGESTED REVISION: In order to assure public confidence in the document, NIST must explain how such an error in overestimating the heating would propagate itself throughout all of NIST’s subsequent computer models, and how such propagation of error will affect the reliability of the ultimate results. The Report should be revised to include such a propagation of error analysis.

Chapter 11: Structural Analysis of Initial Failure Event

Section 11.4 – Structural Response to Case B and Case C Fires

COMMENT: In Section 11.4 (NCSTAR 1-9, p. 523-532), NIST goes through a detailed comparison of the structural response of the lower floors of WTC 7 to Case B and Case C fire scenarios. Case B used gas temperatures that were 10% higher than Case A, while Case C used gas temperatures that were 10% lower than Case A. No analysis of the structural response is shown or discussed for Case A.

On page 533 of NCSTAR 1-9 (para. 1, sent. 1) NIST makes the unsupported assertion that “comparison of Case B and Case C results at 4 h (Section 11.3.3) showed that the Case C structural response would be nearly identical to the Case B structural response at a time between 4.0 h and 4.5 h.” However, when we read Section 11.3.3, we see that the analysis of Case C structural response was not carried out to 4.5 hours. Instead, we see that the response of Case C at 4.0 h was somewhat similar to the response of Case B at 3.5 h. NIST must explain how it extrapolated the Case C damage to 4.5 hours, when it was using lower temperatures in Case C than in Case B.

Also, no detailed analysis is disclosed for the Case A temperatures. NIST must include this data generated by Case A temperatures in its Report so the public can independently determine whether Case A profiles should be used in the subsequent LS-DYNA model.

REASON FOR COMMENT: Most important is the fact that NIST’s use of the structural response to only Case B temperatures in its subsequent LS-DYNA model represents yet another example of NIST choosing input data that would tend to overestimate the temperatures and structural damage caused during the WTC 7 fires. We explained above how NIST did this before with respect to gross overestimates of combustible loads on floors 11, 12 and 13. These happen to be the exact floors on which the most damage was caused in NIST’s black box model. Why did NIST not use the Case A and Case C structural response in the LS-DYNA model? Or, if it did, why did it not report the results of these models?

SUGGESTED REVISION: The final report must be revised to correct this error. If Case A and Case C structural responses were never used with the LS-DYNA model, the models should be re-run and the results reported to the scientific community and the American people. This is especially true in light of the fact that the 3.5 h Case B structural response did not result in global building collapse in the LS-DYNA model.

Chapter 12: WTC Global Collapse Analysis

Section 12.5.3 – Collapse Time

COMMENT: This comment concerns NIST’s estimation of the time it took for the WTC 7 structure to fall. Specifically, this concerns NIST’s comparison to the actual descent time with a hypothetical free-fall time. (NCSTAR 1-9, p. 595; NCSTAR 1A, p. 40-41) Basically, NIST took two data points, and assumed a constant acceleration throughout the collapse. (Id.) The first data point was allegedly taken at the time the top of the parapet wall on the roofline of the north face began descending. The second data point was allegedly taken at the time the roofline was no longer visible in Camera 3. NIST claims that the time it takes for the building to fall this distance, 242 feet, is 5.4 seconds, plus or minus 0.1 seconds. No graphical or visual support is given for this time estimate.

REASON FOR COMMENT: Members of this group have conducted an independent analysis of the Camera 3 footage and come to an entirely different conclusion regarding the collapse time. Our analysis was done on a frame-by-frame basis using a frame rate of 29.97 frames per second. As shown in the figure below, our analysis concludes that it takes 3.87 seconds for the top of the roofline to descend out of view of Camera 3. This time matches almost exactly the free-fall time.

SUGGESTED REVISION: NIST must revise its Report to show the exact frames it used from Camera 3 in determining the time it took for the roofline to fall out of view. 5.4 seconds appears to be a gross overestimate. The frames we used in our collapse analysis are shown below (times “t + X seconds” reference the times given in NIST’s Appendix L, Table L-1) along with a graphical analysis of how we determined which frame represented the onset of global collapse:

Members of this group have used the Physics Toolkit computer software to plot Velocity vs. Collapse Time using discrete data points gathered during the entire collapse from the view NIST calls Camera 2. This plot is reproduced below and provides a much more detailed look at the dynamics of the WTC 7 collapse than is provided by NIST’s two-data-point analysis. Also included in the graph is a linear regression for approximately 2.6 seconds of the collapse that appears to have a constant acceleration. As can be seen, the slope (acceleration) during this portion of the collapse was approximately constant at about 9.8 m/s/s, or acceleration due to gravity with little to no resistance below. The r-squared value for this linear regression analysis was 0.9931 – a very good fit. This clearly demonstrates that NIST is being extremely misleading in reporting to the public that the structure did not descend at free-fall speed, especially given the implications of this documented feature of WTC 7’s destruction.

Chapter 8: Initiating Event Hypothesis

Inconsistencies Between Report and NIST Technical Presentation Slides

COMMENT: On page 353 of NCSTAR 1-9 (para. 1, sent. 9) NIST states that “Buckling of other floor beams followed as shown in Figure 8-27 (a), leading to collapse of the floor system, and rocking of the girder off its seat at Column 79 as shown in Figure 8-27(b).” Slide 33 of Dr. Sunder’s August 26, 2008 technical presentation states that “Forces from thermal expansion failed the connection at Column 79, then pushed the girder off the seat.” (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/WTC7_Technical_Briefing_082608.pdf)

REASON FOR COMMENT: There seems to be an inconsistency in what NIST is telling the public. In the Report it seems as if the floor system collapses, which drags the girder off its seat to the east. In Dr. Sunder’s presentation, the floor beams appear to remain rigid and push the girder off its seat to the west. These conflicting statements make it difficult for the public to determine which story NIST actually believes.

SUGGESTED REVISION: NIST must reconcile the difference between its public presentation and the substance of the Report.

“Perfectly Fixed” Exterior Columns and Rigid Floor Beams

COMMENT: On page 350 of NCSTAR 1-9 (para. 2) the exterior columns and column 44 were modeled as “perfectly fixed” at a number of locations during the finite element analysis of the northeast corner of the building. This computer model was purporting to demonstrate that thermal expansion could cause the girder to disconnect from Column 79. Obviously, if the floor beams were to elongate due to thermal expansion, it would expand in both axial directions. This, in turn, would put pressure on whatever was connected to each end of the expanded beam.

REASON FOR COMMENT: To the extent “perfectly fixing” the exterior columns and column 44 caused the computer model to neglect the pressure put on the exterior columns due to thermal expansion, the computer model does not represent reality. The exterior columns should have been allowed to bow outward in response to this pressure. It is also unclear whether the floor beams were allowed to sag as they heated in the computer model. In NIST’s report on the Twin Towers, the main reason given for global collapse initiation was sagging floor beams. If NIST did not allow the floor beams to sag in its WTC 7 model, then it did not allow any of the thermal expansion to express itself as sagging rather than pressure on the connections. Even the Cardington tests cited by NIST showed that floor beams to sag when they are heated.

SUGGESTED REVISION: NIST must more clearly explain how the thermal expansion of the floor beams in both axial directions was accounted for in the computer models. If “perfectly fixing” the exterior columns caused all of the thermal expansion to occur in one direction, the computer models needs to be modified to comport with reality, and allow outward bowing of the external columns. Also, if the floor beams and girders were not allowed to sag as they heated, there is a fundamental disconnect between the WTC 7 computer models and the WTC 1 and 2 computer models. The computer models should be re-run with appropriate revisions made to the floor beam properties, which allow them to sag as they heat.

Temperatures Applied to Beams and Girders

COMMENT: In Figure 8-25 on p.352 of NCSTAR 1-9, NIST applies temperatures of 600°C and 500°C to the floor beams and girders, respectively, over a period of about 2.6 seconds. Putting aside for a moment the fact that applying that much heat over a 2.6 second time interval could not possibly approximate the reality of the fires at WTC 7, other problems still remain. For example, these extreme temperatures were applied uniformly for all nodes of the beams and girders. (NCSTAR 1-9, p. 351)

REASON FOR COMMENT: On page 452 of NCSTAR 1-9, NIST only reports that some “sections” of the floor beams exceeded 600°C. Nowhere does NIST indicate that the computer models show uniform temperatures of 600°C for floor beams and virtually no information is given for temperatures of girders. Again, these temperatures are applied uniformly over an extremely small amount of time, which is not representative of an actual fire.

SUGGESTED REVISION: Run the computer models for the northeast section of floors again using realistic temperatures and realistic application times. Report the results accordingly.

Only High Explosives Considered in Hypothetical Blast Event

COMMENT: In its analysis of “hypothetical blast scenarios” that might have lead to the collapse of WTC 7, NIST only considers blast events using RDX, an extremely high explosive. (NCSTAR 1-9, p. 355, last sentence) NIST goes on to argue that because no loud sounds were heard, and because no window breakage was observed, that RDX was not used to bring down WTC 7.

REASON FOR COMMENT AND SUGGESTED REVISION: However, as documented by Kevin Ryan at the Journal of 9/11 Studies (http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2008/Ryan_NIST_and_Nano-1.pdf) many scientists working for and associated with NIST have experience with nanoenergetic compounds, or nanothermites, that have the potential to be used for building demolitions. And because nanothermites are primarily high-temperature incendiaries rather than explosives, they could cause damage to steel structures without producing the sound and destruction levels associated with RDX. Because NIST personnel have intimate experience with these materials, NIST should revise its report to specifically analyze whether such nanoenergetic materials could have been used as a component in a “hypothetical blast scenario” at WTC 7.

Furthermore, the National Fire Protection Association Manual for fire and explosion investigations, in Section 921, very clearly indicates that the possibility of explosives should have been thoroughly investigated by NIST. Specifically in NFPA 921 18.3.2 “High Order Damage” – “High-order damage is characterized by shattering of the structure, producing small, pulverized debris. Walls, roofs, and structural members are splintered or shattered, with the building completely demolished. Debris is thrown great distances, possibly hundreds of feet. High-order damage is the result of rapid rates of pressure rise.” WTC 7 clearly met this definition. Therefore NIST should have investigated more thoroughly the possibility that explosive were used. Specifically, the use of “exotic accelerants” should have been investigated. In NFPA 921 19.2.4 – “Exotic Accelerants,” three indicators were clearly met that should have led to a thorough investigation into the possible use of “exotic accelerants,” specifically as stated in the guideline, “Thermite mixtures.” NIST should comply with NFPA Section 921 and test the debris from WTC 7 for thermite residues and report the results to the scientific community.

Omissions from the NIST Report

Foreknowledge of Collapse

NIST omitted from the Report information relating to foreknowledge by several groups of people that WTC 7 was going to collapse.

What we mean by foreknowledge is a quality of detail and a strength of conviction that allow us to say, in light of the building’s collapse at approximately 5:21 p.m., that they knew in advance that it was coming down.

Such knowledge is highly significant in light of the facts that (a) no steel framed skyscraper in history (indeed, NIST says, “no tall building” in history) had ever before collapsed from fire alone; and (b) the collapse, according to NIST, was the result of a series of accidental and unpredictable factors, which did not come together in such a way as to determine the fate of the building until minutes, or possibly even seconds, before the collapse took place.

In any situation where someone demonstrates foreknowledge of an extremely unusual event, the possibility must be considered that the knowledge derived from those who had control over the event. In other words, foreknowledge of WTC 7’s collapse greatly strengthens our suspicions that the building was subjected to controlled demolition and that the knowledge of its demise derived ultimately from those who intended to bring it down.

NIST has tried to evade the issue of foreknowledge of WTC’s collapse by implying:

(a) that the FDNY, on the scene, saw the damage to the building caused by the collapse of WTC 1 and rationally concluded that WTC 7 might collapse.

From NIST NCSTAR 1A, p.16:

“The emergency responders quickly recognized that WTC 7 had been damaged by the collapse of WTC 1...

As early as 11:30 a.m., FDNY recognized that there was no water coming out of the hydrant system to fight the fires that were visible. With the collapses of the towers fresh in their minds, there was concern that WTC 7 too might collapse...”

(b) that an engineer, early in the day, saw the damage to the building and concluded it might collapse, passing on this assessment to others (Lead Investigator Shyam Sunder, in a discussion with Graeme MacQueen on CKNX Radio, Wingham, Ontario, Aug. 25, 2008)

It is true that damage to WTC 7 was directly witnessed by some firefighters and led a few of them (about seven) to worry that the building might collapse, but the great majority (approximately 50) who were worried about collapse did not base this worry on what they perceived but on what they were told. (See Graeme MacQueen, “Waiting for Seven: WTC 7 Collapse Warnings in the FDNY Oral Histories”, Journal of 9/11 Studies, June 11, 2008) Moreover, while it is apparently also true that an engineer communicated his opinion, early in the day, that the building might collapse, neither this communication nor communications from the FDNY is sufficient to explain the evidence of foreknowledge that we possess.

Below are seven reasons why the above NIST explanations of foreknowledge are inadequate. One example is given to illustrate each of the seven reasons. More details can be found in the paper by Graeme MacQueen titled “Waiting for Seven: WTC 7 Collapse Warnings in the FDNY Oral Histories” published at the Journal of 9/11 Studies (http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200701/MacQueenWaitingforSeven.pdf).

1. Certainty
To worry that a damaged building might collapse in some fashion is one thing; but to be certain that it will collapse is another. Detailed study of the accounts of the FDNY shows that over half of those who received warnings of WTC 7’s collapse (where degree of certainty can be determined from the reports) were certain or were told with certainty that it was coming down. (The figures are: 31 out of 58. See “Waiting for Seven”.)

2. Early announcement
If someone was observing the fires in WTC 7 and was able to determine, in the last few moments of the building’s existence, that a peculiar set of circumstances was beginning to threaten the building, that would be one thing; but to receive warnings of the building’s collapse well before this set of circumstances was in place raises far more suspicions. Yet a detailed study of the FDNY reports show that of the 33 cases where the time of warning can be determined, in ten cases warnings were received two or more hours in advance and in six cases warnings were apparently received four of more hours in advance. (See “Waiting for Seven.”) In other words, long, long before the unique set of circumstances had come together to cause the building’s collapse, the collapse was being spoken of widely.

3. Precision
If the collapse warnings derived from vague worries and concerns they would not have been precise. No building had come down from these causes before, and, in fact, complete collapse such as happened to WTC 1, WTC 2, and WTC 7 was very rare, apart from cases of controlled demolition. That is why FDNY member James McGlynn could say on 9/11, speaking of one of the Towers, "Any time I've heard of a collapse, it was never an entire building like this turned out to be." (See “Waiting for Seven.”) Yet, despite the rareness of complete collapse, many people apparently knew in advance that WTC 7 would be undergoing such a collapse. Consider the following from the FDNY oral histories:

Q. "Were you there when building 7 came down in the afternoon?"
A. "Yes."
Q. "You were still there?"
A. "Yes, so basically they measured out how far the building was going to come, so we knew exactly where we could stand."
Q. "So they just put you in a safe area, safe enough for when that building came down?"
A. "5 blocks. 5 blocks away. We still could see. Exactly right on point, the cloud stopped right there." (See “Waiting for Seven.”)

4. New information
If the collapse warnings derived from worries and concerns expressed early in the day by engineers and firefighters, why would the collapse of WTC 7 have been reported by CNN (one hour and 10 minutes in advance) and BBC (23 minutes in advance) as breaking news based on just received information? CNN anchor Aaron Brown said “We are getting information now.” CNN anchor Judy Woodruff: “We’re hearing for the first time” (See Appendix.) BBC anchor: “We’ve got some news just coming in”.

5. Premature announcement
CNN and the BBC did not merely report that the building was damaged or that it might collapse; they prematurely announced its actual collapse.

CNN’s Aaron Brown, one hour and ten minutes in advance of the collapse: “We are getting information now that one of the other buildings, Building 7, in the World Trade Center complex, is on fire and has either collapsed or is collapsing...”
BBC anchor, 23 minutes before the collapse: “the Salomon Brothers Building in New York, right in the heart of Manhattan, has also collapsed.”
No satisfactory explanation has been forthcoming about these premature announcements, which were obviously based on data fed to these announcers.

6. Continuity
The BBC continued to announce that WTC 7 had collapsed, even when the building could be seen standing directly behind reporter Jane Standley, for about 17 minutes until the story was pulled abruptly.

When CNN personnel realized they had made an error in their early announcement, they could simply have corrected it. They could, at the very least, have withdrawn their attention from WTC 7 and stopped covering it since it was obviously still standing. Instead, CNN continued to keep WTC 7 in the forefront of its coverage over the hour and ten minutes preceding its collapse, repeatedly warning that it was going to come down and keeping the image of the building in front of the viewer until it had actually collapsed. (See Appendix.)

7. Progression
According to NIST’s study, WTC 7’s fires had been reduced from ten floors, soon after the collapse of WTC 1, to essentially two floors as the collapse time approached. This was a building in which the fires were actually dying down. Why, then, did CNN show awareness of the building’s approaching doom, and why did it revise its captions accordingly, from “may collapse” to “poised to collapse” (approximately 15 minutes before actual collapse) and then to “on verge of collapse” (approximately 1.5 minutes before actual collapse). (Appendix)

Any one of these seven factors would be enough to make us consider the possibility of foreknowledge of WTC 7’s collapse. Taken together, they make an unanswerable case.

As further support, below we have provided a timeline of events based on CNN’s coverage of Building 7. The times in the left-hand column are within 30 seconds of actual time.

The NIST Report should be revised to include a detailed analysis of all of the reports of specific foreknowledge of the collapse of Building 7. NIST’s Lead Investigator, Dr. Sunder, when challenged with reports like this during radio interviews recently has stated that NIST’s investigation was not a criminal investigation, but instead is a technical one. However, this position belies the fact that NIST did opine in the Report that the controlled demolition hypothesis was unlikely because NIST didn’t believe that the explosives could be placed without being detected. Such an opinion is not a technical opinion, but an operational one that goes more to logistically how a criminal could have committed the crime than technically how it was done. Clearly NIST could consider the many reports of foreknowledge and note the impossibility of such specific and detailed foreknowledge. The Report should be revised accordingly.

FEMA Building Performance Study – Appendix C

The NIST WTC 7 Report does not attempt to explain the “severe high-temperature corrosion attack” on apparently the only piece of WTC 7 steel which was tested, as documented in Appendix C, “Limited Metallurgical Examination” of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Building Performance Study, which can be found at the link below on the NIST website.

http://wtc.nist.gov/media/AppendixC-fema403_apc.pdf

The detailed further study deemed necessary by FEMA was – as far as we know - never done, and the observed “intergranular melting” of the steel can not be explained within the framework of the present NIST hypothesis. Why would NIST ignore the recommendations made by FEMA investigators for additional research of the unexplained material behavior?

In a taped interview Worcester Polytechnic Institute Fire Engineering professor Dr. Jonathan Barnett, one of the authors of the 13 page report in Appendix C, made the comment that normal investigative protocol was not followed in the case of the WTC 7 collapse. He says that the steel from WTC 7 was not photographed, examined, and cataloged before being removed. The comments he makes are at the 3:00 minute mark in the below linked video.

http://www.911podcasts.com/display.php?cat=9998&med=0&ord=Name&strt=180&vid=58&epi=0&typ=0

It is reported that WTC 7 was fully evacuated long before its collapse and that there were no fatalities or missing persons involved with its demise. The photos in the figures below show the collapsed WTC 7 to have its debris field confined to within a short distance of its footprint.

In addition to showing the relatively tight confinement of the debris field of WTC 7, the photo in Figure 2 also shows that debris from WTC 6 and WTC 5 was contained within their footprints or very nearby.

The FEMA report debris field map for the Twin Towers, below in Figure 3, shows that only a small percentage of the debris from WTC 1 made it the 350 feet to WTC 7’s location. The lighter areas on the map represent low debris density and the darker areas high debris density.

The seeming separation of the WTC 7 debris field from those of the other buildings, and the fact there were no missing persons or fatalities involved with its collapse, make it hard to accept the History Channel program narrator’s comment, in the video above, that the mingling of the steel from the different buildings, and the need for search and rescue, were the reasons for the removal of the WTC 7 steel, before it could be properly photographed, examined, and cataloged, at the collapse site.

Even if the WTC 7 steel was moved, without being examined and cataloged at the site of the collapse, an additional question arises as to why it wasn’t recovered and stored for later testing, evaluation, and a systematic forensic analysis. This is especially pertinent in light of the FEMA recommendation that additional research was needed due to the strange findings in their very limited metallurgical examination.

In the August 2008 NIST draft Report on WTC 7 there is no mention of testing of any recovered steel from the collapsed remains of the building. In sections where the properties of the steel need to be discussed reference is curiously made to WTC steel samples, not specifically those of WTC 7. This can be understood if one is aware that in an earlier draft of the WTC 7 report NIST made the stark admission that “No metallography could be carried out because no steel was recovered from WTC 7. Other physical properties are the same as those estimated in Chapter 8 for the WTC steels”.

Since the NIST report on the collapse of WTC 7 suffers from a lack of physical evidence to support its findings, it should go into some level of detail on: why normal investigatory protocol was not followed, why none of the steel was recovered, and whether any laws were violated in not doing so. If there are questions as to the legality of the removal and lack of recovery for investigatory purposes, NIST should recommend that an investigation be commenced to determine who was involved with the decision to remove the steel and why NIST did not receive any of it for its investigation.

There are also several seemingly contradictory issues between the FEMA Building Performance Study Appendix C and the NIST WTC 7 Report, for which no explanations have been provided, and they are:

• NIST states "No steel was recovered from WTC 7" while FEMA section C.2 shows that at least one piece of WTC 7 steel was tested, with the results being alarming, considering the highly unusual formation of a liquid eutectic, intergranular melting, and erosion. Features not seen before, by the experienced investigators, in steel subject to common office fires.
  
  
• FEMA section C.3 Summary for Sample 1 states that the steel was heated to around 1,000° C. (1,800° F.), which is much hotter than the steel temperatures NIST is claiming to have caused the collapse, and seemingly far outside the ability of office fires to heat the steel. Additionally, this section states that steel liquefied at these temperatures, due to the formation of the eutectic, which would dramatically lower the usual 2750° F melting point temperature of the steel.
  
  
• FEMA Section C.6 Suggestions for Future Research states "It is also possible that the intergranular melting, eutectic formation, and erosion phenomenon started prior to collapse and accelerated the weakening of the steel structure."
  

Why hasn't the "future research" been done, and the results from it published, especially when FEMA itself suggested that this melting and erosion may have started “prior to collapse”? NIST was charged with investigating the conditions that led to the collapse of WTC 7, and clearly something that possibly occurred prior to collapse and “accelerated the weakening of the steel structure” is something NIST should have investigated. NIST should revise the Report accordingly after it has performed the needed metallurgical analysis.

These public comments on the NIST WTC 7 Report are being submitted by the following individuals:

James R. Gourley, Esq.
Chemical Engineer
International Center for 9/11 Studies
jrpatent@gmail.com

Tony Szamboti
Mechanical Engineer
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

Richard Gage
AIA Architect
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

Graeme MacQueen, Ph.D.
Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice

Dr. Steven Jones
Ph.D. Physicist
S&J Scientific Co.

Kevin Ryan
Chemist
Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice

Dr. Niels Harrit
Ph.D. Chemistry
University of Copenhagen

Ron Brookman
Structural Engineer
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

Chris Sarns
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

Kamal Obeid, SE PE
Structural Engineer
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

Scott Grainger, PE
Forensic Engineer
Civil Engineer
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

Frank Legge
Logistical Systems Consulting

Bob Fischer
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

Justin Keogh
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

David Chandler
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

Gregg Roberts
gregg@wtc7.net

Source

Coincidences of Building 7 and 9/11

It's a good thing Salomon Brothers took such a huge lease on WTC seven because Silverstein was in a bit of a bind before the building was even completed. Originally a billion dollar deal was about to be completed where the entire building would be leased to Drexel Burnham Lambert. But it didn't work out when things went bad as the junk bond market tanked.

"The investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert (best known for its star dealer, the notorious "junk bond king" Michael Milken) was to become a tenant in 1986 but backed out."
http://www.greatgridlock.net/NYC/nyc4.html#82b

"Drexel Burnham Lambert, the investment house, agreed only two months ago to take an equity interest in the project and also lease the entire building for 30 years."
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DEFDC1430F934A15754C0A960948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

And then Salomon Brothers comes to the rescue. Not leasing the entire building but well over half.

"Salomon said it would sign a 20-year lease on slightly over one million square feet, or just over half the space in the tower. A Billion in Rental Fees...

Larry Silverstein, a New York developer who built 7 World Trade Center on land owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said yesterday that finding a major tenant had not been easy because the rent was high. He said Salomon would pay more than $1 billion over 20 years"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE1D7153FF93AA15752C1A96E948260

No other tenant was even close the the amount Salomon was leasing. ITT Hartford was the next largest tenant with just 10% of what Salomon was leasing. Salomon was by far the major source of the owners income on building 7.

"Tenant Square Feet Leased Floor Industry
Salomon Smith Barney 1,202,900
ITT Hartford Insurance Group 122,590"
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/tenants7.html

But when in late 1997 Travelers group bought Salomon and the name became Salomon Smith Barney they no longer needed or wanted to be in WTC 7. In fact it was costing them lots of money.

"Travelers to Buy Salomon Bros. for $9 Billion
Salomon will be folded into Travelers' huge brokerage unit, Smith Barney Inc."
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/18870894.html?dids=18870894:18870894&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Sep+25%2C+1997&author=THOMAS+S.+MULLIGAN&pub=Los+Angeles+Times&desc=Travelers+to+Buy+Salomon+Bros.+for+%249+Billion&pqatl=google

"Salomon Lease May Cost Millions
Salomon Brothers has been unlucky in real estate in the past, and might lose millions of dollars on its lease at 7 World Trade Center. The investment bank known for making huge profits buying and selling bonds agreed to be acquired by Travelers this week and plans to move into Travelers offices at 388 and 390 Greenwich Street in Manhattan."
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980DEEDC163AF935A1575AC0A961958260

"Salomon stands to lose millions of dollars on its lease when the firm abandons most or all of its space at 7 World Trade Center and moves its traders and investment bankers six or seven blocks north to the Travelers complex at 388 and 390 Greenwich Street in Manhattan.

Salomon Brothers leases 24 floors, or 1.1 million square feet, at 7 World Trade Center, a two-million-square-foot tower built in 1987. Downtown real estate brokers say that Salomon is paying about $40 a square foot, or $56 million a year, for the space on a lease that extends until 2013.

As a result of the merger with Travelers' Smith Barney investment bank, 1,500 bankers, traders, analysts and office workers are expected to lose their jobs. According to Travelers, many of the remaining Salomon executives will move to the offices on Greenwich Street.

Salomon will find no shortage of tenants interested in subleasing its space at 7 World Trade Center, says George Keller, a commercial broker at Cushman & Wakefield. But it is highly unlikely, he said, that any tenant will pay more than market rate, about $30 a square foot. The firm would have to make up the difference between the two numbers, say $5 million a year for the next 16 years if Salomon were to sublease 500,000 square feet.

''They'd take a hit,'' Mr. Keller said."
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950CE0DF163AF935A1575AC0A961958260

It was shortly after this in 1998 that Citicorp and it's connections with the Federal Reserve entered into the picture and purchased Travelers and the new headache at WTC 7.

"NEW YORK, April 6: Banking giant Citicorp and financial services titan, Travelers Group Inc, said on Monday they plan to merge in the largest-ever corporate marriage, creating a global powerhouse to be called Citigroup."
http://www.indianexpress.com/res/web/pIe/ie/daily/19980407/09750344.html

"Citigroup was formed on October 8, 1998 following the $140 billion merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group to create the world's largest financial services organization.

It became the first contributor to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1913, and the following year it inaugurated the first overseas branch of a U.S. bank in Buenos Aires. The 1918 purchase of U.S. overseas bank International Banking Corporation helped it become the first American bank to surpass $1 billion in assets, and it became the largest commercial bank in the world in 1929."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup

"Citicorp is the holding corporation for Citibank, which was formed by the merger of the National City Bank of New York (formerly City Bank of New York) and the First National Bank of New York.

The City Bank of New York was organized two days before the start of the War of 1812. This was the period in U.S. history between the end of the first Bank of the United States and the start of the second Bank of the United States.

Since it lacked a central bank, the U.S. government relied on private banks to finance its participation in the War of 1812, and City Bank's first loan was $500,000 for that purpose.

In 1865 City Bank was chartered as the National City Bank of New York under the recently passed National Bank Act.

One of the early investors in the newly chartered bank was William Rockefeller, who was John D. Rockefeller's younger brother and a cofounder of Standard Oil."
http://www.trivia-library.com/b/largest-banks-in-the-world-citicorp-and-citibank-part-1.htm

While they were still stuck with this lease that they didn't want, another group with ties to the FED 11 months before 9/11 actually then purchased the mortagage to WTC 7.

"BLACKSTONE ACQUIRES DEBT ON 7 WORLD TRADE CENTER

The Blackstone Group, a private investment bank with offices in New York and London, was founded in 1985 by its Chairman, Peter G. Peterson, and its President and CEO, Stephen A. Schwarzman."
http://www.blackstone.com/news/press_releases/7_world_trade_oct_2000.pdf

"Peter G. Peterson--He was also chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from (2000–04)"
http://www.iie.com/institute/peterson-bio.cfm

"Schwarzman attended Yale at the same time as G Bush. He also was a member of a death cult with G Bush called Skull & Bones.."
http://www.nndb.com/org/723/000041600/

"Schwarzman's link to people in power extends beyond the world of high finance and big business, as he and President George W. Bush were roommates while attending Yale University in the 1960s. Their relationship was further cemented by virtue of the fact that they were also Skull and Bones brothers during that time."
http://uk.askmen.com/specials/2007_top_49/stephen-schwarzman-37.html

And then when 9/11 happened they evidently got out of that pesky money losing lease which is what they wanted, looks like 9/11 was a lucky break for them. They were renting to much office space.

"Citigroup immediately had to relocate 2,500 employees who had been housed in 7 World Trade Center, a building that collapsed a few hours after the Twin Towers. Most of those employees were subsequently housed in existing bank offices throughout the New York metro area. But even after that, the bank finds itself with surplus space."
http://web.archive.org/web/20020905132734/homes.wsj.com/plotsploys/plotsploys/20011024-grant.html

"Thermal expansion" sure was a lucky break for all the major players involved. The owner, the major leaseholder, and the mortgage holder. Who says 9/11 was a tragedy? The lucky breaks just keep coming.....

"Citigroup Facing Subpoena in IPO Probe

Rep. Michael Oxley (R., Ohio) said Friday that a subpoena is necessary because Citigroup provided insufficient information about what, if any, special treatment its Salmon Smith Barney investing banking division may have given WorldCom executives. Salomon had been one of the now-bankrupt telecom's principal investment bankers.

But Citigroup says some information that the committee is seeking was destroyed in the Sept. 11 terror attack on the World Trade Center. Salomon had offices in 7 World Trade Center, one of the buildings that collapsed in the aftermath of the attack. The bank says that back-up tapes of corporate emails from September 1998 through December 2000 were stored at the building and destroyed in the attack."
http://web.archive.org/web/20021215143701/www.thestreet.com/markets/matthewgoldstein/10036925.html

No it certainly isn't called the Salomon building anymore. Now you know why they didn't move into the new WTC 7 building. They wanted out of the old one.

"The only completed tower at Ground Zero — the 52-story, SOM-designed 7 World Trade Center, which opened in 2006—is only 75 percent filled."
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/sep2008/id20080915_858092.htm?chan=innovation_architecture_top+stories

As interesting and coincidental as this may be, there is something possibly even more interesting and coincidental going on on the morning of 9/11 at WTC 7. It has been said that there was never any evidence of explosives at ground zero. How do we know this? If the Secret Service had military personal who are experts in explosives recovery at ground zero and they found something do you think they would tell us? Would there be anything to find anyway? Might be prudent to have them there just in case don't you think? It's a little known fact that for some "coincidental" reason the secret service summoned experts in explosives recovery to be at the WTC on the morning of 9/11.

"Teams of CECOM experts from Fort Monmouth were deployed to ground zero in New York with equipment capable of locating cellular phone transmissions within the ruins of the structures that collapsed, according to Timothy L. Rider, a spokesman for the Army base.

Rider said the 754th Ordnance Company (explosive ordnance) from Fort Monmouth was also deployed in New York to assist authorities should they come across anything they think might be explosives while digging through the debris in search of victims.

The 754th Ordnance Company can safely set off or render inoperative any explosive that is found, Rider said."
http://hub.gmnews.com/News/2001/0921/Front_Page/007.html

What they fail to tell you in that article is the the Secret Service had arranged that not only Army explosive recovery experts be at ground zero but others from the Navy be there as well. Not in response to the WTC disaster. But to be there on the morning of 9/11, I guess just in case they were needed? They were not called in response to the attack. They were already there at the requst of the Secret Service.

"Richard J. Spanard, Beta Tau ’93 (Slippery
Rock University) is a U. S. Army
captain and commander of an Explosive
Ordnance Disposal company
based in northern New Jersey. On the
morning of September 11, he was enjoying
breakfast at a deli 50 feet from
the World Trade Center twin towers
when the first plane hit. General
hysteria inundated the deli. Spanard
decided that he and the three
soldiers with him should move to
number 7 World Trade Center, where
they had a scheduled meeting."
http://www.sigmataugamma.org/file_depot/0-10000000/20000-30000/26446/folder/63809/sagawinter02.pdf

You see they were already there. Before any plane hit. For a SCHEDULED meeting in WTC 7. Who were they Scheduled to meet with? The answer as you will see is the Secret Service. But first a little background on this outfit.

"The 754th Ordnance Company (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) came to Fort Monmouth from Camp Kilmer in 1966. Their mission is to train police, fire and public officials in explosive ordnance disposal and bomb threat search techniques, as well as to reduce the hazard of domestic or foreign conventional nuclear, chemical, biological and improvised explosive ordnance that personnel or outside activities may encounter."
http://www.monmouth.army.mil/historian/history.php

Their base just happened to be conducting an excercise on 9/11.

"FORT MONMOUTH, N.J -Lt. Col. Stephen N. Wood, Garrison commander, here. "By sheer coincidence we were scheduled to conduct "Timely Alert II," a force protection exercise on Sept. 11 and because of that, some of the concrete barriers were already in place."

Wood said people on post told him when they first saw live footage of the events unfolding at the World Trade Center, they thought it was some elaborate training video to accompany the exercise."
http://www.amc.army.mil/amc/pa/oct01.html

They are an explosives recovery team from the Army.

"Fort Monmouth is an installation of the Department of the Army in Monmouth County, New Jersey."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Monmouth

But explosives recovery teams from the Navy were also told to meet with the Secret Service at WTC 7 on the morning of 9/11 as we can see here....

“I don’t feel like a hero,” admitted Chief Boatswain’s Mate, Explosive Ordnance Disposal, (EOD) Jim Prewitt

That morning, Prewitt, assigned to EOD Mobile Unit 6, was working as a team leader with the U.S. Secret Service in New York City. While on his way to a brief in building seven of the World Trade Center Complex, the first plane struck the north tower."
http://www.news.navy.mil/search/print.asp?story_id=4866&VIRIN=3463&imagetype=1&page=1

That news release by the Navy is proof he was there also for a brief in building 7 before the first plane hit, and it was with the Secret Service.

So we have Army and Navy Explosive recovery teams at the WTC on the morning of 9/11 at the request of the Secret Service just before the attacks, and before the trade center towers came down and "thermal expansion" took out a building for the first time ever.

"EOD Mobile Unit Six is homeported at Naval Weapons Station, Charleston S.C."
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2005/05/mil-050505-nns01.htm

A little background on the Navy explosives team....

"U.S. Navy EOD, a force of about 1,300 officers and enlisted Sailors, is the world's premier combat force for countering improvised explosive devices, weapons of mass destruction and all other types of weaponry. An elite team of warriors, Navy EOD technicians are the "first in"--clearing the way for further combat operations in every environment--on the ground, in the air and under the sea."
http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=38521

While this article confirms they were working with the Secret Service on 9/11, they fail to mention why they were there before any attack.....

" Manama, Bahrain (Nov. 25, 2002) -- The Navy and Marine Corps Medal is pinned on the uniform of Chief Boatswain's Mate Jim Prewitt. Chief Prewitt was presented the medal for heroism while serving with Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit Six, Charleston, S.C., on Sept. 11, 2001, where he displayed extraordinary heroism and bravery in the face of extreme danger. Chief Prewitt was working with the Secret Service in New York City during the attack on the North Tower of the World Trade Center."
http://www.news.navy.mil/list_single.asp?id=3463

These guys have been pretty busy lately...

"Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs - also known as the infamous roadside bombs, are the single most deadly threat to troops in Iraq. Fort Monmouth’s own 754th Ordnance Company deploys there this spring and will be tasked with the mission to directly engage and minimize that threat.

EOD does not conduct searches, except in support of the Secret Service,” explained Capt. Shawn L. Kadlec, 754th Ordnance Company Commander."
http://www.monmouth.army.mil/monmessg/newmonmsg/jan272006/m04EOD.htm

Why did the Secret Service schedule a meeting with military explosives recovery teams on the morning of 9/11 at the WTC complex?

"Although locating, identifying, and disposing of foreign and domestic explosive devices is the primary mission of EOD, supporting missions for the Secret Service, State Department, and other Federal Agencies are also a large portion of the EOD’s job."
http://www.monmouth.army.mil/monmessg/newmonmsg/jun082007/m23eod.htm

Source