patrick.net

Heraclitusstudent says

What is observed is indeed a simultaneous collapse.

The explanation is a progressive collapse.

Utter nonsense. The above video clearly shows a progressive collapse. Look at what happens to the structures at the very top of the building. They disappear into the internal structure of the building in a progressive manner. Seriously, do you deny that?

Hater says

How much does the government pay sock puppets?

Yawn. So people are sock puppets now because they prefer facts to unsubstantiated and invariably ludicrous conspiracy theories?

Rashomon says

Just the actual bit where the building collapses will do. That clearly shows a progressive internal collapse.

This video shows the entire frame of the building collapsing together symmetrically, simultaneously. And in free fall.
This is exactly what cannot happen if you have a chain reaction. One part would pull the other to the side.

Also the fraction of a second advanced on the inside of the building is typically what happens on a controlled demolition.

This video shows exactly this: the entire set of columns in the front of the building suddenly and simultaneously stop all resistance and let the building fall vertically in free fall. There is no chain reaction. There is no pull on one side, or to the back. It's free fall, and vertically.

Steel columns do not stop all resistance suddenly. They do not coordinate with the neighbor beams. There are basic laws of physics that apply.

Heraclitusstudent says

This video shows the entire frame of the building collapsing together symmetrically, simultaneously. And in free fall.

This is exactly what cannot happen if you have a chain reaction. One part would pull the other to the side.

No, it doesn't. It shows a progressive internal collapse across the building from left to right on that video and then the entire structure coming down. Do you or do you not deny that?

Rashomon says

No, it doesn't. It shows a progressive internal collapse across the building from left to right on that video and then the entire structure coming down. Do you or do you not deny that?

Absolutely not. The entire floors stay horizontal. Fall vertically. The right side with the left side. Not pulled to the back or to the side.
Again if there was a progression and columns were pulled by something else, THEY WOULD NOT FALL VERTICALLY. They would be pulled to the side or back, because they would still resist.
Here the videos clearly shows the exact opposite. ALL RESISTANCE STOPS SUDDENLY AND SIMULTANEOUSLY.
The fall is vertical. And it's a free fall. Showing no resistance.
Watch again.

Rashomon says

And the windows weren't broken on the floors where there was out-venting.

This sentence doesn't make sense.

Heraclitusstudent says

Rashomon says

And the windows weren't broken on the floors where there was out-venting.

This sentence doesn't make sense.

Yes, it does. The pressure broke a window. The windows weren't already broken.

Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth) is an American non-profit[1][2] organization of architects and engineers who dispute the results of official investigations into the September 11 attacks, including the 9/11 Commission Report.[3][4]

Founded in 2006, the group demands that the United States Congress pursue "a truly independent investigation" into the September 11 attacks as they believe government agency investigations into the collapse of the World Trade Center have not addressed what it calls "massive evidence for explosive demolition."[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architects_%26_Engineers_for_9/11_Truth#cite_note-KGO-4

www.youtube.com/embed/OQgVCj7q49o

www.youtube.com/embed/1l-8PFk8j5I

Heraclitusstudent says

Absolutely not. The entire floors stay horizontal. Fall vertically. The right side with the left side. Not pulled to the back or to the side.

Then it's not worth discussing it any further with you because you are denying the evidence of your own eyes. Look again at the structures at the very top of the building. They collapse inwards progressively, taking out many of the internal supporting structures of the building and leading to the collapse of the rest of the building.

Indiana Jones says

Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth) is an American non-profit[1][2] organization of architects and engineers who dispute the results of official investigations into the September 11 attacks, including the 9/11 Commission Report.[3][4]

Yes, and a great many of those who signed have very little or no expertise on the matter, but hey I guess using those two words (architects and engineers) sucks in the target audience.

Rashomon says

And the windows weren't broken on the floors where there was out-venting.

This sentence doesn't make sense.

Yes, it does. The pressure broke a window. The windows weren't already broken.

No but they were probably broken on the floors that were in fact pancaking.
If you want to believe compressed air travels down through 20 flooring to break 1 particular window instead of laterally to a window on the same floor that is pancaking, then you have no sense of reality and nothing will convince you.
I just find these violent lateral explosions very suspect.

Heraclitusstudent says

No but they were probably broken on the floors that were in fact pancaking.

You don't say. Those aren't the parts circled in the picture though, are they?

Rashomon says

Then it's not worth discussing it any further with you because you are denying the evidence of your own eyes.

The entire floor stays demonstrably horizontal on the video as it falls. The right side falls together with the left.
That alone is contradicting the official explanation.
I think you are the one denying the obvious here.

Rashomon says

Look again at the structures at the very top of the building.

You are referring to the top that collapses a fraction of a second before the rest.
1 - this is typically happens in a controlled demolition to ensure the building falls on itself
2 - it doesn't pull the rest, otherwise the building would fall backward as the front columns would still be standing. This doesn't happen.
3 - if it was pulling the rest, the symmetry also couldn't be explained. One side would be pulled then the other.

Ok, this entire thread is just one more to show that many of the posters on patrick.net are fucking stupid and or mentally ill...

curious2 says

As the upper floors fall several meters, accelerating to ramming speed, the lower floors have zero chance of stopping them. A tractor trailer hitting a bicycle continues without slowing down, just as a high-speed train would continue through that tractor trailer as if it weren't even there. The upper floors weighed many times more than a train, and they accelerated to 200km/hour.

This is a very reasonable explanation.
There are just a couple of issues with it:

- The first is that you are talking of the twin towers whereas my main objection is with the WTC7 which was not hit by an airplane but collapsed instantly to free fall.
- The second is that the fall didn't accelerate instantly to 200km/h. One floor fell for 3-4m, and admitting it gathered enough force to destroy the floor below it would at least have been slowed . The towers frame made it pretty much a rigid tube that was designed to be hit by a plane, and beams likely had a security factor 2-4 in how much they could support. All this means the fall should not be a free fall and the resistance should show up in the acceleration downward being slower than gravity.
The problem is it doesn't.

curious2 says

Posting obvious junk about a topic that hurts people is a jerk move.

Many of these hurt people are the one asking for more information and pointing at gaps in the official thesis.
Emotionally, the least that can be done is to provide total transparency. Even if we don't understand we should say it. We should provide all elements including remains of the columns. Instead we got stonewalling and destruction of the evidence. This is not great EQ. And this fodder for conspiracy theorists.

Ironman says

According to many people here, conspiracy theories are what Repubs are involved in all the time, specially with Hillary.

Frankly most republicans conspiracy theories, like death panels, Kerry shot himself to get a medal and become president, Obama is not American, are absolute crap and not worth more than 2 secs attentions.

Heraclitusstudent says

You are referring to the top that collapses a fraction of a second before the rest.

1 - this is typically happens in a controlled demolition to ensure the building falls on itself

No, what happens in a controlled demolition is a series of very loud detonations in a controlled manner, something which clearly did not happen in this event, or perhaps you'd care to share a video of said necessary detonations. And the top doesn't just collapse. It progresses right across the structure - a vertical progression across the entire east side of WTC7 - as stated in the NIST report. The report is very clear about the extent of the buckling and collapse of these parts that then led to a global collapse. Nothing you state counters what they reported unless you somehow think you are more of an expert than those people who spent many thousands of hours researching what happened.

Rashomon says

And the top doesn't just collapse. It progresses right across the structure - a vertical progression across the entire east side of WTC7 - as stated in the NIST report. The report is very clear about the extent of the buckling and collapse of these parts that then led to a global collapse.

You still haven't explained why the entire front (and side seen in an other video) of the building, a line of steel columns, just collapsed in free fall without being pulled back or left or right. And the NIST model in your video doesn't show it either.

www.youtube.com/embed/kqG6v7KZ_s8

Rashomon says

what typically happens in a controlled demolition is a large series of very loud detonations in a controlled manner, something which clearly did not happen in this event

no explosions?

www.youtube.com/embed/4GY0yWXGaKs

I know Dr Steven Jones AND his son. I took advanced physics and electromagnetism classes from them in the early 90's. (And those Maxwell's equations were a bitch for an art guy like myself I can tell you).

He's a pure scientist. It was career suicide to pursue nanothermitic materials in the WTC7 dust. There IS NOT a more conservative university as tightly connected to the intelligence community's recruiting efforts as BYU. (I know because they tried to recruit me). Dr Jones is villified from all sides for following the evidence on this one. He's a brave man and a meticulous scientist.

If many other Manhattan high rises have those nanothermitic red chips naturally lurking regularly throughout the structures, I would highly advise against roasting chestnuts too close to heating oil sources ANYwhere on that bloody island.

After personally speaking with Dr Jones, a US Senator, some highly-placed career intelligence officers, and a pair of active duty army engineers, if someone wanted a building to drop into a tidy pile of dust for careful disposal (of say sensitive national security data, documents or other invaluables better destroyed than dug through by firefighters and construction workers), with today's modern and even "surgical" but very expensive incendiaries, it would not take weeks or even days to place charges.

Consider a totally different possibility. If you had tech as nasty as nanothermite, a budget far beyond a common building detonation crew at your disposal in the event of disaster, and you had to destroy a building in a tidy manner before thousands of civilian construction workers spend months and years digging through it, would you use it and then tell the public? Even the most honorable patriot would keep that under his hard hat.

If for no other reason than to stick up for a stalwart man who was all but crucified for following his IQ rather than his paranoia, I had to at least toss this out.

By all means let's keep arguing the science...it's loads of fun, but don't be naïve enough to think we don't have the tech to bring down a building in a matter of hours (leaving nothing but nasty little red, green and gray chips behind ...hidden in mountains of dust and debris).

deepcgi says

I know Dr Steven Jones AND his son. I took advanced physics and electromagnetism classes from them in the early 90's. (And those Maxwell's equations were a bitch for an art guy like myself I can tell you).

He's a pure scientist.

Wasn't he the guy that created all the truther organizations to publish his papers in? I wonder how much money the truther websites rake in compared to a professors salary? Here is a different truther saying jones is full of shit. http://jamesfetzer.blogspot.com/2011/05/has-nanothermite-been-oversold-to-911.html

Which truther conspiracy nut should we believe?

Heraclitusstudent says

no explosions?

www.youtube.com/embed/4GY0yWXGaKs

a. You don't bring a building down setting demolition charges in that manner. Those windows are shattering because of the internal collapse that is occurring.
b. I strongly suspect the audio is faked on that. Where are those sounds on all the other videos that are available, including the conspiracy websites? Why aren't those sounds clearly audible on this video for example as they are very likely no further away than the zoomed (and cropped?) video you linked and that was posted up TEN years after the event? Or is this simply someone taking original video from a distance and zooming it in (so distorting it) and then adding audio? Even the poster tries to make up excuses for it not being a fake. Hmmm...

www.youtube.com/embed/xrzeN-wvHD4

c. You also clearly see in that video that the windows on the right shatter after the collapse has begun NOT before it.

Yeah. It was a tough choice he made to pursue the nano-thermite evidence. First he was threatened, blackballed, dead poor in no time, but more importantly, debris from WTC 7 was very hard to come by. For some reason there was a mountain of debris removal at WTC7 overnight. A huge portion of the tidy pile of debris was removed before most of us even woke up in the morning on Sept 12. Even people who want to disprove him complain of the lack of access to WTC debris.

It was a building full of national security materials. "Pull it" doesn't have to be some demolition term. Sensitive computer data, paperwork and who knows what else in the building. The whole area is a war zone. By all means "pull" everyone out of the building, level it cleanly, and have military take care of the bulk of it before the smoke even clears. It doesn't mean they did the same to the two towers. Quite the opposite.

deepcgi says

Yeah. It was a tough choice he made to pursue the nano-thermite evidence. First he was threatened, blackballed, dead poor in no time, but more importantly, debris from WTC 7 was very hard to come by. For some reason there was a mountain of debris removal at WTC7 overnight. A huge portion of the tidy pile of debris was removed before most of us even woke up in the morning on Sept 12. Even people who want to disprove him complain of the lack of access to WTC debris.

True or not true that wouldn't matter because if it had been a controlled demolition, where would the charges have been set? Certainly not at the top of the building.

deepcgi says

It was a building full of national security materials. "Pull it" doesn't have to be some demolition term. Sensitive computer data, paperwork and who knows what else in the building. The whole area is a war zone. By all means "pull" everyone out of the building, level it cleanly, and have military take care of the bulk of it before the smoke even clears. It doesn't mean they did the same to the two towers. Quite the opposite.

You seem to be implying they might have set demolition charges after the attack. You don't really believe that, do you? Come on. Be honest. You think it was planned and that charges were laid beforehand, don't you?

Oh. and just look at the second and entirely valid video. Watch the lowest line of windows visible above the other foreground building. They begin to drop simulaneously with the highest most line of windows. I can't say the same from any footage of the two main towers. In fact, those look like the entire tops of the structures have tilted 65 degrees or more before being lost in huge clouds which start at the top and move down.

With or without a fake first video, WT7 is a different story. If you're right and no explosives were used to weaken those internal metal structures, whoever designed THAT building is a disgrace to architecture and civil engineering. If you want to pick on a highly educated professional, pick on whoever designed that piece of crap.

...and yes, i'm saying that well-placed intelligence and military individuals have told me that you can bring a building down, cleanly, within 8 hours, but that it would not be an inexpensive operation. When someone wants to demolish an old high rise brownstone to put up a shiny new stack of million dollar condo's, they want to spend as little as possible - different story.

deepcgi says

With or without a fake first video, WT7 is a different story. If you're right and no explosives were used to weaken those internal metal structures, whoever designed THAT building is a disgrace to architecture and civil engineering. If you want to pick on a highly educated professional, pick on whoever designed that piece of crap.

I suspect it's not that easy to design buildings to 100% withstand very prolonged major fires that are being left to burn. A buckling here, a collapse there...

As for your other point, I don't see what you are referring to. It isn't collapsing simultaneously. There's a clear progression shown in that video. And again, where are the necessary very large numbers of detonations that this supposed conspiracy would require?

deepcgi says

...and yes, i'm saying that well-placed intelligence and military individuals have told me that you can bring a building down, cleanly, within 8 hours, but that it would not be an inexpensive operation. When someone wants to demolish an old high rise brownstone to put up a shiny new stack of million dollar condo's, they want to spend as little as possible - different story.

8 hours for an unprepared (silent) demolition in a burning building at the site of the biggest ever terrorist attack...

Research it for yourself people.

9/11 Truth: The Mysterious Collapse of WTC Seven
Why NIST’s Final 9/11 Report is Unscientific and False

"...But WTC 7 had not been hit by a plane, so it was apparently the first steel-framed high-rise building in the known universe to have collapsed because of fire alone. New York Times writer James Glanz quoted a structural engineer as saying: “[W]ithin the structural engineering community, [WTC 7] is considered to be much more important to understand [than the Twin Towers],” because engineers had no answer to the question, “why did 7 come down?” [2]...

...According to the National Science Foundation, the major types of scientific fraud are fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. There is no sign that NIST is guilty of plagiarism, but it is certainly guilty of fabrication, which can be defined as “making up results,” and falsification, which means either “changing or omitting data.” [13]

The omission of evidence by NIST is so massive, in fact, that I treat it as a distinct type of scientific fraud. As philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said in his 1925 book, Science and the Modern World: “It is easy enough to find a [self-consistent] theory . . . , provided that you are content to disregard half your evidence.” The “moral temper required for the pursuit of truth,” he added, includes “[a]n unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account.” [14]...

NIST, however, seemed to manifest an unflinching determination to disregard half of the relevant evidence."..."

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-mysterious-collapse-of-wtc-seven/15201

//www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x1bxvo
BBC REPORT ON EARLY WTC7 COLLAPSE ( by thedreadzone

the following is a decent collection of WTC7 footage:
www.youtube.com/embed/JnLcUxV1dPo

A particularly revealing shot is at the 11 minute 35 second mark where you see nice clear reflections in slow motion off of hundreds of windows on one side of the building which don't begin shattering until the vertical distance has already dropped by at least 35 percent. At the bottom when the window area turn black - that isn't from the building being in shadow - it's from the windows finally having shattered completely. Actually quite amazing. This building has a different internal structure than the main towers. The entire side of the building just sloughs off like a dirt slide after a heavy rain in southern California.. I'm not the scientist Dr. Jones is. I'm just saying I know him. My father was a prolific civil engineer - and THAT building was very well supported with heavy steel that doesn't just give up like powdery snow. No main structures taken out by the sheering force of a plane; no subsequent extended pressure from a massive unsupported area above the sheered off columns as with Towers 1 and 2.

Unlike with Towers 1 and 2, we can see the top of the building clearly through the fall. Those are massive steel structures just giving up like they suddenly became yogurt dropped from the same height.

You can at least agree that I'm drawing it from an entirely different angle, yes? We know the DOD, CIA and IRS were clients in the building. We know the WTC7 debris was first priority for large scale clearage. We know the vast majority of the rubble of WTC7 was moved and processed so quickly that it can't be traced.

If WTC7 was destroyed intentionally on the same day for national security purposes, it doesn't surprise me that they would hesitate to inform the public. Looking back on it now, perhaps they would admit they "should have".

In closing, my advice is...don't take that Electromagnetism Class from Dr. Jones...that final exam was hell...and i was going for B.A degree. What was I thinking???

Another question might be the following? If there were a conspiracy plot to destroy the World Trade Centers, why bother with a delayed attack on WTC 7? Would it have been to try to kill a bunch of first responders? If so, why not detonate before the building was left abandoned? Was it to increase the size of the catastrophe? The twin towers and the 3000+ dead, and the drama of it all was the catastrophe. Building 7 didn't really change the story at all. So why would anybody risk getting caught intentionally demolishing an extra building that didn't have a plane hit it? The whole thing is ridiculous. There isn't even a lack of motive. There is motive to not demolish WTC 7. The fact that it came down is evidence that the whole thing wasn't a conspiracy.

Now, I know that HerraclitusStudent is trying to frame the question in terms of looking at all of the odd things on one side of the coin without looking at all of the odd things on the other side of the coin. The idea being that he wants to establish that the official version is incorrect, and then go looking for some alt version. He/she is asking us to explain everything that seems intuitively odd about an extraordinary event to make us think that some other extraordinary event (giant conspiracy) happened without examining anything odd about the other extraordinary event. This is a perfect example of coming up with a theory and using every piece of evidence that looks to support your theory and ignoring every piece of evidence that makes it less likely.

Further, there are little factoids released to make something seem less likely, like WTC 7 was the only steel building in the universe to go down due to fire. This really seems unlikely, especially when we use the word Universe instead of world. What the fuck is that about - other than an obvious piece of rhetoric designed to bamboozle a complete rube? We don't even know if there are other life forms in our Universe, much less if they have steel buildings, or if one burned to the ground. If we get back to asking about steel buildings that have been destroyed due to fire, we don't have any other examples of building being left to burn for 8 hrs, either, do we? These facts without any analysis are useless.

Indiana Jones says

But WTC 7 had not been hit by a plane, so it was apparently the first steel-framed high-rise building in the known universe to have collapsed because of fire alone

That statement right there is reason enough to throw out anything that site says. Because it did NOT collapse because of fire alone. This is well documented, and not in doubt.
That statement is a pure lie mean to dupe folks.

The building was heavily damaged. To ignore this fact is ridiculous.

And all the conspiracy nuts arguments generally boil down to things not behaving as they BELIEVE they should. As if common sense should trump scientific analysis of a skyscraper that is hit by a fully fueled commercial jet. Or they know when and how someone should cry when reacting to a traumatic event.

The world if full of things that don't immediately make sense.

deepcgi says

THAT building was very well supported with heavy steel that doesn't just give up like powdery snow.

No it wasn't well supported by heavy steel. You don't know what you are talking about. It's a framed tube (also called hull and core) building same as 1 and 2, not a steel girder type building like empire state building. It has a light exterior framed shell and a central framed core with trusses running between. The exterior wall is the structure. There are no main structures. Compromise the outer shell and the whole structure is compromised.

Indiana Jones says

so it was apparently the first steel-framed high-rise building in the known universe to have collapsed because of fire alone

The WTC is the only framed tube building to have an uncontrolled fire.

YesYNot says

Now, I know that HerraclitusStudent is trying to frame the question in terms of looking at all of the odd things on one side of the coin without looking at all of the odd things on the other side of the coin. The idea being that he wants to establish that the official version is incorrect, and then go looking for some alt version. He/she is asking us to explain everything that seems intuitively odd about an extraordinary event to make us think that some other extraordinary event (giant conspiracy) happened without examining anything odd about the other extraordinary event. This is a perfect example of coming up with a theory and using every piece of evidence that looks to support your theory and ignoring every piece of evidence that makes it less likely.

Assuming the official version of WTC7 is wrong and not what happened, then we are already so deep into extraordinary territory that pretty much any extra fantasy explanation could be brought to fit the known facts. For example you get people like deepcgi: "we know the DOD, CIA and IRS were clients in the building" followed by whatever you can imagine. Reality, it's well known, is in fact often stranger than fiction. This is why I see it as meaningless to even try to argue about what *could* have happened in the absence of more solid information.

What is not speculation is this:
- a steel column doesn't suddenly disappear.
- a set of many steel columns don't suddenly surrender all resistance at the same instant by coincidence.
- a steel column doesn't crumble.
- a steel column can bend or break, but then it tends to push the mass it supports to the side, outside of its main resistance path.
- a steel column could be pulled down by other, but then again would fall to the side.

I don't have theories, I don't care about the factoids that are mentioned in the article. All I need is an even plausible explanation of how a line of steel columns suddenly stop all resistance and and starts free falling at the same instant vertically, without being pulled to the side. Because in the absence of that, only extraordinary explanations remain.
It's just pathetic that no one is presenting such an explanation. (and NIST arguments are convoluted and don't fit the evidence well).

curious2 says

That is like claiming, without math, that an avalanche should be slowed by the trees in its path. Do the exponential calculations and show your work instead of pretending to be smarter than NIST.

This is a bit disingenuous because the article I mentioned cites different calculations and discusses them. It is a small physicists publication so I'm willing to believe that the editors actually looked at it and made sure it sort of made sense before damaging their credibility on a theory of that kind.

"Researchers have since
provided calculations showing that a natural collapse over
one story would not only decelerate, but would actually
arrest after one or two stories of fall"

You also assume that the entire upper mass would suddenly fall 1 floor. It wouldn't, or not at least not on all sides of the building simultaneously. And there is no exponential calculation involved. The energy equation you quote is also equal to the potential energy which is linear of the mass and distance covered.

But nonetheless. Maybe columns had a particular vulnerability that is non-obvious. At least the train of thoughts is "sort of" plausible. And therefore let me concede it is in fact the most likely.

There is no such explanations for WTC7. Your argument about damage is fine, except there is no damage to the 2 sides of the building observed. Even assuming there was damage we can't see, it still doesn't explain how asymmetrical damage can result in a symmetric fall of a large part of the building.

Heraclitusstudent says

What is not speculation is this:

- a steel column doesn't suddenly disappear.

- a set of many steel columns don't suddenly surrender all resistance at the same instant by coincidence.

- a steel column doesn't crumble.

- a steel column can bend or break, but then it tends to push the mass it supports to the side, outside of its main resistance path.

- a steel column could be pulled down by other, but then again would fall to the side.

No one is saying any of those things. The building appeared to my naked eye to collapse at about a constant velocity, which is very different from constant acceleration. It also dropped in an asymmetric manner, leaning to one side as it fell. There are many things holding a building together, and these would cause it to collapse at once by overloading other parts of the building suddenly when one part fails. All of this is speculation rather than a proper analysis, but it is enough to discredit the non-analytic speculation on the other side of the argument.

YesYNot says

The building appeared to my naked eye to collapse at about a constant velocity, which is very different from constant acceleration. It also dropped in an asymmetric manner, leaning to one side as it fell. There are many things holding a building together, and these would cause it to collapse at once by overloading other parts of the building suddenly when one part fails. All of this is speculation rather than a proper analysis

No this is not speculation. Some people spent a tremendous amount of time and energy to map the acceleration of the building frame by frame.

The building suddenly started falling with constant acceleration of gravity.

www.youtube.com/embed/rVCDpL4Ax7I

Further even the NIST now acknowledges free fall: "Stage 2 (1.75 to 4.0 seconds): gravitational acceleration (free fall)"

https://www.nist.gov/engineering-laboratory/faqs-nist-wtc-7-investigation

https://off-guardian.org/2016/09/13/nist-finally-admits-free-fall-of-wtc7/

Heraclitusstudent says

Further even the NIST now acknowledges free fall: "Stage 2 (1.75 to 4.0 seconds): gravitational acceleration (free fall)"

https://www.nist.gov/engineering-laboratory/faqs-nist-wtc-7-investigation

What it actually says in context:

In the draft WTC 7 report (released Aug. 21, 2008; available at http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/wtc/wtc_draftreports.cfm), NIST stated that the north face of the building descended 18 stories (the portion of the collapse visible in the video) in 5.4 seconds, based on video analysis of the building collapse. This time period is 40 percent longer than the 3.9 seconds this process would have taken if the north face of the building had descended solely under free fall conditions.
.........
The analyses of the video (both the estimation of the instant the roofline began to descend and the calculated velocity and acceleration of a point on the roofline) revealed three distinct stages characterizing the 5.4 seconds of collapse:
Stage 1 (0 to 1.75 seconds): acceleration less than that of gravity (i.e., slower than free fall).
Stage 2 (1.75 to 4.0 seconds): gravitational acceleration (free fall)
Stage 3 (4.0 to 5.4 seconds): decreased acceleration, again less than that of gravity
This analysis showed that the 40 percent longer descent time—compared to the 3.9 second free fall time—was due primarily to Stage 1, which corresponded to the buckling of the exterior columns in the lower stories of the north face. During Stage 2, the north face descended essentially in free fall, indicating negligible support from the structure below. This is consistent with the structural analysis model, which showed the exterior columns buckling and losing their capacity to support the loads from the structure above. In Stage 3, the acceleration decreased as the upper portion of the north face encountered increased resistance from the collapsed structure and the debris pile below.

Rashomon says

which showed the exterior columns buckling and losing their capacity to support the loads from the structure above

Except
- the videos shows sudden acceleration to free fall (see the graph above)
- "buckling", by definition: "bend and give way under pressure or strain", means there is no free fall.
- no buckling is seen on the videos

But anyway... If someone is hard bent on believing something in spite of the evidence, no amount of arguments will change their minds.