patrick.net

truth will find you says

3. control is utterly useless for terrorist purposes... knock the building sideways, take out more people down several new york blocks.

I like your post except for this. It's impossible for a building of this size and construction to fall sideways. Gravity and physics wouldn't allow it.

Hater says

But it can fall straight down?

Yes and that's pretty much how it did fall. And it was a pancake collapse which is exactly what structural engineers and physics said it should, once the initial collapse of the columns near the impact point allowed the upper portion of the towers to impact the lower portion.

Hater says

Do you believe that "fire induced progressive collapse" caused concrete to be pulverized into dust?

What are you babbling about? Look at any of the thousands of cleanup pictures. It's not dust, it's rubble which is exactly how concrete breaks apart.

Hater says

But it can fall straight down?

Why wouldn't it fall straight down? What force would make it fall sideways?

It fell roughly straight down, because of gravity. Were you expecting it to fall over sideways like a rigid and structurally sound tree after someone cuts out a huge notch on one side to make room, cuts it from the other side to make a hinge, and then pounds wedges into the cut to slowly start it moving in the right direction?

Hater says

If you removed the middle of a large tree would the remaining top fall and "pile drive" or "pancake" the intact bottom of the tree into splinters and sawdust? Or would the top of the tree hit the intact bottom and fall to the side?

The Twin Towers aren't trees, they were mostly air. Trees are almost completely solid and so can't collapsed into themselves. They way the floors trusses are attached to the support columns, a progressive pancaking is to be expected if a large enough section of building collapses onto a lower floor, especially if its been weakened for a prolonged fire. Once d) happened in your diagram, there was no other result but pancaking of all the floors.

YesYNot says

It fell roughly straight down, because of gravity.

As far as I can tell pancaking in the 2 towers was at least conceivable and it's not where the discussion focus should be. WTC7 is the problem.

A steel column is in fact like a tree trunk: a massive vertical structure that supports everything above. Buildings have redundant such support. WTC7 had at least 19 columns in the outer shell.
- If 1 column fails and collapse, it would NOT fall vertically right in the path where it is supposed to support the building. It would in fact push other elements to the side.
- If it fails in that fashion, then it cannot free fall. By definition. To free fall vertically a column would have to be absolutely destroyed probably in multiple places.
- If one column, or 2, or 5 fail, then you may get a partial collapse followed or not by more collapse.
Add all this together: a progressive collapse cannot lead to 19 columns suddenly all starting to free fall vertically - at the same instant.

There is something very wrong with that picture. And nothing in what you guys bring up here does anything to explain it.

YesYNot says

This might be relevant in the case of WTC 7, because the structure prior to the fires and any collision damage was known. However, by the time of the collapse, no one knew the starting conditions. One would have to know the state of all of the structural members, and that is simply not known.

It's not, because in order to be a theory, it still has to be repeatable, as I mentioned, and as the scientific theory definition states, which Chaos "theory" falls under. What you want to say is unknown would be pretty easy to figure out as the composition of the airplane and building before collision is known, as well as the speed on impact, and the amount of damage that could cause. We also know, thanks to chemistry, that fire had NO PART in the collapse, as it would NEVER reach the heat needed to create any instability that could lead to collapse. I'm pretty sure we also know that a plane of that size, and with that impact, was insufficient to cause collapse.

So we're left with sound principles of physics and chemistry, or you and every detractors "unknown" phantasms. Welcome to the church of the Big Brother!

Hater says

Does this look like a pancake?

You all need to learn about dynamic and static loads. The top of the towers falling onto the first floor before the impact experienced a dynamic load that completely surpassed what it was designed to support and so it failed and fell. Repeat for each floor below it as the dynamic load increased for each successive floor that failed. Structural engineers really aren't surprised by the buildings falling once the tops fell down a floor or two. The initial surprise was that the columns failed allowing the tops to fall, but they figured that out. The funny thing is, to cause this kind of failure via explosives, you would only need to take out most the columns on one or perhaps two floors and then gravity would do the rest.

And yes, a very high speed pancaking with ejection of material on the way down, which by the way heavily damaged WTC 7, which along with burning for hours caused it to collapse.

That link you posted is a good source of mis-information.

NuttBoxer says

It's not, because in order to be a theory, it still has to be repeatable, as I mentioned, and as the scientific theory definition states, which Chaos "theory" falls under.

First a theory of why a building collapsed is not the same as a scientific theory. It's just a proposed explanation, and it doesn't have to be reproducible (no one will reproduce a building collapse). Nor does a scientific theory need to be reproducible (no one will reproduce the big bang to prove the theory).

Once you have an airplane hit a building and a fire burn in the impacted floors, it is indeed hard to know all the factors and judge - based on intuition alone - what should happen.
WTC7 however looks very suspicious.

NuttBoxer says

We also know, thanks to chemistry, that fire had NO PART in the collapse, as it would NEVER reach the heat needed to create any instability that could lead to collapse

By "we", you must mean people who aren't at all versed in chemistry. Or materials science. Because heat absolutely weakens steel. You only need to get 50% of melting point to see significant reduction in strength.

Proving you are a fucking retard. Over and over again. case closed.

Hater says

Pancake?

Yeah, the lower part of the building has started pancaking the floor slabs. The top level is falling on top of them. The outer columns and debris are spewing outward as would be expected. I can only ask if you are a complete idiot or not but the answer appears clear that you are.

Hater says

Tho official story is that the smaller lighter top crushed the heavier stronger bottom

Maybe you should think, that's not going to happen, about the fact that each floor weighed over 2000 tons. The smaller LIGHTER top weighed over 60,000 tons. You can crush a lot of things with 60,000 tons falling on it. Like the next floor down, then the next floor below that, then the next floor below that, for 60 floors. Wow, that would look exactly like your video, who would have guessed? What a concept.

Heraclitusstudent says

and it doesn't have to be reproducible (no one will reproduce a building collapse).

But buildings have collapsed before, and we do know, based on science, what conditions can cause steel to become unstable. Echoing the same lazy "It's all a mystery", rather than looking at expert testimony and eye witness accounts is the strategy of fools who can't face the music.

NuttBoxer says

But buildings have collapsed before, and we do know, based on science, what conditions can cause steel to become unstable. Echoing the same lazy "It's all a mystery", rather than looking at expert testimony and eye witness accounts is the strategy of fools who can't face the music.

I think that describes the conspiracy theorists quite well. Science explains what happened pretty easily once the conditions that existed prior to the collapse are understood.

Hater says

Find some counter examples to prove me wrong.

How about you find me an example of a similarly constructed building hit by a fully fueled commercial jet that survived?

Hater says

And disintegrated in a fiery cloud before it ever hit the rest of the building!

But that's not what happened. It did "hit the rest of the building".

That's what the photo you posted shows so one has to ask if you are blind?

Hater says

WTC 7 was not hit by a plane.

So, do you agree that the planes caused the other towers to collapse?

Hater says

Like this?

Yes, pretty much like that except for the snarky comment.

NuttBoxer says

Heraclitusstudent says

and it doesn't have to be reproducible (no one will reproduce a building collapse).

But buildings have collapsed before, and we do know, based on science, what conditions can cause steel to become unstable.

Just saying, it doesn't have to be reproducible. Yes of course physics are understood and this can be simulated in computers: where what happens depends hugely on starting conditions.

I'm the one who started this thread btw, in case you didn't notice.

Hater says

Interesting read for those unaware of the controversy:

http://www.europhysicsnews.org/articles/epn/pdf/2016/04/epn2016474p21.pdf

This is the doc at the top of this thread btw, in case you didn't notice.

Hater says

No large steel framed buildings have ever collapsed except on 9/11.

Find some counter examples to prove me wrong.

That's nice. The Empire State Building is a steel framed building. The WTC is a tube frame building. No tube frame building other than the WTC has had a major fire. But keep throwing out this meaningless clap trap if you don't have any better argument.

Hater says

And disintegrated in a fiery cloud before it ever hit the rest of the building!

Really? Just disintegrated in a fiery cloud. Must have been one hell of a big fiery cloud to contain 60,000 tons of debris. Considering a ground blast of a hydrogen bomb puts up 200 tons of debris per kiloton of yield and the largest bomb (the Tsar bomb) ever exploded was 50 kt that would be a cloud 6 times larger than the Tsar bomb cloud. Considerably bigger than the entire island of Manhatten based on some rough calculations. Where did the unknown government agency tasked with bringing down the WTC hide this huge cloud that no one saw it? Did they use the same cloaking device they used to get hundreds of people into and out of WTC7 to set up demolitions in the middle of a raging fire without being seen while half the NYPD /NYFD and hundreds of news cameras were standing there? How did they disintegrate at least ten thousand tons of steel in the top stories? It takes something like 2.5kg/cm2 to disintegrate steel. Did someone bring in 20,000 tons of rdx, remove all the interior walls, and attach it to every square inch of steel with nobody noticing? Back to our mysterious government cloaking device I guess. Must have been more of a mind control device to accomplish this.

The europhysics news says the truther article is speculation, but entertaining. Hardly a ringing endorsement.

Keep on posting, I can always user the laughs.

Hater says

Don't stop educating the ignorant and fighting the trolls.

Here is the NIST report for WTC1 and WTC2, I suggest you educate yourself.

And since WTC7 keeps being mentioned, I'll post the link to that NIST report too.

RE: Crush up. You might have tried explaining this earlier, but I didn't see it. If an upper portion starts falling and crushing what is below it floor by floor, don't you think that the top section gets pulverized with each collision? I mean, if a car moving 50 miles an hour hits a parked car, both cars get damaged. Likewise, if you dropped a building on a building below it, I would expect both to get damaged from the impact.

YesYNot says

Likewise, if you dropped a building on a building below it, I would expect both to get damaged from the impact.

The question here is: assuming the top is dislocated, crumbling and falling to the side (and we see it largely falling into pieces to the side), how does it keep ramming all the floors under it down into the ground?

Tampajoe says

Because heat absolutely weakens steel.

I don't have a fancy chart, just the testimony of someone who's job it was to know these things:

Ryan wrote that the institute's preliminary reports suggest the WTC's supports were probably exposed to fires no hotter than 500 degrees -- only half the 1,100-degree temperature needed to forge steel, Ryan said. That's also much cooler, he wrote, than the 3,000 degrees needed to melt bare steel with no fire-proofing.

"This story just does not add up," Ryan wrote in his e-mail to Frank Gayle, deputy chief of the institute's metallurgy division, who is playing a prominent role in the agency investigation. "If steel from those buildings did soften or melt, I'm sure we can all agree that this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers." [Salt Bend Tribune]

Tampajoe says

Science explains what happened pretty easily once the conditions that existed prior to the collapse are understood.

The mystery conditions you can't seem to describe after about 50 posts? The science you haven't once bothered to understand, or contribute links to?

More "Blah blah blah, listen to my opinion". I'd rather be a conspiracy believer, than a religious nut.

Hater says

No large steel framed buildings have ever collapsed except on 9/11.

And no steel framed buildings have caught fire except for the WT... Wait, nm...

Way to prove my point!!

Heraclitusstudent says

assuming the top is dislocated, crumbling and falling to the side (and we see it largely falling into pieces to the side),

Earlier, you said it was in free fall, because nothing was pushing up from below. Gravity and free fall are straight down, not to the side.

YesYNot says

Earlier, you said it was in free fall, because nothing was pushing up from below. Gravity and free fall are straight down, not to the side.

Most of what I said above is about WTC7.
For the 2 towers the videos clearly show some large pieces falling to the side, as you would expect if you start with something like this, and there is some resistance below:

Hater says

I think you can clearly see the top crumbling on all sides rather than acting as a jack hammer. Watch again:

Hater says

www.youtube.com/embed/nUDoGuLpirc

There's a lot missing from that video that is just glossed over. This isn't proof that he is wrong, but it's an off the top of my head just watching that video.
What causes squibs in controlled demolition? Does it occur immediately when an explosive goes off, or does it occur as the building collapses. If it is the former, then you are still left with the question of how a squib could form due to pancaking.

As I see it, the unexplained things are:
What caused the squibs?
What caused the pulverization of concrete as the building collapsed?
What caused the framing members to go out at 70mph?
What caused humans to be essentially pulverized along with the concrete?

Concrete getting pulverized is not really surprising at all. I'd say the same about some other non-steel things getting pulverized too.
The squibs and things getting ejected at 70mph fall into the same category to me. The squibs are below the plume of pulverized materials. But, we don't know what is going on in the interior of the buildings, so we don't know where the pancaking is taking place or even if it is sequentially floor by floor. The center of the building could progress faster than the outer shell, because there is a lot of horizontal movement which is produced when things collide. Near the center, the horizontal things collide with other horizontal things and materials are coming inward as well as outward, so the mass of rubble could be bigger and moving faster toward the center. At the edges, there would be a lot of horizontal motion, and it would be all in one direction - from the center outward. So at the outer edges, there might not be as much debris going downward, and the outer shell might be lagging the inner shell. You can see this effect with avalanches I think. Look one minute in on this video:www.youtube.com/embed/B0RWLxOFGLY. The center of the avalance is moving much faster than the outer edges.

As far as the speed goes, what is 70 mph? That's 102 feet per second or roughly 30 meters / second. How long does it take to reach that in free fall? velocity = g * time, so time = velocity / g = 30 m/s / 10m/s^2 = 3 seconds. The distance it falls would be 1/2 gt2 = 1/2 (10)*9=45 meters. My rough analysis is that 70 mph is a velocity that is totally consistent with what you might expect. That's no dynamic model, but you can tell a lot with these order of magnitude type estimates. Now, as for why the framing members were ejected while the concrete was pulverized: This should be obvious. When hit be a fast moving massive avalanche of material, steel is going to be kicked out, while concrete will be pulverized. That's the nature of those materials. Some of these conspiracy theory hobbyists should make a mini model of a steel and concrete skyscraper and drop a boulder on it from 45 meters up, and see what happens to the concrete and steel. The concrete would have to be made of sand or other finely ground stuff without aggregate to scale appropriately.

This video analysis from someone who just hand-waves and says 'wow - this seems really weird' is useless.

YesYNot I don't think the two tower case is conclusive one way or an other. Indeed, like a tree fall to the side, some pieces would obviously fly laterally - though your calculation is obviously off since it is horizontal movement not vertical.

YesYNot says

Some of these conspiracy theory hobbyists should make a mini model of a steel and concrete skyscraper and drop a boulder on it from 45 meters up, and see what happens to the concrete and steel.

It wouldn't really be fair to drop a boulder from 45m up on a "model" when in the case of the real tower the top only fell initially probably by 1 floor (let's say 4m), and even that would be resisted and slower than free fall.

If you were doing a model with a tube made of steel columns, even very thin ones, you would realize that they resist strongly to downward pressure or shock. The tower would be rigid almost like a solid, rather than like a sand cattle crumbling under pressure. Try dropping a heavy book - or even a small boulder - from 4m up on a bird cage made of steel, and see if it crumbles. And granted physics are not symmetric to different scales but what you see on this video is like a bird cage crumbling.

YesYNot says

This video analysis from someone who just hand-waves and says 'wow - this seems really weird' is useless.

I would say this is certainly not conclusive, and so maybe useless. But it is indeed weird - and suspect if you put it in the light of events I consider far less ambiguous in WTC7.

Hater says

Who said that?

I'm paraphrasing. He mentions things that are happening, and implies that it shouldn't happen, but does not explain why.

Heraclitusstudent says

- though your calculation is obviously off since it is horizontal movement not vertical.

Yeah, that's why it's an order of magnitude calculation and not a dynamic model. But, when things moving in one direction hit something of similar mass, they carom off in another direction, much like a pool ball. The main point is that 70mph sounds fast. The guy mentions it with no context, and the implication is that it can't happen. But when you start to think about how fast things should be moving, you find something of that magnitude. So, while I haven't shown that it should be 70mph, I've shown that it's not all that surprising. IMO, the onus is on the conspiracy theorist to show that it wouldn't happen that way if they want to convince people to seriously start considering other options.

Heraclitusstudent says

Try dropping a heavy book - or even a small boulder - from 4m up on a bird cage made of steel, and see if it crumbles. And granted physics are not symmetric to different scales but what you see on this video is like a bird cage crumbling.

You bring up a good point if we consider that the building only dropped 4 m, but that assumes that the vertical supports that sheared were only 4 m tall. I don't think that the floor by floor description is supposed to be taken literally. It's a way of describing a very heavy top section of a building coming down and breaking things section by section. The section is as big as the length of vertical supports that are being destroyed. I'm going to guess that a bird cage is overbuilt relative to a building when you scale it. I think that I read that the towers were strong enough to support 5 times their own weight. If a building falls 4 m, and then lands on something below, you can calculate the force that is required to stop the fall, but that force depends on how fast you stop the object. The ratio of forces is the ratio of how far it drops to how fast you stop it. So, for example, if you stop someone's free fall with a really strong bungee cord (spring), they will stop fast. If you stop them with a weak bungee cord, they will stop slowly. So, if the structure below can only support 5 times the weight of what falls on it from 4 m, it needs to be able to flex 4/5m in order to arrest the fall without breaking. If it flexes less than that, it will shatter. So, you tell me if the building could flex that much. I wouldn't know without looking up a bunch of factors and knowing a lot more about the building, but it would surprise me if it could flex a meter.

Also, another way to calculate how fast things could be ejected would be to calculate the energy of the top part of the building after dropping 4 m (mass * acceleration * distance), and see what the energy of a few beams and concrete dust is (1/2 m v^2). You can estimate this if say 20 floors falls on one floor, b/c the mass ratio is 20. So, setting the energies equal, you get 20*massperfloor * g * 4m = 1/2 massperfloor* v^2. v = sqrt(80 * 9.8 m^2/s^2) = 28 m/s. So, here again, from just one floor drop, we can calculate about 30m/s, which is exactly what velocity was observed in the video.

YesYNot says

So, you tell me if the building could flex that much. I wouldn't know without looking up a bunch of factors and knowing a lot more about the building, but it would surprise me if it could flex a meter.

Ok, but remember this is not like the top is falling in free fall. Probably 1 or 2 columns would break, leaving more weight on others, which would then break too, etc, around the section that was destroyed by planes. It's not like a separate building falling from 4m up.

Also consider what happens when the entire, let's say 4/5 of the building, have already been broken/dislocated and fell to the side: Now the weight above is in fact much less than the columns were initially supporting right? The columns were supporting 80% of the weight of the entire building and now most of these 80% are gone.
You have to imagine that a relatively small block, (compatible with what we see) continues to ram these floors so hard they keep being crushed.
Now how about 90% of the building has already fallen, how do you keep crushing the top of what remains? How about 95% has already fallen?
The building seems continually crushed from the top, rather than what Hater is showing:
Hater says

You all need to consider the design of this build. It's basically a hollow square tube with the floors hung on the outer and some inner columns. When the top of the buildings started to fall down the dynamic load force hitting the first floor below the collapse point exceeded the strength of the mounting points of the floor to the columns. So the floors kept pancaking inside the building.

Hater says

Wow this is some real BS!

So your saying after one floor of drop the rest of the (disintegrating) building is going 70 mph?

How does one floor drop cause massive beams to fly out at 70 mph and pulverize concrete while still retaining enough kinetic energy to completely dismember a huge tower?

I just calculated it two different ways and came up with about 70 mph. The second method used conservation of energy. The kinetic energy of something moving is 1/2 mass * velocity squared. The kinetic energy of the top of the building is equal to the force (mass of upper 20 floors * acceleration due to gravity) times the distance it fell (4 meters). If you don't believe that the energy is the force times distance, I guess you could also calculate it by 1/2 m v2, and for v, you would substitute gt. For t, you would have to use d = 1/2 gt^2. So, t2 = 2*d/g. Then 1/2 mv^2 = 1/2 mass * g^2 * 2 * d / g = mass * g * d, which is what I said based on the work formula. If you don't understand this, you should just stop thinking about 9/11 and go read some high school physics books.

Now, you could argue that the energy wouldn't push everything sideways. But I could counter that there would be a distribution of velocities and some things would go much faster than others. That is why the whole building rubble didn't go sideways at 70mph. I could also argue that some sections fell much more than 4 m. Without complicated models, we can only make a few gross assumptions and calculate orders of magnitude, and what we observe is exactly what we would expect from that exercise.

Hater says

How does one floor drop cause massive beams to fly out at 70 mph and pulverize concrete while still retaining enough kinetic energy to completely dismember a huge tower?

Because only a small portion was ejected at 70mph. The rest kept pile driving the building. My calculations showed that with each drop, there was enough energy to eject a complete floor at 70mph.

Heraclitusstudent says

Ok, but remember this is not like the top is falling in free fall. Probably 1 or 2 columns would break, leaving more weight on others, which would then break too, etc, around the section that was destroyed by planes. It's not like a separate building falling from 4m up.

How things get started is probably your best argument. I've already stated that once 2 columns break, the others suddenly have a lot more force on them. They also might have sideways shearing forces that they were not designed for if the building starts to tilt. If they were already weakened, that could be enough for the supports to fall like dominoes. Heraclitusstudent says

You have to imagine that a relatively small block, (compatible with what we see) continues to ram these floors so hard they keep being crushed.

This is your weakest point. It's jut like an avalanche. With each successive floor/section collapse you are creating a larger and larger mass of rubble accelerating toward the ground increasing the velocity and energy available to pulverize the fuck out of anything in it's way. The top section is getting pulverized as it pulverizes what is below. It's also accelerating, so it will hit the rubble pile at a high speed pulverizing itself when it finally hits the ground.

It's not like one floor drops with just enough energy to teeter for a while and drop to the next level. It's an avalanche of debris.

https://thegoodcitizen.substack.com/p/mkay-ultra-maga?isFreemail=true

Larry Silverstein bought a mega insurance policy on the World Trade Center towers just a few months before their controlled demolition. As the new owner of the trade center complex, he spent every morning eating breakfast atop the North Tower at Windows on The World, but on that morning he had a “medical appointment”.

His insurance policy paid off $4.7 Billion six years later.

Three months before Silverstein’s “medical appointment” Alex Jones said those towers would be attacked, and the government would be involved and immediately blame Osama Bin Laden. Establishment mid-wits who thought it was a brilliant idea to scorch and raze half of the middle east in the aftermath of those events, and who are presently pushing for nuclear armageddon through their puppet Nazi-loving cocaine comic in Ukraine spent the next two decades calling Alex Jones a crazed conspiracy theorist.

The Towers were attacked in 1993 by terrorists with fertilizer bombs in the garage. Right inside the nose of the FBI which had penetrated the organization but failed to stop the act.

There were reports about using airplanes to attack the Towers back in the 90s received in the Phillippenes and in Bosnia.

Just a few weeks earlier, Condoleeza Rice was asked about Al Queda terrorism and the WTC specifically and she famously said she didn't know and would get back to whatever Senator was asking about it.

More interesting is the options on Airlines, but I heard that had an explanation along the lines that a big firm was playing with cyclical fundamentals like they had success with before.

But taking out insurance right after leasing the property, esp. one that was previously attacked by terror in the past few years, is hardly a red flag.

AmericanKulak says

But taking out insurance right after leasing the property, esp. one that was previously attacked by terror in the past few years, is hardly a red flag.

It wasn't just that. WTC had a litany of repairs needed, and was never at more than half capacity. It was a money pit, and demolition wouldn't be cheap. Unless the government does it for you...

AmericanKulak says

The Towers were attacked in 1993 by terrorists with fertilizer bombs in the garage.

I had a contract programming job for a month on Broad Street in NYC in 1997. I used to eat lunch sitting on the truck barriers in front of the WTC, thinking "No way will they get a truck through these."

And I was right. They didn't get a truck through those barriers.

https://rudy.substack.com/p/random-memories-of-911

Many questions remain about what happened on 9/11. I thought a Substack post might bring together some of the things I’ve noticed and wondered about on Twitter over the years. I don’t have the answers. - RH

Sometime between 1991 and 2001, a regional sector of the North American Aerospace Defense Command simulated a foreign hijacked airliner crashing into a building in the United States as part of training exercise scenario, a NORAD spokesman said Monday.

- CNN, April 19, 2004

On August 6, 2001, the president's intelligence briefing included a response to questions that he had earlier raised about any al Qaeda intentions to strike our homeland.

The briefing item reviewed past intelligence reporting, mostly dating from the 1990s, regarding possible al Qaeda plans to attack inside the United States. It referred to uncorroborated reporting that from 1998 that terrorists might attempt to hijack a U.S. aircraft in an attempt to blackmail the government into releasing U.S.-held terrorists who had participated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. This briefing item was not prompted by any specific threat information. And it did not raise the possibility that terrorists might use airplanes as missiles.

- Transcript of Condoleeza Rice's 9/11 commission statement

“Any letting the Saudis off the hook came from the White House,” former Agent Mark Rossini said. “I can still see that photo of Bandar and Bush enjoying cigars on the balcony of the White House two days after 9/11.”

- Robert Mueller helped Saudi Arabia cover up its role in 9/11 attacks: suit

CHENEY, BANDAR, RICE & BUSH, 9/13/01
In Washington, former FBI Agent John Guandolo, who worked terror cases out of the bureau’s DC office, said then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar “should have been treated as a terrorist suspect” for giving money to a woman who funded two of the 9/11 hijackers. But he was never questioned either, Guandolo said.

To put it bluntly the oil spigot is more important than American lives. The facts are all there, but conscious avoidance has been the practice. We protect the Royal House of Al-Saud, who made a deal with puritanical Wahhabi zealots, in order to ensure the flow of oil. Right or wrong, these are the facts which causes everybody to look down at the floor when you mention them, and hope you'll go away and not interfere with their cheap tank of gas.

- Former FBI Agent Mark Rossini

Washington, D.C., Nov. 3, 2000 — The fire and smoke from the downed passenger aircraft billows from the Pentagon courtyard.
At least five months before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, air defense planners proposed a war-game situation in which a terrorist group hijacked an airliner and flew it into the Pentagon…

New York Times April 14,2004

DTHC participation in an Arlington County EMS tabletop exercise with Arlington County EMS in May 2001 helped response preparation for the Pentagon attack. The scenario in that tabletop exercise featured a commuter airplane crashing into the Pentagon. Additionally, Major Brown and other DTHC staff had recently conducted a detailed disaster plan review. The familiarity with its content helped adapt the DTHC disaster plan to this situation.

- Arlington County After-Action Report On the Response to the September 11 Terrorist Attack on the Pentagon

Oral Histories From 9/11
It was weird how it started to come down. It looked like it was a timed explosion, but I guess it was just the floors starting to pancake one on top of the other.

- BATTALION CHIEF DOMINICK DeRUBBIO October 12, 2001

As my officer and I were looking at the south tower, it just gave. It actually gave at a lower floor, not the floor where the plane hit, because we originally had thought there was like an internal detonation explosives because it went in succession, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then the tower came down.

- Firefighter Edward Cachia, FDNY 12/6/2001

Paramedic Daniel Rivera, October 10, 2001
Floor after floor after floor. One floor under another after another and when it hit about the fifth floor, I figured it was a bomb, because it looked like a synchronized deliberate kind of thing. I was there in '93.

- Firefighter Kenneth Rogers, FDNY 12/10/2001

I just remember we were -- initially we were out by the street and they started having jumpers, so they all kind of moved back towards the parking garage, towards the building, so nothing would come down on us. We were there I don't know, maybe 10, 15 minutes and then I just remember there was just an explosion. It seemed like on television they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions. Everybody just said run and we all turned around and we ran into the parking garage because that's basically where we were. Running forward would be running towards it. Not thinking that this building is coming down. We just thought there was going to be a big explosion, stuff was going to come down.

- Firefighter Richard Banaciski, FDNY 12/6/2001

I know I was with an officer from Ladder 146, a Lieutenant Evangelista, who ultimately called me up a couple of days later just to find out how I was. We both for whatever reason -- again, I don't know how valid this is with everything that was going on at that particular point in time, but for some reason I thought that when I looked in the direction of the Trade Center before it came down, before No. 2 came down, that I saw low-level flashes. In my conversation with Lieutenant Evangelista, never mentioning this to him, he questioned me and asked me if I saw low-level flashes in front of the building, and I agreed with him because I thought -- at that time I didn't know what it was. I mean, it could have been as a result of the building collapsing, things exploding, but I saw a flash flash flash and then it looked like the building came down.

Q. Was that on the lower level of the building or up where the fire was?

A. No, the lower level of the building. You know like when they demolish a building, how when they blow up a building, when it falls down? That's what I thought I saw. And I didn't broach the topic to him, but he asked me. He said I don't know if I'm crazy, but I just wanted to ask you because you were standing right next to me. He said did you see anything by the building? And I said what do you mean by see anything? He said did you see any flashes? I said, yes, well, I thought it was just me. He said no, I saw them, too. I don't know if that means anything. I mean, I equate it to the building coming down and pushing things down, it could have been electrical explosions, it could have been whatever. But it's just strange that two people sort of say the same thing and neither one of us talked to each other about it. I mean, I don't know this guy from a hole in the wall. I was just standing next to him. I never met the man before in my life. He knew who I was I guess by my name on my coat and he called me up, you know, how are you doing? How's everything? And, oh, by the way did you… It was just a little strange.

- Stephen Gregory, Assistant Commissioner, FDNY 10/3/2001

“...remember 7 World Trade had not yet come down, so when I went down to the exchange that Wednesday morning, I was staying with some military and police officers, and we were looking over in that direction, and if it had come down in the way in which it was tilting, it would’ve wiped out everything…there were still fears that if that building had fallen sideways, you’re going to wipeout a good part of lower Manhattan. So they did manage for one to take that down in a controlled implosion later on.”

- Ron Insana, Bernie and Sid in the Morning, 9/11/2019

The White Van “Our purpose was to document the event.”