This book began as a mathematical effort to reconcile the total weight of the seven WTC buildings – the entire World Trade Center complex including basements – with the total weight of debris reportedly removed from Ground Zero. The basic premise was that if I could get accurate numbers for both the buildings
and their post-9/11 debris, I could simply subtract debris weight from structure weight to learn how much building material was pulverized into the dust and ash clouds that turned day into night. How much was incinerated? Were those dust clouds too dense for gravity-driven collapses?
Were the debris piles consistent with fires and structural failures? Or did the answers to these questions suggest planned demolition and therefore "inside job?" While researching, I discovered
the math had already been done. (Gregory Urich, "Analysis of the Mass and Potential Energy of World Trade Center Tower 1,"
Journal of 9/11 Studies, 2007.) The WTC wasn't quite as massive as the reports boasted, I learned. As far as the before and after comparison went, everything seemed to add up on paper. But the stark images and disturbing witness
testimony of extreme ruin compelled me to find more sources.
So I uncovered, collected, and compared as many of these various numbers as possible. To put it simply, the numbers by themselves didn't begin to sum things up. The respected construction trade magazine
Engineering News-Record said the WTC "site concrete was largely pulverized into fine dust...." (Nadine M. Post and Debra K. Rubin, "
Debris Mountain Starts to Shrink," enr.com [cached], 10/1/2001.) The dust in some places measured "several inches thick on the ground." (Joe Dunne, First Deputy Police Commissioner in Dennis Smith's
Report from Ground Zero: The Story of the Rescue Efforts at the World Trade Center, Viking/Penguin, New York, 2002, p. 63.) Watch the WTC Tower 1 cloud form in
this collapse video.
Although "the 9-11 skeptics are apparently unable to offer any quantitative evidence that the observed pulverization of concrete in the collapse of the Twin Towers required pre-planted explosives," the contents of the WTC dust alone have provided compelling evidence. (quoting Dr. Frank R. Greening, "
The Pulverization of Concrete in WTC 1 During the Collapse Events of 9-11," Nov. 2006.) See the chapter "Dust" below.
I should point out that the final official report on the collapse of the towers did not generate enough "quantitative evidence" to produce a working model demonstrating either WTC tower's total destruction (
see NIST FAQ 10.). Moreover, critical arguments strongly refute what little modeling
was done for the supposed collapse initiations. See the section below titled "Investigations." Some said WTC 1 suffered
core failure; some said perimeter column failure. Since it didn't make sense that the core would fail, NIST chose perimeter.
Elements of the dust and other "conspiracy theorists'" evidence refuting the official theories have always struggled against the easy, logical assumption that the hijacked jets – seen repeatedly on television colliding with the towers – made them fall (only in concert with the jet fuel-fed fire and dislodged fireproofing, officials said). The apparent structural failures seemed to initiate at the points of airplane impact, no less. Obvious, right?
"...now you see the images and it all seems so cut-and-dried, it all seems so utterly clear. Plane hits, plane hits, building falls down, building falls down, but it wasn't that way at all on the day. We were immersed in confusion... almost suffocated by chaos." —ABC News anchor on 9/11, Peter Jennings, when interviewed later by the Smithsonian Institution
Now more than ten years later, that confusion can be confronted with hindsight (not 20/20). Researching the events of that day has tended to dig up loads of garbage, as if one had dug too deep at the landfill where the WTC debris now rests. No doubt, the information has been sifted more patiently for evidence.
Virtually unidentifiable rubble (and bodies) enabled an amazingly fast cleanup of the site. The destruction of evidence and investigative failures at the World Trade Center ruins go hand in hand with the quantities and qualities of the physical evidence... often referred to as "debris." By looking at "Ground Zero" from a few different angles (after opening our eyes) it should be easy to see there was some destructive force in addition to gravity – that the World Trade Center was demolished as the world watched. If you disagree, read yet.
I invite you to watch "
9/11 Debris: An Investigation of Ground Zero," parts one and two to see and hear about Ground Zero. Part one makes this investigation valid with compiled reports, images and testimony showing the extreme destruction. Not only were expert witnesses and seasoned workers shocked by what they saw, they were struck by what they did not see. The many professionals' astonishment at the pulverization implied a question.
"When you look at where the towers used to stand, there is surprisingly so little rubble. Where did all the rubble go?" —ABC News anchor Peter Jennings to on-scene reporter George Stephanopoulos 9/12/2001 at 12:44 p.m. Watch TV archive clip [mirror].) So begins part two of my video "9/11 Debris."
Mainstream media reports attempted to explain the missing debris. Was it the "120 dump trucks" that removed debris overnight, as Mayor Rudolph Giuliani mentioned on NBC at 9:52 a.m. on 9/12? (
see TV archive clip) Was it the vast 70-foot deep basement that UK Channel 4 wrongly described as "hundreds of feet deep?" ("9/11: Ground Zero Underworld" 2007 –
See "9/11 Debris" part 2 at 9:00.) Or was the answer hidden in the inches-deep dust – a blanket for a city of people unconscious of the reality of the nightmare?
The paragraphs below are largely composed of impersonal details, behind which a thousand stories of grief and hope seem to be forgotten. Ground Zero for the first weeks was a "city within a city," as a
Nov. 4, 2001 CBS segment described it (video source: "What We Saw," DVD with book by CBS News, 2001
[mirror]). Donations poured into New York from all over the continent, as did volunteers. See "
The Heart of Steel"
(2006) for this side of the story. The awesome compassion dedicated to searching the rubble for survivors and victims' remains quickly converted into efficient manpower for debris removal – that "indefatigably focused activity that began with the simple goal of rescue but evolved into a therapeutic tool for resolution and acceptance." (
Jeannette Catsoulis, in a 2005 review of Lou Angeli's "
Answering the Call: Ground Zero's Volunteers"). Even after hope of finding survivors faded, the shock and sadness were alleviated by the will to help, however that was possible.
The businesspeople who helped raze the WTC took advantage. What for many seemed like an exemplary act of American solidarity and cooperation in turn opened a way for the down side of patriotism – unquestioning following of leaders and popular opinion. (Sadly, our leaders
did not want an investigation into the events of September 11th, for supposed fear of
taking resources away from the new "War on Terror."
V. P. Cheney. See the acclaimed documentary "
9/11 Press for Truth,"
[mirror] specifically 14:00 – 26:00.
More here.)
Meanwhile, the controversial
Patriot Act was pushed into law, only after "the two primary holdouts" in the Senate received
US-made anthrax letters. Letters to the media also stoked fear. (Colleen McGuire, "The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy – Book Summary Published Oct 28, 2014 by Graeme MacQueen," 911tap.org)
"
UNITED WE STAND" became the national theme, as seen on ubiquitous bumper stickers with American flags –
millions of flags. Never mind the fact that most Americans were so united in the act of
watching television.
