Debunked: AE911T: CNBC Anchor Ron Insana claims Building 7 a Controlled Implosion

[Oystein]

The claim is that CNBC Anchor Ron Insana called Building 7 a 'Controlled Implosion'

AE911Truth call this a "Bombshell":

On the 18th anniversary of 9/11, CNBC senior analyst and former anchor Ron Insana went on Bernie and Sid In the Morning on New York's 77 WABC Radio to share his haunting experience of that horrible day.

Approximately eight minutes into the interview, Insana made a statement regarding the 47-story World Trade Center Building 7 — which collapsed late in the afternoon of 9/11 — that is truly stunning, especially considering his access to the scene and his job as a prominent news anchor:

"Well, remember 7 World Trade had not yet come down. And so when I went down to the [New York Stock] Exchange that Wednesday morning [September 12], I was standing 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 have wiped out everything from where it stood to Trinity Church to the Exchange to, effectively, you know, the mouth of the Hudson. And so there were still fears that if that building had fallen sideways, you were going to wipe out a good part of Lower Manhattan. So they did manage for one to take that down in a controlled implosion later on. And the Exchange was up and running the following Monday."
[Emphasis added.]​

Before addressing questions about Insana's timeline, let us establish the aspects of his story that are clear and unambiguous. First, he clearly identifies Building 7 as the building he is talking about. Second, he clearly states that Building 7 was taken down in a "controlled implosion," which flatly contradicts the official explanation that it collapsed due to office fires.

Well, it's true that Insana identifies WTC7 - but it is also an impossibility that he is correct. Simply take a look at a map of the Financial District, bearing in mind that the New York Stock Exchange is located at 11 Wall St and Trinity Church is at 75 Broadway, at the intersection with Wall St:

Here is a Google StreetView from Wall St somewhere between The Exchange (in your back) and the church (visible on the left):
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.706...4!1sWljIdpkflQ-qNdszqTFM-g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

You see there are several buildings between the location that Insana described and WTC7. Also, WTC7 is almost 600 meters away as the crow flies from Trinity Church.

So since WTC7 was so very far away, and had already collapsed on the day Insana is talking about and could not be seen at all from there, and could not possibly have reached Trinity Church, let alone the Exchange, his statement is obvious and utter nonsense.

The most realistic explanation I see is that perhaps he was thinking about the Deutsche Bank Building aka Bankers Trust bldg. at 130 Liberty St, which was located where the word "[W New York ]Downtown" to the left of "McDonald's" is in my map - that building was badly damaged any indeed later demolished - although that took YEARS, and had nothing at all to do with getting the Exchange up and running by next Monday.

The real problem here of course lies with AE911Truth, who failed to do a reality check before accepting that Insana really meant WTC7.[/I][/I]

 

[Mick West]

The most realistic explanation I see is that perhaps he was thinking about the Deutsche Bank Building aka Bankers Trust bldg. at 130 Liberty St, which was located where the word "[W New York ]Downtown" to the left of "McDonald's" is in my map - that building was badly damaged any indeed later demolished - although that took YEARS, and had nothing at all to do with getting the Exchange up and running by next Monday.

He is almost certainly remembering talk about One Liberty Plaza, which is due North of Trinity Church. It was not badly damaged. But people still thought it was tilting over.

Donald Friedman, who started work at the WTC 9/11 site on 9/12, describes rumors it was going to fall in his book, After 9-11: An Engineer's Work at the World Trade Center.

[Sept 14] When we were about up to the 12th floor we heard people in the stairwell, loud. ... . Derek asked, and one of them said they had been radioed that One Liberty Plaza was collapsing and everyone had to clear out. I didn't believe One Liberty was coming down, but this was not a time to think about the possibilities. We ran down the stairs with the scaffold laborers,
...
The most destructive rumors had been those the first week concerning One Liberty Plaza collapsing. One Liberty had been built in the 1970s by US Steel and it showed: the building exterior was a 55 story grid of black-painted steel columns and beams. The idea that the building was about to fall down was everywhere—we heard it from firefighters, it was on TV, and it was one of the first questions put to us by DDC.
...
There were a number of panics, when someone thought they saw motion or some other sign that One Liberty was collapsing (like the one that had caught Derek, David, and me in 90 West Street on September 14). These were not a minor concern—people were trampled in the sudden crowd rushes, including one of our engineers.

He also explains why people thought it was leaning

Why was One Liberty the focus of this attention? I thought maybe because it was now the tallest building in the immediate area. It has no set-backs and has wide sidewalks on the north and south sides and plazas on the east and west, meaning that someone can walk near it and look straight up. There are two optical illusions that can be observed when you do this with any tall building. The first is that the building will appear to be leaning out of vertical so that it hangs over you. The second is that the building face you're looking at will appear to bulge outward about halfway up. I was familiar with both illusions from doing facade inspections. It was important when I described bulges in masonry walls that the bulges actually exist and weren't an illusion. I had thought that everyone working at the WTC would be familiar with these illusions, but obviously not. It was easy to show that neither illusion was true: if you walked from one side of the building to the next, it could be seen that each facade appeared to be tipping over towards you and that the corners of the building were straight. Since each facade couldn't be tipping over unless the four walls were separating like a cardboard box, and since the straight corners meant that the individual sides couldn't be bent in the middle, this test easily showed that the supposed evidence of a problem wasn't real. Unfortunately, when everyone was on edge the first few days, it seemed impossible to convince people of this good news.

Besides this, it's key to point out that this was Insana's recollection of events on Sept 12 or after, whereas WTC Building 7 collapsed on Sept 11.

 

[Mick West]

I discuss One Liberty Plaza with Friedman here, at 29:27

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezHc9x75808&feature=youtu.be&t=1767

 

[deirdre]

Before addressing questions about Insana's timeline,

plus the AETruth quote happens at 8:35 in the podcast. They question his timeline. but the preface to that "timeline" is made clear starting at 8:11 in the podcast. Insana is clear it was the next morning

He called me Wednesday morning, the day after 9/11, he said 'when are you gonna come down and interview [..]', I said I cant get down there I don't have the proper credentials, and I had just lost my ID temporarily when I was down there on 9/11. So he sent a car for me and I went down there and did the interview with Dick on the exchange floor ..

 

[Oystein]

plus the AETruth quote happens at 8:35 in the podcast. They question his timeline. but the preface to that "timeline" is made clear starting at 8:11 in the podcast. Insana is clear it was the next morning

He called me Wednesday morning, the day after 9/11, he said 'when are you gonna come down and interview [..]', I said I cant get down there I don't have the proper credentials, and I had just lost my ID temporarily when I was down there on 9/11. So he sent a car for me and I went down there and did the interview with Dick on the exchange floor ..

Well, the AE article addresses this / constructs excuses for this...

Now for the confusing aspects of Insana's timeline. Building 7 collapsed at 5:20 PM on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. He says he went down to the Financial District on the morning of Wednesday, September 12, where he looked in the direction of Building 7.

There appear to be three ways to make sense of what he said (assuming he is speaking honestly, which there seems little reason to doubt).

One, when he talks about looking in the direction of Building 7, he could mean that he was looking at the debris pile of Building 7, which had already been brought down neatly into its own footprint. In this scenario, he and others were inferring that if the building had tipped over instead of having been brought down, which had already occurred, it would have done significant damage to the surrounding area.

Two, he may have gone down to the Financial District and had the conversation he describes before 5:20 PM on September 11, rather than on September 12. This scenario seems the least likely, though, because he is very specific about not going back down to the stock exchange until September 12, having already made his way up from the scene to NBC's midtown headquarters by midday on September 11. (Insana's first appearance in the studio on September 11 was around 12:41 PM, when he vividly described how the first tower had "started to explode.")

Three, he may have observed the damage to Building 7 or somehow learned about it on September 11, but he is incorrectly placing that observation or the receipt of that information within his experiences on September 12. One possibility is that the conversation he remembers having with military and police officers and/or his observation of the damage to Building 7 actually took place before he left the scene on September 11.

And I can somewhat agree, in a general sort of way, with at least the third proposition being a possibility - that he conflates two or more distinct experiences as happening at the same time or on the same day, when in fact they happened at different times and days. Such is human memory - recollection of time (sequence, point in time, duration) is very much subject to all sorts of mental errors.

It's the spatial problems - the distance of WTC7 from Church and Exchange - that make his story impossible. There is an easy fix, which AE911Truth very consciously glosses over by expressing Total Faith in the Truth of this detail:

Before addressing questions about Insana's timeline, let us establish the aspects of his story that are clear and unambiguous. First, he clearly identifies Building 7 as the building he is talking about.

Yes, true, "he clearly identifies Building 7 as the building he is talking about" indeed - but that has got to be false. The fix is One Liberty. Since One Liberty was never, in fact, demolished, the timeline is a non-issue.

Oh, and by the way, the very next sentence is flat-out wrong:

Second, he clearly states that Building 7 was taken down in a "controlled implosion," which flatly contradicts the official explanation that it collapsed due to office fires.

(My bolding)
But what Insana actually said - and AE911Truth even emphasize this in their article:

So they did manage for one to take that down in a controlled implosion later on.

(Bolding AE911Truth's, red font mine)

"Later on" suggests that this was only an intention directed into the future, as seen from 9/12, not an expression of an event firmly in the past, as the verb form "was" suggests.
One may construe Insana's words to mean that "manage for one to take that down" implies that eventually it was taken down, but that is not what he say, and he certainly does note state this "clearly".


@deirdre - I can't open "Bernie and Sid in the Morning" - the "403 Forbidden" probably indicates that I am in a wrong country (outside USA). Would it be possible for you to extract the audio and post it?

 

[deirdre]

@deirdre - I can't open "Bernie and Sid in the Morning" - the "403 Forbidden" probably indicates that I am in a wrong country (outside USA). Would it be possible for you to extract the audio and post it?

I don't have any such programs on my new laptop because I don't have much storage space. so let's ask @Mick West to do it.

It's the spatial problems - the distance of WTC7 from Church and Exchange - that make his story impossible.

absolutely.

I just think his story about that day jives. He even mentions losing his ID the day before on 9/11 when he was IN the midst of the collapses. and how he specifically had an interview at the location of the Exchange Floor THE FOLLOWING DAY, which is where he was looking at the tilting building from.

I just think it's disingenuous to suggest he mixed up the days, but not that he accidentally mixed up one liberty plaza with one of the wtc buildings (18 years later).

 

[Oystein]

Here is One Liberty Plaza looming over Trinity Church - again, we are looking (roughly) in the direction of WTC7:

 

[deirdre]

decided there are probably media reports, and there are


footage report 9/12/2001 (correspondant Gary Tuchman)

(0:44) that one liberty plaza building started twisting,and windows started popping out of the building. immediately an evacuation was ordered and now all 1000 to 1500 people have evacuated the area. There is noone at the scene right now participating in the rescue and recovery. In addition members of the news media who were about 4 or 5 blocks away from the World Trade Center site, were told to immediately start moving back a couple of blocks to get farther away from the building.
The fear is, and we should make this very clear, there is no evidence this building is coming down.
But there's a concern that it could happen. if the building did come down...[…]... (1:23) it could potentially knock down other buildings nearby.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFWpRGZJp0k

 

[deirdre]

So they did manage for one to take that down in a controlled implosion later on.

note: I found this sentence odd, as far as wording. but it just dawned on me that perhaps he meant "So they did manage, for One [liberty plaza] to take that down..." ???

 

[deirdre]

here is Isani, Wednesday evening, Sept 12, 2001, specifically talking about (briefly) One Liberty Plaza holding up the opening of the stock exchange. 2:15 minute mark

interviewer: do you expect the markets to open on Friday?

Isani: It is possible on Friday, now One Liberty Plaza which is a very large building just near the world trade centers is at risk of collapsing, as im sure you've reported. The problem there is as there is more structural damage throughout the community, NYStock Exchange's chairman said they have to wait until the area is secure before they can reopen

Source: https://archive.org/details/nbc200109121923-2004

 

[Jeffrey Orling]

why was One Liberty Plaza in danger of collapsing?

 

[Mick West]

why was One Liberty Plaza in danger of collapsing?

It wasn't. That's the point.

 

[Oystein]

I'd still much appreciate if someone could make the full audio of the recent Insana interview on Bernie and Sid In the Morning available - the link https://www.wabcradio.com/show/bernie-and-sid/ doesn't work for me in Europe(Error 403 - Forbidden).

Thanks!

 

[Mick West]

I'd still much appreciate if someone could make the full audio of the recent Insana interview on Bernie and Sid In the Morning available - the link https://www.wabcradio.com/show/bernie-and-sid/ doesn't work for me in Europe(Error 403 - Forbidden).

Thanks!

It's a regular podcast, so the audio is freely available on Apple Podcasts etc.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/09-11-2019-ron-insana/id1081585361?i=1000449399593

Also attached.