apologizes to David.. I got my info off a truther site
For what it's worth: I kinda remember - but am only a felt 75% sure - that someone somewhere (JREF probably, but could be any other place) documented that this piece of "vaporized" steel Gross is touching in that photo is the very same piece of steel that the WPI team of Barnett, Biederman and Sisson (I hope I spell the names correctly) analysed for the FEMA report - the infamous "Appendix C", by simply comparing sizes, shapes and locations of features like the holes .
If true, this would indeed show that
A) Gross did examine WTC7 steel
B) This particular piece was retained - very possibly
by Gross - for detailed metallurgical analysis.
The problem remains that, since the WTC7 steel wasn't marked, they could not determine where in the structure this specimen originated, and that renders any analysis of specimens rather useless when debating the individual fate of specified elements of the structure ("girder X on floor Y").
There is a question of jurisdiction here, too: What are the legitimate limits of the crime scene that would empower the state (police, state attorneys...) to keep citizens from entering and using their property? The Twin towers were attacked, and people were murdered there. The WTC7 was rather a collateral, accidental incident that led to property damage only, with the owner of the property being the only person, other than the state, to have standing legally. If the owner, in accordance with his insurers, decides he doesn't need to solve the specifics of the event, that redeveloping has a higher priority, which entity, based on what justification, could legally bind his hands and cordon off the property for a longer, possibly undetermined length of time?
Truthers, ask thyselves: If someone laid arson to your neighbor's house, killing multiple inhabitants, and your house suffered collateral damage, would you volunteer that you must not be allowed to repair, imhabit or even just enter your house for the next months, weeks, decades, until every last question about the original crime has been answered to absolutely everyone's satisfaction? I think you obviously would have standing to peruse your property MUCH sooner.
I know of course what Truthers will reply: That there was a deliberate, unlawful attack directed at WTC7, that therefore it is a crime scene in its own right. But that, quite frankly, is not in evidence, and never has been. The compliance of the insurers that payed out to Silverstein is perhaps the best evidence here: They have the standing, and hundreds of millions of good reasons, to suspect wrong doing. An insurance company that is faced with the prospect of paying out hundreds of millions of dollars will send its best people to the scene to figure put any possible and impossible way to avoid or restrict payout. if those people, every single one more qualified than the entire Truth Movement combined, don't smell a rat, then you can be pretty sure there is no rat.
Unless you expand the Grand Conspiracy Theory, by including the insurers, one leap further towards its Inflationary Limit, where the entire world population conspires against the poor TM.