Fabrication of Evidence
But before describing its miracle story, I will point out three especially obvious examples of scientific fraud committed by NIST before it resorted to this desperate expedient. These examples all involve fabrication.
No Girder Shear Studs: NIST's explanation as to how fire caused Building 7 to collapse starts with thermal expansion, meaning that the fire heated up the steel, thereby causing it to expand.
A steel beam on the 13th floor, NIST claims, caused a steel girder attached to Column 79 to break loose. Having lost its support, Column 79 failed, and this failure started a chain reaction, in which all 82 of the building's steel columns failed. [51]
Without getting into the question of whether this is even remotely plausible, let us just focus on the question: Why did that girder fail?
It failed, NIST said, because it was not connected to the floor slab with sheer studs. NIST wrote:
In WTC 7, no studs were installed on the girders.
Floor beams . . . had shear studs, but the girders that supported the floor beams did not have shear studs.
This point was crucial to NIST's answer to a commonly asked question: Why did fire cause WTC 7 to collapse, when fire had never before brought down steel-framed high-rise buildings, some of which had had much bigger and longer-lasting fires? NIST's answer was: differences in design.
One of those crucial differences, NIST stated repeatedly, was "the absence of [girder] shear studs that would have provided lateral restraint."
But this was a fabrication on NIST's part. How can we know this? All we need to do is to look at NIST's Interim Report on WTC 7, which it had published back in 2004, before it had developed its theory of girder failure.
This report stated that girders as well as the beams had been attached to the floor by means of shear studs. [52]
We have here as clear a case of fabrication as one will see, with NIST simply making up a fact in order to meet the needs of its new theory.
The Raging Fire on Floor 12 at 5:00 PM: NIST also contradicted its "interim report" in telling a lie about the fire in the building. NIST claims that there were very big, very hot fires covering much of the north face of the 12th floor at 5:00 PM. This claim is essential to NIST's explanation as to why the building collapsed 21 minutes later. However, if you look back at NIST's interim report, published before it had developed its theory, you will find this statement:
Around 4:45 PM, a photograph showed fires on Floors 7, 8, 9, and 11 near the middle of the north face; Floor 12 was burned out by this time.
Other photographs even show that the 12th floor fire had virtually burned out by 4:00. And yet NIST now claims that fires were still going strong at 5:00 PM. [53] We have here another clear case of fabrication.
Shear Stud Failure: A third case of fabrication involves shear studs again – this time the shear studs that connected to the steel beams to the floor slab.
NIST claims that, due to the failure of that crucial girder discussed earlier, the floor beams were able to expand without constraint. But each of these beams was connected to the floor slab by 28 high-strength shear studs. These studs should have provided plenty of restraint.
They would have, except for the fact, NIST tells us, that they all broke.
Why did they break? Because of what NIST calls "differential thermal expansion," which is simply a technical way of saying that, in response to the heat from the fires, the steel beams expanded more than the floor slabs did.
But why would that have been the case? Steel and concrete have virtually the same "coefficient of thermal expansion," meaning that they expand virtually the same amount in response to heat. If that were not the case, reinforced concrete – that is, concrete reinforced with steel – would break up when the weather got very hot or very cold. NIST itself points out that "steel and concrete have similar coefficients of thermal expansion."
So why does NIST claim that the shear studs broke because of differential thermal expansion?
To understand this point, you need to understand that NIST's theory is an almost totally computer-based theory. NIST fed various variables into a computer program, which then supposedly told it how WTC 7 would have reacted to its fires. So, what did NIST feed into its computer that caused it to say that the steel would have expanded so much more than the concrete slab that all of the shear studs would have broken? The answer is given in this bland statement:
No thermal expansion or material degradation was considered for the concrete slab, as the slab was not heated in this analysis.
When I first read this statement, I had to rub my eyes. Surely, I thought, I have mis-read the statement, because a few pages earlier, NIST had said: "differential thermal expansion occurred between the steel floor beams and concrete slab when the composite floor was subjected to fire." The "composite floor," by definition, is the steel beams made composite with the floor slab by means of the shear studs. So NIST had clearly said, in stating that the composite floor had been subjected to fire, that both the steel beams and the concrete slab had been heated.
But then in the eye-rubbing passage, NIST said: When doing its computer simulation, it told the computer that only the steel beams had been heated; the concrete floor slab was not. [54]
So of course the steel beams would have expanded, while the floor slabs stayed stationary, thereby causing the sheer studs to break, after which the steel beams could expand like crazy and bump into Column 79, which then causes the whole building to come down.
A comic book version of the official story of 9/11 has been published. [55] This was an exercise in redundancy, because the official reports already are the comic book version of what happened on 9/11. In any case, I come now to NIST's miracle.
NIST's Miracle
Members of the 9/11 Truth Movement had almost from the first been pointing out that WTC 7 came down at the same rate as a free-falling object, at least virtually so.
NIST'S Denial of Free Fall: In NIST's Draft for Public Comment, it denied this, saying that the time for the upper 18 floors to collapse "was approximately 40 percent longer than the computed free fall time and was consistent with physical principles."
Implicit in this statement is that any assertion that the building did come down in free fall would not be consistent with physical principles – that is, the principles of physics.
Explaining why not, Shyam Sunder said at a technical briefing:
[A] free fall time would be [the fall time of] an object that has no structural components below it. . . . [T]he . . . time that it took . . . for those 17 floors to disappear [was roughly 40 percent [longer than free fall]. And that is not at all unusual, because there was structural resistance that was provided in this particular case. And you had a sequence of structural failures that had to take place. Everything was not instantaneous.
Chandler's Challenge: However, high-school physics teacher David Chandler challenged Sunder's denial at this briefing, pointing that Sunder's 40 percent claim contradicts "a publicly visible, easily measurable quantity."
The following week, Chandler placed a video on the Internet showing that, by measuring this publicly visible quantity, anyone knowing elementary physics could see that "for about two and a half seconds. . . , the acceleration of the building is indistinguishable from freefall."
Finally, Chandler wrote a comment to NIST, saying: "Acknowledgment of and accounting for an extended period of free fall in the collapse of WTC 7 must be a priority if the NIST is to be taken seriously."
NIST Admits Free Fall: Amazingly, NIST did acknowledge free fall in its final report. It tried to disguise it, but the admission is there on page 607. Dividing the building's descent into three stages, it describes the second phase as "a freefall descent over approximately eight stories at gravitational acceleration for approximately 2.25 s[econds]. "Gravitational acceleration" is a synonym for free fall acceleration.
So, after presenting 606 pages of descriptions, testimonies, photographs, graphs, analyses, explanations, and mathematical formulae, NIST on page 607 says, in effect: "Then a miracle happens."
Why this would be a miracle was explained by Chandler, who said: "Free fall can only be achieved if there is zero resistance to the motion."
The implication of Chandler's remark is that, by the principles of physics, the upper portion of Building 7 could have come down in free fall only if something had removed all the steel and concrete in the lower part of the building, which would have otherwise provided resistance, and only explosives of some sort could have removed them.
If they had not been removed and the upper floors had come down in free fall anyway, even for only a second or two, a miracle would have happened.
That was what Sunder himself had explained the previous August, saying that a free-falling object would be one "that has no structural components below it" to offer resistance. Having stated in August that free fall could not have happened, NIST also stated that it did not happen, saying: "WTC 7 did not enter free fall."
But then in November, while still defending the same theory, which rules out explosives and thereby rules out free fall, NIST admitted that, as an empirical fact, free fall happened. For a period of 2 and a fourth seconds, NIST admitted, the descent of WTC 7 was characterized by "gravitational acceleration (free fall)."
Knowing that it had thereby affirmed a miracle, meaning a violation of a law of physics, NIST no longer claimed that its analysis was consistent with the physical principles. In its Draft put out in August, NIST had repeatedly said that its analysis of the collapse was "consistent with physical principles." One encountered this phrase time and time again. In its final report, however, this phrase is no more to be found.
NIST thereby admitted, for those with eyes to see, that its report on WTC 7, by admitting free fall while continuing to deny that explosives were used, is not consistent with the principles of physics. [56]
And yet the mainstream press will not report this admission. So the press continues to support the notion that anyone who questions the official reports on 9/11 is unfit for public service. [57]
51. See The Mysterious Collapse [by David Ray Griffin], 150-55.
52. For documentation and discussion of NIST's claim about the lack of girder shear studs, see The Mysterious Collapse, 212-15.
53. See The Mysterious Collapse, 187-88.
54. For discussion and documentation of this point about failed shear studs, see The Mysterious Collapse, 217-21. As I point out in the book the contradictions between NIST's final report and its 2004 interim report, involving the 4:45 fire and both claims about shear studs, were discovered by Chris Sarns.
55. Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón, The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006).
56. For documentation and discussion of this point about free fall, see The Mysterious Collapse, 231-41.
57. I am referring to the fact that Van Jones, who had been an Obama administration advisor on "green jobs," felt compelled to resign due to the uproar evoked by the revelation that he had signed a petition questioning the official account of 9/11. The view that this act made him unworthy was perhaps articulated most clearly by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer. After dismissing as irrelevant the other reasons that had been given for demanding Jones's resignation, Krauthammer wrote: "He's gone for one reason and one reason only. You can't sign a petition demanding … investigations of the charge that the Bush administration deliberately allowed Sept. 11, 2001 – i.e., collaborated in the worst massacre ever perpetrated on American soil – and be permitted in polite society, let alone have a high-level job in the White House. Unlike the other stuff … , this is no trivial matter. It's beyond radicalism, beyond partisanship. It takes us into the realm of political psychosis, a malignant paranoia that, unlike the Marxist posturing, is not amusing. It's dangerous….You can no more have a truther in the White House than you can have a Holocaust denier – a person who creates a hallucinatory alternative reality in the service of a fathomless malice" (Charles Krauthammer
, "The Van Jones Matter," Washington Post, September 11, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/09/10/AR2009091003408.html
