This paper will appear in 9/11 AND THE AMERICAN EMPIRE:
INTELLECTUALS SPEAK OUT, David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, eds. (
Propping
Up the War on Terror: Lies about the WTC by
NIST and
Underwriters Laboratories
Kevin Ryan
"Already there is near-consensus as to the
sequence of events that led to the collapse of the
Turn on C-Span,
or “Meet The Press,” or any other media program presenting federal officials.
Whatever the issue, it always comes back to the same thing. Our government
really has nothing else to offer us but protection from another 9/11. It uses
this painful story to cut public services, eliminate our basic rights, and
plunder the national coffers. But for many of us, it is not entirely clear from
whom we most need protection.[1] As
our debt explodes and our freedoms diminish, it would be wise to maintain focus
on the origins of our War on Terror. No matter where this war leads us, we will
need to keep the beginning in mind if we ever hope to see an end.
The Point of Origin: The Collapse
of the WTC
Many have found that the 9/11
Commission not only failed to help us understand what happened; it also omitted
or distorted most of the facts.[2] But if
we really want to zero in on the exact turning point around which we plunged
into chaos, we need to focus in particular on the collapse of the
It would help to begin with an
accurate description of the WTC towers in terms of quality of design and construction.
In July of 1971, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) presented a
national award judging the buildings to be “the engineering project that
demonstrates the greatest engineering skills and represents the greatest
contribution to engineering progress and mankind.”[3] Others
noted that “the
One would
expect that any explanation for the destruction of such buildings would need to
be very solid as well. Four years after 9/11, the National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST) finally did give us their version of “why and
how” two of the buildings collapsed, but its explanation may be even less
effective than the 9/11 Commission report.[5] Now that
the official story has been given, however, we can see just how weak and
ill-defined our basis for this War on Terror has been all along. Additionally,
we can track the evolution of official comments about collapse and see who was
involved.
Shankar Nair,
whose statement quoted above is quite telling, was one of those “experts” on
whom the government depended to support what turned out to be an ever-changing,
but always flimsy, story. Many of the scientists involved in the investigation
were asked to examine ancillary issues, like escape routes and other emergency
response factors. But those few who attempted to explain what really needed
explaining, the unique events of fire-induced collapse, appear to have engaged in
what can only be called anti-science. That is, they started with their
conclusions and worked backward to some “leading hypotheses.”
Not
surprisingly, many of the contractors who contributed to the NIST
investigation, like the company for which Nair works, just happen to depend on
good relationships with the government in order to earn their living. What may
be a surprise is just how lucrative these relationships can be. For example,
Nair’s company, Teng & Associates, boasts of
Indefinite Quantity Contracts, long-term relationships with federal government
agencies, and federal projects worth in excess of $40 million.[6]
Others who
worked so hard to maintain the official story included Gene Corley, a concrete
construction expert listed by the National Directory of Expert Witnesses as a
source for litigation testimony.[7] Corley
was more than just a witness, however. He had led the
There was
really no need for phony media coverage.
As with The 9/11 Commission Report
and the lead-up to the Iraq War, the major media simply parroted any
explanations, or non-explanations, given in support of the official story. One
example is from a television program called “The Anatomy of September 11th,”
which aired on the History Channel. Corley took the lead on this one as well,
but James Glanz, a New York Times reporter, was also interviewed and helped to spread
what is probably the worst excuse for collapse given. He told us that the fires
heated the steel columns so much (the video suggested 2500 F) that they were
turned into “licorice.” Other self-proclaimed experts have been heard promoting
similar theories.[9]
They will probably come to regret it.
This is
because the results of physical tests performed by NIST’s
own Frank Gayle proved this theory to be a ridiculous exaggeration, as some
people already knew. The temperatures seen by the few steel samples saved, only
about 500 F, were far too low to soften, let alone melt, even un-fireproofed
steel. Of course that result could have been calculated, knowing that 4,000
gallons of jet fuel[10]---not
24,000 gallons or 10,000 gallons, as some reports have claimed---were sprayed
into an open-air environment over several floors, each comprised of more than
1,000 metric tons of concrete and steel.
Another
expert who served on NIST’s advisory committee was
Charles Thornton, of the engineering firm Thornton and Tomasetti.
The Pancake Theory was promoted by an influential
2002 NOVA video called “Why the Towers Fell,” in which Corley (yet again) and
Thornton were the primary commentators. Both of them talked about the floors
collapsing, and
NIST and
Underwriters Laboratories
In August 2004, Underwriters
Laboratories evaluated the Pancake Theory by testing models of the floor
assemblies used in the WTC buildings. Despite all the previous expert
testimony, the floor models did not collapse. NIST reported this in its October
2004 update, in a table of results that clearly showed that the floors did not
fail and that, therefore, pancaking was not possible.[14] NIST
more succinctly stated this again in its June 2005 draft report, saying: “The
results established that this type of assembly was capable of sustaining a
large gravity load, without collapsing, for a substantial period of time
relative to the duration of the fires in any given location on September 11th.”[15]
At the time
of the floor tests, I worked for Underwriters Laboratories (UL). I was very
interested in the progress of these tests, having already asked some sensitive
questions. My interest began when UL’s CEO, Loring Knoblauch, a very experienced executive with a law degree
from Harvard, surprised us at the company’s South Bend location, just a few
weeks after 9/11, by saying that UL had certified the steel used in the WTC
buildings. Knoblauch told us that we should all be
proud that the buildings had stood for so long under such intense conditions.
In retrospect it is clear that all of us, including Knoblauch,
were ignorant of many important facts surrounding 9/11 and did not, therefore,
see his statements as particularly important.
Over the
next two years, however, I learned more about the issues, like the
unprecedented destruction of the steel evidence and the fact that no tall
steel-frame buildings have ever collapsed due to fire. And I saw video of the
owner of the buildings, stating publicly that he and the fire department made
the decision to “pull”---that is, to demolish---WTC7 that day,[16] even
though demolition requires many weeks of planning and preparation. Perhaps most
compelling for me were the words of a genuine expert on the WTC. This was John Skilling, the structural engineer responsible for designing
the towers.[17]
(The NOVA video, incidentally, gave this credit to Leslie Robertson. But
Robertson, who never claimed to have originated the design, was only a junior
member of the firm [
By 2003,
all of this information was available to anyone who cared. The details were,
without a doubt, difficult to reconcile with testimony from officials,
reporters, and scientists who were supporting the official story. But in
November of that year, I felt that answers from UL were needed. If, as our CEO
had suggested, our company had tested samples of steel components and listed the
results in the UL Fire Resistance Directory almost forty years ago, Mr. Skilling would have depended on these results to ensure
that the buildings were sufficiently fire resistant. So I sent a formal written
message to our chief executive, outlining my thoughts and asking what he was
doing to protect our reputation.
Knoblauch’s written response contained several
points. He wrote: “We test to the code requirements, and the steel clearly met
those requirements and exceeded them.” He pointed to the NYC code used at the
time of the WTC construction, which required fire resistance times of 3 hours
for building columns, and 2 hours for floors. From the start, his answers were
not helping to explain fire-induced collapse in 56 minutes (the time it took
WTC2, the
This
response was copied to several UL executives, including Tom Chapin, the manager
of UL’s Fire Protection division. Chapin reminded me that UL was the “leader in
fire research testing,” but he clearly did not want to make any commitments on
the issue. He talked about the floor assemblies, how these had not been UL
tested, and he made the misleading claim that UL does not certify structural
steel. But even an introductory textbook lists UL as one of the few important
organizations supporting codes and specifications because they “produce a Fire
Resistance Index with hourly ratings for beams, columns, floors, roofs, walls
and partitions tested in accordance with ASTM Standard E119.”[20] He went
on to clarify that UL tests assemblies of which steel is a component. This is a
bit like saying “we don’t crash test the car door, we crash test the whole
car.” In any case, Chapin suggested that we be patient and wait for the report
from NIST, because the investigation into the “collapse of WTC buildings 1, 2,
and 7” was an ongoing process and that “UL is right in the middle of these
activities.”[21]
For the
most part, I did wait, although I shared my concerns with Chapin again at UL’s
Leadership Summit in January 2004. I encouraged him to ask for a company news
release on our position, but this did not happen and I never heard from him
again. By the time UL tested the floor assembly models in August of that year,
I had been promoted to the top management job in my division, Environmental
Health Laboratories, overseeing all company functions. Two months later, NIST
released an official update that included the floor test results, as well as
Frank Gayle’s results, in which steel temperatures were predicted. These
results clearly invalidated the major theories of collapse, because pancaking could not occur without floor collapse and steel
does not turn to licorice at the temperatures discussed.
After
reviewing this update, I sent a letter directly to Dr. Gayle at NIST. In this
letter, I referred to my experiences at UL and asked for more information on
the WTC investigation and NIST’s soon-to-be-published
conclusions. NIST had planned at the time to release its final report in
December, with time allowed for public comment. After I allowed my letter to
become public,[22]
this date was moved to January 2005, and then nothing was heard from NIST for
several months.
Other than
UL’s involvement in testing the steel components, the facts I stated had all
been reported publicly, but when I put them together plainly, they were
considered outrageous. Five days after I sent my letter, I was fired by UL for
doing so. The company made a few brief statements in an attempt to discredit
me, then quickly began to make it clear that its relationship with the
government, perhaps due to its tax-exempt status, was more important than its
commitment to public safety.
For
example, in spite of Tom Chapin’s previous statements, UL suggested that it had
played only a “limited” role in the investigation. Despite what our CEO, Loring Knoblauch, had written and
copied to several executives, UL said there was “no evidence” that any firm had
tested the steel used in the WTC buildings.[23] In
doing so, UL implied that its CEO not only had fabricated this story about
testing the WTC steel but had also spoken and written about it for several
years without anyone in the company correcting him. As I see it, the only other
option was that the company claiming to be our “Public Safety Guardian” was
lying to us about the most important safety issue of our lives.
My
experiences give a taste for the delicate nature of our critical turning point.
But to keep our focus, we should examine what NIST did with the results of its
physical tests, which had failed to support its conclusions. Did NIST perform
more tests, at least to prove its key argument that much of the fireproofing on
the steel in the
Tom Chapin
of UL was one of those doomed to make public comments in support of NIST’s final report. His comments were innocuous enough but
he did hint at something of value. “The effect of scale of test assemblies...,”
Chapin said, ”requires more investigation.”[25] This
may be the closest thing to a straightforward statement that we will ever see
from UL on the matter. But it seems clear enough that results showing zero
floor collapse, when scaled-up from the floor panels to a few floors, would
still result in zero floor collapse. Perhaps a more direct version of Chapin’s
comment might be that test results negating predetermined conclusions should
not be used to prove them.
Other than
the video, NIST left us with only some vague statements about a few sagging
floors suddenly destroying two hundred super-strong perimeter columns and forty
core columns. But since sagging floors do not weigh more than non-sagging
floors, it is difficult to see how this might occur, especially so uniformly.
NIST claimed the perimeter columns saw increased loads of between 0 and 25% due
to the damage, but it never reconciled this with the original claim that these
columns could resist 2000% increases in live load. And the outward-buckling
theory, suggested by Thornton, was changed again to inward buckling---apparently
the forces involved were never well defined. Additionally, NIST suggested that
the documents that would support testing of the steel components, along with
documents containing Skilling’s jet-fuel-fire
analysis, could not be found.[26]
Ultimately,
NIST failed to give any explanation for the dynamics of the towers as they
fell, about how and why they dropped like rocks in free-fall. For both
buildings, NIST simply stated that “once the upper building section began to
move downwards . . ., global collapse ensued,” as if just saying so was enough.[27] As
for WTC7, NIST as of yet has not elaborated on its “working collapse hypothesis,” which was vaguely presented in June
2004.[28] The
bottom line is that, after more than four years, it is still impossible for the
government even to begin to explain the primary events that drive this War on
Terrorism.
So much has
been sacrificed, and so much has been invested in this story, that we all have
a need for supportive answers. But when we look for those answers, all our
“mind’s eye” can see is this smoky black box, where scientific results are
reversed to support politically correct, pre-determined conclusions. That
critical point of divergence, where our lives were turned upside down and all
logic followed, has always been too painful to imagine. But now, without expert
accounts of pancaking floors and licorice steel, it
cannot be imagined at all.
Some of us
remain hopeful that we can still achieve a critical mass awareness of the need
for truth, and in doing so pull the support out from under what John McMurtry calls “the 9/11 Wars.”[29] But if
we cannot, even as the hopes for peace fade and the number of 9/11 families
continues to grow, we should remember how we got this story and how it was
propped up despite all the evidence against it. Because whatever happens next,
after the smoke clears, our children may have a need to know.
[1] Richard Heinberg, “Götterdämmerung,” Museletter, No.144, March 2004 (http://www.museletter.com/archive/144.html).
2 David Ray
Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report:
Omissions and Distortions (
3 Angus K. Gillespie, Twin Towers: The Life of New York City’s World Trade Center (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press 1999), 117.
4 “How Columns
Will Be Designed for 110-Story Buildings,” Engineering
News-Record,
5 Jim Hoffman,
“Building a Better Mirage: NIST's 3-Year $20,000,000
Cover-Up of the Crime of the Century,” 911Research.wtc7.net,
6 Website for Teng & Associates (http://www.teng.com/teng2k3/mainframe.asp).
7 Website for National Directory of Expert Witnesses (http://national-experts.com/members2/witness.asp?d_memnum=07572&d_lnum=2).
8 Archived webcast video of
NIST press briefing, NIST News Release website,
9 Sheila
Barter, “How the World Trade Center Fell,” BBC News,
10 Federal
Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), “
11 James Glanz and Eric Lipton, City
in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of the
12 Karl Koch
III with Richard Firstman, Men of Steel: The Story of the Family that Built the
13 Eric Hufschmid, Painful
Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack (
14 Table of
results from Underwriters Laboratories August 2004 floor model tests, as
presented by NIST in October 2004 (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/P6StandardFireTestsforWeb.pdf),
25.
15 NIST, Final Report of the National Construction
Safety Team on the Collapses of the World Trade Center Towers(Draft) (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/NISTNCSTAR1draft.pdf),
195.
16 Silverstein’s statement is contained in "America Rebuilds," PBS documentary, 2002 (www.pbs.org/americarebuilds). It can be viewed (www.infowars.com/Video/911/wtc7_pbs.WMV) or heard on audio file (http://VestigialConscience.com/PullIt.mp3).
17 “Structures Can Be Beautiful, World’s Tallest Buildings Pose Esthetic and Structural Challenge to John Skilling,” Engineering News-Record, April 2, 1964: 124.
18 Glanz and Lipton, City in the Sky, 138.
19
Underwriters Laboratories email correspondence,
20 Samuel H. Marcus, Basics of Structural Steel (Reston, Va.: Reston Publishing 1977), 20.
21
Underwriters Laboratories email correspondence,
22 Kevin Ryan,
“The Collapse of the WTC,” 911 Visibility Project,
23 John Dobberstein, “Area Man Stirs Debate on WTC Collapse,” South Bend Tribune,
24 NIST, Final Report, 196.
25 Comments
from Underwriters Laboratories on NIST WTC report, NIST website (http://wtc.nist.gov/comments/ULI_Ganesh_Rao_8-5-05.pdf).
26 Archived webcast video of
NIST press briefing, NIST News Release website,
27 NIST, Final Report, 197.
28 NIST
presentation on WTC7 collapse investigation, NIST website (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/June2004WTC7StructuralFire&CollapseAnalysisPrint.pdf).
29 John McMurtry, “9/11 and the 9/11 Wars: Understanding the
Supreme Crimes.” In David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, eds., 9/11 and the American Empire: Intellectuals
Speak Out (
[1] Richard Heinberg, “Götterdämmerung,” Museletter, No.144, March 2004 (http://www.museletter.com/archive/144.html).
[2] David Ray Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (Northampton: Interlink Books, 2005). Griffin summarizes the omissions and distortions in “The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571-Page Lie,” 911 Visibility Project, May 22, 2005 (http://www.septembereleventh.org/newsarchive/2005-05-22-571pglie.php).
[3] Angus K. Gillespie, Twin Towers: The Life of New York City’s World Trade Center (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press 1999), 117.
[4] “How Columns Will Be Designed for 110-Story Buildings,” Engineering News-Record, April 2, 1964: 48-49.
[5] Jim Hoffman, “Building a Better Mirage: NIST's 3-Year $20,000,000 Cover-Up of the Crime of the Century,” 911Research.wtc7.net, December 8, 2005 (http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/nist/index.html).
[6] Website for Teng & Associates (http://www.teng.com/teng2k3/mainframe.asp).
[7] Website for National Directory of Expert Witnesses (http://national-experts.com/members2/witness.asp?d_memnum=07572&d_lnum=2).
[8] Archived webcast video of
NIST press briefing, NIST News Release website, June 23, 2005 (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/wtc_briefing_june2305.htm),
01:15:10.
[9] Sheila Barter, “How the World Trade Center Fell,” BBC News, September 13, 2001 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1540044.stm).
[10] Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), “World Trade Center Building Performance Study,” May 2005, Chapter 2.
[11] James Glanz and Eric Lipton, City in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center (New York: Times Books, 2003), 330.
[12] Karl Koch III with Richard Firstman, Men of Steel: The Story of the Family that Built the World Trade Center (New York: Crown Publishers, 2002), 365.
[13] Eric Hufschmid, Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack (Goleta, Calif.: Endpoint Software, 2002), 27.
[14]
Table of results from Underwriters Laboratories August 2004 floor model tests,
as presented by NIST in October 2004 (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/P6StandardFireTestsforWeb.pdf),
25.
[15]
NIST, Final Report of the National
Construction Safety Team on the Collapses of the World Trade Center Towers(Draft)
(http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/NISTNCSTAR1draft.pdf),
195.
[16] Silverstein’s statement is contained in "America Rebuilds," PBS documentary, 2002 (www.pbs.org/americarebuilds). It can be viewed (www.infowars.com/Video/911/wtc7_pbs.WMV) or heard on audio file (http://VestigialConscience.com/PullIt.mp3).
[17] “Structures Can Be Beautiful, World’s Tallest Buildings Pose Esthetic and Structural Challenge to John Skilling,” Engineering News-Record, April 2, 1964: 124.
[18] Glanz and Lipton, City in the Sky, 138.
[19] Underwriters Laboratories email correspondence, December 1, 2003.
[20] Samuel H. Marcus, Basics of Structural Steel (Reston, Va.: Reston Publishing 1977), 20.
[21] Underwriters Laboratories email correspondence, December 1, 2003.
[22] Kevin Ryan, “The Collapse of the WTC,” 911 Visibility Project, November 11, 2004 (http://www.septembereleventh.org/newsarchive/2004-11-11-ryan.php).
[23] John Dobberstein, “Area Man Stirs Debate on WTC Collapse,” South Bend Tribune, November 22, 2004 (http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041124095100856).
[24] NIST, Final Report, 196.
[25]
Comments from Underwriters Laboratories on NIST WTC report, NIST website (http://wtc.nist.gov/comments/ULI_Ganesh_Rao_8-5-05.pdf).
[26] Archived webcast video of
NIST press briefing, NIST News Release website, June 23, 2005 (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/wtc_briefing_june2305.htm),
01:18:50.
[27] NIST, Final Report, 197.
[28]
NIST presentation on WTC7 collapse investigation, NIST website (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/June2004WTC7StructuralFire&CollapseAnalysisPrint.pdf).
[29] John McMurtry, “9/11 and the 9/11 Wars: Understanding the Supreme Crimes.” In David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, eds., 9/11 and the American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out (Northampton: Interlink Books, 2006). My present essay will also appear in this volume.