Analysis of a Tragedy

Procrastinating from packing my things for the afternoon's long drive home, I was doing my usual web-browsing, reading about the tragic terrorist attacks in London. As Americans, I'm sure many of us could not help but reflect back on that day almost four years ago, now infamously referred to as 9/11, the day that catapulted our nation into a state of unending war on the nameless, faceless enemy only known terror. I was encouraged to look back on that day, to reflect on what exactly happened that morning, and how the crashing of four planes (UA 175, UA 93, AA 11, and AA 77) and the destruction of four buildings (WTC-1, WTC-2, WTC-4, and the Pentagon) would inspire almost every major policy decision worldwide for the next four years.

So I started reading some articles, starting with my bread and butter alternative news sites, commondreams.org and alternet.org. To make a long story short, I inevitably ran into some conspiracy theories about 9/11. Now I had read some of these theories before. The most compelling I've read concerns major questions about the Pentagon crash site. Although I find this theory tends to stand up because there is no circulating video evidence of the Pentagon crash, theories about the collapsing towers seem far-fetched, especially since many of us witnessed dozens of videos documenting the collapse. As a UCLA graduate who finds great value in logic, I find most conspiracy theory bogus and stupid. As a bored, unemployed slacker whose wasting time websurfing, conspiracy theory sounds quite entertaining. So I took a leap of faith and started reading. And frighteningly enough, I found one conspiracy theory so well-articulated, in this compelling essay by Morgan Reynolds, I might just be convinced that a 9/11 conspiracy might just be true.

For folks who don't have the time to read thorough his article, let me summarize his main arguments. #1 He debunks the common-held beliefs concerning the collapse of the WTC towers, primarily these two:

1. As stated earlier, common belief holds that the WTC towers collapsed due to the compromised structural integrity of the towers after the crashes of the 767s. If this were the case, the fires would have had to reach at least 1,300°F. However, never in the history of the world (before or since) has a steel-framed skyscraper collapsed due to structural compromise from a fire. The benchmark case Reynolds cites is the 1991 Meridian Plaza fire in Philadelphia, which raged for 19 hours and did not collapse. Both WTC fires lasted less than an hour, and spewed black smoke, implying that the fires were dying and not growing. (A more recent example is the case of the Windsor Building fire in Madrid this past February, which essentially consumed the entire top-half of the building, and yet the steel skeleton remained in tact). The only other factor, then, were the initial explosions caused by the crashes themselves, and yet images of the towers after the crash show little vertical displacement in the support columns (i.e. they did not bend), suggesting that there was not "severe" damage to the towers' structural integrity. This argument holds greater weight for WTC-7, which collapsed later that afternoon, since no significant plane debris hit WTC-7.

1A. Reynolds later argues that if fires set by jumbo jet explosions could melt the support structures of the WTC towers, why wouldn’t demolition companies use similar-sized fires in their own demolition work, which would be far more cost efficient than the current methods they use to implode buildings? Either fires did not cause the collapse of the WTC towers, or the terrorists carried technology that demolitions companies had not yet discovered.

2. Common belief also holds that the floors "pancaked" on each other (i.e. the weight of the building created an impact that caused the floor below to collapse, which caused the next floor to collapse, and so forth). However, experts generally agree that the towers collapsed at free-fall speed (as evidenced in most videos documenting the collapses). However, if the towers collapsed in free-fall, then the idea of "pancaked" floors is highly unlikely, since the impact of each floor would slow the speed of the collapse.

3. Reynolds also argues that although the claim is that two 767s hit the towers, the holes are too small for a 767 by as much as 40 feet. Normally, plane crashes make a crater three times the size of the plane itself. This suggests that the amateur video of the planes crashing into the WTC towers was doctored. (This seems like stretch to me, but look at the initial images of the North Tower and South Tower and judge for yourself).

Instead, Reynolds argues that this evidence suggests that the collapse of the WTC towers was NOT caused by the plane crashes, but by DEMOLITIONS. Along with the previous examples, Reynolds cites other evidence that suggests demolitions caused the towers’ collapse:

• Virtually all the concrete, approximately 100,000 tons in each tower, was pulverized into dust, which would require far more energy than the energy created by the towers merely collapsing due to gravity
  
• Steel beams and columns fell in sections less than 30 feet long and showed no signs of "softening"
  
• Each collapse had detectable seismic vibrations that suggest underground explosions
  
• Hot spots of molten steel at temperatures of 1,350°F persisted days after the towers collapsed, an aspect which characterizes building demolitions
  
• Photos and video of the collapses show "demolition waves", or blast sequences. You can see evidence of this in these videos showing the collapse of the South Tower and North Tower.
  
• On September 8-9, 2001, three days before 9/11, a "power down" condition was declared to install a "cabling upgrade", which would allow terrorists with experience in demolitions to plant explosives in the WTC towers without being recorded by security cameras. (cited on page 45 in the case Rodriguez V Bush
  
• Lastly, one plausible explanation for the collapse of WTC-7 is that it was used as a staging area of the demolitions. It would be the ideal, since it would provide a direct view of the towers, it would been evacuated, which would allow the terrorists to go about their work undisturbed, had its own air and power supplies, was bullet and bomb resistant, and could withstand winds of up to 160 miles per hour, winds that could be created by the collapse of two skyscrapers.

Now, despite all I’ve read and written, I’m still taking in all this information with a grain of salt. However, in this day in age where voter fraud, diminishing civil liberties, condemning memos, and perpetual fear run rampant, where sheepish politicians and a feckless media feed us lies at every turn, it wouldn’t surprise me if, in this world looking more and more like Eurasia in the pages of George Orwell’s "1984", the hodge-podge, raw, design-impaired, renegade websites, spouting off conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory, were the only places where I might just find the truth.