POST SCRIPTS

Eye witness accounts:

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/911_pentagon_eyewitnesses.html

"A few moments later, as I was looking down at my desk, the plane caught my eye.

It didn't register at first. I thought to myself that I couldn't believe the pilot was flying so low. Then it dawned on me what was about to happen. I watched in horror as the plane flew at treetop level, banked slightly to the left, drug it's wing along the ground and slammed into the west wall of the Pentagon exploding into a giant orange fireball. Then black smoke. Then white smoke." Steve Anderson, Director of Communications, USA TODAY

Anlauf was watching TV coverage of the Trade Center burning shortly before 9:30 a.m. when she decided to return to her 14th-floor room from another part of the hotel. Once in her room, she heard a "loud roar" and looked out the window to see what was going on.

"Suddenly I saw this plane right outside my window," Anlauf said during a telephone interview from her hotel room this morning. "You felt like you could touch it; it was that close. It was just incredible. "Then it shot straight across from where we are and flew right into the Pentagon. It was just this huge fireball that crashed into the wall (of the Pentagon). When it hit, the whole hotel shook." Deb Anlauf

Mark Bright, actually saw the plane hit the building. He had been manning the guard booth at the Mall Entrance to the building.

"I saw the plane at the Navy Annex area," he said. "I knew it was going to strike the building because it was very, very low -- at the height of the street lights. It knocked a couple down." The plane would have been seconds from impact -- the annex is only a few hundred yards from the Pentagon.

He said he heard the plane "power-up" just before it struck the Pentagon. "As soon as it struck the building I just called in an attack, because I knew it couldn't be accidental," Bright said. He jumped into his police cruiser and headed to the area.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html?page=6

Claim: Two holes were visible in the Pentagon immediately after the attack: a 75-ft.-wide entry hole in the building's exterior wall, and a 16-ft.-wide hole in Ring C, the Pentagon's middle ring. Conspiracy theorists claim both holes are far too small to have been made by a Boeing 757. "How does a plane 125 ft. wide and 155 ft. long fit into a hole which is only 16 ft. across?" asks reopen911.org, a Web site "dedicated to discovering the bottom line truth to what really occurred on September 11, 2001."

The truth is of even less importance to French author Thierry Meyssan, whose baseless assertions are fodder for even mainstream European and Middle Eastern media. In his book The Big Lie, Meyssan concludes that the Pentagon was struck by a satellite-guided missile — part of an elaborate U.S. military coup. "This attack," he writes, "could only be committed by United States military personnel against other U.S. military personnel."

FACT: When American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon's exterior wall, Ring E, it created a hole approximately 75 ft. wide, according to the ASCE Pentagon Building Performance Report. The exterior facade collapsed about 20 minutes after impact, but ASCE based its measurements of the original hole on the number of first-floor support columns that were destroyed or damaged. Computer simulations confirmed the findings.

Why wasn't the hole as wide as a 757's 124-ft.-10-in. wingspan? A crashing jet doesn't punch a cartoon-like outline of itself into a reinforced concrete building, says ASCE team member Mete Sozen, a professor of structural engineering at Purdue University. In this case, one wing hit the ground; the other was sheared off by the force of the impact with the Pentagon's load-bearing columns, explains Sozen, who specializes in the behavior of concrete buildings. What was left of the plane flowed into the structure in a state closer to a liquid than a solid mass. "If you expected the entire wing to cut into the building," Sozen tells PM, "it didn't happen."

The tidy hole in Ring C was 12 ft. wide — not 16 ft. ASCE concludes it was made by the jet's landing gear, not by the fuselage.

Intact Windows

Claim: Many Pentagon windows remained in one piece — even those just above the point of impact from the Boeing 757 passenger plane. Pentagonstrike.co.uk, an online animation widely circulated in the United States and Europe, claims that photographs showing "intact windows" directly above the crash site prove "a missile" or "a craft much smaller than a 757" struck the Pentagon.

FACT: Some windows near the impact area did indeed survive the crash. But that's what the windows were supposed to do — they're blast-resistant.

"A blast-resistant window must be designed to resist a force significantly higher than a hurricane that's hitting instantaneously," says Ken Hays, executive vice president of Masonry Arts, the Bessemer, Ala., company that designed, manufactured and installed the Pentagon windows. Some were knocked out of the walls by the crash and the outer ring's later collapse. "They were not designed to receive wracking seismic force," Hays notes. "They were designed to take in inward pressure from a blast event, which apparently they did: [Before the collapse] the blinds were still stacked neatly behind the window glass."

Flight 77 Debris

Claim: Conspiracy theorists insist there was no plane wreckage at the Pentagon. "In reality, a Boeing 757 was never found," claims pentagonstrike.co.uk, which asks the question, "What hit the Pentagon on 9/11?"

Few people have direct experience with the results of high-speed collisions of aircraft into strong barriers. Most aircraft accidents occur shortly after takeoff or during attempted landings, and do not completely destroy the aircraft. In contrast, uncontrolled crashes into terrain usually reduce aircraft into fine debris, leaving little if any parts identifiable by casual visual inspection. The debris fields of several jetliner crashes pictured here show the surprising paucity of apparent debris many crashes produce. Crashes of aircraft into buildings also typically leave little in the way of large debris, as the December 5, 2005 crash of a C-130 into an apartment building in Iran illustrates.

It is noteworthy that many crashes that left very little to no large recognizable pieces involved much lower impact speeds than the Pentagon attack. Since the Iranian C-130 was attempting to land, its airspeed was probably less than 150 mph.

Debris from the Attack Plane is Widely Distributed

The Pentagon attack produced damage covering an area inside and outside the building totaling tens of thousands of square feet. Available photographs document only small portions of this area, but nonetheless show significant quantities of debris.

Aftermath: Wreckage from Flight 77 on the Pentagon's lawn — proof that a passenger plane, not a missile, hit the building. (Photograph by AP/Wide World Photos)

FACT: Blast expert Allyn E. Kilsheimer was the first structural engineer to arrive at the Pentagon after the crash and helped coordinate the emergency response. "It was absolutely a plane, and I'll tell you why," says Kilsheimer, CEO of KCE Structural Engineers PC, Washington, D.C. "I saw the marks of the plane wing on the face of the building. I picked up parts of the plane with the airline markings on them. I held in my hand the tail section of the plane, and I found the black box." Kilsheimer's eyewitness account is backed up by photos of plane wreckage inside and outside the building. Kilsheimer adds: "I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?"

Source: http://www.debunking911.com/moltensteel.htm

World Trade Tower Lies Debunked:

Lie: Thermite explosives used to create molten steel! They suggest the above glow is steel which is being cut by a thermite cutter charge reaction. They show photos of a thermite reaction burning a hole downward through a metal plate. Let's forget for a moment that thermite doesn't explode so the claims of hearing explosions become meaningless. The argument that there was thermite and explosives seems to be rationalization of this dilemma. Why would they use thermite which cuts steel without announcing it, then switch to explosives? To tip people off? No theory exist to explain this but the faithful simply say "We're still working on it". I'm sure they are. Let's also give ourselves selective amnesia and pretend thermite can burn sideways to melt vertical columns. Maybe with some device but no working device has been proven to me to work. While there are relatively large canisters which can burn small holes sideways, I have yet to see this elusive steel cutting technique used to cut a vertical column. Then there is a patent of a device which has been brought up but as of yet there is no evidence the idea went any further. Does it even work? Anyone can make a patent but it doesn't mean it exists or even works. Even if it did, they are "Ganged" together to make the cut according to the patent. You would still need these boxes all over the columns. It would be pretty absurd to suggest they moved the walls away from the columns just to fit these things around the columns.

Oxidation of iron by air is not the only EXOTHERMIC reaction of iron (= structural steel which is about 98 % Fe, 1 % Mn, 0.2 % C, 0.2 % Si.....). There is at least one additional reaction of iron with the capability of keeping the rubble pile hot and cooking!

The reaction between IRON AND STEAM is also very EXOTHERMIC and fast at temperatures above 400 deg C. This reaction produces Fe3O4 AND HYDROGEN. It is the classic example of a REVERSIBLE REACTION studied in Chemistry labs at high school. But believe it or not, back at the turn of the century, the reaction of iron and steam was used as an industrial process for the manufacture of hydrogen.

I think iron and steam could have reacted in this way (at least for a while) and generated a lot of heat. What is more, the hydrogen released would have been converted back to water by reaction with oxygen, thereby generating even more heat. In this case spraying water on the rubble pile was like adding fuel to a fire!

Now add in gypsum reactions with H2 and CO and we have a great source of SO2 and/or H2S to sulfide the steel!
Perhaps the endless spraying of water on the rubble pile was not such a good idea!

In the usual lab experiment on the reversible reaction of iron and "steam", nitrogen (or some inert gas) is bubbled through water to create a gas stream saturated with water vapor at room temperature. This gas is then allowed to flow into a glass tube about 1 meter long containing iron in an inert boat at its center. This assembly is heated in a tube furnace to some desired temperature, say 500 deg C. The hydrogen/ nitrogen gas mixture is collected at the outlet of the tube furnace.

In the industrial process the feed gas might also be "water gas" which is a mixture of CO and water vapor. The outlet gas contains mostly H2 and CO2.

I am sure there was plenty of water vapor AND oxygen in the void spaces in the rubble pile. This is the "steam" I am referring to.

Please remember that the recovered pieces of structural steel were heavily OXIDIZED as well as sulfided. The most important oxidizing agents available in the rubble pile were obviously O2 and H2O.

The rubble pile was not only inhomogeneous with regard to its composition, it was inhomogeneous with regard to its temperature. This was due to localized chemical reactions. Such reactions were capable of generating high temperatures in these localized hot spots.

The demolitionists much beloved thermite is a good example, BUT NOT THE ONLY EXAMPLE. AND THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO PROOF WHATSOEVER THAT THERMITE, THERMATE, SOL-GEL NANO-THERMITE WAS EVER PRESENT AT THE WTC SITE!!!!!!

It is irrelevant whether or not the steam was wet or dry, that is a chemical engineering notion only of interest in a closed and controlled system, usually under high-pressure, such as a steam generator in a power station.

Water vapor was present in the rubble pile and water vapor reacts with iron releasing HYDROGEN.

ITS CALLED A CORROSION REACTION:

METAL + WATER = METAL OXIDE + HYDROGEN

WHEN IT HAPPENED AT THREE MILE ISLAND IT CREATED A HYDROGEN BUBBLE
- NEU-FONZE

http://www.debunking911.com/freefall.htm

For those who may think that no one has written a peer reviewed paper on the collapse of the towers here it is...
"Walter P. Murphy Professor of Civil Engineering and Materials Science

Northwestern University

The towers of the World Trade Center were designed to withstand as a whole the horizontal impact of a large commercial aircraft. So why did a total collapse occur? The reason is the dynamic consequence of the prolonged heating of the steel columns to very high temperature. The heating caused creep buckling of the columns of the framed tube along the perimeter of the structure, which transmits the vertical load to the ground. The likely scenario of failure may be explained as follows...

http://www-math.mit.edu/~bazant/WTC/WTC-asce.pdf

Steven E. Jones is a professor at Brigham Young University. He has created the paper which has created the ground swell around the 911 conspiracy theories. His paper was peer reviewed but not by a civil engineering journal. One would think a serious professor would get his paper peer reviewed by a scientific journal which specializes in the field they are writing the paper on.

But is Professor Jones qualified to create a paper which says the towers must have fallen due to explosives? He is a physics professor but what experience does Jones have in building collapse forensics? He has none. His other peer reviewed papers consist of cold fusion technology. He conducts research in nuclear fusion and solar energy. Nothing in his background would suggest he is qualified to write a civil engineering paper on the infinitely complex building collapse of the towers.

Brigham Young University doesn't want anything to do with the paper.

A few department chairmen at Jones' university have issued critical statements, though none of these has yet addressed any of the points which Jones made in his paper and at his presentation at BYU. Chairman of the BYU department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Dr. Miller, is on record stating in an e-mail, "I think without exception, the structural engineering professors in our department are not in agreement with the claims made by Jones in his paper, and they don't think there is accuracy and validity to these claims".

The BYU physics department has also issued a statement: "The university is aware that Professor Steven Jones' hypotheses and interpretations of evidence regarding the collapse of World Trade Center buildings are being questioned by a number of scholars and practitioners, including many of BYU's own faculty members. Professor Jones' department and college administrators are not convinced that his analyses and hypotheses have been submitted to relevant scientific venues that would ensure rigorous technical peer review." The College of Engineering and Technology department has also added, "The structural engineering faculty in the Fulton College of Engineering and Technology do not support the hypotheses of Professor Jones."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Jones

Jones says his paper will pass peer review again. But will it pass peer review in a respected civil engineering journal? Nothing less would be taken seriously.

One of Jones BYU colleagues had this to say after reading his paper..
.
Letter to the Editor

Refuting 9/11 Conspiracy Theory

April 09, 2006

Dear Editor,

After reading in the Daily Herald the presentations made by Professor Steven E. Jones (BYU Physics) to students at UVSC and BYU, I feel obligated to reply to his "Conspiracy Theory" relating to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center (9/11/01).

I have studied the summary of the report by FEMA, The American Society of Civil Engineers and several other professional engineering organizations. These experts have given in detail the effects on the Towers by the impact of the commercial aircraft. I have also read Professor Jones' (referred to) 42 page unpublished report. In my understanding of structural design and the properties of structural steel I find Professor Jones' thesis that planted explosives (rather than fire from the planes) caused the collapse of the Towers, very unreliable.

The structural design of the towers was unique in that the supporting steel structure consisted of closely spaced columns in the walls of all four sides. The resulting structure was similar to a tube. When the aircraft impacted the towers at speeds of about 500 plus mph, many steel columns were immediately severed and others rendered weak by the following fires. The fires critically damaged the floors systems. Structural steel will begin to lose strength when heated to temperatures above 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. Steel bridge girders are bent to conform to the curved roadway by spot heating flanges between 800 and 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. It is easy to comprehend the loss of carrying capacity of all the structural steel due to the raging fires fed by the jet's fuel as well as aircraft and building contents.

Before one (especially students) supports such a conspiracy theory, they should investigate all details of the theory. To me a practicing structural engineer of 57 continuous years (1941-1998), Professor Jones' presentations are very disturbing.

D. Allan Firmage
Professor Emeritus, Civil Engineering, BYU

http://www.netxnews.net/vnews/display.v/ART/2006/04/09/443801bdadd6e

While the "lies" verses "facts" is still in the mind of the beholders who are yet to be convinced it wasn't a big conspiracy, the majority of folks seem to be satisfied that it wasn't a conspiracy, even though there are some lingering questions.

Consider, even if our President and a few of his closest friends would dare to risk treason and the death penalty for some marginal gain (he's already the worlds most powerful man) or to further the new world order, there would have to be many hundreds, if not thousands of others involved in the great conspiracy, including people in the airline industry, people within Al Qaeda, people within some secret organization, deeper than the CIA itself, and they would have be so fanatical, so ruthless and so driven as to risk treason, mass murder of innocent people and on a scale never before known in the history of the world. And further do it all, while fooling Congress, investigators, military patriots, all the members of the FBI, CIA, NSI, State Dept., DEA, ATF and still not have one conspirator coming forward to our of patriotism or out of conscience to blow the lid off the big conspiracy. And lets remember these people are generally supposed to be American citizens in this conspiracy against Americans. The conspirators would presumably have family here. They grew up with our values, were schooled here and had many friends in high and low places and then somehow they all defected to the dark side of humanity, turned on their own country, acted with terrorists and risk everything on the orders of? And for what?

It just doesn't stand the test of logic and I've read the conspiracy claims, I've read the replies, I've read the 9/11 Report, I've reviewed reports not contained in the 9/11 report, I've listened to the latest conspiracy claims/facts and people "who know for a fact" and so far the overwhelming preponderance of evidence, facts and eye witness testimony supports 9/11 was an act of terrorism done by one group, Al Qaeda.

They have repeatedly claimed credit for it, they have given insider details that only the conspirators would have known, the participants were all linked by plan and designs, they had the motivation, the opportunity and the ability....as well as passed practice where we can show planning years before the event.

Al Qaeda has celebrated 9/11 and 9/11 remains their greatest achievement. It is often mentioned in their recruiting rhetoric and to demonstrate their military prowess. Yet, we still have good Americans, caught up in their own bias about not trusting government (which is understandable, government has done some pretty low things) and it's drawn them in like a spiders web to believe our government was behind 9/11. I'll always keep an open mind on 9/11 and I will let the facts where they may, but I will not let passion override my ability to weigh facts from either side. Until such facts sway me in another direction, my verdict for a conspiracy at this point would be NOT GUILTY.