Tale of Building 7's collapse suggests official complicity, persistent obstruction

  Regarding "Drinking the 9/11 Kool-Aid" (Editorial, April 24):

After three government investigations and more than six years, we still don't have answers on 9/11.

Why, for example, did Building 7 collapse? It wasn't hit by a plane, as the towers were. The 9/11 Commission Report completely ignores Building 7. The Federal Emergency Management Agency report discounts fire as a cause and concludes that the reasons for the collapse of Building 7 are unknown and require further research. But when FEMA issued this report, it already cleared the site and disposed of the dust and steel (evidence from a crime scene), thus possibly committing a felony and complicating any "further research."

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal agency, which evaluated the collapse of the towers, has yet to issue its report on Building 7. "We've had trouble getting a handle on Building 7," said the acting director of their Building and Fire Research Lab.

Yet a number of private-sector engineers, architects, and demolition experts have not had that problem. They think Building 7 came down by controlled demolition. The building collapsed suddenly, straight down, at nearly free-fall speed. People heard the explosions, and saw the squibs and the characteristic billowing clouds of pulverized concrete so unique to demolitions. There is no reason to think that Building 7 came down for any other reason than explosive demolition.

And speaking of pulverized concrete, fire does not pulverize concrete. Even the collapse of one floor upon another wouldn't pulverize concrete the way the Twin Towers disintegrated.

Think back to that day: Those towers didn't just fall down. If they had, we would have had huge chunks of concrete breaking apart and falling into a massive pile of rubble. The buildings likely would have toppled erratically sideways and left a much larger pile of debris.

But that's not what we witnessed. The towers didn't collapse - they disintegrated.

We watched them explode into dust, not knowing exactly what we were seeing. Very little intact concrete was found in the rubble. The sheer energy required to pulverize that much concrete into dust can only come from an explosive process.

Reputable scientists, engineers, architects and firemen with no political angle dispute the 9/11 Commission report and say that the evidence indicates the Twin Towers and Building 7 came down due to controlled-demolition explosions. Tests corroborate the presence of thermite, an explosive used in building demolitions, at the site of the Twin Towers and Building 7.

Thermite also explains the pools of molten steel in the basement, which no one has been able to otherwise explain and which the National Institute of Standards and Technology simply denies. Why is the government refusing to even consider demolition as a possibility? What are they afraid of?

Time magazine reported in September 2006 that 36 percent of Americans believe the government was complicit in 9/11. A Zogby poll reported that 51 percent of Americans want Congress to investigate 9/11 further.

Even the co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission are upset with the commission report. They have accused the CIA and the military of "obstructing" the investigation. Former Commissioner Max Cleland resigned, stating that the Commission was "compromised." Former FBI Director Louis Freeh has criticized the report for its inaccuracies and unanswered questions.

The events of 9/11 have never been properly investigated. It's about time they were.



The writer, a Republican from Mesa, represents District 18 in the Arizona Senate.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/0503johnson03.html