The Voice of the White House

            Washington, D.C., August 26, 2010: “The anniversary of the 9/11 attack will soon be upon us and we can absolutely depend on floods of introspective articles in the media, paralleled by lunatic rantings from the conspiracy wierdos. Using this inside-job attack on the United States as an excuse, the Organs of Control are tightening their control over even the lowliest of America’s citizens by spying on everyone. Bank accounts, telephone calls, emails, the USPS, the car, aircraft travel, use of the public library, seeking forbidden subjects on Google or Wikipedia, travel both inside and outside of the country and on and on and in growing profusion aarer now part and parcel of the rodent associations. What all of this spying, note-taking and snooping is doing is to totally destroy the public’s confidence in the integrity of their government and to make evasion and deception more and more popular.

            A young man in Plano, Texas, has invented a simple device for blocking GPS identifiers so that if you want to take a trip, be it to Canada or the store, you merely need to snap the switch on the small box to ‘on’ and the snoops get nothing. I was sent one as a gift and it does appear to work. I don’t know about their marketing plans but believe it, the government, seeing one of their main snoop weapons nullified, will run howling to the courts and demand the device be banned.

Of course it will and no one will use it because it will be termed Unpatriotic and conducive to the Promotion of Terrorism!

And believe it will sell.

I have a Finnish device, small and quite compact, battery-operated and designed to shut off any cell phone operating within 300 feet. I am sure this is somehow not legal but I use it anyway and whenever my wife and I go to the mall, we use it. Great crowd of the idiots can be heard screaming: ‘Hello!!! Hello!! into a dead phone. And then, blessed silence. The chatter of idiots is stilled and we have peace and quiet.

And we also have peace and quiet in elevators, in restaurants, in theaters, in supermarkets, on the street and elsewhere. The screams of the uncomprehending when they discover that they have been disconnected are wonderful to hear! And all of this cell-phone babbling sounds like speed night at a group therapy session for the dysfunctional.”

 

The Government’s New Right to Track Your Every Move With GPS

August 26, 2010

by Adam Cohen

TIME

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway – and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre – and scary – rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants – with no need for a search warrant.

It is a dangerous decision – one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle’s underside.

After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA’s actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)

In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno’s privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the “curtilage,” a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government’s intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.

The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno’s driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited.

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month’s decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people’s. The court’s ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.

Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. “There’s been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there’s one kind of diversity that doesn’t exist,” he wrote. “No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter.” The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of “cultural elitism.”

The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, if government agents can track people with secretly planted GPS devices virtually anytime they want, without having to go to a court for a warrant, we are one step closer to a classic police state – with technology taking on the role of the KGB or the East German Stasi.

Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit’s – including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

In these highly partisan times, GPS monitoring is a subject that has both conservatives and liberals worried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s pro-privacy ruling was unanimous – decided by judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton

Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. “1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it’s here at last,” he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell’s totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: “Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we’re living in Oceania.”

Cohen, a lawyer, is a former TIME writer and a former member of the New York Times editorial board.

 

 

 

Israeli intelligence steps up its activity in the U.S. — and gets away with it.
August 23, 2010
by Philip Giraldi

American Conservative 

            Israeli government claims that it does not spy on the United States are intended for the media and popular consumption. The reality is that Israel’s intelligence agencies target the United States intensively, particularly in pursuit of military and dual-use civilian technology. Among nations considered to be friendly to Washington, Israel leads all others in its active espionage directed against American companies and the Defense Department. It also dominates two commercial sectors that enable it to extend its reach inside America’s domestic infrastructure: airline and telecommunications security. Israel is believed to have the ability to monitor nearly all phone records originating in the United States, while numerous Israeli air-travel security companies are known to act as the local Mossad stations.

            As tensions with Iran increase, sources in the counterintelligence community report that Israeli agents have become more aggressive in targeting Muslims living in the United States as well as in operating against critics. There have been a number of cases reported to the FBI about Mossad officers who have approached leaders in Arab-American communities and have falsely represented themselves as “U.S. intelligence.” Because few Muslims would assist an Israeli, this is done to increase the likelihood that the target will cooperate. It’s referred to as a “false flag” operation.

            Mossad officers sought to recruit Arab-Americans as sources willing to inform on their associates and neighbors. The approaches, which took place in New York and New Jersey, were reportedly handled clumsily, making the targets of the operation suspicious. These Arab-Americans turned down the requests for cooperation, and some of the contacts were eventually reported to the FBI, which has determined that at least two of the Mossad officers are, ironically, Israeli Arabs operating out of Israel’s mission to the United Nations in New York under cover as consular assistants.

            In another bizarre case, U.S.S. Liberty survivor Phil Tourney was recently accosted in Southern California by a foreigner who eventually identified himself as an Israeli government representative. Tourney was taunted, and the Israeli threatened both him and journalist Mark Glenn, who has been reporting on the Liberty story. Tourney was approached in a hotel lounge, and it is not completely clear how the Israeli was able to identify him. But he knew exactly who Tourney was, as the official referred to the Liberty, saying that the people who had been killed on board had gotten what they deserved. There were a number of witnesses to the incident, including Tourney’s wife. The threat has been reported to the FBI, which is investigating, but Tourney and Glenn believe that the incident is not being taken seriously by the bureau.

            FBI sources indicate that the increase in Mossad activity is a major problem, particularly when Israelis are posing as U.S. government officials, but they also note that there is little they can do to stop it as the Justice Department refuses to initiate any punitive action or prosecutions of the Mossad officers who have been identified as involved in the illegal activity.

            In another ongoing Israeli spy case, Stewart Nozette appears to be headed towards eventual freedom as his case drags on through the District of Columbia courts. Nozette, an aerospace scientist with a top secret clearance and access to highly sensitive information, offered to sell classified material to a man he believed to be a Mossad officer, but who instead turned out to be with the FBI. Nozette has been in jail since October, but he has now been granted an additional 90-day delay so his lawyers can review the documents in the government’s case, many of which are classified. If Nozette demands that sensitive information be used in his defense, his case will likely follow the pattern set in the nine-times-postponed trial of AIPAC spies Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, who were ultimately acquitted in April 2009 when prosecutors determined that they could not make their case without doing significant damage to national security. A month after Rosen and Weissman were freed, Ben-Ami Kadish, who admitted to providing defense secrets to Israel while working as an engineer at Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, walked out of a Manhattan court after paying a fine. He did no jail time and continues to receive his substantial Defense Department pension.

            The mainstream media reported the Rosen and Weissman trial intermittently, but there was virtually no coverage of Ben-Ami Kadish, and there has been even less of Nozette. Compare that with the recent reporting on the Russian spies who, by all accounts, did almost nothing and never obtained any classified information. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that spying for Israel is consequence free.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest. His “Deep Background” column appears every month exclusively in The American Conservative.

 

What you believe is no disgrace: the swinishness is in the race!

 

Why Israel deserves “singling out”
August 23, 2010
by Joel Kovel 

 

            • The degree to which US foreign policy is configured to give Israel its impunity, one small instance being Obama’s recent threat to Turkey that he would cut off military contracts unless it lays off Israel for the Mavi Marmara incident; meanwhile the US reinforces Israeli military superiority with the latest in free ultra technology for its F-16 fighter fleet;

            • The shameless debasement of our Congress, with hundreds of elected officials doing the bidding of a foreign power, again to whitewash the Mavi Marmara murders, thereby granting impunity once again;

            • The plague of Islamophobia now raging, inflamed by fury over the “Ground-zero Mosque,” and more generally, over the terrors stirred up by 9-11. But who pauses to reflect upon that awful day and the fact that it provided the one incontrovertible instance of highly suspicious involvement by a foreign state in the havoc, namely, the most odd finding of five “moving men,” who turned out to be Mossad agents filming from New Jersey the collapse of the towers while jubilantly giving each other high fives, who were released back to their home country after 71 quiet days in FBI custody, and whose “employer” moved very hastily back to Israel, after stripping his office of all evidence? How did they know to be there, cameras primed, at that time? Why were they so happy? No point in asking. The propaganda machine has constructed mass consciousness so as to obscure any thinking about the matter, which no longer exists so far as official political culture goes. Such questions are highly impertinent. After all, one does not want to “single” Israel out. That would be anti-Semitic, wouldn’t it? This Reichstag Fire leads in another direction, that of the Islamic Threat.

            • And then, more war, as in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and now the latest looming danger, the Persian menace. That this mainly exists in the mind of the Zionist Power Structure, here and in Israel, is anything but reassuring, given the authority of that mind. Suppose, then, that the exquisitely positioned pundits and opinion-makers get their wish of precipitating us into a bombing war with Iran, Israel’s #1 existential threat, and Iran bombs back. This could be a new Board Game: there goes the global economy; and there looms, as ever, our friend and ally’s “Samson Option” using its nuclear arsenal that nobody is to know about, but that has, in the meantime, totally wrecked any efforts to bring nuclear proliferation under control thanks to universal knowledge of the bad faith of the United States for its complicity over the years under the influence of a certain “lobby” . . .

In sum, if you care about the baleful influence of the United States in the world you cannot set Israel aside as an isolated issue. This is the precise opposite of “singling Israel out.” It is, rather, a demand to integrate Israel within the manifold of imperial/economic/military power, and taking the steps necessary to bring this power under rational control.

http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/zionist-occupation-of-us-civil-society-and-state-aparatus/

 

Youth Unemployment Linked to Immigration
August 18, 2010

             Coinciding with the release of NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) statistics, Migrationwatch have today issued a research paper examining whether youth unemployment and immigration are linked (Briefing Paper 3.11).

            The paper finds that the relationship between immigration and youth unemployment is positive and significant in those areas that have experienced the highest rates of immigration.

            In the case of those local authorities outside London with the highest proportion of immigrants, the relationship is very strong showing that for every one thousand immigrants into these areas, on average, the number of youth unemployed rises by around 900.

             Statistical correlation is not, in itself, proof of causality but a correlation as high as this is, to say the least, highly indicative.

             Commenting, Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of Migrationwatch UK, said

            “People have tiptoed around this issue for far too long. Many factors contribute to youth unemployment but this research suggests that immigration is a significant factor in areas of high immigration. The case for getting immigration down to sensible levels, as the government have promised, gets stronger by the day”

Immigration and the latest employment statistics: Nearly 80% of new jobs have gone to immigrants
August 13, 2010

Migrationwatch

            The thrust of the Migrationwatch press release “Immigration has damaged employment prospects for British workers” (below) is reinforced by the employment statistics released on 11 August – see http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/lmsuk0810.pdf.

              Employment increased by 188,000 between the first and second quarters of this year but 145,000 of them or 77% went to non UK born workers, that is immigrants.

            Many immigrants acquire nationality after some years in Britain but the employment figures for non British nationals are virtually the same as for non British born. This means that those who have entered employment in the last quarter are largely recent immigrants.
Immigration has Damaged Employment Prospects for British Workers
August 12, 2010

            The mass immigration of the past decade has damaged the employment opportunities of UK born workers in the areas most affected.

            This is the conclusion of a new study, from think-tank Migrationwatch, (see Briefing Paper 3.10) issued on the eve of new unemployment figures due out on August 12. It has conducted the first comparison of labour market conditions in the 50 Local Authorities with the highest international immigration with conditions in the 50 with the lowest.

            It shows conclusively that areas of the UK that have experienced the highest levels of immigration have higher unemployment levels than areas that have not.

            The study also shows that employment rates in these areas are lower compared with areas that have received comparatively little immigration from overseas.

            ‘While properly controlled immigration can be of economic benefit, this demonstrates that the ‘open door’ policies of the past decade have had a damaging effect on the employment, and therefore the economic prospects and standard of living, of UK born workers in the areas most affected,’ said Sir Andrew Green, Migrationwatch chairman.

            In London, which has received the highest level of immigrants, the study shows there is a positive relationship between unemployment and net immigration from abroad

            For example for every one percentage point increase in the ‘international immigration rate’ (NIM – Net International Migration expressed as a percentage share of the total population of the Borough concerned.) of a London borough, there is on average an increase of around a fifth of one percentage point in the unemployment rate in that borough.

            It also shows that immigration from overseas into London boroughs is associated with a fall in the employment rate of UK-born inhabitants: for every one percentage point increase in the share of immigrants in London boroughs there is a fall of around half a percentage point in the employment rate of UK-born inhabitants.

            ‘This is a very complex area and other factors such as skills levels and the operation of the benefit system are important. But too little attention has been paid to the impact of immigration on British born employment prospects,’ said Sir Andrew. ‘Our study underlines the importance of getting net immigration down to tens of thousands, as the present government has promised.’

http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/

The Conversations with the Crow

          When the CIA discovered that their former Deputy Director of Clandestine Affairs, Robert  T. Crowley, had been talking with author Gregory Douglas, they became fearful (because of what Crowley knew) and outraged (because they knew Douglas would publish eventually) and made many efforts to silence Crowley, mostly by having dozens of FBI agents call or visit him at his Washington home and try to convince him to stop talking to Douglas, whom they considered to be an evil, loose cannon.

             Crowley did not listen to them (no one else ever does, either) and Douglas made through shorthand notes of each and every one of their many conversation. TBR News published most of these (some of the really vile ones were left out of the book but will be included on this site as a later addendum ) and the entire collection was later produced as an Ebook.

            Now, we reliably learn, various Washington alphabet agencies are trying to find a way to block the circulation of this highly negative, entertaining and dangerous work, so to show our solidarity with our beloved leaders and protectors, and our sincere appreciation for their corrupt and coercive actions, we are going to reprint the entire work, chapter by chapter. (The complete book can be obtained by going to:

http://www.shop.conversationswiththecrow.com/Conversations-with-the-Crow-CWC-GD01.htm🙂

Here is the twenty-sixth  chapter

 

Conversation No. 26

Date: Wednesday, July 24,1996

Commenced: 10:45 AM CST
Concluded: 11:10 AM CST

RTC: I found a very interesting report in the files when I was looking for something else. I misfiled it some time ago. Anyway, Gregory, I thought I would send it to you but I must say that it is highly sensitive and if you publish anything on or about it, you might have very serious problems.

GD: More CIA assassinations?
RTC: No, actually, this has nothing to do with the CIA. We know about the subject but it isn’t really in our field and we want nothing to do with it. This is about…I think we have talked about the subject before. Vanishing people, flying saucers and so on.

GD: I believe so. Do go on.

RTC: Well, you’ll have the report next week, or whenever Greg [1] gets to the local post office…I mean it runs to about a hundred or more pages. Otherwise, I could stick it into an envelope and leave it for the local route man. And there it is. Absolutely pure science fiction but in this case, or rather these cases, science facts. I may have told you about one of our top people who just  vanished while walking down his driveway? Well, there is a lot more. We may have talked about the Roswell business and we can get back to that later but the most interesting item in the file is about the woman who was jaywalking in New York and was hit by some minority trying to escape from the police. Terrible impact and knocked her up onto the sidewalk. Right next to a hospital so she was rushed there but died there at once or more likely was killed by the impact. So, when they did an autopsy on her, they were lucky because they got right on to her, or whatever it was, and that was good because about two hours later, after the body cooled off, it turned to a sort of jelly. But, this is the fascinating part. It looked like a woman from the outside but once they cut into her, it wasn’t a woman.

GD: It was a transvestite?
RTC: No, it wasn’t human. The insides were all different. None of the staff had ever seen anything like it before so they photographed the body and took out what they hoped might be some kind of organs. Didn’t do any good because, like the body, the pieces all turned to jelly in the jars. But there are the affidavits and the photographs plus the police report of the accident and the emergency room people. Not human. What it was, no one knows, not to this day. Fortunately for everyone, one of the doctors was an Air Force reserve officer and he made a call. There was a descent on the hospital and everyone was grilled and terrified. One set of the pictures was saved by accident and we got it. And next week, you can have it, if the USPS doesn’t deliver it to Gambon in error. We had no idea what the whole thing was about but we talked with the Air Force people and they know all about such things. They did their Bluebook project on saucers. They do know, Gregory, but we never will.

GD: Why not?
RTC: You ask a question like that? Orson Wells’ program? Why the issue is national panic, that’s why not. Harry Truman could see this and the Roswell business and other things were all shut up and the press fed with reams of fake sightings and they got their in-house historians to write satires on the little green men. And even now, they encourage the nut fringe to publish silly crap and engage in hair pulling contests, just to keep the public looking at other things. Panic, Gregory. Tens of thousands of people vanish each year without any trace. We got the transistor from the Roswell wreck and the Air Force says at least 5% of all flying saucer sightings are real. And the non-humans walking around. My God, can you imagine the resurrection of the Salem witch trials is the air-brained public ever got it into their fuzzy heads that there were aliens running around the streets? And I don’t mean Guatemalan housemaids or Mexican gardeners either. No, royal panic. The public would demand answers and no one in authority can give them.

GD: Oh, they can just make something reasonable up and get it on the front page of the New York Times and then it’s all quiet on the western front.

RTC: Yes, that’s the usual drill but that might apply to sightings of strange celestial crockery but the thought that something sitting next to you on the bus might be something sinister from another galaxy would cause a royal uproar. No one here wants to deal with such things so they are best forgotten or better still, never talked about in the first place.

GD: I remember uncovering a story in July of ’76 about the Legionnaire’s Disease in Philly. I don’t know who was behind it but it was no accident. I got ABC interested in it and they did one, and only one, story on the air and then were shut up from way on high.

RTC: That was a little mistake from the Ft. Detrick people. The perp was terminated.

GD: So were some old geeks.

RTC: Collateral damage. Yes, I know about that and I laugh every time they mention in the media that it broke out again. Keeps the ball rolling. But the visiting aliens are another matter.

GD: Oh, I understand that. The public would run around like drunken chickens and every nut in the country would be jabbering about his own nut version and of course people would point out homeless eccentrics or, more likely, unwanted neighbors or personal enemies and the public would lynch them.

RTC: That’s the problem.

GD: Is there a solution?
RTC: As I understand it, a number of our agencies have been very quietly working on this visitation business for some time. The problem is that we can’t just send out flyers to hospitals or morgues without it getting out but I would be obvious that if they found something similar, the local press would be alerted and the story might, just possibly might, get out. Ah well, I have mixed emotions about sending this to you and you do assure me you won’t copy any of this or write about it?

GD: Are you joking, Robert? My God, the flying saucer nuts are almost as bad as the Kennedy assassination lunatics. If I published anything that one of them didn’t dream up in some psych ward when the meds ran out, they would gang up on me, screeching like Irish banshees. I’ve been thinking about doing something on the Kennedy business…..

RTC: But after I am no longer around. We agreed on this…

GD: Of course. No, I anticipate the screeching and clawing if I do. And if I ever hinted that there are non-humans among us and, better still, if I could even come close to proving it, my God, not only would the Air Force strafe my house at night but an army of the Undead conspiracy nutties would camp on my lawn and shit all over the grass. But is it interesting all in all. I mean, who, or what, are these things? Are they just doing on the ground recon? Are they going to run one of their people for high office? Are they collecting toads to experiment on? Colonists?

RTC: We could go on for days but in the end, I doubt if we’ll ever know.

GD: I suppose if someone at a Burger King saw an old woman’s three foot long black tongue shoot out of her mouth and snatch a Whopper off of a tray we might have problems.

RTC: There would be a descent of the sanitizing people and a few obits in the local paper. The old lady with the frog tongue would be long gone and so would any witnesses, believe me.

GD: This is a weird conversation Robert, believe me..

RTC: Well, you can see why things like this never get any meaningful press, can’t you. If some farmer started talking about some giant frog eating his horses, everyone would laugh at the really funny AP article on page thirty and that would be the end of it.

GD: Probably would be.  But what do your people think about all of this?
RTC: That there are aliens among us and that flying saucers are about 98% real. And we know that people vanish from the sight of man but then why frighten ourselves unnecessarily, Gregory?

GD: Yes, we can go the beach and watch all the legions of fatties waddling around the sand, crushing small children and blocking out the sun for thousands of others.

RTC: Gregory, I thank God I am not fat or I might find you offensive.

GD: So many others do, Robert. How did they know the thing was a woman?
RTC: It had no cock and a pair of tits.

GD: To the point. Sounds like people I know. Turns to jelly, does it? Why back to  the subject of fatties at the beach, so many people turn to jelly after twenty five. If we could harvest the fat, flense them at it were, we could make up for any international oil shortfall. And if Malthus was right, and I know he was, when the great hunger comes, why this country will have whole ciities full of the hefties they can harvest. I saw a woman the other day and I swear, one of her mostrrous thighs could feed a family of five for a month. For a month, Robert. With a decent sauce, of course. Why the Filipinos eat monkeys but I think that’s more like cannibalism than anything else.

RTC: Your unkindness knows no borders. But to return to reality, Gregory, you understand the dynamics here, don’t you?

GD: More or less. A friend of mine, an anchor person for a television station in San Francisco told me once that if they knew to the hour when a major earthquake would strike Los Angeles, and it will, the state would quietly evacuate people they considered important and wait for the rest to happen. Not cruelty but pragmatism. There would be a huge panic, suicides, looting, rapes, arson and other manifestations of human vileness and the death tolls from these would far transcend those from a major quake. No, I understand the concept. ‘Where every prospect pleases and only man is vile.’

RTC: Have you ever considered going into the ministry, Gregory?

GD: The Ministry of Defense?
RTC: No, that’s not what I had in mind.

GD: I can put my shirt on backward and collect for the poor. Since I’m poor, it wouldn’t bother me at all.

(Concluded at 11:10 AM CST)

 

Dramatis personae:

James Jesus Angleton: Once head of the CIA’s Counterintelligence division, later fired because of his obsessive and illegal behavior, tapping the phones of many important government officials in search of elusive Soviet spies. A good friend of Robert Crowley and a co-conspirator with him in the assassination of President Kennedy

James P. Atwood: (April 16, 1930-April 20, 1997) A CIA employee, located in Berlin, Atwood had a most interesting career. He worked for any other intelligence agency, domestic or foreign, that would pay him, was involved in selling surplus Russian atomic artillery shells to the Pakistan government and was also most successful in the manufacturing of counterfeit German dress daggers. Too talkative, Atwood eventually had a sudden, and fatal, “seizure” while lunching with CIA associates.

William Corson: A Marine Corps Colonel and President Carter’s representative to the CIA. A friend of Crowley and Kimmel, Corson was an intelligent man whose main failing was a frantic desire to be seen as an important person. This led to his making fictional or highly exaggerated claims.

John Costello: A British historian who was popular with revisionist circles. Died of AIDS on a trans-Atlantic flight to the United States.

James Critchfield: Former U.S. Army Colonel who worked for the CIA and organizaed the Cehlen Org. at Pullach, Germany. This organization was filled to the Plimsoll line with former Gestapo and SD personnel, many of whom were wanted for various purported crimes. He hired Heinrich Müller in 1948 and went on to represent the CIA in the Persian Gulf.

Robert T. Crowley: Once the deputy director of Clandestine Operations and head of the group that interacted with corporate America. A former West Point football player who was one of the founders of the original CIA. Crowley was involved at a very high level with many of the machinations of the CIA.

Gregory Douglas: A retired newspaperman, onetime friend of Heinrich Müller and latterly, of Robert Crowley. Inherited stacks of files from the former (along with many interesting works of art acquired during the war and even more papers from Robert Crowley.) Lives comfortably in a nice house overlooking the Mediterranean.

Reinhard Gehlen: A retired German general who had once been in charge of the intelligence for the German high command on Russian military activities. Fired by Hitler for incompetence, he was therefore naturally hired by first, the U.S. Army and then, as his level of incompetence rose, with the CIA. His Nazi-stuffed organizaion eventually became the current German Bundes Nachrichten Dienst.

Thomas K. Kimmel, Jr: A grandson of Admiral Husband Kimmel, Naval commander at Pearl Harbor who was scapegoated after the Japanese attack. Kimmel was a senior FBI official who knew both Gregory Douglas and Robert Crowley and made a number of attempts to discourage Crowley from talking with Douglas. He was singularly unsuccessful. Kimmel subsequently retired and lives in retirement in Florida

Willi Krichbaum: A Senior Colonel (Oberführer) in the SS, head of the wartime Secret Field Police of the German Army and Heinrich Müller’s standing deputy in the Gestapo. After the war, Krichbaum went to work for the Critchfield organization and was their chief recruiter and hired many of his former SS friends. Krichbaum put Critchfield in touch with Müller in 1948.

Heinrich Müller: A former military pilot in the Bavarian Army in WWI, Müller  became a political police officer in Munich and was later made the head of the Secret State Police or Gestapo. After the war, Müller escaped to Switzerland where he worked for Swiss intelligence as a specialist on Communist espionage and was hired by James Critchfield, head of the Gehlen Organization, in 1948. Müller subsequently was moved to Washington where he worked for the CIA until he retired.

Joseph Trento: A writer on intelligence subjects, Trento and his wife “assisted” both Crowley and Corson in writing a book on the Russian KGB. Trento believed that he would inherit all of Crowley’s extensive files but after Crowley’s death, he discovered that the files had been gutted and the most important, and sensitive, ones given to Gregory Douglas. Trento was not happy about this. Neither were his employers.

Frank Wisner: A Founding Father of the CIA who promised much to the Hungarian and then failed them. First, a raging lunatic who was removed from Langley, screaming, in a strait jacket and later, blowing off the top of his head with a shotgun.

Robert Wolfe: A retired librarian from the National Archives who worked closely with the CIA on covering up embarrassing historical material in the files of the Archives. A strong supporter of holocaust writers.

Note: We understand that a large collection of documents, assembled by Robert T. Crowley, will be offered to the public in the near future. Here is a listing of some of the documents which will be included:

DOCUMENT CATALOG

 

Catalog Number               Description of Contents                                      __________________________________________________________________________________

1000 BH            Extensive file (1,205 pages) of reports on Operation PHOENIX. Final paper dated January, 1971, first document dated  October, 1967. Covers the setting up of Regional Interrogation Centers, staffing, torture techniques including electric shock, beatings, chemical injections. CIA agents involved and includes a listing of U.S. military units to include Military Police, CIC and Special Forces groups involved. After-action reports from various military units to include 9^th Infantry, showing the deliberate killing of all unarmed civilians located in areas suspected of harboring or supplying Viet Cong units. *

1002 BH            Medium file (223 pages)  concerning the fomenting of civil disobedience in Chile as the result of the Allende election in 1970. Included are pay vouchers for CIA bribery efforts with Chilean labor organization and student activist groups, U.S. military units involved in the final revolt, letter from  T. Karamessines, CIA Operations Director to Chile CIA Station Chief Paul Wimert, passing along a specific order from Nixon via Kissinger to kill Allende when the coup was successful. Communications to Pinochet with Nixon instructions to root out by force any remaining left wing leaders.

1003 BH                  Medium file (187 pages) of reports of CIA assets containing photographs of Soviet missile sites, airfields and other strategic sites taken from commercial aircraft. Detailed descriptions of targets attached to each picture or pictures.

1004 BH            Large file (1560 pages) of CIA reports on Canadian radio intelligence intercepts from the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa (1958) and a list of suspected and identified Soviet agents or sympathizers in Canada, to include members of the Canadian Parliament and military.

1005 BH          Medium file (219 pages) of members of the German Bundeswehr in the employ of the CIA. The report covers the Innere Führung group plus members of the signals intelligence service. Another report, attached, covers CIA assets in German Foreign Office positions, in Germany and in diplomatic missions abroad.

1006:BH            Long file (1,287 pages) of events leading up to the killing of Josef Stalin in 1953 to include reports on contacts with L.P. Beria who planned to kill Stalin, believing himself to be the target for removal. Names of cut outs, CIA personnel in Finland and Denmark are noted as are original communications from Beria and agreements as to his standing down in the DDR and a list of MVD/KGB files on American informants from 1933 to present. A report on a blood-thinning agent to be made available to Beria to put into Stalin’s food plus twenty two reports from Soviet doctors on Stalin’s health, high blood pressure etc. A report on areas of cooperation between Beria’s people and CIA controllers in the event of a successful coup. *

1007 BH            Short list (125 pages) of CIA contacts with members of the American media to include press and television and book publishers. Names of contacts with bios are included as are a list of payments made and specific leaked material supplied. Also appended is a shorter list of foreign publications. Under date of August, 1989 with updates to 1992. Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, Bradlee of the same paper, Ted Koppel, Sam Donaldson and others are included.

1008 BH            A file of eighteen reports (total of 899 pages) documenting illegal activities on the part of members of the U.S. Congress. First report dated July 29, 1950 and final one September 15, 1992. Of especial note is a long file on Senator McCarthy dealing with homosexuality and alcoholism. Also an attached note concerning the Truman Administration’s use of McCarthy to remove targeted Communists. These reports contain copies of FBI surveillance reports, to include photographs and reference to tape recordings, dealing with sexual events with male and female prostitutes, drug use, bribery, and other matters.

1009 BH            A long multiple file (1,564 pages) dealing with the CIA part (Kermit Roosevelt) in overthrowing the populist Persian prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. Report from Dulles (John Foster) concerning a replacement, by force if necessary and to include a full copy of AJAX operation. Letters from AIOC on million dollar bribe paid directly to J.Angleton, head of SOG. Support of Shah requires exclusive contracts with specified western oil companies. Reports dated from May 1951 through August, 1953.

1010 BH            Medium file (419 pages) of telephone intercepts made by order of J.J. Angleton of the telephone conversations between RFK and one G.N. Bolshakov. Phone calls between 1962-1963 inclusive. Also copies of intercepted and inspected mail from RFK containing classified U.S. documents and sent to a cut-out identified as one used by Bolshakov, a Russian press (TASS) employee. Report on Bolshakov’s GRU connections.

1011 BH            Large file (988 pages) on 1961 Korean revolt of Kwangju revolt led by General Park Chung-hee and General Kin-Jong-pil. Reports on contacts maintained by CIA station in Japan to include payments made to both men, plans for the coup, lists of “undesirables” to be liquidated  Additional material on CIA connections with KCIA personnel and an agreement with them  to assassinate South Korean chief of state, Park, in 1979.

1012 BH            Small file (12 pages) of homosexual activities between FBI Director Hoover and his aide, Tolson. Surveillance pictures taken in San Francisco hotel and report by CIA agents involved. Report analyzed in 1962.

1013 BH             Long file (1,699 pages) on General Edward Lansdale. First report a study signed by DCI Dulles in  September of 1954 concerning a growing situation in former French Indo-China. There are reports by and about Lansdale starting with his attachment to the OPC in 1949-50 where he and Frank Wisner coordinated policy in neutralizing Communist influence in the Philippines.. Landsale was then sent to Saigon under diplomatic cover and many copies of his period reports are copied here. Very interesting background material including strong connections with the Catholic Church concerning Catholic Vietnamese and exchanges of intelligence information between the two entities.

1014 BH            Short file (78 pages) concerning  a Dr. Frank Olson. Olson was at the U.S. Army chemical warfare base at Ft. Detrick in Maryland and was involved with a Dr. Gottleib. Gottleib was working on a plan to introduce psychotic-inducing drugs into the water supply of the Soviet Embassy. Apparently he tested the drugs on CIA personnel first. Reports of psychotic behavior by Olson and more police and official reports on his defenstration by Gottleib’s associates. A cover-up was instituted and a number of in-house CIA memoranda attest to this. Also a discussion by Gottleib on various poisons and drugs he was experimenting with and another report of people who had died as a result of Gottleib’s various experiments and CIA efforts to neutralize any public knowledge of these. *

1015 BH            Medium file (457 pages) on CIA connections with the Columbian-based Medellín drug ring. Eight CIA internal reports, three DoS reports, one FBI report on CIA operative Milan Rodríguez and his connections with this drug ring. Receipts for CIA payments to Rodríguez of over $3 million in CIA funds,showing the routings of the money, cut-outs and payments. CIA reports on sabotaging  DEA investigations. A three-part study of the Nicaraguan Contras, also a CIA-organized and paid for organization.

1016 BH            A small file (159 pages) containing lists of known Nazi intelligence and scientific people recruited in Germany from 1946 onwards, initially by the U.S. Army and later by the CIA. A detailed list of the original names and positions of the persons involved plus their relocation information. Has three U.S. Army and one FBI report on the subject.

1017 BH            A small list (54 pages) of American business entities with “significant” connections to the CIA. Each business is listed along with relevant information on its owners/operators, previous and on going contacts with the CIA’s Robert Crowley, also a list of national advertising agencies with similar information. Much information about suppressed news stories and planted stories. *

 

Truth and Conspiracy in the Catskills

August 23, 2010
by Stanley Fish  

New York Times

            A small gathering of 50 or 60 people; roughly 95 percent white, 90 percent male, a few blond-haired kids, average age 45, all nodding in assent as a series of speakers explains that our government is conspiring against us and fabricating massive lies in order to hide its own crimes and frighten us into giving up our constitutional rights and liberties.

            The Tea Party? Minutemen? Birthers? No, “Truthers,” left-wing conspiracy theorists who believe (among other things) that 9/11 was an inside job, that no plane hit the Pentagon, that Ted Olson did not receive a call from his wife, Barbara, shortly before she perished in the crash of Flight 77, that the anthrax scare was also a government hoax (although the anthrax was real and deadly), and that hurricane Katrina was the result of weather manipulation by racists or profiteers or both.

            The thing about people who hold beliefs you find unbelievable (in two senses) is that they are in most other respects just like you and your friends.
.

Like many others, I was aware of these theories and aware too that a significant percentage of Americans (about the same percentage that believes President Obama is a Muslim who was born in Kenya) was at least partly persuaded by them. But on Aug. 15 I got an up-close look at the phenomenon when I attended a meeting of Truthers that just happened to be held in Livingston Manor, a small Catskill town about 20 miles from my house.

            The thing about people who hold beliefs you find unbelievable (in two senses) is that they are in most other respects just like you and your friends. The parking lot of the facility housing the conference might have been a parking lot at any university: lots of Subarus and Priuses. The men and women were casually dressed, polite and friendly. I’m sure that on any other topic — the Yankees, the Stieg Larsson novels, the latest Julia Roberts movie — they would have been all over the place, but when the topic is 9/11 and the “official story” told by the government, they all speak and think with an impressive unanimity of opinion and with an equally impressive sincerity.

            I was the only insincere one in the room. I didn’t announce myself as a columnist looking for something to write about. I let them think I was one of them. When a speaker began his presentation by asking, “Is there anyone here who holds to the official story?”, I didn’t raise my hand. When he followed up by asking whether anyone was on the fence, I raised my hand weakly, along with one other person who, presumably, was telling the truth. Technically, I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I felt dishonest and I was certainly being duplicitous.

            I distanced myself from my discomfort by regarding the event as theater and inventorying the dramatis personae. They were straight out of central casting. Sander Hicks, the master of ceremonies, looked like an amalgam of Johnny Depp, Sean Penn and Matt Dillon; he kept things moving and implored “put your hands together” as each speaker came to the podium. Paul Zarembka played (and was) the left-leaning academic economist. He said, “The ruling class will do anything to keep in power.” The Rev. Ian Alterman preached gentleness, humility and respect. He said that those who have an investment in the official lies because that’s all they’ve ever heard cannot be approached in a confrontational manner.

            But confrontation was obviously the preferred mode of Barry Kissin, the resident rabble-rouser who harangued the audience with the sins of elites who deliberately killed 3,000 of their own citizens and bullied “beleaguered countries” like North Korea and Iran. Nick Bryant tied the same elites to a massive network of pedophiles including almost everyone you’ve ever heard of.

            The star turn was taken by architect Richard Gage, founding member of Architects & Engineers for Truth, a group, he said, of 1,200 experts in the area of the construction and destruction of tall buildings. It was Gage, the man of science and the scientific method (another stock character), who laid out the basic thesis from which everything else grew. The twin towers could not have been brought down by fire. A fire, however intense, would have left the steel girders standing, perhaps at an odd angle. The way the towers fell — in free fall, straight down, in only 7 seconds — shows clearly, Gage declared, that the cause was controlled demolition by explosives placed next to the support structures and detonated in a precisely timed sequence. In short, destruction from the inside by insiders and not by a rag-tag group of fanatics who were incapable of flying the planes they supposedly deployed with incredible skill.

            Once this scenario is established, you have only to ask, first, who could have had the expertise to bring this off and, second, who had the motive to bring it off. Bingo! The government, which certainly had both money and materials and needed a pretext for starting two real wars and a metaphorical “war on terror” that could justify tight governmental and military control, torture, rendition and the passage of the Patriot Act. On this rock the house of the Truthers is built. Everything that comes up in the way of an objection can be explained by extending the basic assumption, by asking the question, “How did the conspirators get away with this one and pull the wool over everyone’s eyes?” It is always answered.

            At the end of the afternoon and before the conference-ending dinner, I slipped away. I thought about identifying myself before leaving. I should have, but I didn’t. Instead I drove home to a small dinner party: my wife and I, another couple and a friend. I told them about what I had seen and heard. The man of the couple said that on Sept. 11, 2001, when he heard the news, “inside job” was the first thought he had, although he hadn’t bothered much with the thought since. Our other guest told us that her brother-in-law was even more a partisan of the “government-did-it” view than those I had listened to. I guess you never know.

Myths and Legends of the 9/11 attack: Death Rays and Super-Thermite

by Dr. Phillip L.  Kushner

This is a subject that will be with us for years and will certainly grow in the telling. The WTC buildings collapsed  solely for a number of rational, provable reasons but the following the Suudi attack, all manner of “expert” opinions erupted into the public like some kind of a tropical skin disease and a great army of conspiracy idiots left the stale fictions surrounding the Kennedy assassination and gratefully rush to embrace the new religion, a religion that had the exciting suggestions of “plasmoid clouds.” “Ex-Soviet controlled rockets,” “’Nano thermite explosives planted in both buildings,” and on and on.

Now we discover that brilliant, fearless reporters and daring bloggers have exposed and are exposing the Real Truth behind the 911 disaster. We are subjected to the Plasmoid Clouds, The Chinese/Bulgarian Guided Missiles, The ex-Soviet Scientists working with the CIA, and Mossad and the Illuminati.

Ah, and now we learn about the dread Nano Thermite! Yes, more “experts” (as always, unidentified) found traces of this explosive all over the streets after the WTC building collapsed! Of course not a word was ever mentioned about this shocking fact for eight years but why let that bother the seekers after truth?

What about the self-sacrificing US Army Special Forces who actually went inside the buildings, acting on orders from Laura Bush the Freemasons and their controllers, the Illuminati (who were working with the Mossad at the time),  and blew the Twin Towers, and themselves, up? And the acres of foreign rocket engine parts strewed all over New York’s streets, or huge lakes of molten steel found by unidentified “rescue workers” in the cellars of the WTC? God, will these disillusions never end?

Here we have reassurance that all is not lost after all…. Next week, a stunning report will emerge on how Nicolas Tesla’s Z-Ray, controlled by former KGB officers stationed on Planet X,  actually brought down the two buildings,  as well as the Pentagon!  

               Two hijacked commercial airliners slammed into these buildings, setting fires that weakened the structure, causing the weight of the building above the point of impact to collapse down on itself.

There is absolutely no mystery at all about this.

Stories about rockets, explosives and other matters are entertaining and keep some people occupied but neither I nor most structural engineers I know believe any of these burgeoning urban legends for a nanosecond.

Next, I suppose, the killings at Coulmbine High School will be blamed on trained dwarves, members of the Mossad, killer robots, the Skull and Bones Society of Yale, the Teamsters, ABC News or the Mormon Church.

The public has lost confidence in their government and when that happens, all kind of rumor, theory and legends grow up like fungus in the woods after a long rain.

Those with a technical bent, endlessly postulate on the melting point of steel, the heat of burning jet fuel, the exact size of entrance holes in buildings and on and on. In the end, we have entertaining theory but no practice.

The same thing has become evident in the post mortem stories about the Kennedy assassination. Mongolian dwarves, the KGB, Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, the CIA and a dozen other entities are absolutely believed by this or that thrilled discoverer to have committed the deed.

Government stupidity, which is always with us, contributed to the growth of legend over the years until the underbrush is so thick that it could hide a wooly mammoth and sixteen university professors.

.

               It always seems that high-level individuals, privy top the Inner Circle Secrets, have solemnly warned a brilliant and insightful blogger that this or that sinister incident has occurred. Of course like the story of a plasmoid cloud destroying the WTC, the names of these powerful and mysterious sources are never revealed. Our own impeccable sources absolutely verify that the entire business is the work of dimwits but also that powerful forces are now at work to prevent Americans from reading the Real Truth. Among these stories are the SEA tsunami/Tesla bomb release, and the thrilling recent revelation that the head White House gardener was secretly indicted in Chicago for assassinating the Easter Bunny and Laura Bush’s cat with a new and deadly laser ray invented by the sinister Dr. Melbourne Fong, head of the Hidden Hand. There is also the recently revealed plot to put deadly Ricin poison on DoD toilet paper that has all of official Washington a-twitter.

The collapses of the Twin Towers generated seismic disturbances that were recorded by a half-dozen seismic recording stations within a 20-mile radius of Manhattan. Numerous websites have repeated an erroneous interpretation of the seismic recordings as evidence that bombs in the basements of the towers severed the core columns at the onsets of the collapses. One source of this error is an article by American Free Press reporter Christopher Bollyn, reprinted in Serendipity.

To the contrary, there was nothing strange about the seismic spikes recorded by the Palisades station. As the video and photographic evidence shows, the towers exploded into expanding clouds of rubble that were about 400 feet from top to bottom by the time they reached the ground. Those rubble clouds contained virtually all of the mass of towers — thousands of tons of rubble falling from as high as 1000 feet. That could certainly be expected to produce pronounced seismic waves.

In fact the seismic evidence from the Palisades station comports well with the sequence of destruction evident in photographs and videos: each tower was consumed by a wave of destruction that started near the crash zone and moved downward as it generated an expanding cloud of rubble. It took about ten seconds for the bottom of this cloud to reach the ground and another eight seconds for its top to reach the ground. Likewise the seismic records show small disturbances lasting for about ten seconds, followed by large spikes lasting for about eight seconds.

         There appears to be no basis for the claim that the large spikes preceded the collapses, nor that the energy indicated by those spikes was more than could be accounted for by the approximately 110 megawatt-hours of gravitational energy stored in the elevated mass of each tower. And there is strong evidence contradicting the idea that the seismic spikes indicated underground explosions including:

• There is no support in the large body of photographic and video collapse evidence for the idea of powerful explosions in the towers’ basements at the onset of the collapses. Instead they show waves of destruction proceeding methodically downward from the crash zones to the ground.
• Underground explosions would have produced strong P waves, but the seismic stations registered only strong S waves. P waves oscillate horizontally — parallel to the direction of travel; whereas S waves oscillate vertically — perpendicular to the direction of travel.

         An analysis of the timeline of the North Tower collapse on the 9-11 Research site corroborates the idea that the large seismic spikes were produced by rubble reaching the ground.

               If a group of people placed explosive charges in the basements of the twin towers, why did the buildings begin to collapse downward from the points of impact? Fables about great conspiracies make amusing reading but in reality, such massive plots, involving as they would, hundreds of people, would be exposed almost immediately by dissatisfied or horror-stricken participants.

            In 1998, the Republicans had been out of power for some time and were eager to not only get back into power  which they were able to accomplish with one of the usual electorate mood swings and guaranteed assistance by the Florida Republicans and some of the Supreme Court) but, as Karl Rove insisted, keep it for a long time.

            Rove worked for George H.W. Bush before the elder sent him to run his useless, drunken sot of a son. Rove, very much a history buff, reasoned that as George was colorless and stubborn, he would have to have some help or it would be a one term reign. The answer? Looking at Roosevelt, the answer was plain:

            A wartime president.

            In this position, if he could get the public riled up the way they were just after Pearl Harbor (which FDR deliberately pushed the Japanese into doing) much could be accomplished and firm domestic control installed and implemented so the plan went to this level:

            George H.W. was on excellent terms with the Saudi-based, and very powerful,l bin Ladin family. They socialized together and many family members were honored guests of the Bush family (and others) in this country.

            One son, Osama, had worked with the CIA/Taliban connection and although seriously ill (kidney problems) he was an excellent connection.

            The Interior Minister of Saudi Arabia was anti-US so the older Bush spoke with one of the bin Ladins who, in turn, spoke with the Interior Minister and, hey presto, a road crew of Saudi fanatics was put together, supplied with fake papers and off they went on their mission.

            First to Germany where the German BND watched them and reported to their superiors who, in turn, passed on information to our people and next the Saudi terrorists came to this country.

            In order to keep an eye on the volatile Arabs, we enlisted the eager support of the Israeli Mossad who were allowed to function in this country with the, often-disregarded, idea they would pass any information of importance to the FBI.

            The whole bunch were in Hollywood, Florida, plotting. The Jews knew to the minute what was on the fire and passed it all along. One projected hijacked plane was destined for the Pentagon (where we got the Mossad people to convince them to target a side of the huge building that was closed for repairs…the real targets were on the opposite side of the complex), two were destined to slam into the iconic WTC buildings (that had been attacked earlier) and the fourth was intended for the most important mission: crash into the Capitol while Congress was in session.

            This latter was the key to the Rove/George H.W. plan. Congress was in session at that time and if the plane crashed into either wing, it would cripple the government until replacements could be elected to fill the empty seats left by the attack. That plane, we can be thankful, was crashed into a field in Pennsylvania by the unexpected revolt of the doomed passengers and Congress was not touched.

            With the mainstay neutralized, the Bush people pushed ahead with their constant threats of pending terror, followed by more and more oppressive legislation and the erection of more organs of domestic repression.

             Eventually, because of a number of relatively minor problems, the worst being gross ineptness on the part of the Rovians, the plot slowly collapsed like a ground-based barrage balloon with a tear in the fabric.

            There is also the fact that bin Laden died (there exists an authentic copy of his Pakistani death certificate) but he lives on in the rather amateurish productions of the CIA but as a unifying factor, bin Laden is dead.

Point

LASER BEAM WEAPONS AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER

by Christopher Bollyn

American Free Press
http://americanfreepress.net
February 14, 2002

 

Directed-Energy Weapons

A former East German physicist who studied Soviet infrared technology and plasmoids during the 60s and 70s, and who was directly involved in a demonstration of a Soviet laser beam weapon in 1991 for the U.S. Air Force in Weimar (DDR), told AFP that there is evidence that a directed-energy weapon using “deep infrared” radiation was used to bring down the WTC. Although infrared weapon technology is not widely discussed in the West, the Soviet infrared beam weapon is nothing new and was already used during a Soviet dispute with China in 1969 to destroy “a wall” at the Ussuri River, which separates Manchuria from Russia’s Far East, according to the physicist.

The physicist told AFP, “From my experience as a physicist and research scientist with the GRU (Russia’s Central Intelligence Agency) [The GRU was actually Soviet Military Intelligence, dealing with military matters]. I have enough experience to judge that the WTC towers have been burning too quickly, too hot, and too completely to have been caused by the kerosene [jet fuel] fires that resulted from the crashes. Furthermore, the demolished buildings nearby [the 47-story Salomon Bros. Bldg.] are an indication that there was a plasmoid cloud involved, which probably affected the buildings nearby.”

 

[Unfortunately, the reader of this stunning piece is not informed of the name of the “former East German physicist,” so that he might learn more about credentials of the man who has revealed the background of the astounding ‘plasmoid cloud’ that brought down the WTC towers].

A plasmoid cloud is a heated and ionized gas that can be created and projected using far infrared thermal waves. Plasma occurs when a gas is heated so that some electrons have been separated from their atoms or molecules. Ball lightning is considered by experts to be a plasmoid phenomenon.

The physicist told AFP that he believes that a plasmoid may have been projected onto the towers before the planes struck. “The planes may have had a plasmoid in front of them. Just two or three seconds before the planes hit the towers, a plasmoid on the towers would have caused the Faraday cabin effect, like a car being hit by lightning.”

*.

Seismic Evidence Points to Underground Explosions Causing WTC Collapse

 

by Christopher Bollyn
American Free Press
http://americanfreepress.net
August 28, 2002

Two unexplained “spikes” in the seismic record from September 11 indicate huge bursts of energy shook the ground beneath the World Trade Center’s twin towers — just as the buildings began to collapse.

American Free Press has learned of pools of “molten steel” found at the base of the collapsed twin towers weeks after the collapse. Although the energy source for these incredibly hot areas has yet to be explained, New York seismometers recorded huge bursts of energy, which caused unexplained seismic “spikes” at the beginning of each collapse. These spikes suggest that massive underground explosions may have literally knocked the towers off their foundations causing them to collapse.

“MOLTEN STEEL”

In the basements of the collapsed towers, where the 47 central support columns connected with the bedrock, hot spots of “literally molten steel” were discovered more than a month after the collapse. Such persistent and intense residual heat, 70 feet below the surface, could explain how these crucial structural supports failed.

Peter Tully, president of Tully Construction of Flushing, New York, told AFP that he saw pools of “literally molten steel” at the World Trade Center. Tully was contracted on September 11 to remove the debris from the site.

Tully called Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI) of Phoenix, Maryland, for consultation about removing the debris. CDI calls itself “the innovator and global leader in the controlled demolition and implosion of structures.”

Loizeaux, who cleaned up the bombed Federal Building in Oklahoma City, arrived on the WTC site two days later and wrote the clean-up plan for the entire operation.

AFP asked Loizeaux about the report of molten steel on the site. “Yes,” he said, “hot spots of molten steel in the basements.” These incredibly hot areas were found “at the bottoms of the elevator shafts of the main towers, down seven [basement] levels,” Loizeaux said. The molten steel was found “three, four, and five weeks later, when the rubble was being removed,” Loizeaux said. He said molten steel was also found at 7 WTC, which collapsed mysteriously in the late afternoon.

Construction steel has an extremely high melting point of about 2,800° Fahrenheit (1535° Celsius). Asked what could have caused such extreme heat, Tully said, “Think of the jet fuel.”

Loizeaux told AFP that the steel-melting fires were fueled by “paper, carpet and other combustibles packed down the elevator shafts by the tower floors as they ‘pancaked’ into the basement.”

Kerosene-based jet fuel, paper, or the other combustibles normally found in the towers, however, cannot generate the heat required to melt steel, especially in an oxygen-poor environment like a deep basement.

Eric Hufschmid, author of a book about the WTC collapse, Time for Painful Questions, told AFP that due to the lack of oxygen, paper and other combustibles packed down at the bottom of elevator shafts would probably be “a smoky smoldering pile.”

Experts disagree that jet-fuel or paper could generate such heat. This is impossible, they say, because the maximum temperature that can be reached by hydrocarbons like jet-fuel, burning in air is 1520° F (825° C). Because the WTC fires were fuel rich (as evidenced by the thick black smoke) it is argued that they did not reach this upper limit of 825° C.

The hottest spots at the surface of the rubble, where abundant oxygen was available, were much cooler than the molten steel found in the basements. Five days after the collapse, on September 16, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) used an Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) to locate and measure the site’s hot spots. Dozens of hot spots were mapped, the hottest being in the east corner of the South Tower where a temperature of 1377° F (747° C) was recorded. This is, however, less than half as hot at the molten steel in the basement.

The foundations of the twin towers were 70 feet deep. At that level, 47 huge box columns, connected to the bedrock, supported the entire gravity load of the structures. The steel walls of these lower box columns were 4 inches thick.

CENTRAL COLUMNS SEVERED

Videos of the North Tower collapse show its communication mast falling first, indicating that the central support columns must have failed at the very beginning of the collapse. Loizeaux told AFP, “Everything went simultaneously.”

“At 10:29 the entire top section of the North Tower had been severed from the base and began falling down,” Hufschmid writes. “If the first event was the falling of a floor, how did that progress to the severing of hundreds of columns?”

Asked if the vertical support columns gave way before the connections between the floors and the columns, Ron Hamburger, a structural engineer with the FEMA assessment team said, “That’s the $64,000 question.”

Loizeaux said, “If I were to bring the towers down, I would put explosives in the basement to get the weight of the building to help collapse the structure.”

SEISMIC “SPIKES”

Seismographs at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, 21 miles north of the WTC, recorded strange seismic activity on September 11 that has still not been explained.

While the aircraft crashes caused minimal earth shaking, significant earthquakes with unusual spikes occurred at the beginning of each collapse. The Palisades seismic data recorded a 2.1 magnitude earthquake during the 10-second collapse of the South Tower at 9:59:04 and a 2.3 quake during the 8-second collapse of the North Tower at 10:28:31.

The Palisades seismic record shows that — as the collapses began — a huge seismic “spike” marked the moment the greatest energy went into the ground. The strongest jolts were all registered at the beginning of the collapses, well before the falling debris struck the earth. These unexplained “spikes” in the seismic data lend credence to the theory that massive explosions at the base of the towers caused the collapses.

A “sharp spike of short duration” is how seismologist Thorne Lay of Univ. of California at Santa Cruz told AFP an underground nuclear explosion appears on a seismograph.

The two unexplained spikes are more than twenty times the amplitude of the other seismic waves associated with the collapses and occurred in the East-West seismic recording as the buildings began to fall.

Lerner-Lam told AFP that a 10-fold increase in wave amplitude indicates a 100-fold increase in energy released. These “short-period surface waves,” reflect “the interaction between the ground and the building foundation,” according to a report from Columbia Earth Institute.

“The seismic effects of the collapses are comparable to the explosions at a gasoline tank farm near Newark on January 7, 1983,” the Palisades Seismology Group reported on Sept. 14, 2001.

One of the seismologists, Won-Young Kim, told AFP that the Palisades seismographs register daily underground explosions from a quarry 20 miles away. These blasts are caused by 80,000 lbs. of ammonium nitrate and cause local earthquakes between Magnitude 1 and 2. Kim said the 1993 truck-bomb at the WTC did not register on the seismographs because it was “not coupled” to the ground.

Experts cannot explain why the seismic waves peaked before the towers hit the ground. Asked about these spikes seismologist Arthur Lerner-Lam, director of Columbia University’s Center for Hazards and Risk Research told AFP, “This is an element of current research and discussion. It is still being investigated.”

“Only a small fraction of the energy from the collapsing towers was converted into ground motion,” Lerner-Lam said. “The ground shaking that resulted from the collapse of the towers was extremely small.”

Last November, Lerner-Lam said, “During the collapse, most of the energy of the falling debris was absorbed by the towers and the neighboring structures, converting them into rubble and dust or causing other damage — but not causing significant ground shaking,”

Evidently, the energy source that shook the ground beneath the towers was many times more powerful than the total potential energy released by the falling mass of the huge towers.

TEST FOR EXPLOSIONS?

While steel is often tested for evidence of explosions, despite numerous eyewitness reports of explosions in the towers, the engineers involved in the FEMA-sponsored building assessment did no such tests.

Dr. W. Gene Corley, who investigated for the government the cause of the fire at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing, headed the FEMA-sponsored engineering assessment of the WTC collapse. Corley told AFP that while some tests had been done on the 80 pieces of steel saved from the site, he said he did not know about tests that show if an explosion had affected the steel. “I am not a metallurgist,” he said.

SELLING THE EVIDENCE OVERSEAS

Much of the structural steel from the WTC was sold to Alan D. Ratner of Metal Management of Newark, New Jersey, and the New York-based company Hugo Neu Schnitzer East. Ratner, who heads the New Jersey branch of the Chicago-based company, quickly sold the WTC steel to overseas companies, reportedly selling more than 50,000 tons of steel to a Shanghai steel company known as Baosteel for $120 per ton. Ratner paid about $70 per ton for the steel.

Other shipments of steel from the WTC went to India and other Asian ports. Ratner came to Metal Management after spending years with a Sydney-based (Australia) metal trading firm known as SimsMetal. “

 

The Oracle with Feet of Clay 

Man said views led to arrest: Hoffman Estates writer alleges Israel involved in Sept 11

September 8, 2006

by Liam Ford and Tribune writer Mark Shuman

Chicago Tribune

            A Hoffman Estates writer who claims Israeli agents were involved in the World Trade Center attack said police arrested him and shot him with a stun gun because of his views.

            But police say Christopher Bollyn was arrested during an altercation with officers last month because police feared he was going to get a weapon, which Bollyn denies. He was charged with aggravated assault and resisting arrest.

            Bollyn writes for several web sites, including on run by American Free Press, a

Washington weekly publication  that has published articles, including  some by Bollyn, raising the possibility that Israel was behind the Sept. 11 2001 attacks.

            Last weekend, the publication co-sponsored a conference with the Barnes Review, a publication that considers the Holocaust a myth.

            Bollyn, 49, said he was concerned last month about an unmarked car that was driving around his neighborhood two days in a row. The men in the car- identified by police as tactical officers- were dressed in bullet-proof vests and looked like paramilitary agents, Bollyn said.

            On Aug. 15, Bollyn was in front of his house in the 200 block of Kingman Lane, the second day he saw the car.

            “I said ‘Hello FBI,’ and the guy in the passenger seat waved back,” Bollyn said.”These are these guys wearing flak jackets. They looked like they were out of Beirut or Baghdad. They looked like they were dressed for combat.”

            Bollyn called 911 about 8 p.m. to complain of a suspicious vehicle both he and police spokesman  Lt. Rich Russo said.

            Because the tactical car was still in the area, the officers volunteered to Bolly and explain who they were, Russo said.

            Bollyn disputed that, saying the officers did not identify themselves.

            Bollyn “ran out, got into the officers’ faces, got very close to them, caused a ruckus,” Russo said.

            Bollyn said he wanted to call his brother and started walking towards his house. The police, he said “tackled me in front of my wife and daughter,” then after officers had one handcuff on him, “they Taser- gunned me.”

            Police say Bollyn’s gestures, words and actions convinced them that he might be trying to get back into his house to get a weapon, Russo said.

            Bollyn was shot with the stun gun because he continued to resist arrest even after he was on the ground, Russo said.

            Bollyn said he did not resist and added he believes his arrest may have been engineered by federal authorities because he is considered “a dangerous person….a far right winger.”

            Russo said they were not aware of his Internet and reporting.

            “We didn’t know his political views,” Russo said.

Former mayoral candidate guilty of assault

June 6, 2007

by Ashok Selvam

Daily Herald
aselvam@dailyherald.com
 

Jurors heard two radically different stories over the four-day trial on whether Christopher Lee Bollyn assaulted Hoffman Estates police officers last year.

The jurors said they saw holes in Bollyn’s account of police brutality. Tuesday, they found the 50-year-old former Hoffman Estates mayoral candidate guilty of resisting arrest and aggravated assault.

He faces up to a year in prison and is to appear before Judge Hyman Riebman for sentencing June 25.

“I can’t talk about it right now,” a despondent Bollyn said minutes after the verdict.

Police arrested Bollyn Aug. 15 after Officer Michael Barber used a Taser to stun him. Three officers pushed Bollyn to the grass in front of his Kingman Lane home after prosecutors said Bollyn yelled to them that he was going inside to “get the militia to take them down.”

Bollyn said police broke his elbow. Prosecutors denied the extent of his injury and said he threatened police – who wanted to end the incident before it escalated – and that he ignored their commands.

“He wasn’t talking in a calm, civil tone,” prosecutor Stacy Cossette said.

The bizarre incident began when an unmarked police car cruised by Bollyn’s home. He called 911 and said the car was suspicious. The car returned, and three officers got out to explain to Bollyn they meant no harm. Instead, a wrestling match ensued.

Police later said they were patrolling because of possible nearby drug activity.

Bollyn’s attorney, Paul Moreschi, said the officers couldn’t have been terrified of his client, who was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and whose 8-year-old was running around outside. The officers used the incident as an excuse to let off some steam and use excessive force, Moreschi asserted.

Bollyn, a self-described journalist, has written several articles posted online, including a series calling the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks a plot involving Israeli agents. He said the mainstream media have ignored facts and covered up a conspiracy.

After the verdict, friends and family said Bollyn had been targeted by police because of his political views. Prosecutor James Pontrelli dismissed that as “ridiculous.” Pontrelli said Bollyn was looking for a confrontation with authority figures.

“It didn’t matter if it was the FBI or Homeland Security,” Pontrelli said.

Bollyn’s wife of 12 years, Helje Kaskel, witnessed the incident and called police liars. She remained shocked after the verdict.

“This is not the end,” she said.

Earlier Tuesday, Bollyn reflected on his time in the village, including his failed mayoral bid in 2000. He brought up the 1973 scandal, which saw some village officials go to prison after taking bribes from developers.

“Corruption isn’t anything new to the village,” he said.

Pontrelli also said Bollyn had two theft convictions in 1981 out of California, as well as an assault charge. Pontrelli sought to have Bollyn’s bond revoked, but that was denied.

Hoffman Estates Police Chief Clinton Herdegen testified Monday and was again in court Tuesday as a spectator. He had no comment.

Arrest warrant issued after man skips sentencing

June 28, 2007

by Ashok Selvam

Daily Herald

aselvam@dailyherald.com

            The day after Hoffman Estates police arrested Christopher Lee Bollyn in August, he posted his account of events on the Internet.

“

I honestly believe this brutal treatment is connected to my 9/11 research,” Bollyn wrote. “I intend to seek asylum in Norway or Switzerland. I can read the writing on the wall.”

Whatever his current whereabouts, Bollyn is indeed now considered a fugitive. He was a no-show at Monday’s sentencing hearing and a warrant has been issued for his arrest. He remained at large late Wednesday.

On June 5, a jury convicted Bollyn, 50, with misdemeanor aggravated assault and resisting arrest in an August 2006 scuffle with three Hoffman Estates police officers.

He was facing up to a year in jail for the conviction.

Bollyn has written pieces alleging the government covered up a Sept. 11 conspiracy and has said the arrest was an attempt to suppress him.

Though motions were filed to appeal the verdict, Bollyn’s attorney, Paul Moreschi, said Monday he didn’t know his client’s whereabouts. Moreschi couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.

A man who answered the door at Bollyn’s home Wednesday — whom neighbors and police identified as Bollyn’s brother — declined comment. Neighbors said they haven’t seen Bollyn’s immediate family in weeks.

Bollyn’s wife, Helje Kaskel, is from Estonia and the family frequently traveled outside the country.

Judge Hyman Riebman said Bollyn wasn’t a flight risk when denying the prosecution’s request to revoke bond. Riebman noted after the verdict that Bollyn is a lifelong Hoffman Estates resident who attended his previous court dates.

“There’s frustration when we go through a jury trial and you think that the truth is heard … You want to see it finalized,” said Cook County prosecutor James Pontrelli.

Hoffman Estates police are treating Bollyn’s warrant the same as any other misdemeanor, Lt. Rich Russo said.

Police already have questioned the brother and are looking at “reasonable” leads. The department has no plans at this time to travel overseas in search of Bollyn.

“If we felt him as a danger to the public, we would have stepped up our efforts to apprehend him,” Russo said.

Bollyn’s views, which include Holocaust denial, led him to appear regularly on former Ku Klux Klan leader and politician David Duke’s radio show. He also was interviewed by CNN’s Paula Zahn about 9/11 conspiracies, telling her he wasn’t an anti-Semite.

Bollyn has not updated his Web site or made any known postings on other Web sites since his conviction. However, several supporters have posted messages on his Web site backing the idea that he should seek overseas asylum.

http://www.dailyherald.com/news/cookstory.asp?id=327028&cc=c&tc=&t=

Comment: A domestic asylum would be much cheaper. Chris pops up from time to time on odd websites, ranting about his usual disjointed subjects. He really ought to come back to the States, serve his time and then run for Congress on the Republican ticket. Along with such deranged creatures as the Divine Sarah, Bachmann and others too numerous to mention, Chris would be a shoo-in.

Counterpoint

The Destruction of the World Trade Center: Dislodged fireproofing felled World Trade Center

April 6, 2005
Agence France Presse

The twin towers of the World Trade Center would probably be standing today, if the impact of the planes used in the September 11, 2001 attack had not destroyed fireproofing material, experts said.

After what it described as the most detailed examination of a building failure ever conducted, the US Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) said it would be suggesting major changes to the way skyscrapers are built and managed.

In assessing the events that led to World Trade Center’s collapse, the NIST report said the structural impact of the planes and subsequent jet fuel-ignited, multi-floor fires were not in themselves enough to bring the towers down.

“The reason the towers collapsed is because the fireproofing was dislodged,” said Shyam Sunder, lead investigator for the NIST building and fire safety investigation into the disaster.

If the fireproofing had remained in place, Sunder said, the fires would have burned out and moved on without weakening key elements to the point of structural collapse.

He drew an analogy with the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster when the absence of a small piece of insulation foam — knocked off during launch — allowed fire to seep into the shuttle’s entire wing span during re-entry with catastrophic results.

New alternatives to traditional fireproofing should be explored, Sunder said, citing a paint-like substance which, if applied in sufficient layers, would stick “even if a plane hit it.”

Nearly 2,750 people were killed in the attack on the World Trade Center by members of Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.

Roughly 17,400 people were in the skyscrapers at the time of the attack, and NIST estimated that the death toll would have been closer to 14,000 if the two towers had been filled to their 50,000-person capacity.

The report said each jet severed perimeter columns, damaged interior core columns and dislodged fireproofing as they penetrated the buildings. The weight carried by the severed columns was spread to others.

Fires caused by the jet fuel were fed by the building contents and oxygen entering through breached walls and windows.

“The floors weakened and sagged from the fires, pulling inward on the perimeter columns,” the report said.

“Floor sagging and exposure to high temperatures caused the perimeter columns to bow inward and buckle — a process that spread across the faces of the buildings.

“Collapse then ensued,” it said.

In examining the emergency services response on September 11 and the evacuation procedures, the NIST report echoed other probes in highlighting a lack of coordination and poor communications equipment.

The report cited one senior emergency services officer inside the north tower of the trade center as saying he would have known more about what was going on if he had been watching it on television.

“The lack of timely information sharing and inadequate communication capabilities, likely contributed to the loss of emergency responder lives,” the report concluded.

The evacuation of the twin towers has generally been called a success, with 87 percent of the occupants — including more than 99 percent of those below the floors hit by the planes — managing to get out.

The south tower collapsed 56 minutes after impact and the north tower in 102 minutes.

The NIST report noted that a full-capacity evacuation would have taken around four hours — a fatal length of time.

Occupants were often unprepared for the physical challenge of evacuating from higher floors. “It’s pretty demanding, especially if you want to do it fast,” Sunder said.

The NIST report, running to some 10,000 pages, is still in draft form, with a final version, complete with definitive findings and recommendations, to be released in September.

 

Selections from 9/11: Debunking The Myths
PM examines the evidence and consults the experts to refute the most persistent conspiracy theories of September 11.

Published in the March, 2005 issue of Popular Mechanics

Widespread Damage
           

CLAIM: The first hijacked plane crashed through the 94th to the 98th floors of the World Trade Center’s 110-story North Tower; the second jet slammed into the 78th to the 84th floors of the 110-story South Tower. The impact and ensuing fires disrupted elevator service in both buildings. Plus, the lobbies of both buildings were visibly damaged before the towers collapsed. “There is NO WAY the impact of the jet caused such widespread damage 80 stories below,” claims a posting on the San Diego Independent Media Center Web site (sandiego.indymedia.org). “It is OBVIOUS and irrefutable that OTHER EXPLOSIVES (… such as concussion bombs) HAD ALREADY BEEN DETONATED in the lower levels of tower one at the same time as the plane crash.”

FACT: Following up on a May 2002 preliminary report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a major study will be released in spring 2005 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce. NIST shared its initial findings with PM and made its lead researcher available to our team of reporters.

            The NIST investigation revealed that plane debris sliced through the utility shafts at the North Tower’s core, creating a conduit for burning jet fuel–and fiery destruction throughout the building. “It’s very hard to document where the fuel went,” says Forman Williams, a NIST adviser and a combustion expert, “but if it’s atomized and combustible and gets to an ignition source, it’ll go off.”

            Burning fuel traveling down the elevator shafts would have disrupted the elevator systems and caused extensive damage to the lobbies. NIST heard first-person testimony that “some elevators slammed right down” to the ground floor. “The doors cracked open on the lobby floor and flames came out and people died,” says James Quintiere, an engineering professor at the University of Maryland and a NIST adviser. A similar observation was made in the French documentary “9/11,” by Jules and Gedeon Naudet. As Jules Naudet entered the North Tower lobby, minutes after the first aircraft struck, he saw victims on fire, a scene he found too horrific to film  

“Melted” Steel
           

CLAIM: “We have been lied to,” announces the Web site AttackOnAmerica.net. “The first lie was that the load of fuel from the aircraft was the cause of structural failure. No kerosene fire can burn hot enough to melt steel.” The posting is entitled “Proof Of Controlled Demolition At The WTC.”

FACT: Jet fuel burns at 800° to 1500°F, not hot enough to melt steel (2750°F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn’t need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength–and that required exposure to much less heat. “I have never seen melted steel in a building fire,” says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. “But I’ve seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks.”

            “Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F,” notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. “And at 1800° it is probably at less than 10 percent.” NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.

            But jet fuel wasn’t the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST reports that pockets of fire hit 1832°F.

            “The jet fuel was the ignition source,” Williams tells PM. “It burned for maybe 10 minutes, and [the towers] were still standing in 10 minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down.”

Puffs Of Dust
           

CLAIM: As each tower collapsed, clearly visible puffs of dust and debris were ejected from the sides of the buildings. An advertisement in The New York Times for the book Painful Questions: An Analysis Of The September 11th Attack made this claim: “The concrete clouds shooting out of the buildings are not possible from a mere collapse. They do occur from explosions.” Numerous conspiracy theorists cite Van Romero, an explosives expert and vice president of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, who was quoted on 9/11 by the Albuquerque Journal as saying “there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse.” The article continues, “Romero said the collapse of the structures resembled those of controlled implosions used to demolish old structures.”

FACT: Once each tower began to collapse, the weight of all the floors above the collapsed zone bore down with pulverizing force on the highest intact floor. Unable to absorb the massive energy, that floor would fail, transmitting the forces to the floor below, allowing the collapse to progress downward through the building in a chain reaction. Engineers call the process “pancaking,” and it does not require an explosion to begin, according to David Biggs, a structural engineer at Ryan-Biggs Associates and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) team that worked on the FEMA report

            Like all office buildings, the WTC towers contained a huge volume of air. As they pancaked, all that air–along with the concrete and other debris pulverized by the force of the collapse–was ejected with enormous energy. “When you have a significant portion of a floor collapsing, it’s going to shoot air and concrete dust out the window,” NIST lead investigator Shyam Sunder tells PM. Those clouds of dust may create the impression of a controlled demolition, Sunder adds, “but it is the floor pancaking that leads to that perception.”

            Demolition expert Romero regrets that his comments to the Albuquerque Journal became fodder for conspiracy theorists. “I was misquoted in saying that I thought it was explosives that brought down the building,” he tells PM. “I only said that that’s what it looked like.”

            Romero, who agrees with the scientific conclusion that fire triggered the collapses, demanded a retraction from the Journal. It was printed Sept. 22, 2001. “I felt like my scientific reputation was on the line.” But emperors-clothes.com saw something else: “The paymaster of Romero’s research institute is the Pentagon. Directly or indirectly, pressure was brought to bear, forcing Romero to retract his original statement.” Romero responds: “Conspiracy theorists came out saying that the government got to me. That is the farthest thing from the truth. This has been an albatross around my neck for three years.” 

Seismic Spikes
           

CLAIM: Seismographs at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., 21 miles north of the WTC, recorded the events of 9/11. “The strongest jolts were all registered at the beginning of the collapses, well before falling debris struck the earth,” reports the Web site WhatReallyHappened.com.

            A columnist on Prisonplanet.com, a Web site run by radio talk show host Alex Jones, claims the seismic spikes are “indisputable proof that massive explosions brought down” the towers. The Web site says its findings are supported by two seismologists at the observatory, Won-Young Kim and Arthur Lerner-Lam. Each “sharp spike of short duration,” says Prisonplanet.com, was consistent with a “demolition-style implosion.”

FACT: “There is no scientific basis for the conclusion that explosions brought down the towers,” Lerner-Lam tells PM. “That representation of our work is categorically incorrect and not in context.”

            The report issued by Lamont-Doherty includes various graphs showing the seismic readings produced by the planes crashing into the two towers as well as the later collapse of both buildings. WhatReallyHappened.com chooses to display only one graph which shows the readings over a 30-minute time span.

            On that graph, the 8- and 10-second collapses appear–misleadingly–as a pair of sudden spikes. Lamont-Doherty’s 40-second plot of the same data gives a much more detailed picture: The seismic waves–blue for the South Tower, red for the North Tower–start small and then escalate as the buildings rumble to the ground. Translation: no bombs.

WTC 7 Collapse
           

CLAIM: Seven hours after the two towers fell, the 47-story WTC 7 collapsed. According to 911review.org: “The video clearly shows that it was not a collapse subsequent to a fire, but rather a controlled demolition: amongst the Internet investigators, the jury is in on this one.”

FACT: Many conspiracy theorists point to FEMA’s preliminary report, which said there was relatively light damage to WTC 7 prior to its collapse. With the benefit of more time and resources, NIST researchers now support the working hypothesis that WTC 7 was far more compromised by falling debris than the FEMA report indicated. “The most important thing we found was that there was, in fact, physical damage to the south face of building 7,” NIST’s Sunder tells PM. “On about a third of the face to the center and to the bottom–approximately 10 stories–about 25 percent of the depth of the building was scooped out.” NIST also discovered previously undocumented damage to WTC 7’s upper stories and its southwest corner.

            NIST investigators believe a combination of intense fire and severe structural damage contributed to the collapse, though assigning the exact proportion requires more research. But NIST’s analysis suggests the fall of WTC 7 was an example of “progressive collapse,” a process in which the failure of parts of a structure ultimately creates strains that cause the entire building to come down. Videos of the fall of WTC 7 show cracks, or “kinks,” in the building’s facade just before the two penthouses disappeared into the structure, one after the other. The entire building fell in on itself, with the slumping east side of the structure pulling down the west side in a diagonal collapse.

             According to NIST, there was one primary reason for the building’s failure: In an unusual design, the columns near the visible kinks were carrying exceptionally large loads, roughly 2000 sq. ft. of floor area for each floor. “What our preliminary analysis has shown is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors,” Sunder notes, “it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so that the entire section comes down.”

            There are two other possible contributing factors still under investigation: First, trusses on the fifth and seventh floors were designed to transfer loads from one set of columns to another. With columns on the south face apparently damaged, high stresses would likely have been communicated to columns on the building’s other faces, thereby exceeding their load-bearing capacities.

            Second, a fifth-floor fire burned for up to 7 hours. “There was no firefighting in WTC 7,” Sunder says. Investigators believe the fire was fed by tanks of diesel fuel that many tenants used to run emergency generators. Most tanks throughout the building were fairly small, but a generator on the fifth floor was connected to a large tank in the basement via a pressurized line. Says Sunder: “Our current working hypothesis is that this pressurized line was supplying fuel [to the fire] for a long period of time.”

            WTC 7 might have withstood the physical damage it received, or the fire that burned for hours, but those combined factors—along with the building’s unusual construction–were enough to set off the chain-reaction collapse.

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[1] Gregory Upton Crowley, Robert Crowley’s son. Gregory Crowley shipped boxes of his father’s personal files to Gregory Douglas before his father’s death in 2000.