Offer to the Truth Movement: Let's Settle It

[dommyboysinjapan]

uk dave,

Why bother to hijack and crash planes into a building you already have planted bombs in?

Why not? It was certainly a complicated plot to begin with and Al Qaeda has a history of using bombs for terrorist activity. Maybe they were concerned that the airplanes alone might not have caused the towers to collapse.

Why risk the discovery of the bombs leading to the discovery of the hijack plot, or vice-versa?

Why risk the hijack plot by waiting such a long time to turn the airplanes around, or why risk the discovery of the hijack plot by living with FBI agents?

Where's the logic?

Where is the logic of attempting to bring a will onto a flight that is doomed to be destroyed?

 

[KoihimeNakamura]

I ask you to source your second assessment.

 

[defaultdotxbe]

Why not? It was certainly a complicated plot to begin with and Al Qaeda has a history of using bombs for terrorist activity. Maybe they were concerned that the airplanes alone might not have caused the towers to collapse.

theres no evidence to indicate they required or intended the buildings to collapse, in fact there is evidence to indicate the opposite

 

[kookbreaker]

uk dave,



Why not? It was certainly a complicated plot to begin with and Al Qaeda has a history of using bombs for terrorist activity. Maybe they were concerned that the airplanes alone might not have caused the towers to collapse.



Why risk the hijack plot by waiting such a long time to turn the airplanes around, or why risk the discovery of the hijack plot by living with FBI agents?



Where is the logic of attempting to bring a will onto a flight that is doomed to be destroyed?

The tragic beauty of the Al Queda attack is that it was very simple. Get on the planes. Take them over. Crash them into buildings.

If something went wrong, like bad weather, a few hijackers fall ill, an increase in scrutiny, someone gets cold feet, etc, then all you need to do cancel the date and try another date. Pilot training doesn't go bad.

By comparison planting explosives in the buildings is incredibly risky, dangerous, and getting them placed in the right spot not always common knowledge. The explosives would also need to be placed where the planes were going to hit, and would need to be set up so that the plane impact and subsequent fire did not destroy them.

So you have to get into the WTC with explosives. No easy feat by any means. There are often trained explosives sniffing dogs as well as other methods of security. Explosives are, surprisingly, one of the easiest things for a machine sensor to 'sniff'. You have to get in enough to do damage. This is more than a backpack full as troofers seem to believe.

Then you have to plant the explosives. This means you need to cut walls to get to critical columns. You can hope and pray to Allah that there is an empty office you can get access to critical walls and columns. But truth is that you would need access to the offices all around the floor. There weren't that many offices.

You also need a cover for all this work in multiple offices. This cover has to work, needs to explain why shifty people keep walking in an out with limited contractor training, somehow manage to evade the New York Unions, and are doing random work on walls with little explanation. Somehow nobody notices the explosives and detonators people keep bringing into their offices.

Then you need a method of detonation. You can't drape detcord all over the place. And the idea of using a remote radio detonator in NYC, with perhaps the greatest amount radio traffic in the world, is laughable. If you were to try I doubt it would last a second. So there's another problem you need to get over (troofers usually just invoke some kind of magic or ignore remote controls obvious problems).

Now your bombs are activited and ready...so what if something goes wrong with the target date? The bombs are sitting there, waiting for an accidental detonation of discovery. Every day increases the danger of exposure.

Let us end this idea that planting explosives was worth the risk incurred.

 

[lapman]

its like a coroner checking a body for powder burns to see if he was shot, if he was shot there would be an obvious bullet wound and checking for burns would be unnecessary

Actually, they would check for powder burns to see how close the gun was. However, they wouldn't test for Anthrax, asphyxiation, heart attack, earwigs, waterboarding, etc.

 

[funk de fino]

Why not? It was certainly a complicated plot to begin with

No, it was not, it was very simple. Certainly more simple than the truther conspiracy that the TM believe in

and Al Qaeda has a history of using bombs for terrorist activity.

They also have a history of suicide bombers in vehicles. Were there any of those that day?

Maybe they were concerned that the airplanes alone might not have caused the towers to collapse.

They did not mean to knock them down, just damage them badly

Why risk the hijack plot by waiting such a long time to turn the airplanes around

How long did they take?

or why risk the discovery of the hijack plot by living with FBI agents?

Soucre for this?

Where is the logic of attempting to bring a will onto a flight that is doomed to be destroyed?

Who attempted to bring it onboard?

 

[defaultdotxbe]

Actually, they would check for powder burns to see how close the gun was. However, they wouldn't test for Anthrax, asphyxiation, heart attack, earwigs, waterboarding, etc.

just like theyd test for explosive residue to dtermine what kind of explosives were used (not to determine if explosives were used)

my point was if you have a body with no bullet wounds you conclude he wasnt shot, then truthers complain that you cant be sure he wasnt shot because you never tested for powder burns

 

[lapman]

just like theyd test for explosive residue to dtermine what kind of explosives were used (not to determine if explosives were used)

my point was if you have a body with no bullet wounds you conclude he wasnt shot, then truthers complain that you cant be sure he wasnt shot because you never tested for powder burns

Ok, I sit corrected.

 

[gumboot]

For anyone that is interested...

The WTC site was treated as a crime scene by the FBI, and the FBI's initial hypothesis was a combined aircraft/truck bombing attack on the towers, so there's every likelihood that the FBI forensic teams at Ground Zero (fifty, in all) initially looked for evidence of explosive damage when the larger pieces of steel were removed.

The smaller pieces of debris were moved by barge to Fresh Kills Land Fill which then became the largest crime scene in history as every single piece of debris was sorted by hand.

Conspiracy Theorists would like to think that nefarious government agents simply loaded up the debris onto Chinese container ships parked up alongside, but the reality is the debris at Ground Zero was thoroughly checked by experts from a multitude of agencies.

 

[GregoryUrich]

Hi Ryan,

First, thanks for taking the time and energy to try and answer these questions. I'm not sure anyone can have their suspicions resolved by having a single critical question answered, but I don't think that was your intent anyway.

My main reason for being involved with the truth movement is that I think there was a cover-up of incompetence or worse. Some examples:

Patty Casazza (one of the Jersey Girls) says she spoke with potential FBI whistle-blowers who said that targets, dates and methods of the attacks were known beforehand. The names of the potential whistle-blowers were provided to the commission but they were never called to testify. I consider this unforgiveable.

The press conference before the speech was turned out to be a great opportunity, because literally half of the questions were hostile, and I was able to ask Mr. Kean a question about why the 9/11 Commission, on page 172 of their report, stated that the question of who bankrolled the September 11th attacks was "of little practical significance." He replied that the job cost so little money and that it was too hard to trace.

Note, he did not say it would be impossible to trace. How could the money trail be "of little practical significance" when it would lead to conspirators? This also smacks of cover-up.

"Fog of war could explain why some people were confused on the day of 9/11, but it could not explain why all of the after-action reports, accident investigations and public testimony by FAA and NORAD officials advanced an account of 9/11 that was untrue."

How can this be interpreted as anything but a cover-up?

April 13, 2004: Bush Explains Genoa Threat Inspired Him to Ask For Famous August 2001 Briefing. In a news conference, President Bush is asked about the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing entitled “bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” (see August 6, 2001) Bush explains: “I asked for the briefing. And the reason I did is because there had been a lot of threat intelligence from overseas. And part of it had to do with the Genoa G8 conference that I was going to attend. And I asked at that point in time, let’s make sure we are paying attention here at home as well. And that’s what triggered the report.” Apparently he made this request on July 5, 2001 (see July 5, 2001) (see June 20, 2001). [US President, 4/19/2004] The main threat to the late July 2001 Genoa conference, as discussed in numerous articles even before the conference, was an al-Qaeda plot to fly an airplane into the conference building, killing Bush and other world leaders (see Mid-July 2001). But Bush’s tacit admission that a plot involving planes as weapons helped inspire the well-known August briefing passes without comment by the mainstream media. However, a professor writes a letter to the editor of Britain’s Financial Times noting Bush’s remark and commenting, “If President Bush had been sufficiently alarmed by the Italian defenses [against a suicide air attack] in Genoa to request a special report, he must have been able to recognize that, yes, it could happen in the US.” [Financial Times, 4/27/2004]

Bush was clearly aware of the possibility of terrorist crashing airplanes into buildings and that UBL was determined to strike in the US. All the top administration officials stated afterward that (in the words of Ari Fleischer) "Never did we imagine what would take place on September 11 where people use those airplanes as missiles and weapons." More evidence of a cover-up.

I don't think you can tell us what they are covering up, but a hard-hitting investigation would find out what the citizens of our country have a right to know.

I do think it is possible that a group as small as Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld could have just let things happen instead of proactively trying to protect our citizens. The fact that the administration was highly influenced by the PNAC agenda leads me to suspect the worst. It is naive to think that these men have not done estimates of lives lost for a number of scenarios. Of course the scenario of some thousands of lives in a terrorist attack were weighed against the scenario of 100s of thousands of lives lost later in oil wars or energy crises. I don't think this is far fetched. These men are strategic thinkers who have put themselves in positions where they are required to weigh innocent lives against values and living standards.

It is shameful and damaging to our country that they have chosen deception and war over honesty and international cooperation.

 

[GregoryUrich]

For anyone that is interested...

The WTC site was treated as a crime scene by the FBI, and the FBI's initial hypothesis was a combined aircraft/truck bombing attack on the towers, so there's every likelihood that the FBI forensic teams at Ground Zero (fifty, in all) initially looked for evidence of explosive damage when the larger pieces of steel were removed.

The smaller pieces of debris were moved by barge to Fresh Kills Land Fill which then became the largest crime scene in history as every single piece of debris was sorted by hand.

Conspiracy Theorists would like to think that nefarious government agents simply loaded up the debris onto Chinese container ships parked up alongside, but the reality is the debris at Ground Zero was thoroughly checked by experts from a multitude of agencies.

I assume the FBI would have checked for explosives, but as many here have pointed out: planes crashed into the buildings, they burned, they fell down. Why look for explosives?

It would be helpful if we could refer to information regarding the FBI investigation. This is not an area I have focused on but I haven't found anything on the internet so maybe a FOIA request is the only way to find out.

 

[DGM]

I assume the FBI would have checked for explosives, but as many here have pointed out: planes crashed into the buildings, they burned, they fell down. Why look for explosives?

It would be helpful if we could refer to information regarding the FBI investigation. This is not an area I have focused on but I haven't found anything on the internet so maybe a FOIA request is the only way to find out.

Do you think they would have missed the blast effects on the metal?

Note, he did not say it would be impossible to trace. How could the money trail be "of little practical significance" when it would lead to conspirators? This also smacks of cover-up.

You've been around here long enough to know what was meant by the statement you quoted wrong (out of context). Gregory you didn't expect to get away with this did you?

 

[gumboot]

Patty Casazza (one of the Jersey Girls) says she spoke with potential FBI whistle-blowers who said that targets, dates and methods of the attacks were known beforehand. The names of the potential whistle-blowers were provided to the commission but they were never called to testify. I consider this unforgiveable.

If true, I agree completely. However I'd take anything the Jersey Girls say with a grain of salt, and Ms Casazza particularly. All four of them are spouting falsities now, but Ms Casazza is one of the worst. I think they've all lost any sense of perspective or reason.

Note, he did not say it would be impossible to trace. How could the money trail be "of little practical significance" when it would lead to conspirators? This also smacks of cover-up.

I think one of the problems is that Al Qaeda has a pretty sophisticated funding system in place, as do many terrorist groups. After 9/11 it was found that Hamas had hundreds of fundraising entities in the USA, for example.

Tracing the source of funds is therefore not likely to be useful as some rich Muslim donating $100,000 to a seemingly innocent Muslim charity is hardly criminal behaviour.

How can this be interpreted as anything but a cover-up?

As far as I am aware the FAA accounts have always been accurate, it's the NORAD ones that were not. The explanation for this has always been obvious to me; NORAD were massively overloaded trying to maintain Operation Noble Eagle after 9/11 as well as oversee a substantial upgrade to their systems. No one had time to go through the NORAD tapes and decipher what was happening. I've listened to those tapes, and even though I already know what I'm looking for I find it extremely difficult to sort everything out.

Bush was clearly aware of the possibility of terrorist crashing airplanes into buildings and that UBL was determined to strike in the US.

It needs to be pointed out, because it's usually ignored, that the August 6th memo referred to old intelligence, and indicated that the FBI were dealing with it. If anything the August 6th memo would have given a false sense that there was no serious threat.

 

[GregoryUrich]

Do you think they would have missed the blast effects on the metal?



You've been around here long enough to know what was meant by the statement you quoted wrong (out of context). Gregory you didn't expect to get away with this did you?

How much metal did the FBI look at?

I don't know what you mean. Please put it in context or correct it then. Is it your experience that I am trying to get away with something?

 

[leonAzul]

If these principles are well understood then the technique for destroying a steel-frame high-rise with impact damage and fire should be readily available. Where can I see these well understood principles in action?

Just ask any professional fireman.

In 1977 John T O'Hagan, ex Chief of NYFD, wrote a book called High Rise Fire and Life Safety (New York: Dun Donnelly, November 1977, ISBN-10: 9998773741) in which he is highly critical of this type of construction--among several other aspects of the building code that were altered in 1971 when asbestos was banned--because he anticipated precisely this outcome under these circumstances.

A Deputy Chief, Retired, Vincent Dunn has a good summary: here. Among other things, he pointedly makes the following suggestions for new construction at Ground Zero:

* The steel columns, girders and floor beams should be encased in masonry or other more effective fire retarding material. Spray-on fire retarding is ineffective. Post fire investigations reveals the spray on fire retardant has scaled off and steel beams and concrete and steel floor slabs crack and allow flame spread.

* Lightweight bar joists should not be used to support floors in high-rise buildings. The National Fire Protection Association has shown unprotected steel bar joist fail after five or ten minutes of fire exposure.

 

[SDC]

GregoryUrich, could you source the specific statement from Casazza about the FBI, and the commission ignoring the whistleblowers?

ETA: thanks.

 

[R.Mackey]

1) According to the NIST FAQ sheet 236 metal samples were kept and analyzed. There was no testing for explosives or incendiaries. In the case of the Twin Towers the metal samples were only taken from the impact zones. My question is why only do scientific testing that would seem to support an a priori conclusion that the building collapsed due to fire and structural damage without any other possible cause?

Welcome to the Forums. To others who responded, I appreciate your help, but your answers either missed the point or were actually wrong. All of us make mistakes. Therefore, please try to keep this thread respectful, and I'll explain.

Your premise is incorrect. NIST did retain steel from various places in the Towers. Please open NCSTAR1-3, the metallurgical survey and parts inventory, and take a quick look at Tables 5-1 and 5-2. There you will see core column pieces from Floor 12 to 106, and perimeter sections from Floor 12 to 104. NIST did concentrate on the impact zone, but this should be obvious.

NIST's testing was not done to confirm their hypothesis. It was done for three major reasons:

• To provide examples of the as-built steel -- examples of every single grade are included -- so that they could verify the steel met its specifications, and shoddy materials were not to blame
• To provide examples of failure modes of materials and connections, both to verify that the structural design was executed properly (e.g., things that should have been welded actually were, etc.) and that the structure performed as expected (necking in members rather than brittle weld failure or shear of bolts, etc.)
• To verify failure modes at specific locations as predicted by other models, in particular the impact models in NCSTAR1-2B

Rather than simply kept to rubber-stamp their opinion, these observations were an input, and one that shaped in particular the choice of parameters in the structural model and the aircraft impact model.

Is it unreasonable to imagine that there may have been explosives set in the buildings by Al Qaeda terrorists who had spent so much time setting up these attacks?

It would not be unreasonable to suppose al-Qaeda had placed truck bombs outside the buildings in a coordinated attack, and there were a few FBI personnel who initially believed this, not apprehending the sheer amount of jet fuel that rolled down the structures. But as to planting bombs inside with intent to destroy the structures, this is unreasonable.

I say this because, to date, nobody has advanced a single coherent theory of how, where, or what bombs could have been placed inside. Even if we relax the notion that a force with limited resources like al-Qaeda did it, it simply cannot be imagined in any usable detail. I invite you, as I've invited many others in the past, to try to come up with such a theory, if you'd like to give it a shot.

It could also provide further data such as whether the fireproofing was shaken loose at lower levels or not, whether or not there was any faulty construction, and how and to what degree the heat from the fires affected the collapse of the floors near the center or bottom of the Towers.

This is exactly right, and that is indeed why the steel was saved, and why it was taken from so many areas.

Your instincts on how to attack the problem are right on, so you should feel good about that. The problem here is simply that you've heard mistaken impressions about what NIST actually did. The reports are available for your perusal, and if you find it interesting, you should give it a try.

 

[R.Mackey]

I'm not sure anyone can have their suspicions resolved by having a single critical question answered, but I don't think that was your intent anyway.

Hi Gregory; yeah, it's tough, but the closer we get to it, the harder people think. I've gotten a few good questions so far.

Patty Casazza (one of the Jersey Girls) says she spoke with potential FBI whistle-blowers who said that targets, dates and methods of the attacks were known beforehand. The names of the potential whistle-blowers were provided to the commission but they were never called to testify. I consider this unforgiveable.

I don't accept this one. We don't have a name of the FBI agent, we don't have his statements, and what little we have comes from a known prevaricator. Ms. Casazza is on film stating that some of the hijackers are still alive, which is nonsense. I feel sorry for her, having so much invested emotionally in the tragedy, but that does not excuse her for lying about it, whether or not she realizes what she's doing.

This statement is also contrary to those of other FBI agents and CIA agents closest to the case. Whoever this mystery man is, he had to be far more advanced than O'Neill or Michael Scheuer, just to pick two. I don't buy it.

Note, he did not say it would be impossible to trace. How could the money trail be "of little practical significance" when it would lead to conspirators? This also smacks of cover-up.

I partially agree with you here -- even though it was small, following up the money would be useful. But I don't see this as a coverup. You could get $100K from anywhere. Heck, I could refi my house and finance that operation a few times over. Might be laziness, might be a glib way of saying they'd tried but hit a brick wall. Definitely not proof of a coverup.

How can this be interpreted as anything but a cover-up?

It isn't, because in a coverup, NORAD and the FAA would have sung the same tune. I accept that some NORAD individuals made errors, possibly even lies, and there may be grounds for censure there. But the truth was found.

Bush was clearly aware of the possibility of terrorist crashing airplanes into buildings and that UBL was determined to strike in the US. All the top administration officials stated afterward that (in the words of Ari Fleischer) "Never did we imagine what would take place on September 11 where people use those airplanes as missiles and weapons." More evidence of a cover-up.

Exaggeration, not coverup. Ever see Escape From New York? Of course we can imagine it, but I see no reason why they'd have to put it on the front burner.

Even today I can give you at least three terrorist scenarios that in my opinion would be more disruptive than the Sept. 11th attacks, and would be virtually guaranteed to succeed, for virtually no money. No, I won't put this out in public, I am not a terrorist. The point is that not every attack is anticipated, and those that are may not be responded to, sometimes due to oversight, and sometimes due to Malthusian realism.

I do think it is possible that a group as small as Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld could have just let things happen instead of proactively trying to protect our citizens. The fact that the administration was highly influenced by the PNAC agenda leads me to suspect the worst. It is naive to think that these men have not done estimates of lives lost for a number of scenarios. Of course the scenario of some thousands of lives in a terrorist attack were weighed against the scenario of 100s of thousands of lives lost later in oil wars or energy crises. I don't think this is far fetched. These men are strategic thinkers who have put themselves in positions where they are required to weigh innocent lives against values and living standards.

I would have to agree with you that the administration was arrogant, short-sighted, and in some respects incompetent. I also accept that there are small "coverups," specifically of certain individuals' posteriors, following latency or incompetence. But none of this suggests to me that they knew it was coming, let alone that they participated.

An ideally functioning government would have a chance to stop the attacks, but not a guarantee. Our government was not ideal, but not totally incompetent. Where do you draw the line?

Just to pick one example, it's unlikely the attacks would have succeeded had we already maintained locks on the cockpit doors. El Al has been doing this for a long time, I believe. Why didn't we?

Well, why don't we lower the speed limit to 40 MPH while we're at it? This is politics, not Conspiracy Theories.

Therefore, I partially agree with you -- I think there are probably examples of deriliction that went uncaught, and had the full extent of the government's dealing been more common knowledge, the 2004 election might have gone differently. But absolutely none of this abrogates the logical conclusion that al-Qaeda, and only al-Qaeda, was responsible. No government is perfect.

Your position is pretty tame compared to the norm in the Truth Movement, I must say.

 

[PhantomWolf]

It was certainly a complicated plot to begin with

No it wasn't, it was very simple. Get a plane, fly it into a building. Not at all complex.

Al Qaeda has a history of using bombs for terrorist activity.

Bombs are hard to make, require specialise bomb makers and would be hard to get into the towers in a positionn to take them down. Also a previous attempt by another group (done by the lead planner's nephew) had failed. Why use them again?

Maybe they were concerned that the airplanes alone might not have caused the towers to collapse.

You are assuming that the collapse of the towers was their primary aim and not a bonus.

Why risk the hijack plot by waiting such a long time to turn the airplanes around

They waited until the planes were at a constant altitude and in steady flight. Would this not be the best time to attack the crew?

why risk the discovery of the hijack plot by living with FBI agents?

None of them lived with any FBI agents. Two rented an apartment from an FBI informer, an informer who was being paid to tell the FBI about the arrival and activity of any Hamas or Hezbollah supporters who entered the US. He informed the FBI that the two Arabs were there, but having no connections to Hamas or Hezbollah, and at the time no known connections to any other terror organisation, they were merely noted and left alone.

Where is the logic of attempting to bring a will onto a flight that is doomed to be destroyed?

Again you make an assumption, this one that the will was current, it wasn't. It was written in 1996 and had been surpassed by at least one other which was in the possession of one of Atta's friends back in Egypt. The likelihood is that Atta carried it with him in case something happened and packed it alone with all his other belongings that morning. Remeber they had been in the US for about a year at that point, and it is very logical that he would have had it with him during that time in case of his premature death.

 

[Par]

The press conference before the speech was turned out to be a great opportunity, because literally half of the questions were hostile, and I was able to ask Mr. Kean a question about why the 9/11 Commission, on page 172 of their report, stated that the question of who bankrolled the September 11th attacks was "of little practical significance." He replied that the job cost so little money and that it was too hard to trace.

Note, he did not say it would be impossible to trace. How could the money trail be "of little practical significance" when it would lead to conspirators? This also smacks of cover-up.

Here is the quotation in question:

To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance. Al Qaeda had many avenues of funding. If a particular funding source had dried up, al Qaeda could have easily tapped a different source or diverted funds from another project to fund an operation that cost $400,000-$500,000 over nearly two years.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that this statement comes at the end of a chapter which explains that the 9/11 plotters would never have been short of money. That is why they claim that the precise channel used by al Qaeda to fund them is of little practical significance (to this specific issue). It in no way states that either the precise origins of the funding or the issue of terrorist funding more generally are unimportant.