Sure. I find it amusing that Gaffney, the author of several
books, doesn't know about copyright law. Likewise, the JREF forum rules prohibit republishing personal communications without the author's consent. FWIW, here are our emails, with Gaffney's writing indented.
On Dec 29, 2007 5:32 PM, Mark Gaffney wrote:
Dear Mark Roberts,
I've been studying your site. I am a writer and have been
investigating 9/11 for more than a year.
I want to thank you for all of the information you have posted --
including the charts, the accounts, citations etc. which will prove
helpful to me.
However, your conclusions are mistaken. I posted a detailed review of
the NIST report a year ago:
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15970.htm
and have just spent the last few weeks reading even deeper into the
NIST report.
You posted a detailed review of the NIST report but you hadn't read it all? That's strange behavior.
This time through I have found no reason to question my
original conclusion: NIST failed to explain how the fires weakened
the core and perimeter columns -- leading to collapse. They presented
absolutely no empirical evidence for weakening. Faced with a
shortfall of evidence -- they resorted to a computer model, working
backwards, and tweaked it until the program spat out the desired
outcome.
Well, there's the evidence that you certainly didn't read the whole report. There's plenty of evidence that the trusses and columns were weakened by fire and damage. Are you aware of the pronounced inward bowing of the exterior columns where the collapses began, long before they began? You'll find a clip of the inward buckling of the south tower's east wall here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2873871255585611926#1m10s
I recommend watching the whole video, which proves how nonsensical the conspiracist claims of explosive demolitons are, and exposes their dishonesty in disguising the audio of the tower collapses and of the demolitions they use as comparisons.
So if the fires didn't do it -- then what did?
You make two mistakes here: you draw a conclusion that is backed by no evidence, then speculate about other causes that are also backed by no evidence.
I have yet to see any mention of a crucial detail regarding the WTC
elevators. While I agree that jet fuel probably found its way down
two of the shafts to the lower levels
Not "probably." We
know it did.
-- we also know that a number
of the local elevators were blown out in the main lobby.
Oh? Which ones? In the north tower, were they near the # 50 or 6/7 shafts? Or were firemen mistaking blown 6/7 elevators for locals, because they're in the same bank?
BTW, there is physical evidence that the janitors are correct that an
explosion happened BEFORE the plane impact.
One janitor makes that claim, and he didn't start making it until 2005. His supervisor, who was with him in the office, contradicts him. I suggest that you
read my paper about William Rodriguez's massive problems with the truth.
The utterly incompetent people who wrote that paper based their entire claim on their inablilty to read a simple graph timeline. And then that hilarious error passed "peer review" at the "Journal." (Not to mention the fact that not a single person or system reported or recorded such an event.) And after being informed of their error, Furlong and Ross left their paper online, uncorrected. These are your ever-honest "truth" leaders. Here's a JREF forum thread about that. "quicknthedead" is Craig Furlong. Note how he flees the thread when his error is pointed out:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=63740&page=10#394
[MR note, July 14, 2009: subsequently Craig Furlong renounced the conclusions of his paper and joined the rationalist ranks. Gordon Ross? Still a laughable incompetent.]
Finally, are you aware that earlier this year (2007) Steven Jones
found thermate residues in the WTC dust? His paper on this is posted
in the same journal -- I believe in May of 2007. NIST failed to
search for residues -- because they assumed from the start that the
WTC collapse was caused by impacts/fires. This is no way to conduct
science.
Jones found no such thing. Nothing he found is consistent at all with thermate, and everything is consistent with residue that was expected to be there. You've been had by a fraud and a laughably incompetent hack, who doesn't give a damn about science or truth. Read more about this and Jones' other problems with the truth
here.
I think you are guilty of the very thing you accuse Rodriguez of.
Interesting comparison, considering that I have pointed out numerous egregious errors and lies made by Rodriguez, and no truther has pointed out any of mine.
Please take another look at the evidence, and keep an open mind.
Sincerely for 911 truth,
Mark H Gaffney
If you're for the truth, you'll stop accepting demonstrable nonsense as fact. It's nearly 2008, and you people have gotten nothing right. You can't
do any worse than that, Mark.
I hope the new year brings rationality to your life.
–Mark
*******
On Dec 30, 2007 12:45 AM, Mark Gaffney <
markhgaffney@earthlink.net> wrote:
Mark,
I doubt if anyone has read all 10,00 pages -- but I read more than enough.
Holy crap. What an astonishing statement by someone who says he's written a detailed review of a report he hasn't read. Not only have I read all 10,000 pages (as have others I know), I have read, studied, taken notes on, and discussed many sections of the report in great depth. You simply have no idea what you're talking about.
Please guide me to the section in the NIST report where they show that the trusses failed. There is no such section. The trusses failed in exactly none of the UL fire tests.
The fact that you don't know that the trusses didn't fail, but sagged, causing the inward pull on the columns, is all I need to know. The longest restrained truss that was built, fireproofed (with INTACT fireproofing), and installed to be most like the WTC trusses DID NOT meet its fire resistance rating in the UL tests, leading to surprise and reassessments about scaling issues in fire testing by researchers and structural engineers. It's amazing that you don't know that. And you should know that that was a 35-foot truss. The trusses connected to the walls that failed, leading to global collapse, were 60 feet long.
Please also cite the page where NIST shows that the core/perimeter columns were weakened. Believe me, there is no such page.
The inward bowing may or may not be real -- but even if it happened -- it does not prove the perimeter columns failed.
May or may not be real? It's plainly visible and was reported by people on the scene, for crying out loud! In the south tower, inward bowing of the east wall was visible within 18 minutes of flight 175's impact. You didn't even bother to watch the brief video clip I provided. What laziness.
As I explain in my paper -- the factor of safety of the outer wall on 9/11 was 5.7. This means the outer wall could support 5X the design load before incurring any damage. Even with the severed columns and one side bowed -- there was plenty of reserve capacity.
False. The factor of safety for the exterior columns for gravity load, in undamaged condition, was between 1.22 and 1.44. About 5% of the columns exceeded their demand-to-capacity ratios in as-build condition. You'd know that if you had read the NIST report.
I suggest you read my critique BEFORE you shoot from the hip.
Why would I read a paper by someone who has no idea what he's talking about, and is too lazy to learn?
Did you read the FDNY oral histories? 118 firemen and first responders reported explosions.
Not only have I read over 15,000 pages of first responder accounts, I've taken notes and developed spreadsheets on all of them. Why? To put their accounts in context, which you conspiracists desperately avoid doing. Grahame Macqueen, whose "118" paper you refer to,
tells us that he's deliberately taking the quotes out of context. What a flagrant *******. What a miserable, dishonest thing to do to first responders.
Here's my analysis of MacQueen's listing of firefighters who said they heard something like bombs or secondary devices. It's linked on the home page of my site. See what happens when you put the accounts in context, Mark? Note that none of those 118 first responders claim that explosives were used in the towers. Using their accounts to insinuate otherwise is despicable behavior.
One of the firemen, Lt W Walsh, described the damaged elevators in the main lobby in detail. You can find his account posted on the NY Times web site. Walsh distinguishes between the express and local elevators.
If you paid attention or bothered to research, you'd know that Walsh and others are describing the area where the 6/7 express elevators and 50 freight elevator are: in the center of the building. Likewise, in the south tower, the 6 and 7 elevator doors were blown out in the lobby after those elevators fell. You can read all about that at my site.
You talk about being rational -- but you are plainly a hot head.
And yet you, like the other conspiracists, can't point out anything I get wrong, although I can easily point out what you get wrong, and I can back my claims with evidence. So who's the rational one, Mark? Are the rational ones the ones who get nothing right? Yup, deliberate ignorance like yours pisses me off. I think it's dangerous. Live with it.
You are also a fool to deny what Jones found. He knows the science cold. Once again, I suggest you read his paper BEFORE you shoot off your big mouth.
I'm the fool? I've read all of Jones' 9/11 work. If you had bothered to check the links I gave you, you'd know what an utterly incompetent, anti-scientific, and dishonest person he is, and that what he found bears no resemblance to thermate.
I've tried to lead you to water, Mark. Will you continue to be a sucker for your fraudulent leaders who flee like scared bunnies from a tour guide? Will you continue to respect liars? Or will you buckle down and do your homework? The choice is yours.
Feel free to contact me again in a year, if you've bothered to get informed.
–Mark
[Bolding added]
******
[Although I had sent Gaffney away for a one-year remedial learning period, I felt compelled to respond to part of his above email. Remember, he's agreeing with Graeme MacQueen's conclusion that 118 firefighters and other first responders were "persuaded" to change their minds about what they
really thought killed their brothers. What a sicko. My reply:]
If you had bothered to read what I wrote, you'd know that I was reviewing Graeme MacQueen's most dramatic category: people who used the words 'like a bomb" or "secondary device," etc. The list of 31 (30, since he got one wrong), is his, not mine. You'll find more information here:
http://wtc7lies.googlepages.com/whattheyheard.
In other news, someone nominated you for a Stundie Award at the JREF forum:
Yup, you should be taken seriously. Just....WOW.
[End of communications]
Afterword: in June, 2008 I got an email from someone who'd been debating online with Gaffney about his same old thermate/Rodriguez-heard-explosions-before-planes-hit claims. He'd repeatedly directed Gaffney to scenes in my "World Trade Center Not a Demolition" video, which Gaffney said he couldn't watch because he only has a dial-up connection. My correspondent asked for a DVD version of that video, but my DVD burner was on the fritz at the time. I hope Gaffney has broadband by now: all those Loose Change versions await!
