Offer to the Truth Movement: Let's Settle It

[boloboffin]

Got to disagree here, when you read the entire report then most of what they said has not come to pass, even with 9/11.

First thing they wanted was for the US to be militarily powerful enough to continue the peace it had created with the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is now a failure. Of the programs that they recommended scrapping, virtually none have been. Those they wanted concentrated on still are lagging behind schedule. They wanted the US military to be capable of fighting two wars simultaeously, it currently is doing that, barely and only because its oppoents are weak. They used the example of WW2 where the US had to fight the Pacfic and European Wars, today they couldn't handle that, plain and simple, that they are holding on in two theatres is because those theatres are not full scale wars. Finally they wanted the US out of the Middle East and focused onto South East Asia which they considered to be the next potenial hotspot and the best place to launch a defence against the likes of China or North Korea. Instead the US is now totally focused onto the Middle East and has left the area that the PNAC declared as vital to the continued security of the US and the peace it had established to totally fend for itself.

As such of all the goals that PNAC wanted, very few have come to pass. Truthers often claim that the line "unless there is a new Pearl Habor" is a signal that the PNAC wanted one. This isn't true. The author of the statement was pointing out that change would be slow, as it always is, but that if something, such as a new Pearl Habor occured, then that change would likely be more rapid. There is no evidence that this means they wanted to have a new Pearl Habor to speed things up, in fact the rest of the report goes into length about not hurrying because that leads to mistakes, that it has to be accepted that these things will take time to do so as to get them right and make sure that the US was strong in the future. The evidence that they wanted one is about the same that a husband wants to kill his wife because he says, "I want to go to Paris to retire and this will take many years of working, unless my wife dies and I get her insurance."

In this first-rate post, I would only change one item - the "new Pearl Harbor" would not accelerate the process of change, but only the awareness that change needed to be made.

And as your post shows, PNAC was wrong about even that. Kudos, PhantomWolf.

 

[DC]

Why would they have done that?

to learn from it........

 

[Darth Rotor]

The best answer I can give is a lower bound, and that would be the classic al-Qaeda narrative. This involves roughly 50 people. Any increase in complexity also requires these people to exist, i.e. as patsies, and would be larger. Some of the more fantastic ideas, such as those calling for unobtainable superweapon technology etc., could require millions. The range is too large for me to comment in any detail.

Ryan:

Just a comment on LIHOP, as you tilt at the Troofer windmill in your quest for the holy rationality.

I did a back of the napkin estimate in late 2005 after reading one of the MIHOP-LIHOP cracks on this forum, since I myself cannot rule out LIHOP, even though I doubt that is what happened. (Odds and human attention whoring is the issue here.)

Begin with the premise that the monitoring of terrorists is stovepiped between domestic (FBI, ect) and overseas (CIA, et al) sources, which in fact was the law. Indeed, it is a key criticism from many insiders who have published since 9-11 happened: the stovepiping of sources (deemed necessary for OPSEC, and rice bowl protection in various agencies) is often an obstacle to the kind of information sharing that allows an agent or analyst to see the whole picture.

Tracing my grasp of compartmentalized information from a source to the White House, I came up with between 20 and 50 people who need to be in on the deal for LIHOP. It would depend on the number of stovepipes involved. In other words, NORAD never had to be in the loop. FAA never had to be in the loop. ATC never had to be in the loop. No airline needs to be in the loop, though perhaps one or two specially placed security employees would need to be. I didn't parse that well enough.

The skill areas for the LIHOP team would include:

Field agents, who need not be in on the deal but need to be kept quiet after the fact, or at least marginalized.

Communications center personnel and supervisors. Explicitly, folks whose job it is to move the special handling material (often paper only) with an attendant tight accountability of stovepiped computer logs. A few overwrites or deletions here and there would be key to breaking a tracing chain, and the doctoring of logs as well.

A few echelons of operational and agency leadership, each read in on a project, each the one-of-a kind guy or gal in the agency involved. SCI has very, very limited distro.

No more than five people in the Bush inner circle, maybe a dozen tops, with Cheney being one of the stovepipe lids.

Director of CIA has to be in on the loop, at least one person in State, at least one in FBI, one in DIA, and one in NSA. Probably one at NRO.

The entire web has to be kept together to be aware of intel of an event, and ensure key details, times, or areas of probability arenot disseminated to action arms in a given agency via misdirection or reduction of priority. Most info can flow uninterrupted. The C2 style here is command by negation.

There is enormous risk in doing this, in terms of success, unless the LIHOP strategem is based on a broad target time line, and patience is exercised.

Other clues and indicators found serendipitously via other sources and means get reported outside of the stove pipes. If someone outside the stovepipe is very sharp, (see standard Hollywood plot lines) takes note of what isn't done, or wasn't done, within a particular intel or FBI directorate, and asks a supervisor not in the above web, and this chains to queries and briefings to higher level folks who are also not in the web, you get the real challenge of someone much higher up (director or deputy director level) having to delicately defuse a briefing of a significant threat of attack on America, when knowing that it is just what is being let happen.

The LIHOP model has a lack of timeline control as a characteristic. A LIHOP operation can't control the event with any temporal precision, so that the LIHOP conspiracy, to be successful, is not schedule driven, but event driven, with schedule being allowed to slide.

Once events fall into place, the serials and branches are enacted.

A huge drawback to the LIHOP hypothesis is that the Bush-Cheney team have demonstrated a bit of a control freak psychology, precisely the opposite framework required for a LIHOP to succeed. The key political strength of LIHOP is plausible deniability, and the very real fact, or defense if you will, of the avalanche of information sifted through every day by the domestic and overseas intel and info gathering agencies.

I cannot offer you a critical question, developed in the detail your OP asks for, but that hardly matters, as I find the troofers to be an unlikely source of satisfaction for you.

Even so, I salute you, Don Quixote. I'll get Sancho out of the pub, so you can recommence your quest for the Fair Dulcinea.

DR

 

[funk de fino]

to learn from it........

Was it their task to model the collapse?

 

[Darth Rotor]

The cost to develop remote controlled airliners for this mission I eyeball at about $100-150 million, requiring three years, about 200 scientists, pilots, and engineers, and free run of a large, unobserved chunk of unrestricted airspace to pull off -- probably Nellis, either that or overseas in which case cost goes up substantially. At minimum. And this approach still has problems as noted above.

In short, utterly implausible.

Nitpick:

More likely Edwards, not Nellis, or the test range VX-4 operates off of the California coast.

But yeah, not bloody likely.

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.

Twenty years ago a book was published (my brother knows the author) called the Jihad Ultimatum. Easier to pull off than WTC, except for the problem of getting one's hands on a nuke in the 80's. Once the USSR broke up, that difficulty was somewhat reduced. Once Dr Q in Pakistan did his thing, reduced even further.

Even so, Osama could still not pull that one off, even though he had a blue print for an effective and numbing blow written as a work of fiction.

DR

 

[dommyboysinjapan]

uk_dave,

Care to share those sites with us?

I would but they are places that I have been to possibly up to two years ago. I have visited 1000s maybe even tens of thousands of sites regarding 9/11 since them. I simply don't have them memorized.

 

[dommyboysinjapan]

DGM,

Have you read the 9/11 commision report yet? It's not hard reading and quite interesting.

I have the book and I am in the process of reading it.

 

[beachnut]

I never signed anything saying I would uphold any ideas. ...

I know enough about PNAC ...

We all have a lot to learn.

"ample evidence"?

You can stick what you know about PNAC on this period >.< What Greg knows about PNAC influenced by 9/11 truth hearsay. (in large type)

Everyone but 9/11 truth is learning, you and 9/11 truth appear to be knowledge intolerant; someone just schooled you on PNAC. Do political biases hamper the intellectual content of 9/11 truth tripe?

You lack “ample evidence”, claimed in that petition of anti-intellectual tripe. The big need is not a new investigation, it is knowledge and logic for 9/11 truth.

Pure anti-intellectual tripe flows freely from 9/11 truth, your movement. “ample evidence” are you backing it in. 9/11 truth, now being debunked by UBL, IRONY

Let your education continue, … does your paranoia have bounds?

Good answer, not the hearsay from 9/11 truth,

Got to disagree here, when you read the entire report then most of what they said has not come to pass, even with 9/11.

 

[Confuseling]

Is that why you use Confused for your handle?

Precisely, dear fellow, and very astute!

I just cant decide whether government reeducation camps are too expensive, and I should just be done with it and have all you capitalist pig-dogs pushed out of aeroplanes.

 

[Hokulele]

A huge drawback to the LIHOP hypothesis is that the Bush-Cheney team have demonstrated a bit of a control freak psychology, precisely the opposite framework required for a LIHOP to succeed. The key political strength of LIHOP is plausible deniability, and the very real fact, or defense if you will, of the avalanche of information sifted through every day by the domestic and overseas intel and info gathering agencies.

In my mind, an even larger drawback to the LIHOP hypothesis, especially as you have outlined it, would be the amount of time required to set up such stovepipes. The Bush administration would have to have been working on this before reaching the White House (unless they were amazingly lucky in having their plan reach fruition mere months after initiation), or else I suppose you could blame the Clinton administration.

I would guess that the CT response would be that it was really the NWO backing the operation, and the puppet-in-charge is irrelevant.

 

[Childlike Empress]

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.

IIRC she speaks of a whole list of potential witnesses and whistle-blowers who contacted her and other involved people (like Sibel Edmonds), that was given to the commission without reaction.

Sibel Edmonds tells the same story. Here is a 2 min short clip of her talking to Daniel Ellsberg in 2004:




As for names of the whistleblowers, you know that Sibel Edmonds founded the "National Security Whistleblowers Coalition"? Some of them might be on their list of members, who knows.

 

[johnny karate]

IIRC she speaks of a whole list of potential witnesses and whistle-blowers who contacted her and other involved people (like Sibel Edmonds), that was given to the commission without reaction.

Sibel Edmonds tells the same story. Here is a 2 min short clip of her talking to Daniel Ellsberg in 2004:




As for names of the whistleblowers, you know that Sibel Edmonds founded the "National Security Whistleblowers Coalition"? Some of them might be on their list of members, who knows.

And the only person that any of these "whistle-blowers" thought to contact and reveal their earth-shattering information to was just this one woman? In over six years, none of them has gone on record any place else?

Mackey is right to refuse this one. It's too stupid to be true.

 

[R.Mackey]

So this begs the question. Why did they spend all that money with the test? And, why was the test so transparent? I mean, I got to see it and thus I am now satisfied.

It's in the CAIB. The back-of-envelope calculation is enough to prove that the foam strike was a serious threat to the vehicle. The next question is how can that be fixed?

To answer that question, we needed to put much sharper numbers on the impact, i.e. pressure-impulse for various parts of the ascent, vulnerabilities of specific panels, probabilistic assessment, and so on. Understanding an accident is just the beginning, we also need to know how to respond to it. Incidentally, this is why NIST is all about future building codes, and has absolutely nothing I can determine to do with political decisions, i.e. wars in south Asia.

Why hasn't NIST made their computer simulations public?

This was answered in other posts. File an FOIA, pay the handling fee, and you will receive all of their models. I don't see the problem.

I wouldn't really be able to comment much more on this. I would like NIST to be able to do a test that would confirm that fire could cause collapse. I want them to use fire and make a column model (or whatever it is called) and make the thing collapse.

If I can see something collapse, just like I saw the wing get damaged, I will be satisfied.

I refer you to the following paper: Ming Wang, Peter Chang, James Quintiere, and Andre Marshall, “Scale Modeling of the 96th Floor of World Trade Center Tower 1,” Journal of Engineering Mechanics, American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. 21, No. 6, pages 414-421, November/December 2007. Your library should have it, or it's available as an expensive download. This is how most journals operate.

Anyway, in this paper, Dr. Quintiere demonstrates fire-induced collapse of a scale model. You seemed to indicate that would make you happy.

If after reading that you want full-scale, there's a facilities problem. There are no fire test cells big enough, and actually inducing collapse tends to damage them anyway. You'd have to build a complete structure. You aren't going to get that, as I've had to inform tanabear several times. I'm actually quite impressed by Dr. Quintiere's scale model, give it a read.

Even so, I salute you, Don Quixote. I'll get Sancho out of the pub, so you can recommence your quest for the Fair Dulcinea.

Good writeup, thanks. Although I think I'll be joining Sancho in the cantina, so no need to call him.

Nitpick:

More likely Edwards, not Nellis, or the test range VX-4 operates off of the California coast.

I excluded Edwards due to insufficient security. I for one would have seen it, having spent a whole lot of time at Dryden in the last decade... The Vandenburg exclusion zone is a possibility, though. Nellis also doesn't have this problem.

IIRC she speaks of a whole list of potential witnesses and whistle-blowers who contacted her and other involved people (like Sibel Edmonds), that was given to the commission without reaction.

Part of the problem I have with the "potential whistleblowers" is how amazingly timid they seem to be... just because the 9/11 Commission wasn't interested, they decide not to talk?

In their place, I wouldn't even wait the year-plus for the Commission to form. I'd be on the stand in days to weeks, as soon as I could get the Inspector General and the newspapers together. One cannot blow the whistle softly. This whole behavior makes no sense to me, convenient as it is for those who insist on highlighting any potential uncertainty.

 

[Darth Rotor]

In my mind, an even larger drawback to the LIHOP hypothesis, especially as you have outlined it, would be the amount of time required to set up such stovepipes. The Bush administration would have to have been working on this before reaching the White House (unless they were amazingly lucky in having their plan reach fruition mere months after initiation), or else I suppose you could blame the Clinton administration.

That latter was done by plenty of professionals within the security community. I disagree with your critique on the time to set up stovepipes.

Choosing particular people for key cabinet positions is begun before inauguration. Typical practice in DC to replace appropriate level appointees in good time. The tougher nut to crack is to have a few career professionals, or long time field agents, who have an axe to grind, or a motive, or an agenda (see also how to develop a source in good intel work) and select the few needed for the mission. These are the least likely to be found, but not impossible to find.

The critical structural feature of LIHOP is command by negation (minimal interference, or decision making) and slight misdirection to point the heat lamp away from the critical activity node of the folks trying to get their mission done, patience, and the willingness to let events develop.

I would guess that the CT response would be that it was really the NWO backing the operation, and the puppet-in-charge is irrelevant.

Let's not waste our time on that. It's been done to death already.

DR

 

[gumboot]

The way I see it the biggest flaw in the LIHOP scenario is the risk consideration.

Obviously, anyone considering such a thing is committing treason, so can expect a sentence of death if caught. Yet the small-numbered conspiracy relies very heavily on no one uncovering the plot and trying to prevent it, or investigating the plot and realising you knew about it.

If we consider, for example, that the exchange of a single vital piece of intel between Michael Scheuer's CIA unit and John O'Neill's FBI unit could have unravelled the entire plot except that Scheuer hated O'Neill so much he would not hand over a shred of intel unless directly ordered to.

Could these conspirators count on that? Did they intentionally place two men who hated each other's guts in charge of counter terrorism in the FBI and CIA (and before any of these conspirators were in positions of power too)? Did none of their superiors wonder that these higher ranking executives were taking a personal interest in who was running Counter Terrorism?

The small conspiracy LIHOP scenario only works if you operate from the assumption that everyone in government is utterly incompetent, and that the conspirators know this with certainty, or that the conspirators are willing to gamble enormously (the stakes being their own lives) on things going according to plan. I just don't buy it at all.

ETA.

On second thoughts, the small scale LIHOP DR is proposing seems to purely allow for a "we know about the attack and do nothing" scenario, which personally I think falls short of a LIHOP scenario. The glaring problem here is that someone else might uncover the same intel and prevent the attacks, hence the enormous gamble or assumption of incompetence that I mentioned above.

For me LIHOP consists not only of learning about the attacks but actively ensuring that they are able to proceed unhindered. And that sort of undertaking would need to involve a profoundly greater number of people.

 

[psikeyhackr]

TONS of STEEL and TONS of CONCRETE

Greetings,

This is my first post on JREF. I haven't read most of this thread but I did search it for "tons".

After all of these years why don't we have a table telling us the TONS of STEEL and TONS of CONCRETE on every level of the WTC. I downloaded and burned the NIST report to DVD more and a year ago and searched it dozens of times. I could not tell you the tons of steel on the 81st level of the south tower where the plane hit. But the report says one plane had 5 tons of cargo and the other had 9.

I have also looked at Gregory Urich's spreadsheet.

Here is data from Urich's spreadsheet. It is from the column "core column steel tons". These are the six basement levels. As far as I know the columns were 36 feet long and and each level was 12 feet high. But not only is every level different but they get lighter as you go down. Now how is that possible?

B1 469,32
B2 461,57
B3 453,81
B4 446,06
B5 438,31
B6 430,56

911research (dot) wtc7.net/papers/urich/calcMassAndPeWtc1.htm

Now if you check you will notice that each level is different by 7,75. That looks like some kind of linear interpolation with the lightest on the bottom.

But on floors 1 thru 6 are all an identical 477,07.

That makes absolutely no sense to me. So though I admire Urich's effort I am inclined to be suspicious of the details and wonder how he got such weird numbers. So as far as I am concerned there is no reliable data to base a DEBATE on. We can't tell with any precision what the plane hit.

That is reason to criticize every architectural and engineering schools in the United States. Why isn't every engineering school in the country demanding a table specifying the TONS of STEEL and TONS of CONCRETE on every level of the WTC.

www (dot) youtube.com/watch?v=z0kUICwO93Q

psik

PS - Can't post URLs yet.

 

[Hokulele]

After all of these years why don't we have a table telling us the TONS of STEEL and TONS of CONCRETE on every level of the WTC.

Welcome to the forum!

What would you need this piece of information for? Needing to know the mass of the plane makes sense if you are trying to do momentum calculations, but I am not clear as to why you need masses of the separate elements per floor. Can you please clarify?

 

[R.Mackey]

This is my first post on JREF. I haven't read most of this thread but I did search it for "tons".

Welcome to the Forums. Your question is a new one, and I did offer to answer questions of critical importance, so you are even on topic.

After all of these years why don't we have a table telling us the TONS of STEEL and TONS of CONCRETE on every level of the WTC. I downloaded and burned the NIST report to DVD more and a year ago and searched it dozens of times. I could not tell you the tons of steel on the 81st level of the south tower where the plane hit. But the report says one plane had 5 tons of cargo and the other had 9.

I have also looked at Gregory Urich's spreadsheet.

Here is data from Urich's spreadsheet. It is from the column "core column steel tons". These are the six basement levels. As far as I know the columns were 36 feet long and and each level was 12 feet high. But not only is every level different but they get lighter as you go down. Now how is that possible?

I'm a bit confused by your question. As you should be aware, any inaccuracy in Gregory Urich's work does not necessarily mean that NIST is also inaccurate.

Regarding Gregory's whitepaper, I've looked at it and found it to be plausible, and probably of sufficient accuracy to solve the problem he's working on. I believe you are correct that he has linearly interpolated the steel content of the basement, but I doubt this is significant.

There are also potential reasons why the steel content would decrease with depth. The basement levels may be smaller as you descend. Steel may be replaced with additional concrete. Or at higher levels, the steel structure may be less efficient, as it has to provide more room for entryways and such that do not exist at the lowest levels.

I would suggest you follow up with Gregory, who posts here with some frequency.

That is reason to criticize every architectural and engineering schools in the United States. Why isn't every engineering school in the country demanding a table specifying the TONS of STEEL and TONS of CONCRETE on every level of the WTC.

Actually, this concern is unfounded. NIST has a very high fidelity estimate of the steel and concrete masses, attendant with its structural model, described in NCSTAR1-2A. The SAP2000 model includes dimensions of all structural components. There is a "self-weighting" feature in SAP2000 that can output the estimated mass of steel and concrete for any subset of the structure.

Architectural and engineering schools have access to these models. So do you, because a poster here acquired them through an FOIA and made publicly available. See this thread, for example. Gregory's numbers are roughly in alignment with the SAP2000 results, which is one reason why I believe them to be accurate.

 

[Newtons Bit]

That is reason to criticize every architectural and engineering schools in the United States. Why isn't every engineering school in the country demanding a table specifying the TONS of STEEL and TONS of CONCRETE on every level of the WTC.

It's not relevant. Sure having the cross-sectional area of steel on each floor is useful for creating 1-D models, but those have already been done. Complete and detailed structural plans (which don't exist on the internet, and won't/shouldn't be published to open domain) are required to create a full-scale 3-D model. As far as concrete tonnage per floor goes, a sophmore engineering student should be able to easily calculate that from available information.

 

[psikeyhackr]

I'm a bit confused by your question. As you should be aware, any inaccuracy in Gregory Urich's work does not necessarily mean that NIST is also inaccurate.

As I have said I downloaded and searched the NIST report. The NIST does not even specify the total quantity of CONCRETE in the towers. You are welcomed to search it yourself.

If you fix the second link you will see a video of a model I built which has time lapse sequences of the behavior changing due to changes in mass and its distribution as a result of impacts by my airplane simulator.

The NIST report does say that the south tower oscillated for four minutes as a result of the impacts. The kinetic energy of that plane had two effects on the building. Punching the hole doing structural damage and creating the oscillation. How do you compute the energy that caused the oscillation without the distribution of mass. Doesn't it take more energy to move 200 tons 6 inches than it does to move 100 tons 6 inches. So the mass and movement of those floors needs to be determined because that energy did not do structural damage in the impact area.

Now when has that been discussed in the analysis?

Now there are all of those Truthers saying the fires didn't get hot enough to weaken the steel and the steel conducted the heat away but they don't talk about the quantity of steel. What the hell kind of sense does that make? There is also the business of the violation of the conservation of momentum in the speed of the collapse. How do you compute momentum without knowing the mass? So the real question is: Why weren't the EXPERTS talking about the TONS of STEEL and TONS of CONCRETE on every level of the building within SIX WEEKS on 9/11?

As far as concrete tonnage per floor goes, a sophmore engineering student should be able to easily calculate that from available information.

So why didn't the NIST do it?

psik