WTC 7 Question - why blow it up?

[jaydeehess]

Arabs too dumb? Of course not. I question whether the hijackers had the knowledge and training to navigate a 757 to target. Controlling a rudder, yoke, and pedals are one thing, using a navigational computer under duress is a tad different. One would have thought the flight manual left behind would have helped in that regard.

Glad to have you clarify that point SD.

It is NOT rocket science to read and use the navigation equipment on an aircraft. It is rocket science, so to speak, to design, build and install navigation equipment on an aircraft. Obviously they did not have to do the later.

I daresay that even you could do it with about 1 hour's instruction.

Duress?? Why?? They expected and wanted to die. Even if they do somehow get shot down they have accomplished the task of attacking America. In fact it would have been better than simply crashingthe plane into the ground as it would mean that the POTUS would have had to order the deaths of several dozen innocent citizens. So the duress they were under IMHO would be quite a bit less than what you seem to believe it was. You seem to think that a person who has worked for months, years even, to get to the position he is in, the cockpit of a hijacked aircraft, would freeze.

Was there some thought given to making things easier for them by choosing readily identifiable targets?

Yes,yes,yes. The towers rise well above the skyline of all other structures within 20 miles. The Pentagon is surrounded by open spaces, is a unigue shape, is a very large building and sits astride a large river.
The Capitol building is also very tall and unigue with other lankmarks that point to it.

the Whitehouse is probably the most difficult target to identify from the air. It is not that tall, is surrounded by trees on several sides. It only has distinction in that it would be a very desireable target.

CIA hdqtrs is a fairly typical office building, ditto for the NSA.

The towers also have the distinction of being a the object of a previous attempt to bring them down. That would be another, albeit possibly secondary, reason to hit them.

 

[SDC]

Indeed. Read the accounts of WWII naval pilots from, say, the Battle of Midway, about how easy it was to spot burning ships from many miles away if the skies were mostly clear. One can find the occasional period photo which also demonstrates this.

Could someone with significant flight experience explain that: it was a clear and beautiful day; the flight from Boston only had to find the Hudson River (a very significant body of water) and turn left; and how easy it would be to do this.

I could add that the image of Guy Fawkes is meaningless in North America, but what the heck, that isn't relevant.

 

[Dave Rogers]

This is all a classic example of shifting the burden of proof.

Truther: The official account can't be true because the pilots couldn't have found New York.
Debunker: They were trained and licensed pilots, so it's reasonable to suppose they would have been trained in navigation.
Truther: Yes, but you can't prove they did know how to navigate.

It doesn't require proof. Unless the truther can prove that the navigation skills of the pilots were inadequate to find New York or Washington on a clear morning, there is nothing implausible about the official account in this respect. Therefore the implication that it can't be true is invalid.

Dave

 

[Stellafane]

I think the 9/11 TMers' pathological infatuation with WTC7 is based on the fact that it's the last shadow within which anything mysterious can possibly be hiding. All the other major facets of 9/11 -- the Twin Towers, Pentagon, and so on -- have been so thoroughly examined and explained that no one with any objective reasoning skills whatsoever can possibly believe there is any controversy around them. But WTC7 still leaves a tiny scintilla of ambiguity open. Not because there's any real evidence for a CT; there isn't any of course. But WTC7 hasn't been quite as thoroughly and "officially" explained as the rest of 9/11. So here the few remaining TMers huddle together, like T.S. Eliot's Hollow Men, in "this last of meeting places" waiting for their curious little "movement' to inevitably end not with a bang, but a whisper.

 

[jaydeehess]

Considering that long before VOR, DME, and GPS pilots were able to navigate by nothing more than dead reckoning, being able to get an aircraft from one point to another is not some sort of task only the most expert can accomplish. It only requires a bit of research and some practice to do competently.

In a past job I had to fly to several remote locations in the boreal forest on Ontario. No roads, to power lines, no railroads. The pilot navigated primarily by locating lakes along the way by their shape from 5000-8000 ft. On one trip by floatplane (DH Beaver), I was sitting in the right hand seat and he handed me the map and let me point out the lakes along the pencil line he had drawn on the map. Despite the forested portion looking identical everywhere and despite the fact that many lakes are similar, this was no problem.

On another trip (Cessna 206 on floats) the cloud level kept creeping down. this made locating the lakes along the way much more difficult than it was at several thousand feet. We turned back and the pilot used the compass to get back to Red Lake, Ontario.

On still another trip in a larger cargo aircraft (Cessna Caravan on wheels) the pilot had a GPS. He set the waypoints and the destination then just flew where it said to. We arrived dead in line with the runway.

Fact is that navigating is no difficult even by map and compass whereas SD would have us believe that it is the purvue of only highly trained individuals.
Besides which the men in question did indeed have training on the specific equipment used in the planes they used.

 

[twinstead]

This is all a classic example of shifting the burden of proof.

Truther: The official account can't be true because the pilots couldn't have found New York.
Debunker: They were trained and licensed pilots, so it's reasonable to suppose they would have been trained in navigation.
Truther: Yes, but you can't prove they did know how to navigate.

It doesn't require proof. Unless the truther can prove that the navigation skills of the pilots were inadequate to find New York or Washington on a clear morning, there is nothing implausible about the official account in this respect. Therefore the implication that it can't be true is invalid.

It really does all boil down to this. It is not unreasonable to suggest that the hijackers had adequate skills to find their targets. If this is to be contested then proper evidence, not personal incredulity, should be submitted to back it up.

 

[apathoid]

Training to fly the plane and training to navigate the plane from altitude are two separate issues. I'm not a trained pilot, but I was able to fly a 'Grasshoper' from the Vietnam era. Taking that same knowledge and applying it to a navigational computer in a 757/767 are separate issues.

Can you clarify what you mean by "applying it to a navigational computer" and why that would be done? I think you are overcomplicating the issue and I get the sense that you think that navigating an aircraft is like using a sextant; that is, only something a brainiac could do. It isn't. It's very simple actually, even on a 767. Tune the navaid you want to fly over, turn the course knob until you get a fly "TO" indication and a centered course deviation bar, then turn the airplane to a heading that matches the course select knob.

If anyone else besides SD is wondering how the hijackers navigated to their targets, here is an NTSB document called Study of Autopilot, Navigation Equipment, and Fuel Consumption Activity Based on United Airlines Flight 93 and American Airlines Flight 77. Obviously UA175 and AA11's FDRs were destroyed, but it's reasonable to assume that the hijackers all used roughly the same method of navigation. It appears to me that the hijackers used some dead reckoning and some VOR navigation....nothing fancy like reprogramming the FMS, or anything like that. They also relied heavily on the autopilot, particularly heading select, altitude select(hold), level change, and IAS hold modes.....Pretty interesting reading.

 

[Sabrina]

Regarding the allegation that WTC7 was "demolished" to destroy the classified materials contained therein, I direct you to the following Department of Defense regulation which discusses in detail the safeguarding AND destruction of classified information. Of particular interest, I believe, are these:

6-300 General Policy

Everyone who has been granted access to classified information is responsible for providing protection to information and material in their possession or control. that contains such information. Classified information must be protected at all times either by storage in an approved device or facility or having it under the personal observation and control of an authorized individual. Everyone who works with classified information is personally responsible for taking proper precautions to ensure that unauthorized persons do not gain access to it.

In other words, don't leave it lying around where it has even the remotest possibility of being discovered by an individual WITHOUT the access required to look at it.

6-303 Emergency Planning

a. Plans shall be developed for the protection, removal, or destruction of classified material in case of fire, natural disaster, civil disturbance, terrorist activities, or enemy action, to minimize the risk of its compromise. The level of detail and amount of testing and rehearsal of these plans should be determined by an assessment of the risk of hostile action, natural disaster, or terrorist activity that might place the information in jeopardy.

Guess they never planned for debris from another building striking their building and setting off fires that burned for seven hours. Oh, but wait; we're the all powerful NWO, we should have anticipated this! But then again, we're supposedly incompetent enough to leave blatant clues... hmmm, the paradox rears its ugly head again.

6-700 Policy

a. Classified documents and other material shall be retained within DoD organizations only if they are required for effective and efficient operation of the organization or if their retention is required by law or regulation. Documents that are no longer required for operational purposes shall be disposed of in accordance with the provisions of the Federal Records Act (44 U.S.C. Chapters 21, 31 and 33) and appropriate implementing directives and records schedules. Material that has been identified for destruction shall continue to be protected, as appropriate, for its classification until it is actually destroyed. Destruction of classified documents and material shall be accomplished by means that eliminate risk of reconstruction of the classified information they contain.

Note that key word there; "ELMINATE". Not "minimize", "ELIMINATE". Destruction of the building does not eliminate the possibility of reconstruction, because there is always the possibility that some of it will survive the destruction. Note the papers and light debris that survived the crash at Shanksville for an example of papers surviving destruction. It's not a guarantee, therefore it is NOT considered a viable option of destruction.

6-701 Methods and Standards

a. Classified information identified for destruction shall be destroyed completely to preclude recognition or reconstruction of the classified information in accordance with procedures and methods prescribed by the Head of the DoD Component or their designee. Methods and equipment used to routinely destroy classified information include burning, cross-cut shredding, wet-pulping, mutilation, chemical decomposition or pulverizing.

Gee, nowhere does it say controlled demolition of the building the classified material is contained in. I wonder why that is?

I have participated in the past in destruction of classified material, and will be again soon (my unit has a crapload of old papers that will have to be gone through in order to determine what's sensitive and what isn't; guess who gets THAT job). Burning requires a CONTROLLED burn wherein someone is standing there stirring the fire around with a stick to ensure that EVERYTHING is reduced to ash (I had to do this out in the field once; my NCO, soldier, and myself dug a hole and dumped the papers in there and stirred them around to ensure that everything was burned). Cross-cut shredding requires the papers be reduced to tiny bits of paper no bigger than, I believe, 1/16th of an inch by 1/8th of an inch (and in fact may be even smaller; I think the regulation might've been updated since the last time I looked at it). Wet-pulping, mutilation, chemical decomposition, or pulverizing are all more thorough than a building demolition would be.

b. Technical guidance concerning appropriate methods, equipment, and standards for the destruction of classified electronic media, processing equipment components, and the like may be obtained by contacting the Directorate for Information Systems Security, National Security Agency, Ft. Meade, MD 20755. Specifications concerning appropriate equipment and standards for destruction of other storage media may be obtained from the General Services Administration.

There you go; contact information to a directorate that can detail EXACTLY what methods are authorized to destroy classified material and can answer your questions regarding just how it MUST be destroyed. I can guarantee you demolition of a building will not be included, because there is no way to DEFINITIVELY be certain that some of the material will not survive.

Oh, and information on the Federal Records Act of 1950 (wow, fifty-one years BEFORE 9/11) can be found here. I thought this should be of particular note:

Federal records may not be destroyed-except in accordance with the procedures described in Chapter 33 of Title 44, United States Code. These procedures allow for records destruction only under the authority of a records disposition schedule approved by the Archivist of the United States.

 

[jberryhill]

Please post a view of the skyline from when the location at which the hijackers took over the plane.

There are quite a number of views of the Hudson River from a wide variety of places. If you can find that, you go south. If you screw up, go east, find the coastline, and head for the fat end of Long Island.

How hard is that?

 

[ZENSMACK89]

QUOTE=jaydeehess;2974895Repeat after me
"I Zensmack89, believe that under the circumstances of that day, the demolition of a 47 storey structure known as WTC 7 was a secure and efficient way to destroy sensitive materials."

It appears that Zen went to bed about the same time I posted this, so to make sure he/she sees it I am reposting it.

Swing Dangler, just how difficult do you think it is to find New York city? The terrorists had taken lessons in navigation. Hunters in Minnesota can use a GPS with 10 minutes of looking at the instructions. As a school child in grade 6 we were taught how to use a compass and a map. I suppose that you subscribe to the "Arabs are too dumb to do this" mentality.


Once you are within 20 miles of the towers they stick out as the highest object on the horizon and the pilot aims the plane at them. There is then no further need for instruments at all.

WTC 7 would however be just another tall structure amoung others of similar height.

"I Zensmack89, believe that considering the knuckleheads in power today and their now well known record of incompetence, corruption, lies, and cover-up over the last 7 years makes it very possible that given the circumstances of that day, the demolition of a 47 storey structure known as WTC 7 might have been considered an valid option for these same crooks and murderers to destroy sensitive material some of which might have been consider evidence of something they felt needed to be concealed."

If some of you feel that this would have been a dumb move then I would appreciate someone here showing me where the present powers that be are above dumb moves.

 

[ZENSMACK89]

Regarding the allegation that WTC7 was "demolished" to destroy the classified materials contained therein, I direct you to the following Department of Defense regulation which discusses in detail the safeguarding AND destruction of classified information. Of particular interest, I believe, are these:



In other words, don't leave it lying around where it has even the remotest possibility of being discovered by an individual WITHOUT the access required to look at it.



Guess they never planned for debris from another building striking their building and setting off fires that burned for seven hours. Oh, but wait; we're the all powerful NWO, we should have anticipated this! But then again, we're supposedly incompetent enough to leave blatant clues... hmmm, the paradox rears its ugly head again.



Note that key word there; "ELMINATE". Not "minimize", "ELIMINATE". Destruction of the building does not eliminate the possibility of reconstruction, because there is always the possibility that some of it will survive the destruction. Note the papers and light debris that survived the crash at Shanksville for an example of papers surviving destruction. It's not a guarantee, therefore it is NOT considered a viable option of destruction.



Gee, nowhere does it say controlled demolition of the building the classified material is contained in. I wonder why that is?

I have participated in the past in destruction of classified material, and will be again soon (my unit has a crapload of old papers that will have to be gone through in order to determine what's sensitive and what isn't; guess who gets THAT job). Burning requires a CONTROLLED burn wherein someone is standing there stirring the fire around with a stick to ensure that EVERYTHING is reduced to ash (I had to do this out in the field once; my NCO, soldier, and myself dug a hole and dumped the papers in there and stirred them around to ensure that everything was burned). Cross-cut shredding requires the papers be reduced to tiny bits of paper no bigger than, I believe, 1/16th of an inch by 1/8th of an inch (and in fact may be even smaller; I think the regulation might've been updated since the last time I looked at it). Wet-pulping, mutilation, chemical decomposition, or pulverizing are all more thorough than a building demolition would be.



There you go; contact information to a directorate that can detail EXACTLY what methods are authorized to destroy classified material and can answer your questions regarding just how it MUST be destroyed. I can guarantee you demolition of a building will not be included, because there is no way to DEFINITIVELY be certain that some of the material will not survive.

Oh, and information on the Federal Records Act of 1950 (wow, fifty-one years BEFORE 9/11) can be found here. I thought this should be of particular note:

Yeah and these crooks always go by the book right?

 

[Sabrina]

*silently points to her post above about the current regulations regarding destruction of classified material*

Even if the current powers that be are idiots (which is something I don't dispute) the entire government is NOT. There would have been people who would have pointed out the possibility of the material surviving and would have recommended much cheaper ways of destruction. Hell, all they had to do was bundle the crap up in burn bags and take it to the local approved burning facility. That happens on a bi-monthly basis where I'm working now. There are at least three or four industrial-sized DoD approved classified shredders on my floor alone. It is cost-prohibitive and ineffective to demolish a building to destroy the paperwork contained therein when there are exponentially cheaper ways of doing it that do not carry the inherent risk of survival of some of the material that demolishing the building does. They'd have to drop an atom bomb directly on the building in order to completely destroy everything in it.

 

[SDC]

"I Zensmack89, believe that considering the knuckleheads in power today and their now well known record of incompetence, corruption, lies, and cover-up over the last 7 years makes it very possible that given the circumstances of that day, the demolition of a 47 storey structure known as WTC 7 might have been considered an valid option for these same crooks and murderers to destroy sensitive material some of which might have been consider evidence of something they felt needed to be concealed."

If some of you feel that this would have been a dumb move then I would appreciate someone here showing me where the present powers that be are above dumb moves.

I don't know about "dumb move," but it sure is a statement so qualified by "possible," "might have been," again "might have been," and "something," that it is pretty darned useless. Please try again with fewer qualifiers.

Oh, for heaven's sake, let me speak frankly. Stand up for your beliefs. What can happen? So some people whom you have never met will call you a chowderhead. What is scary or harmful in that? If you do not have the courage of your convictions, that what have you got? Answer: very, very little.

 

[Sabrina]

You're the one who keeps saying they were so concerned about completely destroying the material, Zensmack. WHY would they then risk the possibility that some of it could survive when there already exist highly approved and proven effective ways of completely destroying the paperwork that are a heck of a lot cheaper than demolishing a building.

THINK for a minute. Sheesh.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Even if the current powers that be are idiots (which is something I don't dispute) the entire government is NOT. There would have been people who would have pointed out the possibility of the material surviving and would have recommended much cheaper ways of destruction. Hell, all they had to do was bundle the crap up in burn bags and take it to the local approved burning facility.

I'm just guessing here, but I suspect that the local approved burning facility makes a point of not taking a look at the stuff they're burning to see whether it contains information that might incriminate the government, right? So nobody would ever know what was being destroyed? In which case, we have the following risk/cost/benefit analysis:

Putting the stuff in a burn bag and taking it to the local facility:

Cost: A few days of staff cost plus the facility cost.

Benefit: Absolute certainty of complete destruction of the information contained.

Risk: Effectively none.

Demolishing a 47-storey building with the stuff in a filing cabinet inside:

Cost: Several man-months effort rigging the building for demolition. Rebuilding cost of a 47-storey building, less any insurance payout.

Benefit: Somebody help me out here.

Risk: Significant parts of the information may survive.
People involved in the demolition may confess at a later date, prompting further investigation.
Implicates your organisation in insurance fraud, illegal use of explosives and endangering life and limb.

Does anybody here think even the Bush administration would have any difficulty making the right choice?

Dave

 

[JimBenArm]

You're the one who keeps saying they were so concerned about completely destroying the material, Zensmack. WHY would they then risk the possibility that some of it could survive when there already exist highly approved and proven effective ways of completely destroying the paperwork that are a heck of a lot cheaper than demolishing a building.

THINK for a minute. Sheesh.

I don't know. I had a bunch of old bank statements and credit card receipts laying around my house. Rather than shred them, I found it much more effective to burn down my house. Doesn't everyone do that?

 

[ZENSMACK89]

You're the one who keeps saying they were so concerned about completely destroying the material, Zensmack. WHY would they then risk the possibility that some of it could survive when there already exist highly approved and proven effective ways of completely destroying the paperwork that are a heck of a lot cheaper than demolishing a building.

THINK for a minute. Sheesh.

Oh I don't know Sabrina but maybe some of these very rules you are pointing to that are suppose to be followed and dictate whose responsibility it is for what documents weren't followed before the building became compromised. Just another thing they needed to cover-up. For instance how do you know everything was in a proper storage container or everyone had proper recovery methods in place to remove such sensitive material? If the building is destroyed it's one more thing they don't have to worry about.

 

[jaydeehess]

"I Zensmack89, believe that considering the knuckleheads in power today and their now well known record of incompetence, corruption, lies, and cover-up over the last 7 years makes it very possible that given the circumstances of that day, the demolition of a 47 storey structure known as WTC 7 might have been considered an valid option for these same crooks and murderers to destroy sensitive material some of which might have been consider evidence of something they felt needed to be concealed."

If some of you feel that this would have been a dumb move then I would appreciate someone here showing me where the present powers that be are above dumb moves.

Close, no cigar.

Now you are asserting that the order to destroy WTC 7 in order to destroy senstive docuements came from the administration of GWB. were they targeting just one office or several?

Whereas he and his people have shown themselves to be incompetant I still do not subscribe to the notion that you do, that they are complete and utter morons.

As pointed out above, the idea that the demolition of a building is a secure and efficient method of destroying senstive materials is absolutely and completely in the realm of idiocy. I expect that any sugestion to anyone on charge of the offices in question that this be done to 'protect' materials in the offices would be met with vociferous objection and likely a refusal to follow orders based on the illegality of them as outlined by the regulations posted by Sabrina.

I worked at a very remote weather station that also had a military post which did 'radio research'. Everyday there were two armed soldiers who were in charge of burning bags of already shredded docuements. They did not open the plastic bags, they were set into the incinerator as is. On one occasion that I walked too close I was informed, politely, that I was to remain 30 feet away from the small incinerator. I asked a member of the military who I knew, why it was two guys. "They watch each other" was his answer. He told me that they were to ensure that every shred was burned completely and that after the paper was all burned out they were to dump 1 liter of gasoline on the ashes just to make sure. Their work was checked on each day after they were done by an officer.
It would require military clearance just to be on the base. It was located in one of the most remote places on Earth yet these measures were being taken, BUT Zens figures that crumpling a building in the hopes that at least most of the material in question will be destroyed despite the fact that total destruction of them cannot be guaranteed nor checked for afterwards would be fine.

 

[jaydeehess]

If the building is destroyed it's one more thing they don't have to worry about.

ROFLMAO

They most certainly would have something to worry about Zens. The fact that it would be very possible that materials that you believe absolutly must be destroyed would be ejected out of the building during the collapse.

 

[SDC]

I don't know. I had a bunch of old bank statements and credit card receipts laying around my house. Rather than shred them, I found it much more effective to burn down my house. Doesn't everyone do that?

I would recommend blowing your house up, instead. Give a countdown so your next door neighbors can escape.... Hmm... Actually, fly planes into your neighbors' houses and then blow your house up.