Hi.

This is more of a proposal and I would hope to have some comments from the board’s moderators on this one. I must say that although I have been a member since 2003 I do tend to go through “phases” of increased attention to site and it’s forums, so I apologise in advance if this has been tried already.

The reason for my post is basically that during my recent readings of 9/11 conspiracy threads, I have become frustrated in that they all seem to turn out the same way. Although both debunkers and conspiracy theorists present some articulate and well informed arguments both for and against a 9/11 conspiracy, the threads are usually mainly about WTC 1 & 2 and the whole picture in one thread, so only a few of the aspects to the conspiracy theories are discussed in any one thread – therefore giving a somewhat patchy debate. I do not think that they way the board is run is a problem here – indeed the site and forums are brilliant – this is in no way meant as criticism. Perhaps it is because the forums are so popular worldwide that each thread becomes very long very quickly and can cloud this very complex debate.

I would like you all to know that my personal opinion on 9/11 is that I do not feel comfortable with the idea that the US government engineered that whole thing for whatever reason (oil?). I think it is hugely frightening for one thing and for another it just doesn’t fit with me – surely there could have been better ways to achieve it’s international goals. However having looked at some of the material out there on the web (and although I have good marks for science in school, and have read much much more scientific material in the ten years since I left &I am by no means as well read on the subject as I would like and am aware that my own understanding of such scientific concepts could be flawed) I feel that there is a lot of stuff out there that also doesn’t ring true or quite add up with the initial story.

So, in short, I sit on the fence, keeping an open mind and I am not an expert!!

I would propose to break down the 9/11 debate into separate points and hold a thread on each one – perhaps with a poll running adjacent – to clarify each issue for all of us non-experts out there – to hear about further sources (most Google searches I have done seems to come up on the conspiracy bias) while sticking to one point at a time.

This is my suggestion for topics:-

• WTC 1 & 2 – supposed anomalies in weakening of steel / temperature
• The speed of collapse of WTC 1 & 2 and the pancake effect
• reported explosions in the basement and lobby of WTC 1 & 2 and the timing thereof
• Squibs
• Debris in unexpected locations and states (eg dust/ why no bigger bits but huge loops of steel etc)
• evidence for the use of thermite / thermate e.g the remains of the cores of the WTC 1 & 2 being angled (as if the result of a linear charge)
• WTC 7 – why was Mayor Guiliani not in his bunker? – why did BBC report collapse before it happened
• type of collapse of WTC 7
• Silverstein and insurance etc
• reported unprecedented power downs just prior to 9/11 – men with odd tools – lack of security during that time – ignored by authorities etc
• money removed prior to 9/11
• is the hole in the pentagon consistent with the crash?
• crash site anomalies in Shanksville
• the finding of the terrorists passports
• the terrorists flying lessons

I am sure there are many more and this is why I posted this thread – to ensure that if we are to “organise” the 9/11 debate that all aspects are included.

I would hope to use this list as a sort of starting point for lots of strings of debate and maybe have a new thread from these suggestions once week or fortnight or month (opinions please) with perhaps a summing up thread after all the points have been discussed.

I didn’t think there was much point in going ahead and doing it without sounding you all out first as any one of the above topic posted without this prior discussion would just end up become a general 9/11 thread like all the rest with random points coming in all over the place!

Also I was hoping that some of you would volunteer to start some of these threads, especially if you have a lot of knowledge about it. Could you please also suggest a time frame. I fully intend to contribute and monitor the responses – but I am really busy training to be a paralegal, being a mum, running the local under threes group, having a social life and a job… and of course some sleep sometimes – so I would be looking for help with “organising” the 9/11 debate….

Looking forward to hearing from you all

just came across eggumby's 1 Jul thread - maybe we should start with flight 93 and hold a poll?

There are some quite reasonable questions there, i think; about the passports and flying lessons, for instance (I've always felt dubious about those passports). The whole argument does seem to go round and round in endless arguments about details, like what such and such a person said in such and such a testimony, how quickly a building would collapse, would a fire be hot enough to melt steel, etc.; and I would like to see some of the wider questions actually adressed properly by the conspiracy movement: comparing the motives alleged to the hijackers with whatever motives those who were "actually" responsible might have had; the identities of the alleged hijackers (about which there do seem to be some questions), and so on. That's what i'd like to see; but the bigger picture seems to be obscured by a cloud of argument about details. Who, and how, and why. That's what I'd like to see some talk about. Then maybe we could decide for ourselves, which seems more likely? the official version (with its acknowledged discrepancies), or whatever the alternative theory may be?

Thanks for responding 747700 I guess that the who / how / why is the underlying issue. I just can't head my head round what does and doesn't add up about the whole thing. A lot of the CT's out there seem right and are very well argued ... but some people on here and the recent BBC Conspiracy files docu's argue convincingly for the official story.

Guess I just dunno where to start on the who / how /why part!!! Silverstien maybe?

have al-qaudia actually admitted to 9/11?
i recall a while ago that bin laden on one of his video tapes denied involvement.

Hi there.........what are 'squibs'?

According to the Wiki (yes, i know it's not infallible), ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11 )


It's this convenient way they find viedotapes that say just what they want to hear in the unlikeliest places (that one house in particular) that's one of the things that makes me go about some aspects of it. Like the hijacker's passport.

In the 911 conspiracy context, they are puffs of smoke that come out of the sides of the buildings as they collapse. The conspiracy side claim that they are evidence of explosives, the non-conspiracy side prefer to explain them as due to the air inside the building being compressed in the collapse and finding weak points to break out from.

what was the general concensus on those "flashes of light" on each planes nose when impacting with tower(s) ?
swamp gas reflecting off venus?

I sense that you are taking a satirical tone there. What were they, in your view?

/end satire

i have no idea.. this is why i am asking..?

Well, you presumably wouldn't have brought it up if you hadn't thought there was somethying to it.
What "flashes of light" are you referring to? What theories are there as to what they may have been, if there were any at all and it wasn't just a reflection of sunlight or something? I wonder if someone could elaborate a little further?

is my mention the first you've heard of it? i saw it on a doco called "911 - In Plane Sight" (if you are able to view this doco?)

the two flashes i mention above.. i honestly have no idea what they are or might be?

it does NOT appear to be a 'spark' of impact, sunlight reflection or swamp gas reflecting off venus all of that is covered extensively in the doco..

check it out, it won't hurt?

i shall try to, if I can find it.

That circled section is called a squib. It is commonly seen in controlled demolitions. When the explosive connected to one of the inner columns of the building goes off, it causes debris to shoot out the sides of the building as seen in this picture of one of the Twin Towers collapsing.

Others will tell you the cause of this debris exploding out the side of the building like that is due to the pressure created between floors as the building collapsed.

Nonetheless, the effect looks exactly like that of what is seen when a squib is created by a controlled demolition. Coincidently, the fashion in which the three buildings that collapsed on 9/11 fall to the ground also looks exactly like what you would expect to see from a controlled demolition.

It seems there were a lot of bizarre coincidences that took place on that day, assuming you believe the official version of events.

One of the principal bizarre coincidences, and one of the most inconvenient for those who don't believe the official version of events to explain away, being the fact that two planes were, it seems, seen hitting said buildings. Nitpicking over whether or not something might be a demolition charge, or the temperature at which steel melts, seems to rather overlook the presence of said elephants in the living room, or 767s at any rate.

Planes didn't knock the buildings down. Even the official report agrees on that. What were supposed to believe is that the temperature of the fires within the buildings caused them to collapse. Therefore, it is far from nitpicking to discuss the temperature at which steel melts. One should also recognize that most of the fuel carried by the planes burned in the giant fireballs that occurred outside the buildings upon impact.

What this fire scenario means, is that there is absolutely zero reason to believe the impact of the planes hitting the buildings caused them to collapse. Basically, it would be like saying someone could have poured gasoline all over one of the floors in the building, ignited the fuel, and that within an hour or two we could have expected the fire to burn at such a temperature that it would have caused the building to come crashing down at nearly free fall speed.

You refer to the planes as "elephants in the living room" as if their impact into the buildings played a role in their collapse. The impact of the planes had zero effect on the buildings collapsing. You need look no further than WTC 7 to realize that.

Whether or not they were controlled demolitions and I wont say they were or weren't I think the implications of that event the cause and effect 9/11 had on the world should be what's focused on.

9/11 was used as a pretext to kill thousands of people in a pointless war which made the rich richer and the poor poorer. It has led the the stripping of civil rights and so on.

Fact is if it was government who did it they will never be held accountable.

So instead of arguing over whether or not the attack was an inside job people should focus on the direct and indirect involvement this single event had and still ongoing today.

Contrary to what conspiracy sites repeatedly claim, steel-frame buildings are vulnerable to fire. Steel warehouses routinely collapse within 15 or 20 minutes of a fire breaking out. That is why they need fireproofing. In the case of the towers, this fireproofing would have been severely damaged by the aircraft impacts and the impact structural damage would also have increased the potential for a fire to cause a collapse. In the case of WTC7, the fires lasted longer, unfought, than the fireproofing is intended to work.

You have a strange use for the word "exactly".

The "squibs", unike demolition charges, occur after the collapse starts, rather than before, and seem randomly placed on the building.

The collapses of the towers, unlike demolitions, start from the impact sites and after fires.

The WTC7 collapse, unlike a demolition, occurs after a long fire. Also unlike any demolition, a penthouse structure on the roof falls into the building several seconds before the main collapse starts.

Also unlike any controlled demolition are the buildings being occupied during the time the demolition charges would need to be installed, the lack of any sound of explosions immediately preceding the collapses and the lack of any sign of explosive damage or explosive residue in the debris.

The only resemblance to a demolition is the appearance of the final collapse of WTC7, a few seconds out of a process that lasted some six hours.

and all this time i thought i'd been ordering calamari?

..so a squib is that anomolous little ejection from the building side? - there are multiple instances of these things, i also saw them in reruns of the collapse footage. there is also some other 'volumous' (if that IS even a real word) puffs of smoke/cloud to be seen.

I meant the fact that, to all appearances, there were, or did seem to be, planes which did, or did seem to, hit the buildings. So, if it was all a plot and the buildings were demolished, how are they explained?

How are what expalined?

If it were a plot, it's not like they would just demolish the buildings without having something seem to cause it.

Please don't tell me you are going to take the thought a few 9/11 conspiracy theorist have that planes didn't really hit the buildings and use that as a starting point for what you are attempting to discuss.

There is a big difference between steel warehouses collapsing due to fire and 100-story skycrapers collapsing to the ground at nearly free fall speed due to one. It doesn't make sense.

The floors underneath impact area/fire should have caused some type of resistance, which would have prevented the towers collapsing to the ground at the rate of speed they did.

Right. Keep denying what your eyes show you.

There were sounds of explosives going off before the buildings collapsed. The lobbies, at ground level, looked as if they were blown up before the building ever collapsed.

The debris was quickly gathered and shipped to Japan or China, or somewhere before the chance was ever presented for it to be investigated for explosive damage and/or residue.

For you to deny the resemblance all of these collapses had to what a controlled demolition looks like is rediculous. That aside, it's even more absurd to pretend these structures would collapse at nearly free fall speed due to fires more than half way up the building.

Heat rises. The floors below the impact area should have been fully intact. So even if everything at and above the site of the fire weakened to the point of giving way, the floors below should have still prevented some type of resistance. The buildings shouldn't have just come tumbling to the ground at nearly free fall speed.

Another characteristic of steel structures that the conspiracy websites fail to mention is the failure mechanism of steel columns when overloaded. Basically, the columns start to bow outwards at their centres. A bowed column has less load-carrying capacity that a straight one. When the point is reached where the column can carry less than its applied load, the column fails very rapidly.

For more details, see about half-way down this page:
http://www.mech.uwa.edu.au/DANotes/buckling/intro/intro.html

Combine this with the much greater dynamic load caused by an object dropping onto a support compared with the same object resting statically on the same support, and the way that the towers collapsed makes perfect sense.

No it doesn't.

The heat causing the support columns to bow only explains the areas at the impact site and the floors above.

Every floor below should have been perfectly fine. There should have been some type of resistance in the way of the buildings as they collapsed. There was virtually none.

It's astonishing the lengths people will go to refute this. Even moreso in regards to WTC 7.

Large fires are likely to cause explosions, but there were no explosions immediately before the collapses. The "Loose Change" video comparison of WTC7 and a controlled demolition would be a lot less impressive if you were allowed to hear the two soundtracks. A controlled demolition starts with a lot of very loud explosions, there was nothing comparable for WTC7.

Plenty of engineers examined the debris, both at ground zero and at the Fresh Kills holding area:
http://www.asce.org/pdf/3-6-02wtc_testimony.pdf
"There has been some concern expressed by others that the work of the team has been hampered because debris was removed from the site and has subsequently been processed for recycling. This is not the case. The team has had full access to the scrap yards and to the site and has been able to obtain numerous samples."

See above post for the engineering rationale for the collapses.

Read the link. Steel columns fail by buckling when they are overloaded, nothing to do with heat. I am not going to any astonishing lengths, this is very basic engineering, neither am I claiming that there was virtually no resistance. The resistance was enough to slow the collapse by a few seconds, but what more do you expect when the dynamic load produced by the top portion of one of the towers dropping a single floor is about 30 times the design load?

just an update (my post buried some pages back now)

1) those 2 weird flashes at plane nosecone area when impacting towers (not sure if there is footage of the first impact) but there are multiple angles of second impact.. (sunlight and sparks have been sufficiently ruled out)

2) anyones thoughts on the elevator load of passengers who fail to make eye contact, and leave the building in a casual but fast manner.. this seems strange to me.. the footage of this can be seen in the fireman documentary where they are talking about explosives going off (boom boom boom boom boom)

1) still no idea; but

2) could be explained simply by shock, surely? Fail to make eye contact? If the building's falling down around you, are you going to stand around chatting about the weather? You'd want to get out of there as quick as possible, surely. And surely, if they were Mossad agents/demolition experts or whatever, they'd have got out long before it actually started coming down?

Good question unit - can you give me a link to the people in the lift? I have never seen it

There were thousands of people riding those elevators on 9-11. Each building had a hundred elevators.

15,000 people evacuated the towers after the impact of the first plane. It would seem the elevator traffic saw lots of people with all sorts of things on their minds, before what took place that morning. They all had one thing in common, though, after it started.


Elevators were disaster within disaster (various links)

unit - reference the "flashes".

You say that sunlight or sparks have been "sufficiently" ruled out. Could you summarise the reasons for them being ruled out, or give a link to a site / sites that form the basis for why you believe they have been sufficiently ruled out?

I am not necessarily convinced this is so.

Thanks!

I have always wondered about the "flashes" i have read and seen people claiming it was a missile strapped to the bottom of the plane, and fire at the last second.

to me this is absurd,
if your hitting a building with a 200 ton aircraft, i doubt a missile is going to do much more damage,
it vastly increases your chance of having very tricky questions to answer when you can not guarantee no one on the ground will get a good picture/ video of it.
and how exactly would you attached said missile.

and if(as it has been suggested the people werent even on the plane) then why would the missle be on the outside.. if you were just SO in need of a missile.

i have always ruled that the flashes were static discharge, anyone able to back me up on that scientifically? i dont know much about airplane physics etc.

with regard to the towers falling, i dont think any tests could be done, no matter what level of foresight you had to ensure that the buildings wouldnt fall when struck like that.

i know the empire state building was hit by a plane once, and it survived, however it was hit by a plane lost in fog, very small in comparison to a loaded 747, so the actual machanics of the collapse could be debated endlessly(but thats why we are here is it not! lol) however i do feel that the buildings falling that fast is very dubious.

and all the other evidence to do with the buildings collapse all open up doubt, molten steel found weeks after the tragedy for example?

as i said above, the actual mechanics of the destruction/heat of the fire etc will never be fully known, jet full doesnt burn hot enough to melt steel, only weaken it. so why was molten steel found at all?

911 documentary collection

that site has a huge array of (if not all of) the 911 documentary to brush up on the topic at hand for this discussion.

hope it says friendly

because we all know it a $#&*^&*$%^$%^#^&^^*%* sona$^$%^%%$&stupid%$&^%&% fraud on the people of the %^$#^$%^ states %#$$#$#%# america!!!!

in all seriousness i believe the conspiracy theory's however, where or not we know how it actually happened or why is the real question.

no matter how you look at it... it doesnt make sense.

terrorists knew america wont just brush off the attacks, the world knew america wouldnt just forget it, the government knew its people wouldnt go to war over nothing.....

It was a cocktail or witch's brew of secular and religious warfare. How could it make any sense, except that it was secretive and devious.Those responsible should have donated their brains to science, so we might have a better understanding of the physiological sources of such pathologies.


If it was a conspiracy by the USG, then there were no terrorists. So, which is it?


So, are you suggesting that non-americans were responsible, after they deliberated on how to attack?


America would have gone to war if those planes were just ditched at sea by a group of hijackers. This business of saying a worse case scenario was required by an insider cabal is just nonsense.

It requires a lower threshold than you imagine to kill those who foster cults of homicide against you, or to try and rectify the causes.

thats my point, i do not think a terrorist group would provoke all out war to get no real reward other than one victory, they would need a long term and lasting ability to continue the terrorism in a organised manner to complete thier agenda

and "worst case" idea of planes filled with americans being used by a insider cabal is only nonsense if they choose it to be, McNamarra wanted to do something similar before the cuban missile crisis reached its peak, but Kennedy said no. there is alot of belief and evidence(although i dont have any to hand but will find links if required) that the US military(and others) have done plenty of medical experiments and physical testing on its citizens to improve gases and other biological weapons, so in no way to belittle the loss of 3000 lives, it was no where near a "worst case scenario" the anthrax attacks, properly used, or a nuclear device would have been far more worse case.

i am not saying that terrorists planned the whole thing..or that the government did.

what i consider very possible is, that it was allowed to happen, whether directly or indirectly. whose idea it was originally or who set in motion the events etc etc.

i am just trying to make sense of it in the best manner i can by trying to think logically and to a certain extent practically.

the government could never in any circumstances allow this to happen if they had prior knowledge. if the truth ever came out... it would instant collapse of the government and probably civil war.

however it did happen, and there is plenty of material that have come out to suggest there was prior warning, the russians and the brittish and french all contacted the US to alert them to a immediate threat.

however when you realize that the government is made up by humans(mostly ) then mistakes can happen.

however it is remarkable the number of things which happened to allow the terrorists into the position they needed to commit the attacks.

when i say i believe the conspiracy, that does not mean that i believe that bush et all where sitting in a office with a remote control blowing up citizens at will. but i do believe that too many mistakes were made to be practical and logically believable, and that too much evidence has surfaced to completely believe the official story. and other evidence hasnt surfaced at all...which is almost as disturbing.

just my thoughts, not used to posting on forums..so excuse my bad writting

So your belief in the conspiracy theory is founded on your faith in the competence of the Bush administration?

The situation they have now in Iraq, and numerous other recent foreign policy decisions of the US government, suits their purposes perfectly. They don't need to keep doing it; once was enough, since the goverment then did exactly what they wanted to do, first with their panicking security measures to instil a climate of fear, and then the invasion of Iraq, which made sure that the terrorists have a steady supply of recruits. I think, anyway.

my belief of the conspiracy is based on all the pieces that dont add up, and the failures all down the line from the intelligence agencies to the airports etc etc which could have been affected by the government but who know what exactly is subject to debate, or as i said whether they allowed it to happen or helped plan it is another question.

i would agree that the government acted badly post 911(who am i kidding they have always been bad ) and i due agree the situation in the war zones etc is no where near perfect, but how organized is it? it would seem to me that the terrorists are more fractured now, with no common lasting goal other than due as much damage where and when they get the chance. that is not organized per say. even if the coalition forces pulled out tomorrow, the country's would most likely slip into civil war as a power struggle for control takes over with no one in charge to dictate how to proceed.

i would agree that the militia forces over there will now have more people willing to join the fight against the invaders but how much of that is solely to do with experiences thay have had first hand at the armys hands or because they have alsways hated america..and are now willing to fight?

although any footage recieved over here from the coalition forces over there found on non mainstream sources does not represent the majority(hopefully) of the armys actions against the common man in iraq etc it does seem as if there is alot of mistreatment of the iraq etc peoples, i have seen footage on youtube and many other sites of soldiers tormenting people, teasing children with food and water, making them beg, insulting them, making say things and do things for basic human essentials. the after affects of that kind of abuse is not making the situation for anyone any better.

what are the arguments against a conspiracy that you believe? looking thru all the available information there is too many things which do not make sense, at least to me.

I think you are mistaking who has the burden of proof here. To quote Carl Sagan, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". I don't see any extraordinary evidence for a conspiracy, no "smoking gun", and precious little ordinary evidence, it's mostly innuendo plus a lot of misunderstanding of engineering, so I don't believe in a conspiracy.

That's not to say that I don't agree with a lot of what you say about the Iraq war, but I think the Bush administration were determined to take on Saddam Hussein and would have done so without 9/11. They would still have played up the WMD claims as a reason to invade. Incidentally, am I the only one to see a certain discrepancy between the fiendishly clever administration that masterminded a 9/11 inside job and the blunderingly incompetent bunch that couldn't find (or fake!) any WMD evidence and had no idea what to do with Iraq when they got it?

Emphasis mine. Is there anything that can be called evidence at all?! Al the claims that the structural integrity of WTC could be weakened enough by the impacts and subsequent fires have largely been brought forth by non-architects and non-civil engineers, whereas architects and civil engineers actually agree that it was the impacts and the fires that brought the buildings down. Not exactly what I would call evidence. On the contrary, every claim has been peeled apart by people knowledgeable in this field.

Just a single piece of evidence, is there one?!



Emphasis mine. It is striking, isn't it?!

Cheers,
Badeskov

Not dissimilar to the way this thread is going I like your idea of setting out distinct areas for discussion; it’s something I have thought about as well but decided it’s a hopeless task.



I will take you up on that one, badeskov.

Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth is a group with a 400+ and ever expanding verified membership. As the name suggests, these are professional architects and engineers who disagree with the official story we have been told regarding the WTC collapses. Well that already shows that architects and engineers certainly do not agree impacts and fires caused the collapses.

Still now, can you reference an equal number to the above of building professionals that specifically support the official story, preferably independent? Here’s a tip – don’t waste your time looking; those specifically opposing the official story in this area of expertise do outweigh those specifically supporting it.

Since when have technical matters been subject to a vote?

However, since you repeatedly raise this issue, I suggest you repeat the count again with how many authors of technical papers on the 9/11 collapses have supported controlled demolition and how many have found that the impacts and fires are all the explanation you need. You might get a different answer. None of your 400+ seem to be able to put up a technical argument for their beliefs, which is why you put in that word "independent". In your book, any engineer who studies the collapses and then publishes a paper automatically becomes no longer "independant". I pointed out that there were hundreds on names on the NIST report, and your response was "not independent".

I am an engineer, my colleagues are engineers, we discuss these matters, so I know that your 400+ are a very small proportion of their professions. They do not show that "architects and engineers certainly do not agree impacts and fires caused the collapses", they show that less than a tenth of one percent of them don't agree.

What's the difference?

As much as you like being able to state you are an engineer, and that you can run through a created technical scenario of what may have caused the collapse, there are still other engineers that will state the opposite and say the way the Twin Towers collapsed, at nearly free fall speed, simply isn't possible without the use of explosives to blow the lower floors out.

If any structural engineer has actually come out with a technical paper that says that, perhaps you could provide me with the reference.

Well, I believe I already found one, though I haven't read it yet myself so I couldn't tell you exactly what it says. I will read it once I have the time, but it will have to wait til later. Since you asked however, I will provide the link.

Swedish Structural Engineer: WTC Towers Did Not Collapse from Fire (Part 1)
Swedish Structural Engineer: WTC Towers Did Not Collapse from Fire (Part 2)

Obviously in this case, since badeskov’s inaccurate claim.



Why do you want me to repeat the count if numbers are not important as you say above? Anyhow, as you well know, I have already done this and got nowhere near your ‘hundreds’ figure. I have supplied details of 400+ construction professionals who oppose the official story and now the onus is on you, or rather badeskov, to produce an equivelant list… or accept his claim is inaccurate.



As I have said before regarding NIST’s contributors: -

The point is it’s a government report with the individual study areas tied together by the NIST team leaders and as such cannot be seen to be publicly expressing a controversial political viewpoint.

Notwithstanding the above, I took a good look at the list of NIST contractors. As I have been saying, the area of contribution is important and sure enough everything from occupant behaviour and evacuation studies to fire alarm and smoke management system analysis was revealed – completely irrelevant to the physical collapses.

It happens that the largest group of contractors are employees of Science Applications International Corporation who, as well as having had well-known public servants on its Board of Directors including a former CIA Director, interestingly are the ninth largest Department of Defense contractor in the US and have also worked with the FBI and NSA – hardly unaffiliated.

After filtering out the members who did not make a direct contribution to the Tower impact, fire and collapse initiation simulation, I was left with only four companies comprising of less than 30 listed staff altogether, plus a handful of other individuals.

Considering all of the above, NIST’s list is entirely unimpressive compared to the 400+ Architects and Engineers who are calling for a new investigation.

Now can you supply a list of construction professionals supporting the official story or not?

This is a self-published piece by someone who appears to misunderstand how building structures work. He claims that if the top and bottom parts of the tower were misaligned, the columns would punch through the floors and secondary structure and somehow be arrested after falling ten stories or so. He completely neglects the fact that the secondary structure destroyed in this process is there to stabilise the primary columns, and without it they would also fall. An example of this is the slender pinnacle that was left standing for a few seconds after one of the towers had gone. He also neglects the fact that to arrest the falling upper structure, the secondary structure of the lower part has to transmit loads to the columns. Either they do so, it which case the analysis reverts to the mainstream work that he questions, ie that the columns cannot take the loads, or they do not, in which case his argument that the secondary structure can halt the collapse doesn't work.

He obviously hasn't managed to get this article into a peer-reviewed journal because any reviewer would point out these failings.

Edit to add: I note that a conspiracy believer called Heiwa is a contributor to the JREF forum. Bjorkman's company is called Heiwa.

Your "400+" argument is every bit as much an appeal to authority as badeskov's. Just because he said "architects and engineers" rather than "99.9% of architects and engineers", doesn't mean that your 0.1% of "architects and engineers" are right.

Because you bring up this subject of numbers, I'm just pointing out that your "400+" are suspiciously reluctant to put technical arguments to their opinions. Of people who have done so, the vast majority reject the claims of your 400+. If you only count peer-reviewed publications, all I can see on the conspiracy side is that one of Jones' trying to establish common ground.

Typical conspiracists argument - anyone who disputes the conspiracy is under the control of the US government, even the Chinese - you have absolutely no proof for this. Why would the government even bring in outside contractors at all if they had anything to hide?

Why do you filter out the NIST authors who you think didn't contribute to the collapse simulation? They have all put their names to the report, so they must agree with it. How many of your 400+ have the experience to do such simulations? Very few of them appear even to have any expertise in structural or fire engineering. So you accept all 400+ whatever their areas of expertise, but rule out anyone who contributed to the NIST report if they don't have the right expertise.

There may be no equivalent list to AE911T for professionals who accept the NIST report, but then there is no list for historians who think the holocaust occurred, no list for biologists who accept evolution, etc. You only set up a list of that sort if you take the minority view.