A few months back I sent my open letter to debunker Ryan Owens. Within a few weeks he responded back. Here's his full response with my comments added. Ryan has given me full permission to use this email in any way I want.
(My comments in red, and also links.)
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Well this thing surely turned out to be a lot longer than I had expected (nearly 8 pages), which is why it took so long to finally get back to you. Right off the bat, I'll admit that there were some things in the letter you were correct about, like information about WTC7 being based on early hypotheses which later turned out to be incorrect, which I plan to make a note of in the videos with one of the little bubble box things as soon as I figure out how to do that and get a chance to. But for about 95% of the things you said, it seemed to me like you were just repeating the same old 9/11 truther speaking points when they try to "debunk the debunkers". Given the fact that, as we will see, you did not respond to the full 100% of my letter, I don't see that as being a fair or accurate statement. I tried not to sound like too much of a dick in my responses, And you didn't . I have dealt with those sorts of people before. You are not one of them. but some of the things were just too ridiculous. Anyway, here's the letter. Feel free to use any quotes from it (or the whole thing) however you want. And I will.
9/11 Debunked: Controlled Demolition not Possible
Claim 1: Concerning the puffs of air being ejected several floors below the pancaking floors, this is something I DO address IN the video. The floor slabs extended across the open office space areas, but there was a massive core in each tower which contained three stairwells, over a dozen elevator shafts, and numerous air shafts for ventilation throughout the building. This accounts for the puffs of air several stories below the actual pancaking floor slabs. Furthermore, actual controlled demolitions set of their explosives BEFORE the building begins to collapse (since, of course, it is the explosives that CAUSE the collapse). In fact, some of these ejections have been shown to occur before the collapse here and here. The fact that 100% of the puffs of air you refer to are seen only AFTER the collapse has clearly already started proves that the collapse caused the puffs, the puffs didn't cause the collapse. As I have shown, this is incorrect. Finally, remember that not a single one of the video cameras recorded the resulting tremendous explosion that would had been clearly audible if these puffs of air were indeed explosions. If the explosions were continuous and rapid, then distinct explosions would have been nearly impossible to hear.
Only a percentage of the concrete per floor pulverized, with that percentage growing greater and greater the further into the collapse. Additionally, much of the dust was composed not only of pulverized concrete but also by the pulverized drywall. NIST's collapse theory is not contradicted by this, it merely demonstrates a misunderstanding among most 9/11 truthers of what NIST's collapse theory IS.
A few things you did not address:
1) Calculations done by Dr. Crockett Grabbe show that the horizontal ejection rate of the squibs is disproportional to the vertical collapse rates of the Towers. And 2) David Chandler has shown that some of these ejections came from the steel corner columns, making it impossible that they were the result of air pressure.
Claim 2: There are no squibs "shooting" out of the north side of Building 7. This is the clearest video of what you refer to, so your readers can watch for themselves:
What I see are a series of windows breaking due to the stress as the outer shell of WTC7 begins to descend downward. The outward rush of air caused by the descending shell then pushes the intense smoke with had filled every floor at that point out through those broken windows. According to NIST, there were only fires mainly on the lower floors, not the upper ones. And according to the FEMA report: “Concrete floor slabs provided vertical compartmentalization to limit fire and smoke spread between floors (see Figure 5-11). Architectural drawings indicate that the space between the edge of the concrete floor slab and curtain wall, which ranged from 2 to 10 inches, was supposed to be filled with firestopping material.”
Therefore, it seems unlikely that the smoke from the lower floors could have traveled up to the upper floors.
I see no flashes of light indicating an explosion, nor did any of the video cameras pick up any tremendously deafening explosions which would have been picked up if these were indeed explosions. Furthermore, whether you believe that these are breaking windows or "squibs", we can both agree that they occur near the TOP of the building (about 10 floors from the roof), whereas we can also agree that the building began collapsing from the BOTTOM. So what would possibly be the reason for setting off explosions near the roof when the collapse initiates from the base? Perhaps to weaken the building throughout, as is done in other demolitions. In this video, explosions can be seen going off at the upper sections even after the building has started to fall.
Claim 3: Where do I begin? With regards to the many videos in and around Ground Zero following the collapses in which random explosions are heard... well, duh, that's because stuff was exploding! The collapses damaged underground gas lines, setting off random explosions all throughout the day. Hundreds of vehicles were also set on fire, setting off random explosions. An explosion in the pile AFTER the collapses of the towers (or literally hours and hours before the collapse of WTC7) is not evidence of explosive charges placed inside the buildings. I have shown this to be wrong. Kevin McPadden, the only person claiming to have heard explosions preceding the collapse of WTC7, was a well-known 9/11 truther who gave speeches at rallies and never once made any mention of having heard explosions prior to the collapse of WTC7. He only "remembered" this detail and began making the claim in September 2007, a full 6 years after 9/11! He is also contradicted by the many firefighters who say that they never heard any explosions preceding the collapse of WTC7 as well as the many video cameras which were present and recording at the exact intersection where McPadden claims to have been standing, in which no explosions are heard.
If you hear an explosion in the NBC video of WTC7's collapse, then you are making yourself hear something which is not there. I am not making myself hear anything. I can clearly here loud booms occurring right before the collapse. Even just a single explosion needed to sever even one column in WTC7would have created an audio level of about 140 dB at a distance of half a mile, equivalent to the audio level created by a jet engine. Here, you are using NIST's strawman argument, assuming that RDX, which produces those sound levels, was the only explosive that could have been used. There are other substances, such as incendiaries, that could have been used. It's worth pointing out that very few of the prominent controlled demolition advocates have ever suggested that RDX alone was used. Why you and NIST would rule out demolition based on this argument is puzzling. But the fact remains is that the "sounds" are not what defines an explosion. Also, remember that this would be only one explosion, whereas controlled demolitions traditionally use hundreds of explosives. The video of 1WTC's collapse, in which you claim explosions are heard, contains nothing of the sort. The constant "crashing" sound is the normal sound of the building collapsing. What should a collapsing 110 story skyscraper sound like? You are missing the point in that sounds consistent with demolition can be heard, something you and other debunkers have said did not occur. Should it not make any sound at all? Also, the roaring/crashing sound is heard only AFTER the building begins to collapse. If this were controlled demolition, you would hear sharp - BANG, BANG, BANG - sounds, following by the collapse of the building. If these were traditional demolitions, I would agree. But if these were supposed to be deceptive demolitions, then they would obviously be modified. The video PROVES that there AREN'T any such explosions. No, it does not.
I note that here you completely ignored Claim 4, which is your video's assertion that explosives would have left behind remnants such as det cord. I clearly demonstrated that Brent Blanchard and yourself are incorrect about this assertion, and I still recommend you put a disclaimer in your video.
9/11 Debunked: World Trade Center - No Free-Fall Speed
Claim 1: Don't understand your reasoning. The upper section did tilt 23 degrees to the east, but the floor slabs of the floors below pancaked pretty much straight downward. The core of the South Tower had neither its north or west columns. If the top tilted to the east, we would expect at least the west columns to survive.
9/11 Debunked: Flight 77's Pilot not a Terrorist
I'm glad you don't believe Flight 77's pilot, Charles Burlingame, was in some way in on 9/11. I'm also aware that not every 9/11 truther has the exact same beliefs about 9/11 as every other 9/11 truther. In fact, I'm sure no two 9/11 truthers have the exact same beliefs. In my videos I don't say that all 9/11 truthers believe in the particular claim being debunked. I'm just saying, "Here is a theory, and now here's why it's false." I'm also well aware that not all 9/11 truthers believe it was a missile that hit the Pentagon, but I still have videos debunking this theory because there are plenty 9/11 truthers who DO believe this. And I happen to think those are some of your better videos. The theories about Burlingame somehow being involved in 9/11 were put forth by Loose Change 2nd Edition, which was reportedly the most viewed internet video at one point, so surely a lot of people knew of this theory even if not all of them believed it. It would still help if you added some sort of disclaimer to make clear that few truthers believe that theory.
9/11 Debunked: WTC 7's Collapse Explained
Claim 1: Correct, the original WTC7 was 350 feet from the North Tower, not "less than 300 feet" as I said in the video. If I remember correctly, when I was making the video I used the distance bar on a satellite photo of Ground Zero post-9/11 via Google Maps, which it turns out is not the most accurate technique. At the time I also assumed the southern edge of the original WTC7 was perfectly flush with the edge of the Vesey Street sidewalk as the new WTC7 is, but it turns out that the original building was pushed back (northward) about 20-30 feet to allow for the loading docks. However, whether 300 feet or 350 feet, this is still nothing with compared to the vertical height of the North Tower (1368 feet). The horizontal distance between the buildings was only about 1/4th the height of the tower. Though to be fair, most of the large debris appeared to be heading towards building 7 when the North Tower was at about half its original height. For comparison, we know that debris from the North Tower fell as far away as to crush the eastern edge of the Winter Gardens, which is about 500 feet away. Yes, and why was this debris flung so far? Still, I will add a message in the video saying it should be 350 feet.
Claims 2, 3, and 4: I made and uploaded this video in September 2007, which was over a year before the official investigation had released its final report. Hence, everything in the video was based off of NIST's working hypothesis at that time. The investigation found that the diesel generators did not help to feed the fires and that it was the failure of Column 79, not Truss 1, which initiated the collapse. Also, the report does not say that the structural damage to the building played no role in the events leading to WTC7's collapse, it found that it played only a minor role. They did say, however, that the building would have collapsed even with no structural damage. However none of these three findings by the investigation changed the overall hypothesis for the collapse as presented in their early reports and in the video. Yes, the hypothesis of fire, which was the only hypothesis they seriously looked into. Still, I'll note either in the video or in the description that the video was made several years ago and based on the findings at the time.
9/11 Debunked: "Molten Metal" Explained
Claim 1: I usually don't like to just tell people "Read the report", since most of them won't bother to, but this is such a complicated area that you really need to at least just read the section of the official report dealing with the temperature simulations and how they calculated the temperature of the fires. It was different on every floor. It was also different as time passed. Hydrocarbon fires can burn as hot as over 2000 degrees F, but NIST calculated that based on the available oxygen entering the building, the fires in the hottest parts of the building were generally burning at about 1832 degrees F. This was also backed up based on analysis of steel beams in WTC7 by FEMA that showed that they maximum temperature they had reached was 1832 degrees F. Interesting that you would bring this up. You are referring to the eutectic steel. You have such strong faith in NIST's calculations, and yet this steel actually contradicts NIST's WTC7 report more than it supports NIST's report on the Towers. After all, nowhere in NIST's WTC7 report do they claim that any of the steel in Building 7 was heated to 1800F. At most, they claim the steel in Building 7 was heated to about 1250F. So, the WTC7 steel may support the WTC collapse report, but it raises more problems for the Building 7 report. In any case, I cannot say how accurate NIST's calculations are until they release their modeling data for peer review. Of course, this beam was from WTC7 (not the Twin Towers), but the fires in the towers and WTC7 were very similar and fed by the same material, the same type of normal office contents. My key point is that the maximum temperatures for the fires would have been about 1832F. But I have seen no empirical evidence to support the assertion that the fires in the South Tower were that hot only minutes before its collapse. The page you linked to completely misrepresents NIST (or at the least, misleads the reader). The fires in the towers took place over 8 floors in 1WTC and 6 floors in 2WTC. That's 14 floors and literally hundreds of columns and hundreds of floor trusses. The hottest zones in the towers were at the floor trusses (IE, the ceilings, remember heat rises), not the core columns or perimeter columns. NIST was only able to analyze core and perimeter columns. They weren't able to test the floor trusses I THINK because they needed to actually test the paint and the floor trusses were not painted. In any case, details about the temperatures the columns reached tell us nothing about the temperatures the floor trusses reached. Regardless, any speculation that the trusses were heated far hotter than the core or perimeter columns is just that-- pure speculation backed by no empirical evidence.
Claim 2: This is grasping at straws when you consider than the color of any metal is going to vary with the lighting even if the temperature remains the same, True, but the picture I reference shows the south side more in shadow than the other sides, meaning that less natural light would have altered the color. and also there are dozens of videos showing the molten metal, and at many angles the molten metal is even a much darker orange. Also true, but the fact remains that the metal clearly did attain this high temperature at some point. Molten aluminum should not remain that bright for very long.
9/11 Debunked: World Trade Center's Collapse Explained
Claim 1: See above.
9/11 Debunked: WTC - Zero Hallmarks of Controlled Demolition
Claim 1: Not always but generally. The reason no flashes are seen in that video is because the demolition team wrapped heavy protection around the blast zones to prevent the explosives from sending debris flying. Regardless, flashes can obviously be prevented in a controlled demolition, based on how the explosives are set up or what type of explosives are used. You should still add a disclaimer that bright flashes do not have to occur for it to be a demolition. Flashes in the South Tower's collapse have been found. You ignore the deafening explosions in that video. No, I don't. As I've shown, explosions are present in videos of the Tower collapses.
Claim 2-4: See above.
Claim 5: Wrong, it leans exactly as it starts to collapse. No, it doesn't. Also, something I don't even see you truthers talk about is why you think the buildings leaned AT ALL. The fires in the South Tower at the moment of collapse were on the east side of the building, and the building leaned to the east when it started to collapse. A controlled demolition would have caused a straight down symetrical collapse, with nothing to cause such a sharp lean. So by your standards, this must not be a controlled demolition. Even if for some unfathomable reason it would have caused a lean, the odds of it just "coincidentally" leaning in the exact direction where the fires were is 1 in 4. But wait, the exact same thing happened in the North Tower. The fires at the time of collapse were on the south side of the building, and the building leans to the south as it collapses. The odds of this happening by coincidence: 1 in 4. The odds of it happening in both towers in 1 in 4 multiplied by 1 in 4, or 1 in 16. Unless they were engineered to do that, much like how the demolitions would had to have started near where the planes impacted the buildings.
Claim 5: The antenna falls at exactly the same time as the rest of the building, even in that video. Again, the antenna does rotate south at one point, but the initial motion was entirely vertical and happened before the main collapse. Also, the fact that huge sections (as much as 70 stories tall) NIST says 60 stories for WTC1 and 40 for WTC2. of the North Tower's core remained standing for about 20 seconds after the rest of the building has collapsed proves that the core did not fall first. This assertion relies on the idea that the core would start to fail at the bottom like a conventional demolition. However, the demolition clearly had to start at the top, meaning that only the upper part of the core had to fail for the antenna to fail first.
Claim 6: See above.
Claim 7: Agreed 100%. But the claim that the buildings fell at or near free-fall acceleration is one of the KEYSTONE claims of the 9/11 truth movement, it's even 1 of the top 10 claims of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Many argue that explosives were placed on every column on every floor, which caused a free-fall collapse. Of course, this is completely ridiculous and even if you wanted to take a building down in a controlled demolition, you wouldn't need to put explosives on every single column and on every floor. So, their ideas about how controlled demolitions work is laughable in the first place, but the point of my video is to prove that they didn't fall at free-fall anyway. That's fine, but my main point was that you explicetly state in your video that explosives "would have caused the buildings to collapse at free fall speed." I showed this to be most likely incorrect. Basically, you should think about rephrasing that particular comment.
Claim 8: Again, the claim that the buildings fell into their own footprints is one of THE LEADING claims of the 9/11 truth movement. The point of my video was to prove that none of the buildings fell even remotely into their own footprints. That may apply to the Towers, but to claim that Building 7 did not "even fall remotely into" its footprint is stretching the truth, don't you think? Panels from the North Tower radiated outwards as far as 600 feet outside the building's footprint. Yes, and why were they flung that far? 30 W. Broadway, which was entirely across the street from WTC7, was so badly damaged by debris from WTC7 that it had to be demolished. "Entirely across the street" makes it sound like it was blocks away. As I said before, the fact that Building 7 damaged other buildings was probably due to the fact that it was a very large building. A building the size of WTC7 would never have been legally demolished with explosives with neighboring buildings that close, hence why they are demolishing the Deutsche Bank Building beam by beam. Only within the past couple months did they start constructing the new 30 W. Broadway.
9/11 Debunked: Thermate Chemical Signatures Disproven
The video was made in December 2007 (and was actually just an updated version of the one I'd made about 6 months prior), which was based on a 204 page/slide PowerPoint presentation that Steven Jones had been giving, when he was still claiming it was thermate. In that presentation he wasn't talking about microspheres or red chips at all, it was all about thermate and chemicals found in the dust. This is simply wrong. Dr. Jones has, to the best of my knowledge, always talked about the iron spheres when discussing his thermite hypotheses. He certainly was discussing them at the Rebuilding America's Senses event, a clip of which you show at the beginning of your video. In his slide presentations, he discusses the spheres in great detail.
It was only later that he changed his version of the truth (for the third time) and started talking about nanothermite and microspheres (which, by the way, form completely naturally in ordinary office fires and the EPA had already released a lengthy report explaining the microspheres in December 2003, literally years and years before Jones had ever even heard of them). The EPA actually discussed using the spheres as one of the signature components to distinguish WTC dust from so-called “background” dust (i.e. common office-building dust).
By that time I felt no need to keep making videos debunking every new version of the truth that Steven Jones came up with. First, it was thermite (which I debunked). Then, "No no, it was thermate!" (which I debunked). Then, "No no, it was nanothermite!" Even more recently, he seems to have changed his story yet AGAIN and now claims that it was traditional explosives all along, and if nanothermite was involved at all then it was just to be used as a detonator to set off the explosives (which, by the way, it a completely ridiculous theory since there are already detonators for explosives which work perfectly well and reliably and there would be no need to invent "nanothermite detonators"... but, that's Steven Jones for ya). This sort of nonsensical criticism has already been thoroughly addressed.
None of this changes the fact that the current information in your video is incorrect. Your claims about thermate have long been debunked, and I highly recommend that you either add disclaimers to your video or remove it entirely. I also recommend you look at this, regarding your criticism of the nanothermite discovery.
9/11 Debunked: WTC - No Pools of Molten Steel
Claim 1: Ugh, sorry to be blunt but please tell me you're joking. You're basically saying that the reason the molten metal was still molten 6 weeks later is because the thermite/thermate continued to burn for 6 weeks. No. What I claim, or rather, what the peer reviewed scientific article claims, is that there was an abundance of odd chemicals and chemical reactions occuring at Ground Zero which lasted for weeks because the chemicals were largely present and continued to reacte. This is outlined in this video at minute 6:52. In one of my videos I show that the amount of molten metal flowing from the South Tower in the final 7 minutes before its collapse can be estimated at about 30 tons, which would require 60 tons of thermite, which is equivalent to about 10 full dump truck loads of thermite. The idea of sneaking that much thermite onto one office floor with no one noticing is so absurd that anyone seriously entertaining the idea that the molten material flowing from the South Tower is molten iron from thermite should have their sanity card revoked. Right. Because it sounds tricky to do, we can just throw out the theory entirely. Gotcha. But wait, this is only one building. You say molten steel was found below all three buildings. For both towers and WTC7, it would require, say, 180 tons or 30 full dump trucks of thermite! And this is 180 tons of thermite for a 7 minute burn. Now if you want to go so far as to say that the burn lasted not for 7 minutes but for 6 WEEKS... then this calculates out to not 180 tons of thermite but 1,555,200 tons of thermite! Equivalent to about 259,200 full dump truck loads of thermite! I defy you to sneak even ONE dump truck load of thermite into the World Trade Center (or any other office building). Again, I recommend that you actually read the enviromental anomalies paper.
Claim 2: Oxidize does NOT mean vaporize! Oxidation of lead will start at normal room temperatures. Yes, but it has to boil before it oxidizes. And lead does not boil until temperatures of 3180F. And RJ Lee made it clear in their 2003 report that they talked about temperatures “at which lead would have undergone vaporization.” (RJ Lee Group, WTC Dust Signature Study, 2003, page 5) And temperatures high enough to melt steel or iron were recorded in the debris.
Claim 3: See above.
Claim 4: Glowing does not mean molten. Yes, but if a metal such as copper or aluminum were glowing that bright it would be completely liquid. Anyway there's no question there was molten metal in the debris pile (aluminum, lead, and copper were all abundant in the debris pile and all have melting points at or below the range of fires known to exist in the pile). But as I already pointed out, because the molten metal remained glowing for as long as it did, it indicates it was a metal with fairly low heat conductivity and high heat capacity, which is not the characteristic of any of the metals you mentioned. Even if the flakes falling from the glowing beam were molten (meaning, liquid) as opposed to glowing embers, that doesn't automatically indicate that it was molten steel. It does if the other metals are ruled out.
Claim 5: As stated above, copper and lead were also present through the complex (used in pipes and wiring and other electrical devices). But they do not have the heat conductivity/capacity characteristcs I mentioned.
9/11 Debunked: The "First Time in History" Claim
Claim 1: It is from the FEMA report and I'll point out in the video NIST's estimation.
Claim 2: See above.
Claim 3: When I show examples of those steel-framed buildings collapsing from fire, I didn't claim they were skyscrapers! I even say that the Kader Toy Factory collapses were all 4-story buildings, and I certainly don't imply that the Dogwood Elementary School was a skyscraper. I never stated that you claimed they were skyscrapers. I simply pointed out that you compare them to the Towers, which is obviously misleading. How would the partial collapse of the Windsor Building possibly support your side? The link I provided should have clarified that. The building was designed differently than the WTC in that it had a concrete core from the bottom of the building all the way to the roof and concrete floor columns up to around the 21st floor. Only the top 11 floors had a steel-frame, and that was only the FLOORS (meaning the office space, not including the core which was concrete). All 11 of these steel-framed floors collapsed to the ground from fire. The only part of the building that didn't collapse was the concrete core and the bottom 21 concrete floors. Fire affects steel differently than concrete. 100% of the Windsor Building which had a steel-frame design collapsed. 100% of the World Trade Center had a steel-frame.
You laughably attack us debunkers for not comparing the World Trade Center to other fires in skyscrapers which did not collapse. Maybe the reason we don't compare the WTC to these other skyscraper fires is as simple as this: Of every single other skyscraper fire (you know, the ones you truthers love to talk about), not a single one of them had a hijacked 767 crash into them. True, but the fires are blamed more for the collapses than the damage. Nearly all of them were also made of concrete and not a steel-frame like the WTC. Wrong. The One Meridian Plaza and the First Interstate Bank were in fact tube-within-tube steel-framed designs like the Towers were, although not quite the same. Even WTC7, although not hit by a plane, was completely different than these other fires in that it had a steel-frame, it was designed completely differently than these other buildings, it no sprinklers working to suppress the fires, and it was abandoned by the FDNY and allowed to burn unchecked for 7 hours (whereas most other high-rise fires had firefighters in the building fighting the fires). If you would bother to read what NIST said about the fires in WTC7 (yes, I have read much of the WTC7 report), then you would see that NIST claims that “[I]n each of the other referenced buildings, the fires burned out several floors, even with available water and fire fighting activities (except for WTC 5). Thus, whether the fire fighters fought the WTC 7 fires or not is not a meaningful point of dissimilarity from the other cited fires.” Ultimately, NIST says the fires in other steel-framed buildings were, at the very least, just as severe as the fires in WTC7. They claim the crucial differences had to do with differences in design, but this has already been found to be problematic as well.
We don't compare the WTC to these other buildings because they are nothing alike, and you shouldn't either. So you apparently think it's okay to compare the Towers to elementary schools and badly built toy factories? Just because they collapsed from fire? Sorry, but until I see an example of a steel framed skyscraper totally collapsing from fire, I think I have good reason to compare the WTC skyscrapers with other skyscrapers.
Lastly, I would just like to point out that even if an event is the first time in history that it's happened, that doesn't mean it's impossible for it to ever happen. In 1912, for the first time in history a luxury liner sank after hitting an iceberg. In 1937, for the first time in history a passenger airship burst into flames while in the air. In 1969, for the first time in history man walked on the moon. In 2003, for the first time in history a Space Shuttle exploded on reentry into the atmosphere due to damage to its heat shield. In 2008, for the first time in history the United States elected its first African-American president. Just because something happens "for the first time in history", that doesn't mean it's impossible for it to happen. True, but one must look at the bigger picture in these matters. Say, for example, three Titanic-like ships, all designed to cope well in extreme situations, all sank after all three had hit icebergs within hours of each other. Three ships all sinking for the same reason within a few hours. If that had happened in 1912, I'm sure most people would find that incredibly suspicious and very well could have caused people to cry "conspiracy."
9/11 Debunked: On WTC's Design to Withstand 707 Impact
Claim 1: Leslie Robertson passionately rejects this claim by the Port Authority. Even if it were true, which it may well be, the towers on 9/11 DID survive the plane impacts. The stripping of the fireproofing and the long-term fires were another matter entirely. Oh and you conveniently left off that part from the NIST report which expresses doubt over which of the speeds was considered. I am fully aware of NIST's doubt, but I have yet to see any pre-9/11 documentation showing that the speeds considered were really 180mph. But I have seen plenty of pre-9/11 material saying otherwise.
Claim 3: Again, the towers did remain standing after the planes hit. Still, your argument is obviously misleading.
Claim 4: When you truthers quote John Skilling, you always leave off the most important part of his quote: "However, back in those days people didn't think about terrorists very much." He was still considering it being an accident, not a plane being deliberately crashed into the building at full speed with 10,000 gallons of jet fuel. But, he clearly stated that he fires were taken into account. Also, your claim about Robertson being the cheif engineer is still wrong. Skilling was clearly the head engineer.
9/11 Debunked: WTC - No Small or Oxygen-Starved Fires
Claim 1: I don't know if this is 9/11 truthers' attempt at a straw-man argument or just a complete misunderstanding of what the official explanation for what the collapse is, but the NIST report says that the jet fuel burned off within the first 10 minutes and had, essentially, nothing to do with the fires in the buildings. The jet fuel acted like a match: It started the fires, but then the jet fuel itself burned off almost immediately, leaving normal office fires to burn, much like a match lighting a fireplace. The jet fuel was gone in 10 minutes, yet the fires in 1WTC burned for 102 minutes! 7WTC did not have one drop of jet fuel in it at any point, and yet it burned out of control for nearly 7 hours. What I pointed out, however, is that your citation of NIST saying that 70% of the fuel remained in the Towers is wrong, and that they clarify this much more accurately in NCSTAR 1-5F. They even go as far as saying that half the fuel in the buildings did not even stay within the imapct points and that it flowed away from were the planes hit. So you should clearly rethink your statements about how much fuel was in the Towers, as they obviously played a role in how the fires were spread throughout the buildings.
9/11 truthers very commonly assume that the fires were fed entirely (or mostly) by jet fuel, when in fact the official report makes it clear that the jet fuel had very little to do with anything. And in the case of WTC7, it had nothing to do with anything. I never claim jet fuel was the only source of fuel for the fires. What I claim is that you are cleary wrong about how much fuel was in the Towers.
Claim 2: This claim is better addressed by NYPD videographer Steve Spak who, in the documentary "The Truth Behind the Third Tower", responding to Richard Gage's claim that the smoke pouring out of WTC7 was actually being drawn over to WTC7's south side from WTC6, says that that's absurd and that he was there on the scene that day and that the smoke was clearly coming FROM WTC7. It then cuts to a video clearly showing the smoke coming out of WTC7, not being drawn TO WTC7 and then rising up its side. I'm sorry, but pictures and videos show that clearly the same thing happened to WTC1 (minute 11:43).
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Mr. Owens, I hope you will take these points into consideration and keep your promise.
