Introduction

This article will examine the claims made in the March, 2005 issue of Popular
Mechanics purporting to "debunk" 9/11 "conspiracy theories."

A fundamental tenet underlying my analysis is my firm belief that the American

People have not been afforded a forum - whether in closed hearings
by their elected Representatives in Congress, or in public - whereby urgent
questions relating to the events of September 11th, 2001 have been addressed cogently
and forthrightly.

Generally the reasons offered by the Government for this failure are to the effect of:
"We're too busy fighting the war on terror;" or "An investigation might hamper
efforts to secure the safety and well-being of the American people."

This line of argument is only plausible up to a point.

Certainly there was a rush to judgment that Osama bin Laden and "Al Qaeda"
were "behind" the attacks. Shortly after September 11, 2001, on September 14th,
the FBI released a list of 19 suspected "hijackers." The day before, Secretary of State
Colin Powell had fingered Osama bin Laden as likely to have been behind the attacks.
Presumably then, the FBI's list of suspected hijackers included individuals associated
with bin Laden; or part of the bin Laden organization, dubbed by Western intelligence
"Al Qaeda," meaning "the base" in Arabic, and often used as a euphemism for the
crapper. Note that no one in bin Laden's organization had ever used this term with
reference to themselves or to their activities before 911.

A reasonable person might ask, on what grounds should we believe that bin Laden
and/or "Al Qaeda" was responsible for the September 11th attacks?

And, how did the FBI come up with its list of suspects?

What was known about bin Laden and "Al Qaeda" beforehand?

(The speed with which FBI Director Meuller produced the September 14th
list of names implies foreknowledge.)

Even then the question, "How did this happen?" still remains.

Was somebody asleep at the wheel?

The United States spends about 1/3rd of its national budget on defense (if you include
allocations for past military expenditures, for example, veterans' pensions and benefits,
including the VA, and interest on past war-debt, the figure is actually much higher).

What were our military defense forces doing on the morning of September 11th?

The stated mission of the 9/11 Commission was to find out what went wrong on
the morning of September 11th, 2001 - and even what might have gone "right,"
although apart from the heroism displayed by some ordinary Americans and first
responders it is difficult to find much in the chronology of events surrounding 9/11
to recommend to history.

David Ray Griffin, in a follow-up to an earlier (2004) book, The New Pearl Harbor, has
subjected the 9/11 Commission Report to a thorough review.

In The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, Griffin shows that the
Commission performed a great disservice to the men and women who died on the
morning of 9/11, to their families, and to this Nation.

The author masterfully marshals complex materials, drawing on the timelines constructed
by Paul Thompson (available online at cooperativeresearch.org or in Thompson's new
book, The Terror Timeline). Extending Paul Thompson's 2003 article, "The Failure to
Defend the Skies on 9/11," Griffin's painstaking analysis of flights 11,175, 77 and 93 is
simply unsurpassed in its clarity.

Griffin argues persuasively that the 9/11 Commission deliberately set out to shift the
entire burden of blame for the deficiencies of the US military's response on the morning
of 9/11 onto the FAA. Griffin demonstrates that the Commission's revisionist account of
the responses of both NORAD/NEADS and those of the civilian authorities, including
the FAA, is simply not credible.

Before proceeding, then, with an analytical deconstruction of the Popular Mechanics

article, "Debunking 9/11 Lies," it is necessary that readers understand that the PM article
relies heavily on the 9/11 Commission Report, but without specifically citing, or even
acknowledging the 9/11 Commission, or any of its reports, including the widely-
publicized final report.

Note that the article also relies heavily on the FEMA/ASCE/NIST Building Performance
Reports, and specifically, the Building Performance Assessment Team (BPAT) Reports,
which analyzed the factors that led to the collapse of the World Trade Center (Twin
Towers, the WTC Hotel, Buildings 4, 5, 6 and 7, and the Bankers Trust Building).
These are available online. Readers are encouraged to consult the original reports.

The Joint House and Senate Intelligence Committee (JICI) held hearings in September
2002 to address 'intelligence failures" relating to 9/11. This question - "What did we
know about bin Laden and "Al Qaeda" prior to 9/11?" - was taken up again by the 9/11
Commission. Peter Lance, in his book Cover-Up (a follow-up to his earlier book, 1,000
Years for Revenge) argues convincingly that the 9/11 Commission's Report is not to be
believed. The subject of "What did we know (beforehand)?" was not addressed by the
article in Popular Mechanics , and will not be discussed further here.
1. A thousand words: seeing is NOT believing!

The first straw man knocked down by Popular Mechanics was

the question of photographic "evidence." Popular Mechanics
seems not to have noticed that the writers of the WTC
Building Performance Report were forced to rely - heavily - on
photographic evidence. This was because forensic evidence
that would have allowed for truly definitive analysis of structural
failures was removed and disposed-of before House Science Committee
investigators could secure the crime scene. In some cases, team members
were forced to retrieve pieces of steel from dump trucks or from garbage
barges. Almost all of the physical evidence was sold as scrap to China. In
several instances, due to "jurisdictional conflicts" and a lack of any
clear command authority, investigators were actually prevented from
accessing the WTC site.

I should note that the writers of the Popular Mechanics article themselves
resort to photographic evidence in their disposition of another scuttlebutt,
namely the windows - or lack thereof - on Flight 175.

Without acknowledging the facts regarding the wanton disposition of

crucial physical evidence, the writers of "Debunking 9/11 Lies"
instead choose to focus on a question raised by David von Kleist, of the
Power Hour radio show.

Von Kleist had noticed what appears to be a strange "pod" mounted on the under-
belly of Flight 175 in a photograph taken by Rob Howard and published in New
York magazine.

Popular Mechanics sent a "digital scan" of the photo, taken just seconds
before UA 175 smashed into the South Tower, for analysis to Ronald Greeley,
Director of the Space Photography Laboratory at Arizona State University.
Greeley concluded that the apparent "bulge" - or "pod" - was likely an artifact.

Although intriguing, many of the other images reproduced by von Kleist in his
video, 9/11 In Plane Site were derived from videographic recordings, and these
similarly cannot be resolved decisively.

Popular Mechanics' writers at were at pains to emphasize that von Kleist "believes"
that the mysterious pod "proves" that the 9/11 attacks were an "inside job."

However, von Kleist has always insisted that he does not know what
caused the mysterious bulge seen in the Howard photograph.

He merely asks us to look at the photograph and then asks, "What is it?"

Von Kleist carefully qualifies his remarks, asking:

 if what we see in the photograph was not UA 175
- if, for example, what we're looking at is a picture of a tanker jet -
and not a Boeing 767 - then,
what would this imply?

An atmosphere of "internet myth and rumor" permeates the whole article.

James Meigs, the editor of Popular Mechanics,, in a brief introductory essay,
"The lies are out there," makes reference to the "X-Files" and to "Oliver
Stone movies."

Significantly, Dr. Greeley was asked to analyze a digital scan of the original
Howard photograph. This already seriously vitiated any conclusions he may have
have been able to draw about the apparent "bulge" which appears underneath the
fuselage of the aircraft that crashed into South Tower (which, according to the "consensus
reality" was a Boeing 767-200ER).
2. Even if not a stand-down, then surely a let down

As I have already indicated, Popular Mechanics' defense of the US military's

response - and more specifically, the response of NORAD/NEADS - on the
morning of September 11, 2001 is at best percursory and relies, uncritically, on
the 9/11 Commission Report. - without, however, anywhere referring to either
the 9/11 Commission or to any of its reports.

As stated in my introduction, the 9/11 Commission had a hidden agendum. First, the
Commission labored to absolve the US military of any possible blame for its evident
failure on the morning of 9/11. To do so, of course, it had to deny the obvious - pretend
either that the attacks on World Trade Center and the Pentagon had never occurred, or, if
they had, that this, somehow, did not constitute any dereliction of duty - without,
however, admitting at any point that the response of the US military that morning was
ever anything less than exemplary.

That is, there really was, no, not any, failure to defend the skies after all!

(Meanwhile, for months after the attacks, the smoke continued to pour out of Ground
Zero...)

It would have been easier if the Commission had not been saddled with
an additional burden. It had also to be sure to remove any suspicion that
Flight 93 might have been shot down by US fighter jets - even though, given
everything that had happened that morning there was every justification for
"executive action."

It was arguably better to have brought down the plane over rural Pennsylvania
than some densely populated area. But curiously, the US military had frantically
denied responsibility for this - the one effective action taken that morning to try
and stop the attacks!

Popular Mechanics, following the lead of the 9/11 Commission in a locked-step

fashion, claims that the FAA (specifically, "Boston Center, one of 22 Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) regional ATC facilities") called NEADS (Northeast Air Defense
Sector) three times.

In fact, according to the writers of the Popular Mechanics article (and the 9/11
Commission), the FAA greatly added to the confusion. The Commission claimed that
someone at Boston Center called NEADS and asked whether American Flight 11 was still
in the air and headed towards Washington, DC, at almost the same moment that Flight
175 slammed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
This call was recorded by NEADS and was cited by the Commission as
"NEADS audiofile, Identification Technician position, channel 7, 9:21:10"
(reference #148, chapter 1).

[A truncated segment of this audiofile recording - or perhaps a dramatization of it - was

replayed in the National Geographic special Inside 91/1.]

It is striking that the Commission does not cite any other logs or transcripts of
taped conversations - of the Logan controllers, or air-traffic controllers at any of the other
FAA centers; or of their military counterparts at NEADS - in support of their assertion
that this one brief exchange "explained" the apparent inability of highly-trained military
personnel at NEADS - or anyone else in the North American Aerospace Defense
Command - to anywise comprehend "what was happening" that morning until after the
attacks.

In its final report the 9/11 Commission admitted that their researchers had not been able
to determine the provenance of this audio file. That is, they had been "unable" to
ascertain the identity of who it was at "Boston Center" that had, presumptively on the
morning of 9/11, put in a call to NEADS, and, in the course of terse conversation, made
the confusing remarks about AA Flight 11. Nor were 9/11 Commission staffers able to
identify of the woman at NEADS ("Technician position, channel 7") who took the call.

They do not explain why they were unable to identify either the Boston Logan controller
or the NEADS "channel 7" technician.

This is simply unacceptable as "evidence."

For all we know, "NEADS audiofile, Identification Technician position, channel 7,

9:21:10" could have been recorded at a later date.

"Officially," that is, according to the 9/11 Commission, this call was made at 9.21 a.m.
(pp. 26, 27)

Taken out of context, it is very misleading.

It is extraordinarily revealing that the Commission focused - obsessively - on this one

brief snippet of recorded conversation. The Commission introduced "NEADS audiofile,
Identification Technician position, channel 7, 9:21:10" as if it were a kind of "smoking
gun." This brief exchange of remarks - made by persons unknown - supposedly "proved"
that no one at NEADS could have possibly known that American commercial airliners
had been hijacked and that the country was under attack.

And in fact, according to the Commission, the only reason NEADS knew that American
Flight 11 had gone missing was because, at the suggestion of the military liaison at
Boston Center, NEADS "contacted the FAA's Washington Center," to be "informed" that
they were "looking" - that they'd "lost American 77."
At the same time, the Commission excluded a large volume of evidence that
indicated that senior officials at the White House, the Pentagon, at FAA
headquarters and at NEADS were well aware by 9:21 a.m. that America was
under attack.

Most of the "world" knew that "a plane" had hit the World Trade Center
by 9:03 a.m. EST. And millions of Americans were glued to their television sets when
Flight 175 crashed - "live" - into the South Tower!

Robert Marr, NEADS Commander stated on the National Geographic special, Inside 9/11
that a technician had been watching a television set in the computer room, and had come
to him to report that a plane had crashed into the Twin Tower of the Trade Center in New
York. Colonel Marr said that he then decided that they needed to "get a TV station into
the battle cab to help with... decision-making." This was a little after 8:54 a.m.
AA Flight 11 had crashed into the North Tower (at 8:46 a.m.).

So, obviously, NEADS, along with several news commentators, and millions of
Americans watching the Today Show, CNN, etc., knew that America was under
attack by the time UA 175 hit the South Tower. Knew that this was not an "accident" or a
series of accidents.

Knew that the second jet had been crashed - deliberately - into the WTC.

So what's going on here?

The casual reader might have missed the significance of this call, were it not for
the way it is highlighted by Popular Mechanics.

The 9/11 Commission stakes the main weight of their whole case on this one
undocumented, unverifiable piece of so-called "evidence?"

So what "case" are t h e y trying to make?

As pointed out in the introduction, the US spends a large part of its annual budget
on defense.

So what went wrong on 9/11?

As mentioned above, David Ray Griffin, in his book, The 9/11 Commission Report:
Omissions and Distortions persuasively argues that a fundamental objective of the 9/11
Commission was to shift the entire burden of blame for the terrible events of 9/11 - blame
for what can only be described as a truly abysmal performance by the US military - onto
the FAA.

To understand this, the reader will need to go back to the days that immediately
followed the attacks.

At a prescheduled confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services

Committee, General Richard Myers, who had been acting JCS Chairman
on September 11th, testified that, "to the best of [his] knowledge,"
the order to scramble fighters had been given "after the Pentagon [had been]
struck" (emphasis added). This was on September 13th.

As evident from the tone of Senator Levin's question to General Myers,

were we really to believe that "the armed forces of the United States simply
sat passively during the attacks?"

Then, NORAD spokesman, Mike Snyder made it worse!

He confirmed what General Myers had said in his Senate testimony to Boston Globe
reporter, Glen Johnson.

According to Snyder, "fighters were not scrambled for more than an hour after the first
hijacking was reported" (emphasis added). Presumably this means, "reported" to
NORAD.

Snyder had added that NORAD had not immediately scrambled any fighters "even
though it was alerted to a hijacking 10 minutes before the first plane...
slammed into the first World Trade Center Tower" (emphasis added).

But even before the Globe story had been published, on September 15th,
CBS Evening News, the day before, had offered another account, saying that
"contrary to early reports, US Air Force jets did get into the air on Tuesday
while the attacks were underway" (emphasis added).

The damage control was already underway.

But, if so, then how was it that no military jets were anywhere near the WTC
or the Pentagon; if only to a t t e m p t to intercept; let alone to prevent the attacks?

Note that Mike Snyder, when talking to Globe reporter Glen Johnson, on
September 15th, had refused to "comment" on the earlier (September 14th)
CBS Evening News report.

On September 18th, NORAD issued a press release, which filled in the "gaps"
in General Myers' memory.

But, as David Ray Griffin notes, in The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and
Distortions, this second, "official" version did little to allay suspicion that a stand-
down order had been given.

A careful examination of the times published by NORAD in their press release of

September 18th, when compared with accounts of the events leading up to the
hijackings and the attacks, reveals, first, and most prominently, an apparent failure by the
FAA to follow their own procedures.
Well-established routines dictated that as soon as a plane deviates from its flight-plan, air-
traffic controllers must establish contact with the plane to ascertain the reason for the
diversion. Obviously this is all the more critical in the air-space immediately surrounding
major inter-national airports, but it is generally true over the entire Eastern seaboard, with
perhaps the densest air-traffic in the world.

If the aircraft does not respond, the civilian authority is supposed to immediately
"inform" NORAD. In the event of a suspected hijacking, or even a passive crisis,
as in the case of the private jet of pro golfer Payne Stewart, which lost cabin pressure
at high-altitude, immediately killing everyone on board due to anoxia, NORAD is
supposed to scramble fighters to intercept the plane and make an assessment.

The NORAD response time is 15 minutes. (This means, the fighter jets are required to
make a visual inspection of the cockpit of the suspected plane).

As noted by the 9/11 Commission in its final report, "before 9/11, it was not unheard-
of for a commercial airliner to deviate slightly from course, or for an FAA controller
to lose radio contact with a pilot for a short period of time. A controller could also
briefly lose a commercial aircraft's transponder signal, although this happened much
less frequently. However the simultaneous loss of radio and transponder signal would
be a rare and alarming occurrence, and would normally indicate a catastrophic system
failure or an airplane crash" (p. 16).

The Commission argues that in such a case, "the job of the controller was to reach out to
the aircraft, the parent company of the aircraft, and other planes in the vicinity in an
attempt to re-establish communications and set the aircraft back on course. Alarm bells
would not start ringing until these efforts - which could take five minutes or more - were
tried and had failed" (ibid).

The September 18 NORAD timeline reveals that the "FAA" contacted NEADS
regarding AA Flight 11 at 0840 a.m. EST.

According to the Commission, the FAA did not make contact with the military until well
after they knew there was a hijacking. The Commission attributes this failure to follow
established protocols as being due to a weakened or inappropriate command structure,
stating that "as they existed on 9/11, the protocols for the FAA to obtain military
assistance required multiple levels of notification and approval at the highest levels of
government" (p.17).

Then, according to the 9/11 Commission, Boston Center called NEADS at 8:37:52 a.m.
(which only slightly differs from the NORAD September 18th timeline). As Griffin
points out, "here we... see that the regional FAA managers could [and did] call the
military themselves; without going through FAA headquarters. We also see that they did
not need to go through the NMCC in the Pentagon but could call their local NORAD
sector - in this case NEADS - directly.
"It is not clear how the Commission can [then] say that [FAA] headquarters" began to
follow the hijack protocol - but failed to contact NMCC, since "the essential role played
by FAA Headquarters in this protocol is to contact the NMCC"
(Omissions and Distortions, p.158; emphasis added).

The import of this apparent discrepancy in the Commission's presentation may be lost on
the casual reader. On the one hand, the Commission wants to suggest that a relatively
"loose" (over-long and weakly linked) or disorganized command structure on the civilian
side contributed to the delay in the military response.

What is not clear is that the ATC -> regional -> Command Center -> Headquarters
sequence has to do more to do with getting final shootdown authority than with initial
response.

In the event of a serious emergency, as in the case of the Payne Stewart plane, or a
possible hijacking, before June 2001, the FAA and NMCC were free to initiate immediate
responses without waiting for specific approval from the Secretary of Defense.

The June 2001 change was the only major change of procedures in place for over 15
years. Certain "immediate responses" were allowed under the new orders, but were
more restrictive.

Apart from shootdown authority, scramble authority also had be sought from
acting NORAD US Continental Commander, Major General Larry Arnold,
at Tyndall Air Force Base, in Florida.

NEADS Battle Commander Colonel Robert Marr, after being contacted by Logan ATC,
ordered fighters to "battle stations," and then called General Arnold to seek authorization.
"Not one to waste time, General Arnold said (he later recalled), 'go ahead and scramble
them, and we'll get authorities [sic] later'" (Griffin, quoting the Commission Report, p.
20).

Early critics of the US military response looked at the "Fighter Scramble Order" times
published by NORAD on September 18, 2001, and, when they did the math - calculated
the "Airborne" times and the times of the WTC and Pentagon crashes - they discovered
that

1) The Otis fighter jets scrambled at 8:43 (UA 175) and airborne by 8:52 ("estimated")
were 71 miles away when United 175 crashed into the South Tower; F-15s going at top
speed (or, in the words of Lt. Colonel Timothy Duffy, one of the pilots, "full-blower")
should have been over Manhattan well before 9:02 a.m.

As it turned out, at 9:02 they were "vectored towards militarily-controlled airspace off
the Long Island coast," according to the Commission (p.20). We shall see how the
Commission explains this away below.

2) Jets scrambled from Langley presented an even thornier problem for apologists for
the US military response on 9/11; we shall see how the Commission attempts to throw up
dust about this below;

for now, we'll note that according to NORAD's September 18 timeline, NEADS was
"notified" by the FAA at 9:24 (AA Flight 77);

the F-16's were fully airborne by 9:30.

What is extraordinarily interesting is that the September 18 NORAD timeline calculates

that the fighters were 105 miles when the western wall of the Pentagon was hit at 9:38.
a.m.

Langley AFB is about 129 miles away from the Pentagon.

Top speed (just under "full-burner," which is prodigal with fuel) is about 1,200 mph...

Were, perhaps, the jets headed in the wrong direction?

According to the 9/11 Commission that is exactly what happened!

In summary: the Commission had to correct some residual "defects" in the

timeline offered early on by NORAD - which had endeavored to undo the
damage caused by General Myers, at his confirmation hearing, and by Mike Snyder.

To do this, the Commission will not only have to rely on the flimsiest of "evidence,"
taken out of context, as mentioned above, and discussed further below, but will literally
have to manufacture "new" evidence out of thin air!

Without going into details here (see below for further discussion), I will only
point out that the overriding rationale behind the "phantom aircraft," introduced
by the Commission as a new revelation (it had never been reported anywhere
before, by anyone; neither at the FAA nor at the Defense Department) was
to provide an "explanation" for the fighters scrambled from Langley; since,
according to the revised (9/11 Commission) timeline, the military had never been
notified about Flight 77 (see below for discussion).

To call the Commission's revisionist timeline "Procrustean" would be too high-minded.

The Commission introduced slender reeds intended to be used as a plaster

to "explain" the launch of the Langley fighters - while at the same time maintaining
that the FAA had, in "fact," and contrary to the September 18, 2001 NORAD timeline,
never notified NORAD/NEADS about Flight 175;

or about Flight 77;

or even about Flight 93 -

until after the latter had gone down near Shanksville, PA.
To fully understand all this is to go beyond the scope of this article.

Readers are urged to consult David ray Griffin's book (along with the
Thompson/cooperativereserach.org timeline).

However, a few remarks are in order.

It is especially outrageous that the Commission "corrected" its own witness,

NORAD Commander, General Arnold, browbeating him into admitting
that in his earlier, May 23rd, 2003 testimony before the Commission, that
he had been "incorrect."

General Arnold had stated in his previous testimony that at 9:16 a.m., the
FAA had reported that United Flight 93 "might have been hijacked."

After relentless badgering by Commissioner Ben-Veniste, during the June 17, 2004
hearing, Arnold rather grudgingly conceded that in his earlier, May 23, 2003 testimony
before the Commission he must have been confused. General Arnold adds that "a lot of
the information" that Ben-Veniste and the Committee Research Staff "have found out in...
[their] study of this 9/11, the things that happened on that day, helped us [the US
military?] reconstruct what was going on."

This admission is made all the more trenchant when Ben-Veniste bears down:

"General, is it not a fact that the failure.. [of] the [NEADS] miscommunication
[about American Flight 11] and the notion of a phantom Flight 11 [which NO ONE -
neither the Press; nor NORAD/military spokespersons, nor the FAA - had hitherto
thought worthy of mention] continuing from New York City south in fact skewed the
whole reporting of 9/11, it skewed the official Air Force report, which is contained in a
book called the Air War Over America, which does not contain any information about the
fact that... [NEADS and/or the Langley fighters] were following, or thinking of a
continuation of Flight 11... that you had not received notification that Flight 11 had been
hijacked?"

As to the audiofile recording unearthed by the Commission, General Arnold lets slip that
"[NEADS} ...apparently had a tape that we were unaware of at that time [i.e., in his
earlier testimony]. And your - to the best of my knowledge, what I've been told by your
staff is that they were unable to make that tape run. But they were later able to - your staff
was able, through a contractor, to get that tape to run."

OK. Let's review:

First, we had NORAD's claim, in its September 18th, 2001 timeline,

that Air Traffic Control had failed to ever "notify" NEADS about
Flight 93. (This claim is disputed by news reports that the FAA had notified
NORAD about Flight 93 at 9:16.)
[After "FAA Notification," the NORAD timeline had indicated "N/A"
for "Not Applicable." But as we have seen, General Arnold testified
on May 23, 2003 that at 9:16 a.m. the FAA had reported to NEADS
that United Flight 93 "might have been hijacked."]

To "correct" the Sept 18 NORAD timeline, the Commission needed make sure its
witnesses got their stories "straight."

Recall that the Commission claims that the second time "the FAA" (Boston
Center) contacted NEADS, (at 9:21 a.m.) the caller only added to what Col.
Robert Marr, in his interview in the National Geographic special, Inside 9/11,
the "fog of war."

I have already noted the problems of provenance with the audifile. But to fully
understand just what the 9/11 Commission (and thus the writers of Popular Mechanics)
have done by thrusting this "evidence" into the foreground, one needs to more closely
examine the Commission's published transcript of the call with the segment reproduced
in the National Geographic special, Inside 9/11.

National Geographic is careful to label the 9:21 a.m. caller as "FAA."

Was this "Boston Center," as suggested by the Commission? Or was it perhaps someone
at Boston's Logan Air Traffic Control? Was this someone at the FAA regional center, or
could have been someone at the FAA Command Center is in Herndon, VA? Or at FAA
Headquarters in Washington (perhaps the "hijack coordinator")?

The published transcript is as follows:

FAA: Military, Boston Center. I just had a report that American 11 is still in the
air, and it's on its way towards - heading towards Washington.

NEADS: Okay. American 11 is still in the air?

FAA: Yes.

NEADS: On its way toward Washington?

FAA: That was another - it was evidently another aircraft that hit the tower.
That's the latest report we have.

In the segment reproduced by National Geographic, the "FAA" person never identifies
himself. The meaning of "Military, Boston Center" is unclear.

Did the Commission simply assume that the caller was from "Boston Center"
and insert this into the transcript? In which case, to what does "Military" refer?
It would be easy to put this all down as mere effluvium, if it weren't critical to the
9/11 Commission's case.

The Commission seems to maintain that prior to 9/11 the proper role of the military
in the event of an attack on the United States was to sit passively - awaiting information
and some kind of official "notification" from their civilian counterparts. They imply that
such was the case on 9/11.

In any event, after 9:03 a.m. it was clear to NEADS personnel that the US was under
attack.

According to the 9/11 Commission, the established p r o t o c o l was for the "hijack
coordinator" at the FAA's Headquarters in Washington was to call the NMCC (the
National Military Command Center), located in the Joint Chiefs of Staff area of the
Pentagon. The NMCC, in turn, would seek approval from the Office of the Secretary of
Defense to provide military assistance.

The 9/11 Commission enlarges on what is already - at best - a somewhat dubious

proposition ("confusion" about Flight 11) by attempting to create a thoroughly false
impression that the FAA had somehow "lost track" of the hijacked flights, something not
borne out by any historical account!

Note that the sole basis for Popular Mechanics' claims regarding Flight 77
could only have come from the 9/11 Commission "reconstruction" of the
flight's chronology.

Indianapolis Air Traffic Control, which had taken over for Dulles,
knew that Flight 77 was off course by 8:54.

Radar contact had been lost at 8:50 and there was a loss of the transponder
signal for a little over 8 minutes.

Starting at 8:56, and until 9:05, according to the 9/11 Commission,

Flight 77 simply "disappeared" from Indianapolis "primary
radar" - for reasons that were "technical" in nature said the Commission.

The main problem with this account, apart from news reports that Flight
77 had gone seriously off course at 8:46 (somebody knew; just not the FAA -
nor NORAD, according to the Commission!) is that when a transponder signal
is lost, information about the plane's altitude is no longer available,
a very dangerous situation in busy air-space. The plane is then displayed as a two-
dimensional blip, and in any plane under ATC control, the blip for that aircraft
is inserted automatically into the screens of every ATC in the region.

The crucial question then is, "Did West Virginia also lose primary radar?"

The 9/11 Commission never asked. And neither did Popular Mechanics.
The Commission is content to comment only that "neither [the FAA Command
Center in Herndon, VA] ... nor FAA headquarters issued an all points bulletin
to surrounding centers to search for primary radar targets." Adding that "American 77
traveled undetected for 36 minutes on a course heading due east for Wasinhgton, DC."
(p. 25).

To claim, as Popular Mechanics does that "ATC [couldn't} find

hijacked flights when the hijackers turned off the planes' transponders,
which broadcast identifying signals [because] ATC [then] had to search
4500 identical radar blips crisscrossing some of the country's busiest air
corridors" (p. 73; emphasis added) is ludicrous. A blip without identifying
information sticks out like a sore thumb to a trained eye!

In answer to critics who had pointed out that that the military's sophisticated
PAVE-PAWS radar can track objects three-dimensionally, including
their altitude, even without a transponder signal, Popular Mechanics
suggests that if the US military didn't know anything about what was happening
(insinuating that this was the case - i.e., they hadn't known - 'cause if they had,
of course, they would have at least tried to intercept at least one of the errant flights -
especially after Flight 11 had crashed into the North Tower - wouldn't they?),
well, this was because they weren't looking.

Or rather that they were "looking outwards for threats, not inward,"
says Popular Mechanics. Here again we find Popular Mechanics following
the lead of the Commission, but wandering off even further into the land of Oz.

The article quotes Maj. Douglas Martin, a NORAD Public Affairs

spokesperson: "It was like a doughnut... there was no coverage of
the middle."

The careful reader will notice that Maj. Martin doesn't explicitly deny that
NORAD was perfectly capable of tracking anything in the air over North America...

Popular Mechanics then further insinuates that pre-9/11 "NORAD wasn't prepared"
to "track flights" o r i g i n a t i n g in the United States (again without explicitly saying
that they couldn't!).

This is doubly misleading. The casual reader might assume from this that NORAD's radar
was all "pointed outwards."

That is, might think that the North American Air Defense Command was blind
vis-à-vis the continental United States!

And, in fact, this was the original line that the US military command
tried to peddle to Congress and the public.

They fairly quickly modified this to "mean" an external defense "posture."

As if US military air-bases don't need their own Air Traffic Control!

Prior to 9/11 there was every indication that the military's air-traffic control
system was well-integrated with civilian ATC.

Fact: Between September 2000 and June 2001, US military fighters were
launched 67 times to chase after wayward or suspicious aircraft.

(Note: There was an Air Defense Intercept Zone for the entire Atlantic seaboard.)

But, here again, Popular Mechanics strays dangerously close to outright

disinformation.

In a section headlined "Intercepts Not Routine" Popular Mechanics

tells us that "[I]n the decade before 9/11, NORAD intercepted only one
civilian plane," referring the Payne Stewart incident (also mentioned by the
Commission).

Here one is reminded of Bill Clinton's hedging about the meaning of "is."

Military fighters escorted the stricken jet, which had lost cabin pressure,
killing everyone on board due to lack of oxygen, until it crashed in a field
in South Dakota.

The question is then, What were the other 67 'incidents'?

(Intercepts? Escorts?)

Popular Mechanics attempted to cover its journalistic tracks by adding the following
qualifier (to "Intercept Not Routine"): "over North America."

Noting a little later that "Prior to 9/11, all other NORAD interceptions were limited to
offshore Air Defense Identification Zones."

To rectify their headline into some semblance of the truth, one would have to write:
"Intercepts over continental North America [were] not routine."

This would be at least consonant with their earlier claim that "pre-9/11, flights
originating in the States were not looked at or seen" by NORAD (emphasis added).

(Because, you'll recall, NORAD, was postured "looking outward.")

Popular Mechanics states that it took "1 hour and 22 minutes"

for a pair of F16's dispatched from Air National Guard at Tyndall Air
Force Base, Fla., to reach the Payne Stewart plane.

This is an egregious error!

Newspaper accounts reported that within about "20 minutes after ground
controllers lost contact" the jet was escorted in relay-fashion by a series of
fighters (Dallas Morning News, 10/26/99) until it crashed.

The NTSB gave this "interception" time as about 9:52 CDT (in the vicinity
of Eufaula, Alabama the plane crossed from the EDT zone to the CDT zone):
and about 10:00 CDT "the [fighter] test pilot began a visual inspection of
N47BA [the Payne Stewart plane]" - within about 22 minutes.

Perhaps Popular Mechanics wants us to think that the NTSB (and/or the Air
National Guard) can't keep track of time-zones changes!

But even if NORAD doesn't ordinarily closely "monitor" commercial jet traffic,
at least 3, possibly 4, war games (or even more) were in progress during the attacks
on the morning of September 11th.

Despite the patent absurdity of the assertion that these wargames facilitated
the military's response on 911 (an ignoratio elenchi repeated by William
B. Scott, in Aviation Week and Space Technology, June 3, 2002:
"Exercise Jump-Starts Response to Attacks"), the revelation that there were
air defense drills underway effectively torpedoes the claim that NORAD's
pre 9/11 "defense posture" somehow explained what was otherwise inexplicable -
or rather, might be used to excuse the inexcusable.

9/11 Commissioner Roemer questioned General Ralph Eberhart, asking

if "you were postured for an exercise... [d]id that help or hurt? Did that
help in terms of were more people prepared? Did you have more people
ready? Were more fighters fueled...?

"Or did that hurt in terms of people thinking 'No, there's no possibility that
this is real world; we're engaged in an exercise' ....delay[ing] things?"

Eberhart replied "my belief is it helped because of the manning, because

of the focus," and said that it had taken "about 30 seconds to make the
adjustment to the real-world situation."

As if the air defense command's performance that morning were anything

less than disgraceful!

Nonetheless, diligent research about the nature of the exercises underway

(details were classified) revealed that NORAD was in the 11th day
of an exercise called Vigilant Guardian.

And Gen. Myers told Richard Clarke that NORAD was in "the middle" of
Vigilant Warrior.

These exercises included live-fly "hijacking" drills and the insertion of false radar blips
into the screens of both military and civilian air traffic controllers.
Scenarios had been scripted in which airplanes were supposed to have crashed into
buildings like the Pentagon and the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office).

(The NRO drill scheduled for that morning was called off after the first attack.)

Now all of this indicates that NORAD was

a) alert and

b) likely to be especially attentive to "unusual" activity occurring in domestic air-space.

That is, NORAD/NEADS personnel were definitely not just gazing "outward" over the
Atlantic Ocean or somewhere past the DEW line!

Not when their job-performance ratings depended on the scores for games and exercises
which included live-fly simulations of domestic hijackings and scenarios in which planes
used as missiles crashed into buildings designated as possible terrorist targets.

[Any "doughnuts" they may have been contemplating were from Kispy Cream!]

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of David Ray Griffin's analysis is his
comparison of three "versions" of the timeline/events of that terrible morning
in September, 2001.

Griffin helps the reader to sort through these accounts by making plain the many
dilemmas confronting the Kean-Zelikow Commission.

Note that it is my contention here that the writers at Popular Mechanics bought into the
same agenda; namely, to absolve the US military of any possible blame for an evident
failure to defend the skies on the morning of 9/11, and to shift the entire burden
of blame for that failure onto the FAA.

I have attempted to demonstrate that the only possible source of at least

two of the "plasters" applied by Popular Mechanics (used to "paper over" the
disgraceful performance of US military forces on September 11th) was the 9/11
Commission's Final Report.

The task confronting the Commission, and the writers at Popular Mechanics, was
to absolve the US military of any possible culpability - for dereliction of duty on
9/11 - if for nothing else.

The Commission had to explain (or, more accurately,

explain-away):

First, the Otis jets circling 71 miles away over Long Island when UA175 crashed
into the South Tower.
Second, the Langley F_16's; which were:

either 105 miles away, headed north from Langley, towards Baltimore;

or 150 miles away, heading directly east over the Atlantic, (remember,
Langley is about 129 miles south-east from the Pentagon).

[Reports about the Langley fighters vary widely.]

In any case, as Paul Thompson points out in The Terror Timeline, "even traveling at 1,300
mph [top speed of an F_16 is about 1,500 mph] the Langley jets could have reached
Washington in six minutes" - well before the Pentagon was hit).

Third, and finally, the Commissioned labored to remove any possible suspicion
that Flight 93 might have been shot down by US military fighters.

To do this, Popular Mechanics' writers claim, again following the 9/11 Commission
without anywhere explicitly saying so, that the FAA Boston Center only contacted
anyone in the military three times.

The second call was the brief conversation entered into evidence as
"NEADS audiofile, Identification Technician position, channel 7, 9:21:10"
by the Commission.

While this claim - about Boston Center - largely seems to be true (apart from
uncertainties about the second call) based on television, radio, internet and news-
paper accounts, it ignores a main point established by David Ray Griffin in his review
(Omissions and Distortions) of the Final Report of the 9/11 Commission.

Griffin shows that the Commission obfuscated the significance of a substantial body of
evidence which indicates that communications between the civilian and military
authorities on 9/11; i.e., between officials at the FAA and the White House and the US
military were more than adequate.

If the civilian authority had:

a) informed the military about "possible" hijackings (even if they had failed to follow
long-established protocols, and inexplicably delayed serving official "notice");

and

b) then kept their White House and NORAD counterparts informed of the progression
from possible to "probable" in continuous real-time, utilizing at least three
teleconferences, as suggested by Griffin

then it would be all but impossible for the Commission to explain-away any of the major
points above; viz., the Otis jets, the Langley jets, and Flight 93.
Again, it is beyond the scope of this article to examine the way the Commission
puts negative spin on the White House, FAA and NMCC teleconferences. Readers are
referred to The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions.

I have mentioned two incidents that especially served as "plasters" for the
Kean-Zelikow account, and were applied without critical reflection by the writers
of Popular Mechanics.

The first was the suspicious audiofile, which, although it had no real evidentiary weight,
effectively contributed to the "cover."

Second was the "phantom aircraft" introduced by the Commission. To understand the
significance of the audiofile, it's necessary to review the revised timeline offered by
the Commission - keeping in mind that since NORAD had first published its timeline
of events on September 18th, 2001, many commentators had noticed:
that the Otis jets dispatched after Flight 11 were eight minutes (71
miles) away - circling over Long Island - when Flight 175 crashed into
the South Tower;

and that if the revised times given by NORAD on September 18th

were true, namely that one minute after the Otis fighters were airborne, at
9:24 a.m., NEADS was informed by the "FAA" (the reason for the quotes
will be clearer later) of a possible hijacking of AA Flight 77 (this was widely
reported in various news accounts - Washington Post, CNN, Guardian - as well as by
NORAD), this represented the greatest threat to the Commission's revisionism

Because NORAD had said that immediately - at 9:24 a.m. - a scramble order
was issued at Langley AFB.

Assuming that the Langley F16 Fighting Falcons were airborne by 9:30, they should
have had plenty of time to reach the Capital.

Why the Capital, you may ask?

Because according to a BBC report ("Clear the skies," BBC 9/1/2002), even as
"last-minute pre-launch checks... [were] being made" by Captain Craig Bergstrom,
codenamed "Honey, and Major Dean Eckmann, the other Langley F16 pilot, "air-traffic
controllers at Dulles had reported that a plane was heading at high-speed towards
Washington.
.
The pilots were told to fly to Washington to protect the Capital and they received
a signal over their transponders indicating "an emergency wartime situation."

(The question of why the order was issued to Langley - over 300 km away from the
Capital - has never been completely satisfactorily resolved by any account.)

As mentioned above, the Langley jets could have covered the 129 miles in seven minutes.
Instead, at 9:40 when Flight 77 flew into the Pentagon, they were hundreds of miles
away, headed out over the Atlantic (according to NORAD, Sept 18, 2001, approximately
12 minutes or 105 miles away from "Airline impact location;" i.e., the Pentagon).

We have seen how the Commission attempts to explain-away reports like that of the
Arlington County After-Action Report (Annex C, Law Enforcement, Part III, Federal
Bureau of Investigation). According to this HRSA (Health Resources and Services
Administration) report, "at about 9:20 a.m. the WFO [FBI Washington Field Office]
Command Center... [was] notified that American Airlines Flight 77 had been hijacked
shortly after takeoff from Washington Dulles International Airport."

The Commission claims that earlier reports, by NORAD (September 18, 2001)
and the FAA were in error. Regarding the latter, in a May 21, 2003 'clarification'
[a for the record] memorandum, the FAA stated that although the FAA had only made
"formal notification" to NEADS that Flight 77 might have been hijacked at 9:24 a.m.,
"information about the flight was conveyed continuously during... phone bridges"
established earlier between FAA field facilities, FAA Command Center, FAA HQ, the
DOD, the Secret Service and other government agencies. "The US Air Force liaison to
the FAA immediately [that is, "within minutes after the first aircraft hit the World Trade
Center] joined the FAA headquarters phone bridge and established contact with NORAD
on a separate line."

The New York Times reported that "During the hour or so that American Airlines Flight
77... [was] under the control of hijackers, up to the moment it struck the Pentagon,
military officials in a command center on the east side of the building [the NMCC] were
urgently talking to law enforcement and air traffic control officials about what to do"
(NYT, Sept 15, 2001, "Pentagon Tracked Deadly Jet But Found No Way To Stop It").

In the Commission's reconstruction:

By 8:50 a.m., when radio contact is lost, Indianapolis flight control center was handling
Flight 77. The plane began to veer off course at 8:54.

By 8:56 a.m. Flight 77's transponder signal is lost. According to the Commission, the
Indianapolis flight controller watched the flight go off course, headed south, when it
"disappeared" from primary radar. (See above discussion.)

Supposedly, this controller is blissfully ignorant about any hijacked planes that morning.

According to the Commission, he presumably notifies AA headquarters in Fort Worth

("While trying to confirm whether the aircraft that had hit he World Trade Center was
Flight 11, we learned from air traffic control officials that another of our flights, Flight
77, was not responding to radio calls and not emitting a transponder signal, and that air
traffic control could not determine its location." January 27, 2004 testimony of Mr.
Gerarad J. Arpey, President and CEO of AMR Corporation. and AA before the National
Commission On Terrorist Attacks on the United States).
However, according to the Commission, NORAD is not notified.

[Recall: N O R A D had claimed, Sept 18, 2001, that NEADS was notified at 9:24.]

The 9/11 Commission denies that NORAD was ever notified about Flight 77.

That is, the Report states, flatly, on page 34, that: "NEADS never received
notice that American 77 was hijacked."

In fact, according to the Commission, not only was the published September 18th,
2001 NORAD timeline in error, but so was General Larry Arnold, when he testified
on May, 2003, in front of the Commission.

Furthermore, when other NORAD officials had told reporters that the Langley fighters
had been scrambled in response to the 9:24 a.m. "notification" about AA Flight 77, their
statements, too, were "incorrect."

As David Griffin points out, the Commission never explains how it was - or why -
General Arnold and other NORAD officials had made all these false statements. "The
main point.. [of] the Commission's revisionist account of Flight 77... is its twofold denial
that NORAD was notified about the hijacking of Flight 77 and that Langley F-16s were
scrambled to intercept it" (p. 193).

Ah, "but if the military had not been notified about Flight 77 at 9:24, why were
fighters from Langley airborne by 9:30?" (ibid)

The key to understanding the Commission's treatment of Flight 77 is to be found in its

earlier treatment of Flight 175. In answer to the question, why were fighters from
Langley airborne by 9:30? "the Commission faced a problem similar to that of
explaining why the F-15s were scrambled from Otis at 8:53 even though Flight 11 had
already crashed and [according to the Commission's revisionist account] NORAD did
not know that Flight 175 had been hijacked" (readers are strongly encouraged to study
Chapter 13 of Omissions and Distortions).

It is at this crucial juncture that the full significance of the audiofile can be seen, together
with the baroque tap dance around Indianapolis ATC's "primary radar" described above.

According to the Commission, the Langley F-16's were chasing a "phantom aircraft,"
American Flight 11.

If so, why weren't they headed towards New York City?

And this is where the Commission becomes really "creative."

[Either that or completely disingenuous.]

As Griffin notes, "Elsewhere the Commission told us that Colonel Robert Marr, head of
NEADS, had to call General Arnold to get permission to scramble fighters to after the
real Flight 11. But now we are being asked to believe that planes were scrambled for
phantom Flight 11 without Arnold's ever having heard anything about such a flight."

The Commission concedes that:

"this... phantom aircraft was not accounted in a single public timeline or statement
issued by the FAA or Department of Defense."

However, these [perforce] "inaccurate accounts created the impression that the Langley
scramble was a logical response to an actual hijacked aircraft" (p. 34).

But their back-and-fill explanation strains credulity, even amongst stalwarts

of the official consensus.

Even assuming that we can accept that the "taped conversations at NEADS" along
with "taped conversations at FAA centers" support the Commission's theory of the
"phantom" - together with "contemporaneous logs compiled at NEADS, Continental
Region headquarters, and NORAD;" and "other records" (p. 34) - the Commission fails to
offer any actual supporting evidence - original recordings or copies; transcripts; etc.

We simply have to take their word for it.

Contemporary accounts, published just days after 9/11 indicate that at no time did
Boston Logan controllers lose sight of Flight 11. In some accounts, Boston has to update
NEADS by telephone until a few minutes before the plane crashes into the North Tower.

Astonishingly, the Commission claims that NEADS personnel were "still trying to
locate the flight... [when] word reached them that a plane had hit the World Trade Center"
(p. 20).

The reasons for this should be obvious by now.

It was necessary to imply that NEADS needed 'better radar' if the Commission was
to sustain the myth of the "phantom plane."

Finally, even if we were able to swallow this treacle, it still leaves at least one major
detail unaccounted-for: why were the Langley pilots headed out to sea, over the Atlantic
when the Pentagon was struck?

The various accounts of the pilots' actions that morning are garbled (see discussion
above).

I leave it the reader to read the Commission's "clarification" (p.27 - "The Langley pilots
were heading east...").

My point is that, by hanging their entire theory about what happened that morning
on one, flimsy, piece of so-called "evidence" the Commission and Popular
Mechanics leave themselves subject, under the most generous interpretation, to a charge
of revisionism.

It seems fair to ask at this juncture - why - and how - was the defense of NORAD a
proper subject for Popular Mechanics? A close check of their "experts" on air defense
experts (listed at the end of the article) indicates that Popular Mechanics "consulted"
public information spokespersons for the article.

Only PA spokespersons.

That is, Popular Mechanics did not interview anyone at, say, the Center for Strategic
and Security Studies. Or at the War College. Or anyone at RAND.

By their own account, the "experts" they claim to have consulted about Air Defense were
all press agents. Their area of e x p e r t i s e was public relations, not security or strategic
studies.

Popular Mechanics' attempted defense the US military is, then, at best "science by press
release."

[Translation: pure spin.]

In this case, the fact is that our military let us down.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
2. Wagging the WTC

In general, Popular Mechanics' bullet-style presentation effectively precluded

in-depth analysis or any serious discussion of the facts.

And even then, their handling of bare facts is occasionally quite misleading.

This "massaging" appears deliberate.

Behind Popular Mechanics' presentation, then, one can clearly perceive an attempt
at "spin."

In plain English, the article appears to be an exercise in propaganda.

One of the internet sites asking questions about 911 suggests,

tongue in cheek, that perhaps Muslims had suspended the laws
of physics.

It is difficult to figure out where to begin, even, when addressing

the many issues about the WTC collapse.

The article in Popular Mechanics is good a place as any.

Actually, I'm a little baffled by Popular Mechanics' discussion about

the damage reported in the lobbies of both towers after jet planes had
crashed into the buildings but before they collapsed. Popular Mechanics
shows an un-credited photograph of shattered windows in the North
Tower lobby captioned "Before the fall." Why would this surprise anyone?

Apparently Popular Mechanics introduced this picture to refute reports -

by survivors, some of them firefighters or other first responders, some of
workers - and by on-the-scene news crews about "explosions." It's too bad
Popular Mechanics didn't bother to more closely examine these reports.
They are not, of course, always coherent accounts of what happened. They
are first hand reports of people either escaping from or responding to a
desperate scene.

For example, Tom Elliot, at work at Aon, a brokerage firm located in the
South Tower, reported "a tornado of hot air and smoke and ceiling tiles
and bits of drywall came flying up the stairwell" [this was probably the
B stairwell] just after Flight 175 crashed into the building. It is likely that
this, and the shattered windows observed by firefighters on the Concourse
level, were both a result of "overpressure" in the stairwells as well as
in the elevator shafts, as was suggested by the authors of the Building
Performance Study (Chapter 2, p. 21).

However "overpressure" cannot explain the incident televised by CNN,

which showed smoke billowing up from the Customs House, WTC 6
from street level at 9:04 a.m. - only one minute after 175 crashed into
the adjacent South Tower. Nor the large crater which was observed
in the ruins of WTC 6. What could have caused this crater?

William Rodriguez, a maintenance man assigned to the three stairwells,

A, B, and C in the North Tower, was in the maintenance office, located
on the first sublevel, at about 8:30 a.m. on September 11th. As he
described it to Deanna Spingola (renewamerica.us) "There was a very
loud massive explosion which seemed to emanate from between sub-
basement B2 and B3... At first he thought it was a generator that had
exploded. But the cement walls in the office cracked from the explosion.
.... seconds later, there was another explosion way above" which made the
building sway momentarily, according to other observers.

Stephan Evans, a BBC's North American business correspondent,

on the ground floor of the South Tower when Flight 11 crashed into
the North Tower, reported: "There was a huge bang and the building
[So Tower, presumably] physically shook... Seconds later there were
two or three similar huge explosions and the building literally shook
again."

There were other eyewitnesses who heard what they described as

"explosions." In many cases these sounds did not seem to be connected
to the crashing jets nor were they associated with either collapse of the
towers.

One might be tempted to write all of this off as secondary impact damage -
bursting water mains, or exploding "generators" or maybe gas-lines,
except that some of the witnesses who thought they heard bombs going
off were professional fire-fighters.

But this raises an important question: if there were bombs planted in the
building(s) does this help explain the WTC collapse?

Here we will adopt a convention: by WTC collapse we mean the

structural failures of WTC 1&2, Building 7; and Buildings 4, 5 and 6.
In none of these cases can failure be explained as a result of impact
damage alone (in the case of the Twin Towers).

We do not include WTC 3, the hotel complex, which was severely damaged
by falling debris from WTC1&2.
It is highly significant that prior to 9/11, no steel-framed building had
ever collapsed solely due to fire.

But the explosions mentioned by eyewitnesses generally fail to correlate

well with the idea that the Towers were brought down by explosives.

A controlled demolition - one that would produce the almost symmetric

pattern of damage seen at the WTC (in a non-symmetric collapse a tower
would have fallen over, crashing onto other buildings) requires a very
precisely timed sequencing of explosive charges.

In one case, a man who witnessed the collapse of the towers from his
22nd floor office window, a few blocks away, reported that he'd seen
what looked like small explosions on each floor as the buildings went
down.

Popular Mechanics has an answer at the ready, which passes off these
"puffs of dust" as perfectly consonant with the "pancake theory,"
which will be discussed below. In attempting to explain-away the
clouds of dust that were ejected with incredible force as the buildings
came down, - over 500 feet into the air in some cases - they also
hastened to offer Van Romero's redaction of his statement to the
Albuquerque Journal that "the collapse of the [towers] ... resembled...
controlled implosions used to demolish old structures." Romero, Vice
President for Research at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and
Technology had speculated on September 14th, 2001 that "there were
explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse"

According to Popular Mechanics Romero now believes that fire

"triggered the collapses" and "regrets" that his comments had become
"fodder for conspiracy theorists."

Van Romero was not the only observer who thought that the collapses
had every appearance of being controlled demolitions...

Before discussing what Popular Mechanics dubs a "scientific

conclusion" (namely, that fire triggered the collapses), I'd like to
dispose of the question of seismic evidence.

The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory is located in Palisades, N.Y.

about 21 miles from the WTC. Routine seismographic recordings taken
on the morning of 9/11 showed a 2.1 magnitude earthquake during the
10-second collapse of the South Tower at 9:59:04 and a 2.3 quake during
the 8-second collapse of the North Tower at 10:28:31.
However - and this is the part that needs explaining - the middle spikes
of the graph of the collapses are approximately 20 times larger in amplitude
than those appearing at the end of the 10 and 8 -second graphs... Which is odd,
because one would expect the majority of the energy to have been transmitted to the
ground towards the end of the collapse - rather than towards the middle.

In any case, to write, as does Popular Mechanics, that the "seismic waves
escalate" as the buildings make impact with the earth (ummm, this would be
at the end of their fall... right?) is simply incorrect (emphasis added). In fact,
the graphs for both events clearly indicate a diminution of energy - smaller
waves - just as the buildings hit the earth!

So what's going on here?

Popular Mechanics is undoubtedly correct in its assertion that the 30-minute

graphs, which appeared to show two "spikes" is misleading.

However, the energy of the waves recorded during the collapses is significantly
greater than that seen when the planes hit the buildings (which caused minimal
earth shaking).

And Lerner-Lam specifically stated that "Only a small fraction of the energy
from the collapsing towers was converted into ground motion." And that
any "ground-shaking that resulted from the collapse of the towers was extremely
small." They explained that "during the collapse, most of the energy of the falling
debris was absorbed by the towers [on the way down] and the neighboring structures,
converting them into rubble and dust or causing other damage - but not causing
significant ground-shaking."

[One of the problems with attempting a revisionist account is that the time-
sequences of the collapses was quite precisely known...]

Now this might have supported Popular Mechanics' earlier explanation for
the "puffs of dust." That is, even though "these clouds of dust may create
the impression of a controlled demolition," they were, according to Popular
Mechanics the result "floor pancaking" which ejected air, along with "the
concrete and other debris pulverized by the force of the collapse."

But Popular Mechanics must have its [pan]cake and eat it too!

And "Pulverized." Just the word I was looking for!

The one anomaly of the WTC collapse that initially caught my attention
was the dust.

Those clouds of white dust - what Paul Lioy et al describe as "aerosol

plumes" - left a blanket inches deep (10-15 cm) spread
over several city blocks (in a radius of approximately .7 km).

Microscopic analysis revealed that the dust was composed primarily

of pulverized concrete, gypsum and glass particles, approximately 60
microns in size.

It takes a specific amount of energy to reduce concrete to such a fine

powder. Generally, only explosive charges can pulverize concrete into
dust.

Now it is likely that there was more than enough energy to pulverize
concrete as potential energy was transformed into kinetic energy -
but this would depend on the accelerated mass involved. That is, by
the time the great mass of the WTC had collapsed into ruble, there
would have been more than sufficient energy to pulverize concrete.
[But nowhere near enough to reduce high-quality steel to puddles
of molten metal. See below.]

Here's the difficulty: the "aerosol plumes" described by Lioy et al

may be clearly seen being "elected" from the upper floors of the Towers.

Where did energy to pulverize concrete come from - at the 80th - or 100th!
- floor?

According to Popular Mechanics, this energy came entirely from the

force of the weight of the floor above crashing onto the floor(s) below.
But this is nonsense! Remember - in order for this theory to work, only
the total mass of the floors above the collapsed zone can be used to calculate
the available energy. Even if this mass were assumed to fall freely -
without impediment - onto the floor below, the distance involved is not
enough to allow potential energy (PE) to be converted to kinetic energy (KE)
- sufficient to pulverize concrete!

Now we'll turn our attention to the to "melted steel."

Leaving aside for the moment questions about the collapse of the World Trade Center
buildings, it seems fair to ask - why - and how - was the defense of NORAD a proper
subject for Popular Mechanics?

When we examine the problems with the "official consensus" about what really happened
at the World Trade Center, we will discover that in fact, there is no such consensus.

In fact, the "official" report about the WTC - the FEMA/ NIST/BPAT/House Science
Committee "building performance" report - states, unequivocally, that the cause of the
collapse of either of the Twin Towers, or of Building 7 (or of Building 4) is not known.

To claim, then, as Popular Mechanics does that studies have "shown" that these buildings
collapsed as a result "the severe damage inflicted by the planes" or as a result of "intense
fire" is simply untrue.

In the engineering conference convened at MIT in the October following 9/11, experts
attempted to explain how a steel-framed building like the WTC could have succumbed to
fire.

Or how an incredibly redundant structure like the WTC could have sustained enough
damage from an airliner collision to have collapsed the way it did ("nowadays, they just
don't build them as tough as the World Trade Center," said Robert McNamara, President
of engineering firm McNamara and Salvia; quoted in the October, 2001 issue of
Scientific American).

The engineers speculated that structural damage (from the plane collisions)
coupled with weakening - due to fire - of the remaining intact steel somehow
led to a cascade of failure(s); what was described as a "pancaking" of overlying
floors onto floors below. We will discuss this later (see section 2: Wagging the WTC).

For now, I wish to return to my question above: What makes Popular Mechanics in any
way "expert" on questions regarding America's air defense? A close analysis of their Air
Defense experts indicates that they consulted public information spokespersons. That is,
Popular Mechanics' defense the US military is at best "science by press release"
(translation: pure spin).

Let's pause for a moment and consider the implications of this observation. On the one
hand, I do not mean to criticize Popular Mechanics for probing the many complexities of
the events that occurred on 911.

Even if the readers of Popular Mechanics are not themselves structural engineers, or
specialists in materials science or fire and/or medical forensics, they are, in a sense, a
"jury" - one presumably made up of reasonably intelligent individuals who seek to
educate themselves about their world.

Just the sort of folks who sit on medical malpractice cases and court cases deciding the
legal facts of complex issues about corporate and government liability (the latter being
at the discretion of the government; the sovereign grants citizens the privilege of
bringing suit on an individual basis; there is no general "right" to sue the Government).

Many of these cases involve quite complex technological and/or legal issues. Which
brings us immediately to a hot topic: there is a movement to remove ordinary citizens
from complex cases.

But, as Judge Brazelton, of the US Court of Appeals, District of Columbia once pointed
out (in an article for the Atlantic, I believe), there are no issues so complex that they
cannot be presented for review before reasonably intelligent people. The job of litigants is
to lay out the facts in such a manner that they are made objectively clear to impartial
observers. Else he said, no cases could ever be decided.
Judges are not generally also nuclear scientists, or structural engineers, and so forth.

They are, presumably, knowledgeable - "experts" - about the law. They can, and do
advise juries about fine points of the law. Other "experts" may be brought in to explain
other advanced topics in language the Judge - and Juries - can understand.

This common-sense approach is being challenged by a "new school" that seeks to

insulate corporations from any possible liability for harm that may result from their
products or services.

The first line of attack is to place caps on "pain and suffering."

But the so-called "tort reform" legislation sought by the Bush Administration goes much
further, and effectively cuts off the legs of complainants seeking "punitive damages."

The second line of attack is an assault on the jury system.

I applaud Popular Mechanics for assuming that as readers we are intelligent enough
to educate ourselves about the temperature at which high-quality steel begins to weaken,
and the point at which it cannot hold - its point of structural failure. Aabout hydrocarbon
chemistry. &tc.

We will, no doubt, need to consult experts: about statics, load-bearing, and

structural failure. About cockpit design on a modern jetliner. About the technical
feasibility of placing telephone calls in flight. And about a host of other questions.

But this is just what an investigative body, like a grand jury is called together to do.

Juries in both criminal and civil cases review explanatory arguments made in
representation of the fact or facts of a given issue, and attempt to render a decision.

I suppose, in the end, this is a decision about plausibility. It is plausible that 2+2=4.

It is less plausible, under the rules of simple arithmetic that two added to itself could
yield some other number - say five. Even in Oceania.