"They didn't think the buildings would collapse..."

According to former CIA officer John Kiriakou, al-Qaeda logistics chief Abu Zubaydah claimed that the attack of 9/11 was only meant to be a "wake up call." Zubaydah aparrently also said that they did not believe there would be such a loss of life, and that they did not intend to provoke the subsequent response by the United States.

John Kiriakou stated specifically, "They didn't think the buildings would collapse...That's what he told me."

This was reported in the ABC Exclusive interview of John Kiriakou. See part 3 of the 10 part series.

Could this be evidence that the actual destruction was deliberatly enhanced or magnified by some other unknown perpetrator?

Furthermore, why is the attack on the Pentagon not mentioned? I ask this question based on my own suspicion that the Pentagon may not have been attacked by al-Qaeda at all, but by an unnamed perpetrator. For an insightful look into the attack on the Pentagon visit PentagonStrike

Overall, I am wondering if the whole controversey over "waterboarding" may actually be a side-show to distract from a more relevant issue. What if the tapes were not destroyed to cover the fact that they had used "waterboarding" as an interrogation technique? After all, we have known about this for some time now. What if these tapes were actually destroyed to protect the secret information which they could reveal? This has actually been stated as the reason. What if the secret information is that although al-Qaeda participated in the 9/11 attacks, there were other unknown conspirators?

I remember hearing this not long after the attack. There is just so much conflicting information out there that I don't know what to believe anymore. I don't necessarily believe that this is any kind of proof of a controlled demolition, mainly because I don't necessarily believe that the people quoted in the article were completely responsibile for the attack.

reply to post by Karlhungis


Though I do believe without a doubt that we are being lied to about 9/11, I was "on the fence" for a while over the controlled demolition debate. It certainly looked like a controlled demolition, but a NYState engineer explained to me how the building could have some down, and in his opinion as an expert, how they did in fact come down. Basically he explained that because of the center column design, each floor was dependant on the next to carry its share of the load. I am not as eloquent or as thorough as he was, but I got the picture of a sort of vertical suspension bridge. A high tension design holding it into the ground so that it could actually sway without breaking. Say in high winds, earthquake, or even a plane impact. But because of that tension, it was actually quite weak vertically. Once the floors began to pancake onto one another, the built in tension pulled them to the ground.

Recently I have been looking into material presented about WTC-7. This building was not of the same design as the Twin Towers. Therefore the same principles do not exist. For an interesting video on the subject of WTC-7 click here.

But I have to say, that with this new evidence I may be reopening the case of controlled demolitions entirely, in the court of my own opinion.

reply to post by jackinthebox


well if you have any questions about explosives feel free to ask, i may have my own opinions about the events of 911 but when im sharing data i tend to stick to facts (opinions aside its hard to lie about facts and i tend to share info that can be verified. my integrity is more important to me than my opinions)

also if youre interested, i had a debate on the topic of CD last spring where i did my own calculations for what it would take to bring the towers down. some general info on demo in there if you care to read it.

clicky here for the debate

Interesting - because I've been saying for years that no-one expected the buildings to collapse. Not the authorities, not the owners of the WTC, not those responsible for the attacks.

Now, whether that means it was a construction or design fault (the conspiracy no one wants to address!), whether it was just an unforeseen consequence, or whether nuclear bombs or photon torpedoes from the Starship Enterprise brought the towers down, I don't know.

Originally posted by Essan
Now, whether that means it was a construction or design fault (the conspiracy no one wants to address!),

ya know, i could, and have, totally consider this a possibility.

a lot of the engineer types will talk about safety factors etc, but the fact of the matter is that it always comes down to the dollar. if the contractors could get parts of it done on time and under budget they get bigger bonus' etc. so yeah, theres something i could totally consider as a plausibility.

I'll have to stop back later and inquire of "Damocles" insight, but I have to agree that the design of the Twin Towers may have been flawed. As I understand it, they were built to withstand sever blows on all sides, but not from the top town. So when the floors began to "pancake" onto themselves, the buildings became their own worst enemy.

As I stated above, I am back "on the fence" with regard to the controlled demolition theory, but here are some of my thoughts. First, al-Qaeda probably had no knowledge of this design flaw in the towers. Second, there probably were people right here in the US that were aware of this weakness in the design. Third, that information may have been passed on to the "x-faction" who then directed a false-flag attack on the WTC by proxy.

Lastly, there is the extremely remote possibility that the towers were built in such a way intentionally. Meaning that the conspiracy runs back as far as the 1970's. It is possible, as unlikely as it sounds, that this secret cabal may have built-in this flaw as a "trump-card" in case they ever had need of a spectacular false-flag attack. Specifically, the WTC may have been slated to be sacrificed from the start, as part of the long-term orchestration to bring about NWO. As unbelievable as this may sound, it should at least be left as a possiblity. I'll end here for the moment with a pertinent quote:

Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity. - Marshall McLuhan (media guru)

[edit on 12/12/0707 by jackinthebox]

[edit on 12/12/0707 by jackinthebox]

Well frankly I'm going to be honest with you - I didn't think buildings would collapse, either. (When the planes hit the towers that is)

www.oilempire.us...

UNDERNEWS SPECIAL REPORT
Dec 15, 2003
From the Progressive Review
Edited by Sam Smith
Since 1964, Washington's most unofficial source
www.prorev.com...

PROGRESSIVE REVIEW SPECIAL REPORT
The World Trade Center's Dirty Secret

The first story below, column one in Sunday's Times, involves a matter the Review has been following since the month after the attack on the WTC. Even this report, however, does not suggest the depth of the scandal - the probability that most of the deaths at the WTC were not due to the crash of the planes but to the grossly negligent construction of the buildings in violation of fire standards dating back as far as 60 years. Involved are not merely design flaws, as one might gather from the Times article, but the deliberate circumventing of city fire codes by having the World Trade Center exempted from them. To get some sense of the seriousness of the matter, compare the understated Times report with the criminal charges filed in the recent Rhode Island music hall fire or with last century's Shirtwaist Triangle fire. We have also included earlier accounts to give a better picture of this largely suppressed story

[edit on 12-12-2007 by ULTIMA1]

The WTC twin towers were one of the first so called "modern" or "light
weight" structures built. This was a design movement in the 1960's to
use engineered steel to replace much of the concrete in buildings
(which is heavy and expensive). Pressure was used by architects and
construction types to relax the fire codes - the 1938 code required steel
columns be encased in several inches of concrete or masonary. When
the WTC was designed and built the code required only 2 hours fire
resistance (vs 4 hr in earlier) and allowed any materials that could give
the required time. Hence 2 pieces of 5/8" sheet rock used to provide fire
resistance Steel web truss was used to support floors vs solid steel I
beams. The truss had 1/2" in or so of sprayed -on fire proofing vs
concrete. The aircraft impacts scraped off the fire proofing. You can kick
a hole in sheet rock or peel off the sprayed on - try that with concrete.

As with any new design there are always problems which surface later -
assumptions made don't always work as planned and unforseen problems
are revealed. That said buildings are not designed (short of an under
ground bunker) to resist impacts of fully loaded jet aircraft at 500mph.

The new WTC 7 (which opened in 2006) was reinforced based on what
happened on 9/11

Here is short blurb on new design features

The building is being promoted as the safest skyscraper in the U.S.[56] According to Silverstein Properties, the owner of the building, it "will incorporate a host of life-safety enhancements that will become the prototype for new high-rise construction".[57] The building has 2 ft (60 cm) thick reinforced-concrete and fireproofed elevator and stairway access shafts. The original building used only drywall to line these shafts.[58] The stairways are wider than in the original building to permit faster egress.[58] Steel columns are encased in much thicker fire protection, which consists of a medium-density, portland cement-based product that adheres well to the steel columns, among other advantages over alternate types of spray-applied fire-resistive material.[59

The "theory" or more correctly ravings that the buildings were designed
to fail 30 years later as part of some conspiracy is absurd.
sheet roo

Originally posted by thedman
The "theory" or more correctly ravings that the buildings were designed
to fail 30 years later as part of some conspiracy is absurd.
sheet roo

id have to agree with that. personally it would never have crossed my mind that they were built with the intention to fail at some later date when subjected to a predetermined event doesnt make sense to me.

what DOES make sense to me is that maybe the contractor was offered a bonus for coming in ahead of schedule or at the least on time (delays are part of business for these guys) and/or under budget.

so, maybe some shortcuts were taken that didnt comprimise the integrity of the building under normal circumstances but throw something unforseen into the mix and.....

I am not necessarily endorsing a far-out theory that the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11 was in fact planned from the time the buldings were designed and built, though I do leave the possiblity open to discussion.

I would find it much more likely that these design flaws were discovered later, and exploited by the unknown faction.

What I am most concerned about at this point is that al-Qaeda did not intend to provoke a response greater than having a few cruise missiles tossed at them. Therefore, it calls into doubt that they were responsible, even accidentally, for the entire scope of the 9/11 attacks. Flying planes into the Towers would certainly have been enough of a "wake up" call to fulfill their objective.

Were they perhaps planning another sort of attack, but "steered" toward hitting the Towers? Furthermore, I do not believe that WTC-7 collapsed as a result of the planes flying into the Towers, even indirectly. Lastly, they probably would not have dared to hit the Pentagon unless they did intend to provoke the response which they suffered. There is little evidence to support that a plane hit the Pentagon anyway.

This video may be further evidence that al-Qaeda may not have been acting alone. I found the link onthis thread posted by "IvanZana."

The 9/11 commision report states that fir chiefs were only conserned with the upper floors above the fires migh collapse IF the fire would have burned for several more hours (which they did not)

From the 9/11 commission report, staff statment 13, page 20

None of the chiefs present believed a total collapse of either tower was possible. Later, after the Mayor had left, one senior chief present did articulate his concern that upper floors could begin to collapse in a few hours, and so he said that firefighters thus should not ascend above floors in the sixties.

[edit on 15-12-2007 by ULTIMA1]

www.tms.org...

It is known that structural steel begins to soften around 425°C and loses about half of its strength at 650°C.4 This is why steel is stress relieved in this temperature range. But even a 50% loss of strength is still insufficient, by itself, to explain the WTC collapse. It was noted above that the wind load controlled the design allowables. The WTC, on this low-wind day, was likely not stressed more than a third of the design allowable, which is roughly one-fifth of the yield strength of the steel. Even with its strength halved, the steel could still support two to three times the stresses imposed by a 650°C fire.

I would like to point out that, when this happened, I was not at all surprised to learn both towers had collapsed. Buildings are simply not designed to have planes flown into them. Plain and simple. Tower + impact + structural damage + fire = collapse of said tower.

But, the "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" does come in when we start analyzing the construction of the tower. Its original designs call for an all-welded structure. This was sacrificed for the sake of time and bolts were used, instead.... AND the bolts were further lowered in diameter to save on materials (cost).

Further digging yields that the structure would likely have been condemned in another few years because of the way that bolts rapidly degrade over time. The relative size of the structure shares a near exponential relationship to the rate at which the structure degrades (if it's bigger - it usually degrades MUCH faster).

This is a problem that has been plaguing industry for a while. It's the "American accountant" outlook on business. It's about looking to the next quarter for gains, meeting minimum specifications, and the lowest bidder wins out. I can have two ball bearings - one has tension springs in it, the other does not.... but the one without tension springs costs half as much.... so that's what our engineers will have to work with. Even though the one with tension springs will last five times as long and maintain its accuracy and quality through its lifespan... unlike the cheap-o solution.

We've been making huge strides forward in computer technology, but taking leaps backwards in business and industrial philosophies. We look to the next quarter for gains. If we don't see them, we massacre customer support (that's just an expense), eliminate 'less popular' products, and start ignoring the engineers who want the slightly more expensive solution (we're accountants - we know what works in the machine better, anyway).

If you want a man behind the curtain to send Toto after - you can start with that one while you continue your search for other men behind their curtains.

Originally posted by Aim64C
I would like to point out that, when this happened, I was not at all surprised to learn both towers had collapsed. Buildings are simply not designed to have planes flown into them. Plain and simple. Tower + impact + structural damage + fire = collapse of said tower.

www.tms.org...

The early news reports noted how well the towers withstood the initial impact of the aircraft; however, when one recognizes that the buildings had more than 1,000 times the mass of the aircraft and had been designed to resist steady wind loads of 30 times the weight of the aircraft, this ability to withstand the initial impact is hardly surprising. Furthermore, since there was no significant wind on September 11, the outer perimeter columns were only stressed before the impact to around 1/3 of their 200 MPa design allowable.

I have light-bulb rated at 500 watts. You can warm your hands off of it at a few inches away from the light. I also happen to have a two-watt laser. Stick your hand in front of that, and you'll start to smell that sweet smell of burning protein.

Why is this? It's not just about force. It's about the distribution of that force. I can body-check you and send you a couple feet backwards - or I can deliver nearly equivalent force in the form of a punch and break some ribs while moving your body very little.

Same concept, here. While the total force exerted on the structure in heavy winds is far greater than that of the airliner - it is distributed across the entire surface of the structure and successfully countered by each level of supports. A plane is not only much harder than air - it also has much more concentrated mass and velocity - meaning it is going to cause damage to the structure.

Let it be noted that doing enough damage to a single floor's supports will cause the whole structure to fail (fall down - go boom) - especially mid-level.

Come on, now. You have to learn to "feel" the world around you. Our brains can do what computers, today, have a lot of trouble doing - allow us to simulate real-world dynamics - effortlessly. Use that capability. Go up to any steel beam supporting a building - put your hand on it - and 'feel' the tension its under - feel the weight of the mass it is supporting. go smash rocks with a hammer - just for kicks and grins, then apply what you have experienced to your mind's ability to emulate the real world.

All of this stuff is simple. Really - it's all particulate physics - everything is made up of tiny particles, can be broken into those tiny particles - and those tiny particles will behave the same on any scale. If I have a million water molecules rolling down the hill - they will behave rather similarly to a million boulders (only they will cling together, more).

Physics doesn't change. Just like electronics doesn't change. Just because I've added a capacitor in parallel with an inductor - it doesn't mean the inductor no longer resists a change in current; and the capacitor doesn't suddenly stop resisting a change in voltage.

The main thing you have to keep in mind is scale. Each floor "was designed to support the weight of five floors above it". However, we'll say that each floor has a mass of 1 (for math's sake, since I don't want to mess with larger values that complicate things - and this is simply arbitrary, anyway). Each floor was approximately three meters above the floor below it (about 9-10 feet). 9.81m/s/s is the rate of attraction of gravity. That means it took 3/[%Force-sub-G%] seconds to impact the floor below it (0.30581039755351681957186544342508 seconds). I do hope that is within your standards of precision... I know they are quite strict.

Now, having fallen for 0.3058 seconds, this floor, with a mass of 1 (arbitrary), is moving at [%Force-sub-G%]x[%Time%] - where "Time" represents the duration of acceleration due to gravity (3 meters/second is the result).

So, we have an arbitrary mass of 1 moving at 3 meters/second. Inertia is equal to 1/2[%mass%]x[%velocity%]^2. So, that leaves us with 1/2x1x3^2 - or "4.5". While not the "official" unit - this would be the equivalent of having 4.5 static floors suddenly appearing atop the floor of subject. So, one floor couldn't compromise the integrity of the tower, right? Each floor is supposed to support five times the weight of the floor above it.

Well... so it would seem. Let's start increasing the mass, shall we? We'll say the floor now has a mass of 10. That means each floor can support a static mass of 50. Rate of acceleration and distance are the same... so no need to go through that again. And we end up with the inertia of the falling floor to be 1/2x10x3^2 = 5x9 = 45. Standard unit of measure, here, being kilograms - we're not even in the hundreds and thousands of kilograms involved in one single floor on the WTC.

It is highly unlikely, due to the nature of the structure, that the mass of just a single floor would be at play. Also, in the event that a single floor collapses, the floor above it will come crashing down on top of it... now pay attention...It fell twice as far - that's 6/9.81=0.61162079510703363914373088685015 seconds of free-fall (at this point the steel structure will provide little resistance as it has already been compromised).

That's 6 meters per second (hey, that works out nice, don't it?)

That means our original mass of one would come out looking like 1/2x1x6^2=0.5x36 = 18 - with the original floor being capable of supporting five additional floors. Even if the structure of the collapsing floor managed to slow the descent of the above floor (not counting the mass of the floors above it), it is apparent that the collapse is completely out of control.

This is also assuming there is zero damage to the structure(s) below, and not taking into account design flaws - such as the bolt&bracket joints - which do not perform up to the original welding specifications.

If you want to play around with this some more - www.ajdesigner.com...

had some formulas I used to verify my own. Feel free to explore. The only thing I should note is that I left the final values in representation to a comparable static force. It's essentially the same, it's just that the notation is different because they are, fundamentally, different things (inertia (also known as kinetic energy - expressed in joules) implies a body in motion, relative to another body, whereas mass implies no motion).

Have a nice day.

Edit: fixed math problems.

[edit on 15-12-2007 by Aim64C]

Originally posted by Aim64C
Same concept, here. While the total force exerted on the structure in heavy winds is far greater than that of the airliner - it is distributed across the entire surface of the structure and successfully countered by each level of supports. A plane is not only much harder than air - it also has much more concentrated mass and velocity - meaning it is going to cause damage to the structure.

But the point is the evidence still states the planes did not cause enough damage to cause the collapse.

Originally posted by ULTIMA1

Originally posted by Aim64C
Same concept, here. While the total force exerted on the structure in heavy winds is far greater than that of the airliner - it is distributed across the entire surface of the structure and successfully countered by each level of supports. A plane is not only much harder than air - it also has much more concentrated mass and velocity - meaning it is going to cause damage to the structure.

But the point is the evidence still states the planes did not cause enough damage to cause the collapse.

The plane impacts did not, but the plane impact also started the fires, which then started a chain of events that led to the collapse. This is what the official reports state.