Wednesday, March 28, 2007

WTC Blueprints Leaked by Whistleblower

Unseen documents show official investigations used flawed construction details
infowars

A whistleblower that was on a team working for Silverstein Group in 2002 has made public an extensive set of detailed architectural drawings of the World Trade Center, that prove beyond any doubt that the official reports into the collapse of the towers misrepresented their construction.

The documents were passed to physics Professor Steven Jones, formerly of Brigham Young University, who has done extensive research into the collapse of the buildings and contends that explosives were used to bring them down.

Little is known about the identity of the whistleblower at this point, however the blueprints provided consist of 261 drawings included detailed plans for the North Tower (WTC 1), the World Trade Center foundation and basement, and the TV mast on top of the North Tower.

Most of the drawings can be viewed here.

The blueprints, unlike those of any other publicly funded building, have been withheld from public view since the 9/11 attacks without explanation and were even unavailable for viewing by the team of engineers from the American Society of Civil Engineers, who were assembled to investigate the collapses by FEMA, until they had signed legal documents which bound them to secrecy and demanded that they never use the information against the buildings' owners as part of a lawsuit.

The website 911research.wtc7.net, one of the sites at the forefront of independent investigation into 9/11 for years now, states:

The detailed architectural drawings make clear what official reports have apparently attempted to hide: that the Twin Towers had massive core columns, and those columns ran most of the height of each Tower before transitioning to columns with smaller cross-sections.

Both of the government-sponsored engineering studies of the Twin Towers' "collapses" -- FEMA's and NIST's -- are highly misleading about the core structures. Neither Report discloses dimensions for core columns -- dimensions that are clearly evident in the architectural drawings. Both Reports use a variety of techniques seemingly designed to minimize the strength of the cores or to conceal their structural role entirely.

FEMA, in its explanation of the collapses, stated:

As the floors collapsed, this left tall freestanding portions of the exterior wall and possibly central core columns. As the unsupported height of these freestanding exterior wall elements increased, they buckled at the bolted column splice connections, and also collapsed.

The blueprints show that FEMA's report was inaccurate in stating that core columns were "freestanding" when in fact large horizontal beams cross-connected the core columns in a three-dimensional matrix of steel.

The NIST report into the collapses has also been proven inaccurate by the blueprints as it has implied that the only the corner columns were "massive" and that the core columns decreased in size in the higher stories when, in fact, the sixteen columns on the long faces of the cores shared the same dimensions for most of each Tower's height.

These omitted and distorted facts serve to render the official reports extremely questionable. It seems that facts were being tweaked in order to get closer to an explanation for the collapses. Even then the reports both failed to provide adequate explanations of why the buildings fell.

The buildings more or less fell into their own footprints, which is something that normally takes weeks of expert planning when a building is intentionally demolished and there are only a few companies on the planet that can do it.

Within each trade tower there were 47 steel columns at the core and 240 perimeter steel beams. 287 steel-columns in total. According to the official story, random spread out fires on different floors caused all these columns to totally collapse at the same time and at a free fall speed, with no resistance from undamaged parts of the structure.

Professor Steven Jones points out that the total annihilation of the building, core columns and all, defies the laws of physics unless it was artificially exploded:

"Where is the delay that must be expected due to conservation of momentum – one of the foundational Laws of Physics? That is, as upper-falling floors strike lower floors – and intact steel support columns – the fall must be significantly impeded by the impacted mass. If the central support columns remained standing, then the effective resistive mass would be less, but this is not the case – somehow the enormous support columns failed/disintegrated along with the falling floor pans."



Below is an examination of the official reports in more detail.

The Official Explanation of the collapses of the Trade Towers and Building 7

The official explanation says that the towers collapsed because of the combined effect of the impact of the airplanes and the resulting fires. The report put out by FEMA said: “The structural damage sustained by each tower from the impact, combined with the ensuing fires, resulted in the total collapse of each building".

And building 7's collapse according to FEMA was also due to fire, however FEMA could not give specific details:

"The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how they caused the building to collapse [“official theory”] remain unknown at this time. Although the total diesel fuel on the premises contained massive potential energy, the best hypothesis [fire/damage-caused collapse] has only a low probability of occurrence. Further research, investigation, and analyses are needed to resolve this issue."

FEMA is not an investigative agency, but it was entrusted with the sole responsibility for investigating the collapses. It began to coordinate the destruction of the evidence almost immediately. The structural steel was quickly removed and loaded on ships for transport to blast furnaces in India and China. Meanwhile, FEMA's investigation of the collapses consisted of assembling a group of volunteer investigators from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), dubbed the Building Performance Assessment Team (BPAT). The group was headed by W. Gene Corley, a structural engineer from Chicago who led the investigation of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

FEMA's investigation of one of the worst and most pivotal events in history was farcical:

*
No independent investigation was funded: FEMA allocated $600,000 for the BPAT's study, which included the cost of printing their report.
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Except for an early "tourist trip", The BPAT volunteers were barred from Ground Zero.
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They did not see a single piece of steel until almost a month after the disaster.
*
They had to guess the original locations of the few pieces of steel they saw.
*
They collected 150 pieces of steel for further study (out of millions of pieces).
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Their report, which called for "further investigation and analysis", was published after Ground Zero had been scrubbed.

A key facet of the FEMA report on the towers' collapse was the pancaking floors theory, whereby each floor successively gave way due to buckled columns and the weight from above. This theory has since been roundly dismissed as it totally ignores the fact that the building's central core columns even existed and also ignores the toppling effect witnessed during the collapse of the South Tower and the explosive pulverizing of all materials into fine powder.

NIST's Investigation

It was not until long after the Ground Zero clean-up was completed that an investigation with a multi-million dollar budget began: NIST's 'Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation' was funded with an initial budget of $16 million.

Where as the FEMA investigation in understanding the Collapse of the World Trade Center could be chalked up as a farce, the NIST's investigation cannot. NIST's results strongly indicate a cover-up. NIST's Final Report on the Twin Towers shows that:

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NIST avoids describing, let alone explaining, the "collapse" of each Tower after they were "poised for collapse." Thus, NIST avoids answering the question their investigation was tasked with answering: how did the Towers collapse?
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NIST describes the Twin Towers without reference to the engineering history of steel-framed buildings, and separates its analysis of WTC Building 7 into a separate report. By treating them in isolation, NIST hides just how anomalous the alleged collapses of the buildings are.
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NIST avoids disclosing the evidence sulfidation documented in Appendix C of the FEMA's Building Performance Study.This unexplained phenomenon was described by the New York Times as "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation."
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NIST has refused to publish the computer models that its report imply show how the fires in the Towers led to "collapse initiation".

The report explains the collapse of both towers with the following sentence:

"The change in potential energy due to downward movement of building mass above the buckled columns exceeded the strain energy that could have been absorbed by the structure. Global collapse then ensued."

So NIST promulgates a theory of "progressive collapse" - ie once the top started coming down, the whole lot came down with it, even the undamaged sections of the building.




NIST admits that it didn't even attempt to model the undamaged portions of the building and only modeled a portion of each tower in any detail -- its "global floor model" which consisted of "several stories below the impact area to the top of the structure." Thus the structurally intact floors 1-91 of WTC 1 and floors 1-77 of WTC 2 were excluded from the so called "global" models of the towers. NIST provides no evidence that its model even predicted "collapse initiation".

The excellent research website www.911review.com, which everyone should visit, succinctly sums up the cover up perpetrated by the NIST report:

In summary: The reports by NIST say nothing about how -- and if! -- the collapse was able to progress through dozens and dozens of structurally intact floors without being stopped. If no external energy was available e.g. in the form of explosives, this would have been the opportunity to show that no such energy was needed. On the other hand, if some unaccounted-for energy broke the supporting structures enabling the collapse to progress with the speed it did, there would have been many good reasons not to try to model the impossible, ie. a purely gravitation-driven collapse. Stopping the analysis early enough also saves NIST from trying to explain the symmetrically of the collapses (despite non-symmetrical impact damage and fires), the almost complete pulverization of non-metallic materials as well as the extremely hot spots in the rubble. These remain as inexplicable by the official story as they have ever been.

Despite calls from leading structural and fire engineers, and despite the fact that they published models of the plane impacts, NIST has refused to publish visual simulations from its computer models of the collapses.

In an even more startling admission in its own report, NIST reveals that it "adjusted the input" of variables in tests beyond the visual evidence of what actually happened in order to save its own hypothesis:

"The more severe case (which became Case B for WTC 1 and Case D for WTC 2) was used for the global analysis of each tower. Complete sets of simulations were then performed for Cases B and D. To the extent that the simulations deviated from the photographic evidence or eyewitness reports [e.g., complete collapse occurred], the investigators adjusted the input, but only within the range of physical reality. Thus, for instance,…the pulling forces on the perimeter columns by the sagging floors were adjusted..." (NIST, 2005, p. 142)

NIST simply "discarded" realistic tests based on the empirical data because they did not cause the buildings to collapse.

If this is not indicative of a cover up then what is? The investigation is the wrong way round, NIST has already decided what happened and is manufacturing data to prove it!

Iran TV airs footage of U.K. sailors - Focus on Iran - MSNBC.com

Iran TV airs footage of U.K. sailors - Focus on Iran - MSNBC.com

Iran TV airs footage of U.K. sailors
Tehran claims sailors confessed to tresspassing, says woman will be freed
BREAKING NEWS
MSNBC News Services
Updated: 12:57 p.m. ET March 28, 2007
TEHRAN, Iran - Iranian state television showed video footage Wednesday of a British servicewoman and a group of seized British sailors and marines.

The video showed the sailors and marines eating. The woman, 26-year-old Faye Turney, was shown wearing a white tunic with a black headscarf draped loosely over her hair.

Turney was to be freed Wednesday or Thursday, the Iranian foreign minister told the Associated Press.

“Today or tomorrow, the lady will be released,” Manouchehr Mottaki said Wednesday on the sidelines of an Arab summit that he was attending in the Saudi capital.

"Obviously we trespassed," Turney said on the footage broadcast by Al-Alam, an Arabic-language, Iranian state-run television station that is carried across the Middle East by satellite. She was also shown in uniform eating with sailors and marines and at one point was shown smoking a cigarette with her eyes downcast.

"My name is leading sailman Faye Turney. I come from England. I have served in Foxtrot 99. I've been in the navy for nine years," she said.

It also showed what appeared to be a handwritten letter from Turney to her family. The letter said, in part, "I have written a letter to the Iranian people to apologize for us entering their waters."

Turney was the only person to be shown speaking in the video.

Tehran claims proof sailors trespassed
Iran's state television quoted an unnamed Iranian official on Wednesday as saying the first, technical phase of an investigation into the detentions of the British sailors was complete and had determined they were "definitely" in Iranian waters when seized.

The unnamed official also was quoted as saying that some of the detained British sailors had "confirmed they were in Iranian territorial waters and expressed regret over it."

One Iranian official said immediately after the detentions last week that all the British had confessed to being in Iranian waters, but Iran had not until now repeated that assertion.

"This case is completely provable," the unnamed official was quoted as saying, "and British officials were also informed about it."

British remain cautious
A British diplomat in Tehran said the embassy had not heard anything officially about plans to release Turney.

He said Britain’s ambassador to Iran was now in a meeting with a senior Iranian Foreign Ministry official, the third such meeting in as many days.

“We’ve had nothing officially,” he said.

The ISNA news agency earlier quoted Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini as saying: “This issue will be solved in a calm atmosphere. We can not predict how long it is going to take.”

The statement came shortly after Britain announced it would suspend bilateral business with Iran on all other issues until Tehran returns 15 British sailors and marines seized on Friday.

The Iranian government had not yet studied British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett’s announcement, Hosseini Matin, the Iranian Embassy’s first secretary, told The Associated Press. The Iranian Embassy had earlier released a statement saying the dispute over the sailors captured in disputed waters could be resolved, but Matin said the situation may have changed.

“The new situation needs new review,” he said.

A British Foreign Office spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the bilateral freeze meant that all official inward and outward visits will be stopped, the issuance of visas to Iranian officials suspended, British support for other events such as trade missions to Iran are put on hold and there will be no government-to-government business on any other issue.

Blair calls for more pressure
Earlier, Prime Minister Tony Blair said it was time to increase the pressure on Iran and the British military released what it said was proof that their boats were within Iraqi territorial waters when they were seized.

Britain’s military said that navy vessels were 1.7 nautical miles inside Iraqi waters when Iran seized the crew members.

Vice Admiral Charles Style told reporters that the Iranians had provided a position on Sunday — a location that he said was in Iraqi waters.

By Tuesday, Iranian officials had given a revised position 2 miles east, placing the British inside Iranian waters — a claim he said was not verified by global positioning system coordinates.

“It is hard to understand a legitimate reason for this change of coordinates,” Style said.


Britain and the United States have said the sailors and marines were intercepted Friday after they completed a search of a civilian vessel in the Iraqi part of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, where the border between Iran and Iraq has been disputed for centuries.

Iran has said that the British sailors and marines were being treated well, but refused to say where they were being held, or rule out the possibility that they could be brought to trial for allegedly entering Iranian waters.

Echos of past incident
In 2004 eight British sailors were captured as they were delivering a patrol boat to the Iraqi Riverine Patrol Service. Britain described the mission as "routine" but Iranian officials accused them entering Iranian waters illegally.

A day later, Iran announced that the soldiers would be put on trial, and Iranian television broadcast video of the soldiers blindfolded and sitting on the ground. Two of the sailors later read a statement of apology for entering Iran's territorial waters, saying it was a mistake.

The soldiers later told reporters they had been mistreated and subjected to mock executions.

The eight were eventually returned to British diplomats in Tehran, from where they were flown back to Iraq. Iran initially promised to return the seized boats, but later decided to keep them for display at Tehran's War Museum.

The Iranians also kept the crew's GPS equipment, and their coordinates have never been released.

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17827481/

BBC NEWS | Americas | Rumsfeld torture suit dismissed

BBC NEWS | Americas | Rumsfeld torture suit dismissed

Rumsfeld torture suit dismissed
A US court has dismissed a lawsuit against former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld over claims prisoners were tortured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The court accepted that the nine men who sued had been tortured - and detailed the torture in its ruling.

But Judge Thomas Hogan ruled the five Iraqis and four Afghans did not have US constitutional rights, and also that Mr Rumsfeld was immune from such suits.

Two human rights groups brought the suit against him and three officers.

Judge Hogan threw out the claims against retired Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the former commander of US military forces in Iraq, Col Thomas Pappas and former Brig Gen Janis Karpinski, both former commanders at Abu Ghraib prison.

In a ruling stretching to nearly 60 pages, the chief judge of the US district court for the District of Columbia said the allegations of torture were "horrifying".

Details of abuse

The nine men suffered abuse including being:

* hung upside-down and slapped until they lost consciousness
* stabbed with knives
* subjected to electric shocks
* deprived of sleep by loud noises and bright lights
* grabbed by aggressive dogs

They also were subjected to sexual humiliation.

None was ever charged with a crime.

All were released after detentions of one month to one year. Some were detained multiple times.

The complaint alleged that the three officers knew torture and abuse were occurring and were present when officers under their command were committing torture and abuse.

The complaint against Mr Rumsfeld - brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First - focused on an order he signed in December 2002 authorising new methods for interrogating prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Both groups say he later ignored overwhelming evidence that the policies resulted in prisoner abuse.

Mr Rumsfeld has apologised for the abuse scandals.

He was removed as defence secretary following the defeat of President Bush's Republican party in elections last year.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6501499.stm

Published: 2007/03/27 21:49:33 GMT

© BBC MMVII

Russia slams U.S. foreign policy - Europe - MSNBC.com

Russia slams U.S. foreign policy - Europe - MSNBC.com


Russia slams U.S. foreign policy

Policy review cites 'creeping American strategy' of destabilizing Iran

The Associated Press
Updated: 6:42 p.m. ET March 27, 2007

MOSCOW - Russia's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday criticized the United States for what it called over-reliance on force and warned Washington against military action against Iran.

But in a major review of foreign policy priorities, the ministry said Russia was ready to cooperate to end global crises if Washington treats it as an equal partner.

The statement reflects Russia's growing confidence and economic clout, and appears to be a signal to Washington that, while the two nations can work together, Russia will not always follow the U.S. lead. It also plays to national pride in advance of parliamentary and presidential elections.

Russia criticized what it called "the creeping American strategy of dragging the global community into a large-scale crisis around Iran," saying that Iran helps maintain stability in Afghanistan and Central Asia.

At the same time, the ministry's paper assailed Iran for its "unconstructive" stance, reflecting growing Kremlin irritation with its ally's refusal to freeze uranium enrichment, as the U.N. demands.

Russia and China, both permanent U.N. Security Council members with significant trade ties with Iran, have opposed U.S. efforts to impose harsh sanctions against the country. But years of growing international mistrust over Iran's ultimate goals led to initial U.N. sanctions in December and to tougher penalties imposed last Saturday.

Iran has remained defiant, rejecting the latest sanctions and announcing a partial suspension of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog. It also accused Russia of caving in to Western pressure.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday that the latest set of sanctions was a "call for the resumption of talks rather than an instrument of punishment" — a statement apparently aimed both at soothing Iran and assuring Russians public that their government was not betraying its partner.

The ministry's paper emphasized the need to conduct a "balanced course on Iran, protecting our national interests in that country while preventing violations of the nuclear non-proliferation regime."

The ministry also hinted that Russia would tie weapons sales to Iran to its cooperation on the enrichment program. "Military-technical ties with Iran must develop on the basis of strict compliance with Russia's international obligations while taking into account developments related to the Iranian nuclear program," it said.

Russia recently delivered 29 Tor M-1 air defense missile systems to Iran despite strong U.S. complaints.

The strategy paper said that arms exports would remain an important component of Russia's foreign policy.
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17816660/