I would love to know how many actual engineers of skyscrapers have signed the AE911 petition, especially when probably every engineering school and company on the planet has looked at the unprecedented WTC collapses.
Ruppert was correct to point out the "deception dollar" campaign degenerated into nonsense claims, but wrong to state (immediately after Rubicon was published) that 9/11 shouldn't be focused on any more. There's obviously not going to be a real official investigation - nor a real investigation led by the grassroots - but it's still important to point out that this was the trigger, the excuse, for the wars for Iraq's oil and Afghanistan's opium and all the rest. The omission of 9/11 in the "Collapse" movie is odd for anyone who's followed Ruppert's writings. The film's claim that the White House was paying attention to his work only makes sense if one already knows that he was writing on this topic.
It would be nice to see some of the demolition theorists mention that the firefighters watched all three buildings leaning before they fell down, that floors fell away from under people trapped in the WTC before the collapses, among a few of the many problems with the demolition claims.
It's also sad to see the claim that thermite is used to knock down buildings (the current Project Censored annual publication states this) when there's no documentation that this has ever been done to any building because it doesn't have the precise timing that would be required for controlled demolition. Also there is the problem of the collapses of the towers starting at the point where the structures were shattered by the plane crashes - and the fact that steel loses a lot of heat at the temperatures of the fires (the reason the beams were wrapped with fireproofing that was dislodged during the crashes).
Meanwhile, the early focus of the 9/11 truth movement on the NORAD standdown, foreknowledge, coincidental war games, the interesting business partners of the Florida flight school, the FBI agents who tracked the flight schools, Able Danger, means / motive / opportunity, relationships of 9/11 to the pre-existing war plans, peak oil, homeland security, etc. -- they seem like a distant memory only vaguely remembered. It must be a coincidence that the media ignored the truth movement when those (now passe) topics were the focus, but when no planes and demolition began to dominate, then the media was delighted to mention them.
"One of the primary means of immobilizing the American people politically today is to hold them in a state of confusion in which anything can be believed and nothing can be known… nothing of significance, that is."
-- E. Martin Schotz, "History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy"
"Woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity"
-- Eric Hoffer
Here is an extract from the testimony of Deputy Chief Peter Hayden, who had 33 years service in Division 1 to his credit:
Firehouse: Other people tell me that there were a lot of firefighters in the street who were visible, and they put out traffic cones to mark them off?
Hayden: Yeah. There was enough there and we were marking off. There were a lot of damaged apparatus there that were covered. We tried to get searches in those areas. By now, this is going on into the afternoon, and we were concerned about additional collapse, not only of the Marriott, because there was a good portion of the Marriott still standing, but also we were pretty sure that 7 World Trade Center would collapse. Early on, we saw a bulge in the southwest corner between floors 10 and 13, and we had put a transit on that and we were pretty sure she was going to collapse. You actually could see there was a visible bulge, it ran up about three floors. It came down about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, but by about 2 o’clock in the afternoon we realized this thing was going to collapse.
Firehouse: Was there heavy fire in there right away?
Hayden: No, not right away, and that’s probably why it stood for so long because it took a while for that fire to develop. It was a heavy body of fire in there and then we didn’t make any attempt to fight it. That was just one of those wars we were just going to lose. We were concerned about the collapse of a 47-story building there. We were worried about additional collapse there of what was remaining standing of the towers and the Marriott, so we started pulling the people back after a couple of hours of surface removal and searches along the surface of the debris. We started to pull guys back because we were concerned for their safety.
www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz/hayden...
Captain Chris Boyle (Engine 94) with 18 years of service with the FDNY gave this interview:
Firehouse: Did that chief give an assignment to go to building 7?
Boyle: He gave out an assignment. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but he told the chief that we were heading down to the site.
… We went one block north over to Greenwich and then headed south. There was an engine company there, right at the corner. It was right underneath building 7 and it was still burning at the time. They had a hose in operation, but you could tell there was no pressure. It was barely making it across the street. Building 6 was fully involved and it was hitting the sidewalk across the street. I told the guys to wait up.
A little north of Vesey I said, we’ll go down, let’s see what’s going on. A couple of the other officers and I were going to see what was going on. We were told to go to Greenwich and Vesey and see what’s going on. So we go there and on the north and east side of 7 it didn’t look like there was any damage at all, but then you looked on the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors. Debris was falling down on the building and it didn’t look good.
But they had a hoseline operating. Like I said, it was hitting the sidewalk across the street, but eventually they pulled back too. Then we received an order from Fellini, we’re going to make a move on 7. That was the first time really my stomach tightened up because the building didn’t look good. I was figuring probably the standpipe systems were shot. There was no hydrant pressure. I wasn’t really keen on the idea. Then this other officer I’m standing next to said, that building doesn’t look straight. So I'm standing there. I’m looking at the building. It didn’t look right, but, well, we'll go in, we’ll see.
So we gathered up rollups and most of us had masks at that time. We headed toward 7. And just around we were about a hundred yards away and Butch Brandies came running up. He said forget it, nobody's going into 7, there’s creaking, there are noises coming out of there, so we just stopped. And probably about 10 minutes after that, Visconti, he was on West Street, and I guess he had another report of further damage either in some basements and things like that, so Visconti said nobody goes into 7, so that was the final thing and that was abandoned.
Firehouse: When you looked at the south side, how close were you to the base of that side?
Boyle: I was standing right next to the building, probably right next to it.
Firehouse: When you had fire on the 20 floors, was it in one window or many?
Boyle: There was a huge gaping hole and it was scattered throughout there. It was a huge hole. I would say it was probably about a third of it, right in the middle of it. And so after Visconti came down and said nobody goes in 7, we said all right, we’ll head back to the command post. We lost touch with him. I never saw him again that day.
www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz/boyle....