WTC Evidence Obstruction

Before we look closer into the claims made by (Screw) Loose Change a summary of who was responsible for the investigation:

QUOTE

"The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), together with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), has established a team of experts, the Building Performance Assessment Team (BPAT), to investigate the factors that led to the collapse of and damage to the World Trade Center towers and other buildings around them (see box below). The team will also identify and make recommendations on further research that needs to be done as a consequence of the terrorist attacks." Source

QUOTE

Dr. W. Gene Corley, a structural engineer with Construction Technology Laboratories, in Skokie, Illinois (...), is the over-all director of FEMA's inquiry into the World Trade towers." Source

and of who was responsible for the clean-up:

The New York City agency that oversees the Ground Zero cleanup operation is the Department of Design and Construction (DDC). The DDC is normally responsible for overseeing municipal construction contracts, such as street repairs and jails. Its two top officials are Kenneth Holden and his lieutenant, Michael Burton

That afternoon, Burton meets Holden and together they begin organizing the cleanup operation. Under Burton’s direction, the team of “unbuilders” subsequently undertakes what journalist William Langewiesche describes in his book "America Ground" as

QUOTE

“the most aggressive possible schedule of demolition and debris removal.”Langewiesche

Yet this appears to go against established procedures. New York’s official emergency plans, which were written before 9/11, in fact require the Department of Sanitation to remove debris after a building collapse.

QUOTE

"That DDC would be in charge of the construction response was never an official charge from Coles or Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The city's Sanitation Dept. normally handles emergency debris removal, site officials say, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were on their way, as was usual in disasters of this magnitude. "In early January, I realized that no one ever asked me to manage the effort at Ground Zero." Burton remembers. "I just did what I thought had to be done, and it just happened." Adds DDC Commissioner Kenneth Holden: "We were there, no one said ‘no,' so we went ahead." Order out of Chaos - Engineering News-Record, 4/22/2002

This lack of clear responsibility (which makes it difficult to hold someone accountable) was also stated by Langewiesche in his book. According to him, there is no specific moment when Holden and Burton are placed in charge of the Ground Zero cleanup effort.

QUOTE

“Rather, there was a shift of power in their direction that was never quite formalized and, indeed, was unjustified by bureaucratic logic or political considerations.”

Reportedly, at some point, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani made a

QUOTE

“back-room decision to scrap the organization charts, to finesse the city’s own Office of Emergency Management (OEM), and to allow the DDC to proceed.”Langewiesche

Authors and New York Times reporters James Glanz and Eric Lipton write that Michael Burton,

QUOTE

“who had become the effective czar for the cleanup job, had made it clear that he cared very little about engineering subtleties like the question of why the towers first stood, then collapsed on September 11. ‘We know why they fell,’ he said. ‘Because they flew two planes into the towers.’ But he was deeply immersed in the details of hauling steel out of the debris pile.” Glanz and Lipton, p. 299

The prime consultant on the cleanup job was Thornton-Tomasetti Group, Inc., of New York, N.Y., who managed all structural and engineering operations association with the entire WTC cleanup effort. (Source)

It was Mike Burton from the DDC who made the decision to call them in:

QUOTE

"I got a call from Mike Burton at 1 p.m. He said they needed engineering help down there," says Richard Tomasetti, president of structural engineering firm Thornton-Tomasetti Group Inc".Order out of Chaos - Engineering News-Record, 4/22/2002

The same Burton who, according to that report, "could not tell who was part of the DDC effort and who wasn't."

Also Controlled Demolition Inc. played a major role:

QUOTE

"The core of what may become the cleanup master plan for the wrecked site in lower Manhattan was delivered to the city's Dept. of Design and Construction Sept. 22 by implosion consultant Controlled Demolition Inc., Phoenix, Md. The 25-page "preliminary" document offers a host of debris-related concerns and removal ideas related to the site's key collapsed buildings and outlines other project management issues, from site security and safety to contractor relations and offsite debris disposal. CDI was initially retained by Tully Construction Co. Inc., one of the site's four main cleanup management contractors, to assess debris removal in its sector that includes the former Two WTC and several smaller buildings." Source See also

So, who made the decision to quickly transport the remaining structural steel to scrap yards in the first place? It seems that this is a tough question:

QUOTE

"In one testy exchange, Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., asked the panel of witnesses who was leading the investigation and three people raised their hands."Source

Finally, we will find the answer here:

From the HEARING BEFORE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE - HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 6, 2002, Serial No. 107–46:

QUOTE

Chairman BOEHLERT. Thank you very much. And we are welcoming, as a guest in the Committee, but an interested guest, Mr. Crowley of New York. Mr. CROWLEY. (...) I have a number of questions that I think I would address to Mr. Shea, Dr. Corley, and Dr. Bement firstly. And one, can any one of you gentlemen tell me who was in charge of amassing the steel and other debris as a result from the attack of September 11 on the WTC? Mr. SHEA. I am not sure I understand fully your question, but—— Mr. CROWLEY. In other words, who—what entity was in charge of collecting the material? Mr. SHEA. FEMA commissioned the Building Performance Assessment Team, and it was that team, led by Dr. Corley, that would have embraced that responsibility. Mr. CROWLEY. Did they determine which debris would be sold off as scrap? And if not, who did? Mr. SHEA. I will—yeah, I will defer to Dr. Corley on that. Dr. CORLEY. No. We did not determine that. That was determined, I understand, by the City of New York. We—— Mr. CROWLEY. When did you—when did you become aware that the steel from the World Trade Center was being sold off? Dr. CORLEY. I think it was on the order of a week or so before we arrived on site, on October the 5th, I believe it was. Mr. CROWLEY. So they were—they—in other words, the city was selling or was disposing of material within two weeks of the actual event, or was it prior to that? Dr. CORLEY. It may have been prior to that. I am not sure when the first decision was made on that. But I didn't find out—we didn't find out about it until then. Mr. CROWLEY. Were you disturbed by that—by finding that out? Were you disturbed to find out that the city was actually disposing of or selling off that material? Dr. CORLEY. We had previously indicated that we definitely wanted to see the steel and select quantities that were—— Mr. CROWLEY. Did you or did FEMA or any other entity actually ask or tell the City of New York to cease and desist from disposing of that material? Dr. CORLEY. As far as the team is concerned, we made it known that we needed steel. And I don't have any knowledge that anyone had the authority even to ask them to cease and desist. Mr. CROWLEY. So no one even asked them politely to stop selling what, in all likelihood, could be evidence? (....) But I do believe that conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day with this. They are going to make the Warren Commission look like a walk in the park. And that is unfortunate not only for the Members of Congress who are trying to work on this issue, but for all the families out there that are listening very carefully to what we are talking about today, what these experts are saying. And I just think there is so much that has been lost in these last six months that we can never go back and retrieve. And that is not only unfortunate, it is borderline criminal. Chairman BOEHLERT. Yeah. Mr. CROWLEY. And I will yield back with that, Mr. Chairman. Chairman BOEHLERT. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Crowley. And the whole purpose of this hearing is to get as much information as we can so that we can be very prudent and very thorough in our analysis and make the appropriate recommendations. Let me point out, in response to your line of questioning, the decision was made by the City of New York to dispose of the material before the BPAT team was even onsite. And I understand fully what the City of New York was doing. Their first interest was the search and rescue operation and they had to get the debris out of the way. And it had a BPAT team, but on site, they would have immediately said, you know, we need this. This is evidence. We need this. This is very important, so get it out of site obviously. We don't want to hamper the research—rescue operation. But at one time, they were even talking about dumping it into the sea to build a new reef for fish. But, in any event, it just points up to the fact that the material should have been saved. And had there been a timely response of a BPAT team, had we had a protocol in place to get people onsite, we know who is in charge and when, someone would have said that. Source

Now we begin with Loose Change and the debunking-attempt by Screw Loose Change:

If only we could examine the debris from the World Trade Center and figure out what happened.
Experts did examine the debris. Extensively. The last steel wasn’t removed from the WTC site until May 29, 2002.

Unfortunately, Mayor Giuliani began shipping the remains off to recycling yards overseas before investigators could even examine it. False.

No, it's true. We've just seen that the decision was made by the City of New York aka Major Giuliani. Now we will look closer into the efforts made by the experts to examine the steel. Again from the Firehouse-Article:

QUOTE

"The team of investigators - comprised of officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the American Society of Civil Engineers - did not even get access to the site until October, a month after the attack. They testified they never asked the city of New York not to recycle tons of steel that some experts say could hold vital clues about why the twin towers fell. And the team, which has no subpoena power, did not get access to the trade center blueprints from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey until four months after the collapse and only then after being forced to sign a form agreeing not to testify against the Port Authority."Source

QUOTE

Some 185,101 tons of structural steel have been hauled away from Ground Zero. Most of the steel has been recycled as per the city's decision to swiftly send the wreckage to salvage yards in New Jersey. The city's hasty move has outraged many victims' families who believe the steel should have been examined more thoroughly. Last month, fire experts told Congress that about 80% of the steel was scrapped without being examined because investigators did not have the authority to preserve the wreckage. (NY Daily News, 4/16/02)

From another article:

QUOTE

New York authorities' decision to ship the twin towers' scrap to recyclers has raised the anger of victims' families and some engineers who believe the massive girders should be further examined to help determine how the towers collapsed.Source

Again from the HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE 6-03-02:

QUOTE

"In the month that lapsed between the terrorist attacks and the deployment of the BPAT team, a significant amount of steel debris—including most of the steel from the upper floors—was removed from the rubble pile, cut into smaller sections, and either melted at the recycling plant or shipped out of the U.S. Some of the critical pieces of steel—including the suspension trusses from the top of the towers and the internal support columns—were gone before the first BPAT team member ever reached the site. "Source

Now-Mayor Bloomberg, a former engineering major, was not concerned about the destruction of the evidence:

QUOTE

„If you want to take a look at the construction methods and the design, that's in this day and age what computers do. Just looking at a piece of metal generally doesn't tell you anything. “Source

Amazing statement. Has he ever heared of something like this?

Back to Loose Change, it claims that:

Not even FEMA was allowed into Ground Zero.
Screw Loose Change's answer is a simple "False." and provides us with two quotes to debunk Loose Change:

QUOTE

"At the beginning of October, the team visited the collapsed and damaged buildings at Ground Zero and over a period of six days collected a significant amount of data on building performance under extreme conditions."?Source

QUOTE

"Team members toured what was left of the 16-acre World Trade Center plaza, interviewed officials and eyewitnesses, and examined remnants of fallen structures at the Staten Island landfill and at salvage yards. Steel samples were cut and catalogued for further study, and some were taken back to WPI for analysis (see the "deep mystery" of melted steel)".?"The investigation consisted of visiting Ground Zero, a survey of the WTC site, land-fill and steel recycling centers, review of videotape records, eyewitness accounts, interviews with building design teams, and analysis using computer models."Source

First, the Ground Zero-Tour was from October 7–12, 2001, almost a month after 9/11. At this date, there were already more than a hundred of thousand tons of debris removed, and furthermore, hundreds of tons of steel were announced as stolen. The Telegraph reported on Sept. 28:

QUOTE

"The theft of more than 250 tons of steel from the ruins of the World Trade Centre is being investigated by the FBI and New York police who believe that it was organised by one of the city's Mafia families. Material from the scene of the September 11 terrorist attack, consisting mainly of steel girders, was discovered earlier this week at three scrapyards, two in New Jersey and one on Long Island. It appears that the scrap was hauled away by trucks involved in the clear-up operation. But instead of being taken to the FBI-controlled dump on Staten Island where all the material is being stored and sifted it was driven directly to the independently-owned scrapyards. So far, about 130,000 tons of the debris have been removed." Source

A similiar number has been reported three days later:

QUOTE

"By New York City estimates, debris removal to date has topped more than 115,756 tons." Source

And we've had already the quote from the Hearing before the Committee, that "a significant amount of steel debris were gone before the first BPAT team member ever reached the site. "

Second, it's the speak that the BPAT "collected a significant amount of data" during its tours. Let's see, if this is true.

FEMA's BPAT, who wrote the WTC Building Performance Study, didn't collect steel samples from the salvage yards. According to Appendix D of the Study,

QUOTE

"Collection and storage of steel members from the WTC site was not part of the BPS Team efforts sponsored by FEMA and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)."Source (PDF)

Then it's said that:

QUOTE

"SEAoNY [Structural Engineers Association of New York] offered to organize a volunteer team of SEAoNY engineers to collect certain WTC steel pieces for future building performance studies. Visiting Ground Zero in early October 2001, SEAoNY engineers, with the assistance from the New York City Department of Design and Construction (DDC), identified and set aside some steel pieces for further study."

To be precise, seven pieces were set aside for further study as we could read later in D.4 Data collected:

QUOTE

"The steel pieces range in size from fasteners inches in length and weighing a couple of ounces to column pieces up to 36 feet long and weighing several tons. As of March 15, 2002, a total of 156 steel pieces (not including most of the fasteners and other smaller pieces) had been inspected. In addition, seven pieces were set aside from Ground Zero with assistance from the DDC."Source (PDF)

So, of a total of 156 steel pieces ("significant amount"), seven were collected from Ground Zero, not from the BPAT/FEMA, but from voluntary engineers. All other pieces were collected later and not from Ground Zero, as it is also confirmed by the Committes Hearings:

QUOTE

"Since November, members of the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY) have volunteered to work on the BPAT team's behalf and are visiting recycling yards and landfills two to three times a week to watch for pieces of scrap that may provide important clues with regard to the behavior of the buildings." Source

For the 156 pieces the SEYoNY released a "Summary of Identified WTC Steel Pieces at Salvage Yards as of March 15, 2002" , which is replicated here.
The FEMA-Report notes:

QUOTE

"Not all of these pieces were kept for further study. This is because: -some pieces were later determined not to be relevant to understanding building damage; -once a coupon was taken, the full piece was discarded; and -pieces were accidentally processed in salvage yard operations before they were removed from the yards for further study. Approximately 100 potentially helpful steel pieces were identified at the four salvage yards that had contracts to obtain and process the WTC steel debris. These pieces have been removed and transported to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland." (FEMA WTC Study, Structural Steel and Steel connections, Appendix B, Seite B2,Source (PDF))

The number of recovered pieces differs a bit in the NIST-report (maybe it includes the fasteners and other smaller pieces not counted by FEMA):

QUOTE

" A total of 236 recovered pieces of WTC steel were cataloged; the great majority belonging to the towers, WTC 1 and WTC 2. These samples represented a quarter to half a percent of the 200,000 tons of structural steel used in the construction of the two towers." (NIST NCSTAR 1-3, (PDF))

They also state a

QUOTE

“scarcity of physical evidence that is typically available in place for reconstruction of a disaster.” (National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. xxxvi )

Also important to note that:

QUOTE

"No steel was recovered from WTC 7." NIST NCSTAR 1-3 (PFD)

But the SEAoNY-Summary contains a few pieces from WTC7, were they also "later determined not to be relevant to understanding building damage" and didn't find their way to NIST? In May 2002, the SEAoNY claims that 41 of the 156 pieces went to NIST, why not the pieces of WTC 7? Shouldn't any kind of piece of debris of the first and only collapse of a steelframed skyscraper due to fire treated as very relevant? Let's stay for short at WTC 7.

QUOTE

"Conventional demolition of 5 WTC is not possible currently because it would get in the way of debris removal operations for the collapsed 7 WTC, which itself is a stand-alone operation." Source

And in a History Channel broadcast, in which WTC7 was a subject, Jonathan Barnett, PhD, had this to say:

QUOTE

"Normally when you have a structural failure, you carefully go through the debris field looking at each item -- photographing every beam as it collapsed and every column where it is in the ground and you pick them up very carefully and you look at each element. We were unable to do that in the case of tower 7." See the whole part on WTC 7 here

Back to FEMA:

QUOTE

"The team FEMA had assembled to investigate the failures -- the Building Performance Assessment Team (BPAT) -- was denied access to the evidence." NY Times, 3/7/02

The Science Committee of the House of Representatives later identified several aspects of the FEMA-controlled operation that prevented the conduct of an adquate investigation:

1.The BPAT did not control the steel:

QUOTE

"No clear authority and the absence of an effective protocol for how the building performance investigators should conduct and coordinate their investigation with the concurrent search and rescue efforts, as well as any criminal investigation: Early confusion over who was in charge of the site and the lack of authority of investigators to impound pieces of steel for examination before they were recycled led to the loss of important pieces of evidence that were destroyed early during the search and rescue effort. In addition, a delay in the deployment of FEMA's BPAT team may have compounded the lack of access to valuable data and artifacts."

2.FEMA required BPAT members to sign confidentiality agreements:

QUOTE

"Uncertainty as a result of the confidential nature of the BPAT study: The confidential nature of the BPAT study may prevent the timely discovery of potential gaps in the investigation, which may never be filled if important, but ephemeral evidence, such as memories or home videotapes, are lost. The confidentiality agreement that FEMA requires its BPAT members to sign has frustrated the efforts of independent researchers to understand the collapse, who are unsure if their work is complementary to, or duplicative of, that of the BPAT team. In addition, the agreement has prevented the sharing of research results and the ordinary scientific give-and-take that otherwise allows scientists and engineers to winnow ideas and strengthen results. (....). Others fear that the BPAT’s silence on the scope of its report may allow critical aspects of the picture to be missed, and that, by the time the report is released and any such gaps are discovered, the trail of evidence that could provide answers may have grown cold."

This was also mentioned in an article of the New York Times, where it's said that

QUOTE

"Members have been threatened with dismissal for speaking to the press."Source

3.The BPAT was not granted access to "pertinent building documents.":

QUOTE

"Difficulty obtaining documents essential to the investigation, including blueprints, design drawings, and maintenance records:The building owners, designers and insurers, prevented independent researchers from gaining access—and delayed the BPAT team in gaining access—to pertinent building documents largely because of liability concerns. The documents are necessary to validate physical and photographic evidence and to develop computer models that can explain why the buildings failed and how similar failures might be avoided in the future."

4. "The BPAT team does not plan, nor does it have sufficient funding, to fully analyze the structural data it collected to determine the reasons for the collapse of the WTC buildings."

QUOTE

"Uncertainty as to the strategy for completing the investigation and applying the lessons learned: The BPAT team does not plan, nor does it have sufficient funding, to fully analyze the structural data it collected to determine the reasons for the collapse of the WTC buildings. (Its report is expected to rely largely on audio and video tapes of the event.) Nor does it plan to examine other important issues, such as building evacuation mechanisms. Instead, FEMA has asked the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to take over the investigation. Yet so far, NIST has not released a detailed plan describing how it will take over the investigation, what types of analyses it will conduct, how it will attempt to apply the lessons it learns to try to improve building and fire codes, and how much funding it will require."

House Science Committe, 3/6/02

And to the role of the National Science Foundation the Committe has this to say:

QUOTE

"The efforts of NSF-funded researchers were impeded by the same obstacles the BPAT team encountered: an inability to examine the steel, either removed from the site during the early search and rescue work or shipped to recycling plants, and the denial of access to building design, construction and maintenance documents. (...) To date, the NSF-funded researchers continue to face problems. They continue to be denied access to important building diagrams and blueprints, and so are unable to complete their analyses or develop the computer models necessary to better understand the failure of the buildings structural elements. Perhaps more importantly, without these computer models, engineering researchers will be unable to develop effective mitigation strategies."See also

Also Bill Manning, editor of "Fire Engineering Magazine", expressed his concerns among the firefighting community over the barring of investigators from the crime scene:

QUOTE

„Fire Engineering has good reason to believe that the "official investigation" blessed by FEMA and run by the American Society of Civil Engineers is a half-baked farce that may already have been commandeered by political forces whose primary interests, to put it mildly, lie far afield of full disclosure. Except for the marginal benefit obtained from a three-day, visual walk-through of evidence sites conducted by ASCE investigation committee members- described by one close source as a "tourist trip"-no one's checking the evidence for anything.“ Source

He also condemned the destruction of steel, demanding that

QUOTE

"The destruction and removal of evidence must stop immediately." "Such destruction of evidence shows the astounding ignorance of government officials to the value of a thorough, scientific investigation of the largest fire-induced collapse in world history. I have combed through our national standard for fire investigation, NFPA 921, but nowhere in it does one find an exemption allowing the destruction of evidence for buildings over 10 stories tall."

And Manning compared the procedure with past disasters:

QUOTE

„Did they throw away the locked doors from the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire? Did they throw away the gas can used at the Happyland Social Club Fire? Did they cast aside the pressure-regulating valves at the Meridian Plaza Fire? Of course not. But essentially, that's what they're doing at the World Trade Center.“

And this is from the New York Times,12/25/01 :

QUOTE

"Saying that the current investigation into how and why the twin towers fell on Sept. 11 is inadequate, some of the nation's leading structural engineers and fire-safety experts are calling for a new, independent and better-financed inquiry that could produce the kinds of conclusions vital for skyscrapers and future buildings nationwide. Dr. Frederick W. Mowrer, an associate professor in the fire protection engineering department at the University of Maryland, said he believed the decision could ultimately compromise any investigation of the collapses. "I find the speed with which potentially important evidence has been removed and recycled to be appalling." Experts critical of the current effort, including some of those people who are actually conducting it, cite the lack of meaningful financial support and poor coordination with the agencies cleaning up the disaster site. They point out that the current team of 20 or so investigators has no subpoena power and little staff support and has even been unable to obtain basic information like detailed blueprints of the buildings that collapsed. ...structural engineers have said that one serious mistake has already been made in the chaotic aftermath of the collapses: the decision to rapidly recycle the steel columns, beams and trusses that held up the buildings. That may have cost investigators some of their most direct physical evidence with which to try to piece together an answer. Interviews with a handful of members of the team, which includes some of the nation's most respected engineers, also uncovered complaints that they had at various times been shackled with bureaucratic restrictions that prevented them from interviewing witnesses, examining the disaster site and requesting crucial information like recorded distress calls to the police and fire departments.Source

On the first anniversary of the attacks, The Times wrote,

QUOTE

"the public knows less about the circumstances of 2,801 deaths at the foot of Manhattan in broad daylight than people in 1912 knew within weeks about the Titanic, which sank in the middle of an ocean in the dead of night." [NYT 7/23/02]

And here are somes testimonies made before the Science Committee of the House of Representatives on March 6 2000:
Congressman Boehlert, Chairman of the Science Committee of the House of representatives:

QUOTE

"I must say that the current investigation- some would argue that 'review' is the more appropriate word- seems to be shrouded in excessive secrecy" and "…valuable evidence has been lost irretrievably, and blueprints were unavailable for months." Source

Professor Glenn P. Corbett, John Jay College of Criminal Justice:

QUOTE

"Without an investigative presence, the FEMA-sanctioned assessment team did not have the authority - nor the organizational wherewithal - to ensure that all of the structural steel was thoroughly examined and the crucial steel from the points of impact saved for examination. Only a handful of pieces of steel from the points of impact have been secured to date. In addition, the BPAT studying the collapse has apparently been hampered in accessing building construction documents. These hindrances will have an impact on the BPAT report, due to be released in April. The lack of significant amounts of steel for examination will make it difficult, if not impossible, to make a definitive statement as to the specific cause and chronology of the collapse. The collapse of the World Trade Center towers were the largest structural collapses in world history. A disaster of such epic proportions demands that we fully resource a comprehensive, detailed investigation. Instead, we are staffing the BPAT with part-time engineers and scientists on a shoestring budget."

He further noted:

QUOTE

"The steel holds the primary key to understanding the chronology of events and causal factors resulting in the collapse." Source

In a letter to Mr. Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. Director, Office of Management and Budget, the committee wrote:

QUOTE

"There was unanimity among the witnesses on the need for a comprehensive assessment and research agenda to address evacuation procedures, emergency response, and structural analysis of the site's buildings." "However, we are concerned that NIST does not have the financial resources to implement its plan. Although NIST has alocated $2 million for its efforts, the FEMA-BPAT has estimated that $40 million would be required to fund a comprehensive study of an event of this magnitude and complexity." "We have also been troubled by accounts that the BPAT did not have immediate access to the WTC site. As a result, structural steel artifacts were destroyed that may have been important to the investigation." Source (PDF)

(See also this reports: CBS New York Times )

Back again to (Screw) Loose Change:

Essentially, they blocked off a crime scene and destroyed all the evidence. False.
Dr W. Gene Corley, head of the building performance assessment team, in his testimony to the House of Representatives:

QUOTE

"There has been some concern expressed by others that the work of the team has been hampered because debris was removed from the site and has subsequently been processed for recycling. This is not the case. The team has had full access to the scrap yards and to the site and has been able to obtain numerous samples. At this point there is no indication that having access to each piece of steel from the World Trade Center would make a significant difference to understanding the performance of the structures". Source

I see a problem here with the quote provided by Screw Loose Change:

1. Corley also says in his testimony: "Resources allocated to support our BPA team's activities is about 1 million. In our opinion, 40 million would be sufficient."

2. We've already seen that his statement about having full access is just not true.

3. Please read again to understand the „logic“ of Dr. Corley:

„At this point there is no indication that having access to each piece of steel from the World Trade Center would make a significant difference to understanding the performance of the structures“

Ever heard of something similar relayed to a crime scene? Ever heard that the FBI would say. „No, we don't need full access to a car that was used in a crime, because it makes no significant difference in the understanding of the structure of the car.“? What is this man talking about? Of course you need to have access to EVERY piece in a crime scene. And of course it's a crime to remove and destroy pieces of a crime scene before investigators have examined them. And to say that it makes no difference to understand the performance of the structure makes only sense when the conclusion (plane crash + fires) is actually made before the investigation even begins. If you take an alternative explanation into consideration, like explosives, would it also make no significant difference to having access to each piece of steel?


See how others are faced with going to prison for 10 and 15 years for taking away debris of the Space Shattle Columbia with the intent to keep it up: Consequences of Stealing Space Shuttle Debris --- See also
Think of it: people who remove debris and keep it are threatened with prison for many years and to pay up to 500.000 $ . People who remove and destroy debris from a crime scene of mass-murder are punished with ....nothing....or with the position of the major of NYC (Bloomberg)!

Let's look closer at Gene Corley. The BPAT team deployed to the WTC site was assembled by the American Society of Civil Engineers and is headed by him. He was also the principal investigator in the FEMA study of Oklahoma City's Murrah Federal Office Building. This is of interest, because, according to the official story, the damage was caused by a 5000-pound fertilizer and fuel oil bomb packed into the back of a rented Ryder truck parked on the street in front of the building. But it turned out to be not as simple like that:
Police who arrived on the scene after the bombing discovered several unexploded bombs inside the building. This discovery was widely reported on local TV news broadcasts and confirmed through testimonies by others.
Explosives expert General Parton revealed in his analysis that the truck bomb alone could not have produced the damage to the building. He notes that, at the distance the truck was parked from the building, the pressure wave of the blast would have been ten times less than what is required to pulverize concrete. See his report, which was submitted to the U.S. Congress and is part of the Congressional Record, here.
His claims were ignored. Meanwhile Controlled Demolition Inc. was contracted to demolish the rest of the Murrah Building and bury its remains, thus preventing proper forensic examination.

There were also stories about a leaked report prepared by the Pentagon, stating that their two experts working independently of one another came to the same conclusions like General Parton. Source
Note also, that besides Gene Corley, the authors of the official report on the Murrah Federal Building, Charles Thornton (from the Thornton-Tomasseti-Group!) and Mete Sozeny, were among the initial team of the WTC and Pentagon investigation. Furthermore, the fourth author on the Murrah Building report was Paul Mlakar, who headed the Pentagon investigation:

QUOTE

"the Pentagon team is headed by Paul Mlakar, Ph.D., P.E., of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers Waterways Experiment Station in Vicksburg, Mississippi." Source

Quoting Kevin Ryan:

QUOTE

"Why do the same five or so individuals turn up in investigations relating to terrorist attack, when, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), there are 1.5 million engineers in the US?" Source

That's a very good question.

Considering that never before steelframed-skyscrapers collapsed due to fire, and that the towers were built to withstand an impact of a boeing (which they obviously did), it's also a good question why Corley was so sure that the towers would collapse , when rescue-workers, firefighters, etc didn't even think of it? Source
Besides Corley, there were six other authors of the FEMA report who became authors of the NIST report. (Therese McAllister, John Gross, Ronald Hamburger, William Baker, Harold Nelson, Ramon Gilsanz). Isn't it strange, that the collapse explanations offered by both reports are quite different though many of the authors are identical? Even more strange when you think of the Weidlinger Study, commissed by Silverstein for his insurance claim, because it was released only five months after the FEMA report. The Weidlinger study blames column - not truss - failure for the collapses.

As failures of truss supports could indicate a design fault, and therefore fail to support the "two occurrances" claimed by Silverstein, the explanation for collapse had to be shifted from the trusses to the columns. Guess who also shifted? Right, Gene Corley (btw. Thornton-Tomasetti Group was also involved in the Weidlinger Study). Source
Why would the same individual endorse two contradictory theories in their different roles? Apparently for political and economic reasons.

I think it's safe to say that the principal witness of Screw Loose Change is in a deep conflict of interest.

And for the last time Loose Change vs Screw Loose Change:

Guess who was allowed into the site? Controlled Demolition, who was also responsible for cleaning up after the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995.
"Allowed into the site?" They were the major cleanup contractor. They are acknowledged as the best in the world. Why mention the OK City bombing? What's that got to do with the WTC? Do you just like things that go boom?

I think the Screw Loose Change comment speaks for itself, and in some way, this does, too:

QUOTE

"Controlled Demolition Incorporated’s (CDI's) international experience with products of the world’s explosives manufacturers, and the paralleled knowledge of the intentional inducement of progressive collapse, positions our groups perfectly to assess the risk of terrorists activities adjacent to existing structures. Controlled Demolition Incorporated’s in-house explosive and anti-terrorist database provides information necessary to respond to questions raised by the most discerning of clients on an absolutely confidential basis. Controlled Demolition Incorporated (CDI) has the appropriate experience and expertise to assist Department of Defense (DOD) agencies and contractors in demolition operations on sensitive projects, domestically and internationally. Through the support of our international network of offices and agent relationships, Controlled Demolition Incorporated can respond promptly for defense-related consulting and performance requests on short notice. Controlled Demolition Incorporated (CDI) has the appropriate clearances and internal controls to support federal agencies involved in domestic or foreign investigations which involve the gathering of criminal evidence critical to our precepts of due process."Source

Bottom line: Loose Change is backed up by the facts, Screw Loose Change has not debunked Loose Change.