Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

Do firefighters and 9/11 conspiracy theories

0 views
Skip to first unread message

Wext

unread,
Apr 15, 2009, 6:49:06 PM4/15/09
to
Do firefighters believe 9/11 conspiracy theories?
By Christopher Beam

Posted Wednesday, April 8, 2009, at 5:18 PM ET

In the new season of the FX drama Rescue Me, firefighter Franco Rivera
espouses the belief that 9/11 was "an inside job." According to a Sunday
New York Times article, the show's writers added this assertion because
actor Daniel Sunjata is a "truther"; but the real firefighters on
set—who work as script advisers—were offended by his allegations. This
got the Explainer wondering: Do any firefighters believe in 9/11
conspiracy theories?

Yes. There's no evidence that firefighters buy into 9/11 conspiracy
theories at higher rates than the rest of the population. (A 2007 Zogby
poll found that 26 percent of Americans believe the government "let it
happen." A 2006 Scripps-Howard poll found it was more than a third.) But
some firemen do believe the government was behind 9/11 and use their
status as first responders to draw attention to their statements.

The most common conspiracy theory held by firefighters is that the Twin
Towers—as well as a third building, 7 World Trade Center—collapsed not
because planes crashed into them but due to a "controlled demolition."
On Sept. 11, an NBC reporter quoted New York Fire Department Chief of
Safety Albert Turi as saying he believed there were explosives planted
in one of the towers. After the attacks, the New York Fire Department
interviewed firefighters to create an oral history of 9/11. These
tapes—which were not released until 2005—contain numerous references to
explosions heard just before the buildings fell. Firefighters for 9/11
Truth, a Web site started in 2008, says the government destroyed
evidence that 7 World Trade Center was blown up and hosts a petition
asking Congress to look into the possibility that "exotic accelerants"
destroyed the buildings. (The National Institute of Standards and
Technology, which investigated the collapse of 7 World Trade Center,
concluded that "blast events inside the building did not occur and found
no evidence supporting the existence of a blast event.")

Another common theory is that federal agents found three of the planes'
four black boxes and then hid or destroyed them because they contained
incriminating evidence. Nicholas DeMasi, a firefighter formerly with
Engine Company 261 in Queens, was quoted in a 2003 book saying that he
was there when federal agents made the discovery. Another first
responder corroborated his account. Although his allegations are
contradicted by The 9/11 Commission Report, which says the boxes were
never found, many truthers choose to believe there was a cover-up.

Do other professions marshal their own expertise to poke holes in the
official story? Absolutely. Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth
point to the physics of the towers' collapse—its "free fall" pace, the
"lateral ejection" of steel, the "mid-air pulverization of concrete"—as
evidence that they could not have fallen exclusively because of the
planes' impact. Pilots for 9/11 Truth have their own set of theories
that focus on the planes' black boxes and flight paths, arguing, for
example, that the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77 would have
had to perform an extremely difficult aerial maneuver to hit the
Pentagon where they did. Lawyers for 9/11 Truth conclude that the 9/11
Commission investigation was inadequate. There's also Scholars for 9/11
Truth and Justice (not to be confused with its rival, Scholars for 9/11
Truth), which tackles scientific aspects of the towers' collapse, such
as the alleged residue of explosive materials like thermate in the dust
at Ground Zero. One notable group that does not have its own 9/11 truth
group is the police force.

Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Mike Berger of 911Truth.org, Mark Fenster of University
of Florida, Erik Lawyer of Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, and Barrie Zwicker.

Christopher Beam is a Slate political reporter.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2215703/

Freedom Fighter

unread,
Apr 16, 2009, 2:46:46 PM4/16/09
to
SIMPLE PHYSICS EXPOSES THE BIG 9/11 LIE - GOVERNMENT BUILDING COLLAPSE EXPLANATION FAILS REALITY CHECK On September 11, 2001, the world watched in horror as the World Trade Center (WTC) Twin Towers collapsed, killing thousands of innocent people. Videos of the collapses were replayed ad nauseam on TV for days. About 5 hours after the towers fell, WTC building 7 also collapsed suddenly, completely, and straight down at near free-fall speed. This steel-framed building was not touched by the planes that struck the towers, and had sustained relatively minor debris damage and small fires. Nearby buildings far more heavily damaged remained standing. In June 2005, in an apparent response to an article by Morgan Reynolds, former CIA Director and current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated, "The American people know what they saw with their own eyes on September 11, 2001. To suggest any kind of government conspiracy in the events of that day goes beyond the pale." We will prove here, with scientific rigor, that it's the government's tale that's "beyond the pale"! Did most of the American people really understand the unprecedented phenomena they had witnessed? Could a lack of knowledge of physics, and the emotional shock of this mass-murderous "terrorist attack" have stymied objective thinking and led to the blind acceptance of authoritarian assertions? The government and the media TOLD US what we saw. The government told us that we had witnessed a "gravitational" collapse; what is now referred to as a "pancake collapse". According to the government claims, the plane crashes and subsequent kerosene (like lamp oil - jet fuel is NOT exotic) fires heated the UL-certified structural steel to the point where it was significantly weakened, which is very difficult to believe, never mind repeat in an experiment. Even with massive fires that incinerate everything else, the steel frames of such buildings generally remain standing. According to the "pancake theory", this purported (all physical evidence was quickly and illegally destroyed) weakening supposedly caused part of the tower to collapse downward onto the rest of the tower, which, we've been repeatedly told, somehow resulted in a chain reaction of the lower floors sequentially, one at a time, yielding to the weight falling from above. There are some problems with that theory - it does not fit the observed facts: * It cannot account for the total failure of the immense vertical steel core columns - as if they were there one moment and gone the next. * The collapse times were near free-fall, far too rapid to be due to gravity alone. This article focuses on the latter of these two discrepancies. Those that concocted the "pancake theory" made a fatal error - they didn't check their story against the inviolate laws of physics! This is easy to do, even without any physical evidence to examine. We can test that incredible pancake tale using basic high-school physics. Let's do that - use a simple, unassailable, incontrovertible conservation-of-energy analysis to perform a reality check that establishes once and for all that the government, and such government story backers as PBS, Popular Mechanics, and Scientific American have falsified the true nature of the 9/11 disaster. How Gravity Acts: Sir Isaac Newton noticed that apples fell from trees. Others had also noticed this, but none had ever devised a theory of gravity from the observation. Over the years, mankind has learned that the force of gravity at and near Earth's surface produces an acceleration of known constant magnitude. That doesn't mean we know HOW it works, or WHY, but we have become able to predict its effects with a high degree of precision and certainty - gravity has always had the same, predictable, effect. Galileo Galilei used the leaning tower of Pisa to demonstrate that a large ball and a small one (of lesser mass) fell (accelerated downward) at the same rate. Prior to Galileo, people had just assumed that heavier objects fall faster, much the way they had assumed the Earth was flat. So while an object of greater mass will exert more force (its weight) upon anything supporting it against gravity's pull, it does not experience any greater acceleration when gravity's pull is not opposed - when it is falling. Earth's gravity at and near the surface of the planet can only accelerate objects downward at one known, constant rate: 32 feet per second for each second of free fall. As Galileo demonstrated centuries ago, heavier objects are not accelerated any quicker than are lighter objects. So Earth's gravity produces a downward acceleration of 32 feet per second per second. This means that an object, after falling one second, will be falling at a speed of 32 ft/sec. After the 2nd second, it will be falling at 64 ft/sec. After the 3rd second, it will be falling at 96 ft/sec., and so Further, since gravity's acceleration is constant, and an object is falling at 32 ft/sec after one second has elapsed, we know that it has averaged 16 ft/sec for the entire distance. Thus after one second, the object has fallen 16 feet. Scientists have derived simple free-fall equations that can be used to harness this knowledge mathematically. These equations can be found in any high-school physics book: * Falling velocity = acceleration of gravity x time. (V = G x T) * Distance fallen = 1/2 x acceleration of gravity x time squared. (D = 1/2 x G x T x T) So if we want to know how far an object has free-fallen after 3 seconds: Distance = 1/2 x 32 x 9 = 144 feet So after 3 seconds in Earth's gravity, an object will have fallen 144 feet and will be falling at 96 ft/sec. Checking Our Work: We've just solved a simple physics problem. Now let's check our work, using conservation of energy. We know that energy can neither be created nor destroyed - it merely changes form. If we take the potential (in this case chemical, molecular) energy in a barrel of oil and burn it, it changes to heat energy. When we burn gasoline in our car's engine, we get kinetic (motional) energy, plus some heat, as an engine is not 100% efficient. When we use our car's brakes to bleed off some of that kinetic energy (slow down), that energy is converted into heat (the brakes get hot). Explosives convert potential energy [molecular or atomic] to kinetic energy (explosive force) quickly enough to shatter or even pulverize concrete. In the case of the free-falling object, the two kinds of energy we are concerned with are kinetic energy and potential energy. Examples of potential (gravitational) energy are the energy available from water stored up high in a water tower, or a boulder perched atop a hill. If whatever is holding it up there is removed, it will fall under the influence of gravity's pull. As it accelerates downward, the potential energy is converted to the kinetic energy of the object's motion. So, as an object falls, it changes its potential energy into kinetic energy. The equation for potential energy is: * Potential Energy = Mass (or weight) x Gravity x Height. (PE = M x G x H) The equation for kinetic energy is: * Kinetic Energy = 1/2 x Mass x Velocity squared. (KE = 1/2 x M x V x V) So let's just say, for the sake of simplicity, that our falling object has a mass of 1. (Remember, the object's mass will affect its energy, and its momentum, but not its rate of free-fall.) The potential energy given up by falling 3 seconds (144 ft) is: 1 x 32 x 144 = 4608 The kinetic energy gained after falling 3 secs is 1/2 x 1 x 96 squared = 1/2 x 9216 = 4608 So, the available potential energy was converted into kinetic energy. Seeing that energy was, in fact, conserved is how we know that the answer in the simple case above was correct. We've checked our work, using an independent analysis, based upon the sound physical principle of conservation of energy. Now, and only now, we can be certain that our answer was correct. One Little Complication - the effect of air resistance: The free-fall equations above reflect a perfect, frictionless world. They perfectly predict the behavior of falling bodies in a vacuum. In fact, you may have seen a science class demonstration in which the air is pumped out of a tube and then a feather will fall, in that vacuum, just as fast as will a solid metal ball. That's how parachutes work: much of the falling object's potential energy gets expended doing the work of pushing a lot of air out of the way in order for the object to fall. As a result, not all of the gravitational potential energy can go towards accelerating the object downward at gravity's rate of 32 ft/sec/sec. In other words, only when there is zero frictional resistance can any falling object's potential energy be completely converted into kinetic energy. Anything that resists a falling object's downward velocity reduces its acceleration from the maximum gravitational acceleration of 32 feet per second per second, as some of gravity's potential energy is consumed in overcoming frictional resistance. This explains the phenomena of "terminal velocity". The free-fall equations predict that a falling object's velocity will continue to increase without limit. But in air, once a falling object reaches a certain speed, its propensity to fall will be matched by the air's resistance to the fall. At that point the object will continue to fall, but its speed will no longer increase over time. Another way of looking at it is this: gravity's incessant force produces a downward acceleration, but friction with the air creates an upward force and thus an upward acceleration. When falling at terminal velocity, the acceleration downward equals the acceleration upward, they cancel each other out, and a constant downward velocity is maintained. Thus the parachute, with its high air friction resistance, allows the person attached to it to float to earth unharmed. A Quick Recap: Earth's gravity causes objects to fall, and they fall according to precise physical equations. The equations assume no air or other resistance. Any resistance at all will cause the object to fall less rapidly than it would without that resistance. If a falling object is affected by air resistance it falls slower than it would if free-falling, and it will take longer to fall a given distance. Free-fall From WTC Building Heights: The towers were 1350 and 1360 feet tall; average = 1355 feet. Let's start by using our free-fall equation to see how long it should take an object to free-fall from the towers' height. Distance = 1/2 x Gravity x Time squared. (D = 1/2 x G x T x T) With a little basic algebra, we solve the equation for the fall time, T: 2 x Distance = Gravity x Time(squared) (2 x D = G x T x T) Time squared = (2 x Distance) / Gravity (T x T = 2 x D / G) Time squared = 2 x 1355 / 32 = 84.7 (T = square root of (2 x D / G)) Time = 9.2 So our equation tells us that it takes 9.2 seconds to free-fall to the ground from the height of the WTC towers. Using our simpler equation, V = G x T, we can see that at 9.2 seconds, the free-falling object's velocity must be about 295 ft/sec, which is just over 200 mph. But that can only occur IN A VACUUM. Since the WTC was in Earth's atmosphere at sea level, you might be able to imagine how much air resistance that represents. Think about putting your arm out the window of a car moving even half that fast! Most free-falling objects reach their terminal velocity long before they reach 200 mph. For example, the terminal velocity of a free-falling human body is around 120 mph. The terminal velocity of a free-falling cat is around 60 mph. Therefore, it is clear that air resistance alone will make it take longer than 9.2 seconds for anything falling from the towers' height to reach the ground. Observations from 9/11: On page 305 of the 9/11 Commission Report, we are told, in the government's "complete and final report" on 9/11, that the South Tower collapsed in 10 seconds. Here is the exact quote: "At 9:58:59, the South Tower collapsed in ten seconds". That's the government's official number. With all the videos that show it, they could not lie about this. But as we've determined above, the FREE-FALL TIME IN A VACUUM is 9.2 seconds, and 10 seconds is an exceptionally short fall time through the air. This "collapse" was not without far more physical resistance than from the air alone. It proceeded through all the lower stories of the tower. Those undamaged floors below the plane impact zone offered resistance thousands of times greater than that of air. Those lower stories, and the central steel core columns, had successfully supported the mass of the tower for 30 years despite hurricane-force winds and tremors. Air cannot do that. Can anyone possibly imagine undamaged lower floors getting out of the way of the upper floors as gracefully and relatively frictionlessly as air would? Can anyone possibly imagine the lower stories slowing the fall of the upper floors less than would, say, a parachute? It is beyond the scope of the simple but uncontested physics here to tell you how long such a collapse should have taken. Would it have taken a minute? Ten minutes? Hard to say, but certainly it would take far more than 10 seconds! What is certain, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is that the towers could not have collapsed gravitationally, through their intact lower stories, as rapidly as was observed on 9/11. Not even close. This is shown above to be physically impossible! Not only was tremendous energy expended in causing the observed massive high-speed sideways debris ejections, but virtually all the concrete and glass of the tower was pulverized - actually dissociated is a better word. Never mind what happened to all the supporting steel core columns! The energy requirements to do anything like that, alone, rival the total amount of potential energy that the entire tower had to give. Gravity alone is sufficient to cause some things to fall that far, even through air, in close to the observed 10 second collapse time. But that is without the huge expenditure of energy necessary to pulverize all of that concrete and glass, eject debris, plus cause the steel core columns to effectively disappear. The gravitational potential energy present was certainly not enough to have done all these things at once. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it only changes form. So WHERE DID ALL THAT ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTIVE ENERGY COME FROM? Conclusions: In order for the towers to have collapsed "gravitationally" in the observed duration, as we've been told over and over again, one or more of the following zany-sounding conditions must have been met: * The undamaged structure below the impact zone offered zero resistance to the collapse. * The glass and concrete spontaneously disintegrated without any expenditure of energy. * The massive vertical steel core columns simply vanished, as if by magic. * On 9/11 alone, in that location alone, gravity was much stronger than gravity. * On 9/11 alone, in that location alone, energy was not conserved. None of these laws-of-physics-violating, and thus impossible, conditions can be accounted for by the official government theory of 9/11, nor by any of the subsequent analyses and arguments designed to prop up this official myth of 9/11. The Bottom Line: The government explanations for the WTC collapses fail the most basic conservation-of-energy reality check. Therefore the government theory is FALSE; it does not fit the observed facts, and the notion of a "pancake collapse" cannot account for what happened. The "pancake collapse" explanation is impossible, and thus absurd. It is A LIE. It is utterly impossible for a gravitational collapse to proceed so destructively through a path of such great resistance in anywhere near free-fall time. This fact debunks the preposterous contention that the WTC collapses can be blamed solely upon damage resulting from the plane impacts. The unnaturally short durations of the top-down collapses reveal that the towers did not disintegrate because they were coming down, but rather they came down because something else was causing them to disintegrate. So, to the extent that people accept the ridiculous "pancake collapse" story, former CIA Director and current Secretary of Defense Gates' other premise, that people know what they saw, is also false. It is left to you to decide if his conclusion, which was based upon clearly incorrect presumptions, is also flawed. The collapse of WTC building 7, which was NOT hit by any plane, and which also collapsed within a second of free-fall time later that same day, similarly fails the conservation-of-energy analysis. The 9/11 Commission made no attempt to explain it. Just how and why so many highly-accredited and credentialed people all so miserably failed to check the "pancake collapse" theory, by giving it this basic physics reality check, is beyond the scope of this analysis. --------------------------------- FURTHER IRREFUTABLE PROOF BY PHYSICS OF THE 9/11 INSIDE JOB: http://vehme.blogspot.com/2007/12/glaring-proof-of-something-hotter-than.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck's_law_of_black_body_radiation

Zee

unread,
Apr 18, 2009, 7:07:20 AM4/18/09
to
One thing I am sure of...theres no passenger plane crashed in
Pentagon...no fuselage, no bodies, no wings, tail, etc.

Wext

unread,
Apr 18, 2009, 2:25:35 PM4/18/09
to
Zee wrote:
> One thing I am sure of...theres no passenger plane crashed in
> Pentagon...no fuselage, no bodies, no wings, tail, etc.

Each of the following individuals on Flight 77 had been in the Navy:

Charles Burlingame III – pilot, had once worked at the Naval Command
Center in the Pentagon.

David Charlebois – Copilot, Navy.

William Caswell – one of the Navy’s top scientists.

Charles Droz III – Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy and Vice
President for software development, EM Solutions Inc.

Wilson “Bud” Flagg – retired admiral (Involved in “Tailhook”).

Bryan Jack – worked for the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

[Bryan Jack was involved with economics and budgeting. There was soon
to be a massive fraud in the Pentagon, prompting neocon comptroller and
Jewish Rabbi Dov Zakheim to quit. Did he know about this? It is
possible that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recruited Mr. Jack to
participate in this exercise.]

John Sammartino – former worker at Naval Research Lab.

John Yamnicky – consultant and ex-test pilot.

Vicki Yancey – former naval electronics technician.

And while not in the Navy,

Barbara Olson – was a devote right-winger and wife of Ted Olson, who was
Jonathan Pollard’s former attorney! It is certainly possible that Ted
Olson recruited his third wife to participate in this conspiracy. Did
Ted Olson want to destroy the incriminating records of his ‘clients’?

http://911exposed.org/NCC.htm

Mike

unread,
Apr 20, 2009, 11:04:22 AM4/20/09
to

It was all Bush and Cheney, and Global Warming of course...;>)

0 new messages