Three skyscrapers collapsed at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2022. The Twin Towers’ destruction killed nearly 3,000 that day. Building 7, however, was not struck by a plane, yet collapsed the same way the Towers did. Facing a U.S. government agency’s intransigence, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth is asking again, HERE, for help — help to make what it calls a powerful new film “showing that controlled demolition has NOT been ‘debunked.’” Beginning below, the organization’s director of strategy and development gives part of the rationale for keeping pressure on NIST to answer a series of questions it has refused to for 14 years. The film is scheduled to premier in September. — MCM
– – –
NIST confirms its Building 7 report is false — Part 1 of 5: The omitted web stiffeners
On August 21, 2008, exactly six years to the day after launching its investigation into the destruction of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers and the nearby World Trade Center Building 7 — a 47-story high-rise not hit by an airplane that nonetheless fell to the ground at 5:20 PM on 9/11 — the National Institute of Standards and Technology held a press conference to announce the release of its draft report on Building 7. Its report on the Twin Towers had been issued three years earlier.
NIST’s lead investigator, Dr. Shyam Sunder, gave prepared remarks and fielded questions for about 50 minutes, then concluded the Q&A session with an unusual admonishment for a scientist to make:
“The public should really, at this point, recognize that science is really behind what we have said.”
Dr. Sunder then stood there in silence as the director of media relations, Ben Stein, wrapped up the briefing.
The thing is, in science we do not simply take people at their word. We judge scientific reports and articles on their merits — i.e., for their ability to explain all of the available evidence. No one should be told to “recognize” the validity of any scientific report. The report should speak for itself.
Case in point: If the investigators at NIST were truly confident of their findings and wanted the public to accept their report as scientifically sound, they should have opened the door wide to scrutiny and made it easy for other engineers to attempt to replicate their analysis. This is how the scientific process works.
But NIST has done exactly the opposite of that since issuing its final report in November 2008. Here are a few examples:
* In 2009, after a member of the public submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for NIST’s computer modeling data, NIST classified the data based on the absurd grounds that releasing it “might jeopardize public safety.”
* Also in 2009, NIST denied a FOIA request for the text of interviews with witnesses who reported explosions inside Building 7, basing its decision on the equally absurd grounds that these interviews “were not directly related to the building failure.” (See page 69.)
* On more than one occasion, the information NIST has disclosed in response to FOIA requests has conspicuously omitted drawings of structural elements that are central to its explanation of how the building collapsed.
* NIST has continually ignored basic questions posed by outside engineers about decisions made during NIST’s computer modeling — decisions that materially affected the results of its analysis.
* When prominent criticism has emerged — for example, the 2016 article in Europhysics News critiquing the NIST report or the 2020 release of the final report of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Building 7 study — NIST has either responded with superficial boilerplate language (see page 44) or has not responded at all.
Indeed, over the past two decades, NIST has rarely, if ever, had to answer criticism of its reports.
But now, finally, NIST’s hand has been forced. [T]wo years ago this spring . . . ten 9/11 family members, 88 architects and engineers, and Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth submitted a request for correction to NIST’s Building 7 report under the Data Quality Act, a law that enables the public to seek correction of information disseminated by federal agencies.
In the request . . . READ MORE . . .