Moreover, the Commission did not include a single scientist, engineer, or first responder (firefighters, police, volunteers) to provide expertise, vital for any definitive conclusions about the collapses. Commissioner Timothy Roemer did cite the remark of the “premiere collapse expert in the country,” Fire Chief Ray Downey who died under the North Tower. Downey was convinced “there were bombs up there [the South Tower]” because, he told others, its collapse was “too even.”
The WTC’s senior project design engineer for electrical systems, Richard F. Humenn, PE, has demanded a structural investigation of all seven WTC buildings. A lawsuit is being filed against the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) by engineering professor Judy Wood, Ph.D. who challenges the science underlying its conclusions about the collapses. A former NIST chief of the Fire Science Division, James Quintiere, Ph.D., has asked for an independent inquiry.
So has world-renowned scientist Lynn Margulis, Ph.D., board member of the National Academy of Sciences and holder of the National Medal of Science, America’s highest honor for scientific achievement.
The international community wants a new investigation. In January 2008, Yukihisa Fujita, a spokesman for the main opposition party in the Japanese Parliament, accused the prime minister and the Bush Administration of lying about 9/11 and demanded a new inquiry. A month later, members of the European Union’s (EU) Parliament began exploring the establishment of an independent international 9/11 “Commission of Inquiry.”
Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga, one-time leader of a NATO intelligence network, told a major Rome newspaper in December 2006 that 9/11 had been planned and executed by the Central Intelligence Agency and Israel’s counterpart, the Mossad. He added that his was a widely held view in Europe. However, it’s possible an EU inquiry would clear Israel of any allegations of complicity in the WTC events on 9/11.
In Canada, Parliament member Libby Davis recently demanded another investigation about the WTC collapses on behalf of the 24 Canadians who died in the Towers.
Former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel, a 2008 presidential candidate, has endorsed petitioners seeking a New York City initiative for the November 2008 ballot that demands another 9/11 investigation about 9/11. A Republican Senator in the Arizona legislature, Karen S. Johnson, in a June 10, 2008 floor speech declared she and “millions of other people” did not believe the findings in the previous probe. Displaying photographic exhibits of the collapses and other documents, she demanded Congress launch a thorough independent “real investigation.”
Minnesota’s former Gov. Jesse Ventura, a Navy Seal expert on demolitions, told a television audience in April 2008 that the collapses were attributable to controlled demolitions. In addition, nearly 280 engineering and architecture professionals have petitioned Congress for a scientific and technical investigation about the structural failures.
Last, the families of those who died in the Towers are demanding a new investigation. First responders have lobbied extensively to have their testimony of events inside all three buildings included in
a new investigation.
In light of public and expert doubt of various explanations, evinced by such a significant call for a scientific and technological investigation, this Act would initiate the most thorough examination of all known and discoverable evidence to date as to what caused the catastrophic structural failures of the buildings.
(b) Functions - Areas of scientific and technological investigation shall include the following theories:
(1) That collapses of WTC 1 and 2 were attributable to commercial aircraft strikes on the buildings, loosening asbestos wrappings of the steel framing which then weakened the structures.
(2) That collapses of WTC 1 and 2 were attributable to the softening of key columns both by aircraft strikes and subsequent jet-fuel fires that ignited office furnishings and materials in the first and only instance in 100 years that fires cause the collapse of steel-framed high-rise buildings.
Skyscrapers around the world have burned for hours without collapse. In fact, no high-rise building in the world has ever collapsed because of fire. The most recent has been the August 18, 2007 seven-alarm, nearly eight-hour fire at the 43-story Deutsche Bank building across from the South Tower site. The bank was completed in the same year as the Towers (1973) and was being demolished floor-by-floor until a workman’s cigarette ignited the mid-afternoon blaze. Unlike the three WTC buildings, the bank’s structure was open to inpouring oxygen because of its deconstruction. Yet its steel beams did not soften or collapse.
(3) That compressed air was created as each floor collapsed onto those beneath it. This theory rests on the view that “pancaking” of floors was a factor in the collapses, a phenomenon that experts estimate would have reached a 14-story pile of concrete and steel rubble——or 12.5% of a 110-story building——not five feet of dust from the Twin Towers and five- or six-story high pile of rubble from Building 7.
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