by Scott Creighton, from American Everyman

Jim Hoffman has just published his essay ” A Hypothetical Blasting Scenario:  A Plausible Theory Explaining the Controlled Demolition of the Twin Towers Using Aluminothermic Incendiaries and Explosives with Wireless Ignition Means” in time for it to coincide with the new Jones et al piece, “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe” and quite frankly, Hoffmans work is structurally unsound.

I don’t want to get too far into a critical review of Hoffmans work till I can wrap my head around what Jones’ paper concludes and that is mainly because Hoffman’s efforts are largely based on giving what he thinks is a practical application for the hypothesis of aluminothermic controlled demolition of the Trade Centers.  Clearly understanding more about the new Steven Jones work is key to validating Hoffman’s theory.

I am currently working through the Jones effort as you will see in a moment.

But Hoffman’s “Plausible” theory is a horse of a different color. It would appear that he may have been too eager to get a working demolition theory out there at the same time Jones released his research.

His “Plausible” theory and his conclusions clearly need a lot more work.

1.  An unsupported assumption

Right off the bat, Mr. Hoffman makes the claim that “… there is direct evidence for two broad types of thermitic pyrotechnics in the destruction of the Twin Towers” : incendiaries and explosives.  This is not completely accurate, according to the Jones report.

Though Jones does conclude at the end of his work that  ” … the red layer of the red/gray chips we have discovered in the WTC dust is active, unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology, and is a highly energetic pyrotechnic or explosive material.” earlier he clearly states that it was not possible for them to determine the how it was used.

“We make no attempt to specify the particular form of nano-thermite present until more is learned about the red material and especially about the nature of the organic material it contains.”  Steven Jones

You see, the organic material is the key here because without it, you don’t have an “explosive” you have an incendiary material and an incendiary material couldn’t do what Mr. Hoffman presumes as the basis for his hypothesis.

In a nutshell, even massive amounts of Jones’ active thermetic material, which he has clearly found, would not be capable of creating the needed detonating velocity to break up the floor structures were it not for very specific organic materials combined in just the right manner. And even then, the question still becomes would that specific compound still have enough detonating velocity to destroy all 220 concrete floor systems in the two towers?

Jones does NOT make that conclusion whereas Hoffman’s work is dependent on it.

“We suggest that the organic material in evidence in the red/gray chips is also highly energetic, most likely producing gas to provide explosive pressure… As this test was done in air it is possible that some of the enhancement of energy output may have come from air oxidation of the organic component.” Steven Jones

Not only does Jones NOT make that conclusion, but he also clearly states that other materials need to be tested for, because as he himself puts it…

“ The red material does burn quickly as shown in the DSC, and we have observed a bright flash on ignition, but determination of the burn rate of the red material may help to classify this as a slow or fast explosive. It may be that this material is used not as a cutter-charge itself, but rather as a means to ignite high explosives, as in super-thermite matches [30]. Having observed unignited thermitic material in the WTC residue, we suggest that other energetic materials suitable for cutter charges or explosives should also be looked for in the WTC dust. NIST has admitted that they have not yet looked for such residues.”  Steven Jones

This is a critical part of Mr. Hoffman’s hypothesis and it is basically grounded in the suggestion that Jones has definitely found a thermetic material that creates enough detonation velocity to produce a concussion wave strong enough to demolish the floor systems.  Yet Jones doesn’t come to that conclusion in his paper so therefore it is certainly a weakness in Hoffman’s argument.

2. The Ridiculous Ceiling Tile Theory

I am sorry, but I have to call it ridiculous, because, well because it is. According to Jim Hoffman, this is how it works: This thermitic material is formed into a sheet (which is possible) and that sheet is then sandwiched between two ceiling tiles and out fitted with it’s very own wireless “igniter” making each and every one of these things it’s own separate bomb.

How many of them would it take to do the job? Well, without giving any specifics at all about the thermitic material film in each one of these or giving us an idea about the necessary detonation velocity required to break up the floor systems (and floor pans and truss systems and furniture) Mr. Hoffman tells us they would need 1 million of these “hot” ceiling tiles to do the trick.

But that is just on the tenet part of the buildings. The core area would require another 800k of them. For a grand total of 1.8 million ceiling tiles to be replaced, each with it’s own wireless “igniter”.

1.8 million separate ceiling tile bombs, according to Mr. Hoffman.

Now, how does Mr. Hoffman suggest they were installed? Simple, they were put in place by a crew of non-English-speaking workers who, by the way, didn’t know they were bombs.

Not only is Mr. Hoffman suggesting that the people who based everything on those towers coming down put 1.8 million individual bombs in the hands of unsuspecting illegal immigrants, but, according to Mr. Hoffman, they would have to have installed them at a rate of 10 per minute.

That’s 10 ceiling tiles, ceiling tile bombs mind you, per every 60 seconds in a room that Mr. Hoffman details as being 8′-3″ high. That means, on AVERAGE now (sometimes moving even faster) that they would have to go up and down a ladder, remove the old tile, grab a new one and put it in place, all in the course of 6 seconds. And remember that’s a bomb, now.

Not only that, but to make his numbers work, those workers would have to do that 600 times in one hour.  Not taking into consideration the fact that the ladder has to be moved or the old tiles have to be stored away or they have to get them out of the box… none of that should be considered. Just imagine getting anyone to go up and down a ladder 600 times in an hour and you will understand how ridiculous that time estimate is.

Now lets also not forget that to make even that number of 1.8 million separate bombs work, Mr. Hoffman has constructed his “plausible hypothesis” on the premise that only EVERY OTHER FLOOR GETS WIRED FOR DEMOLITION.

So now Mr. Hoffman is suggesting that the thin film sandwiched in between the ceiling tiles not only has the detonation velocity to pulverize the floor and the floor pan and the trusses above it, but it also has enough to do the same to the one BELOW it as well?

All that based on the work where Jones himself says even he doesn’t even know how “explosive” the organic compound enriched thermitic material is?

That’s quite a leap, Mr. Hoffman. But then again, you got immigrants running up and down ladders 4,800 times per work day, so I guess that little “two floor demo” stretch really isn’t that much in comparison.

3. All that said… it gets worse

Aside from the fact that we have 1.8 million individual bombs being set by Speedy Gonzalas and his merry band of men that have no idea not only about how to handle explosives or that they are actually handling explosives while running around at break neck speed  (mind you now, this theory is based on the notion that a “controlled demolitions EXPERT” must have devised this plan in the first place) but in fact, there are STILL more bombs to set.

They have to prep the thermite gel on the columns and the kicker charges that knock them out of the way after the thermite “cutter charges” ignite.

I am glad to see that Mr. Hoffman did some research on demolition processes, but I have to admit he seems to have missed the point just a little.

(oh wait a minute, I have to throw this in; how does he suggest the kicker charges don’t get noticed by the people in the towers? He suggests they disguised them… as “fire extinguishers”. Really. A bomb disguised as a fire extinguisher in an occupied and working office space…)

Now, here is where it all gets a little strange… the demolition process itself.

Here, Mr. Hoffman suggests (and I am going to run through this quickly now) that the “cutter charges” SLOWLY melt through the massive core columns for 10 full minutes before the demolition takes place (for some reason).  Now it’s key to remember that according to Mr. Hoffman’s “plausible hypothesis”, the planes would have had to hit exactly right above the place where these cutter charges were planted (no real room for high winds or error of any kind), you see that way the thermite gel applied to the core columns could eat away at the core of the towers and, as he puts it, leaves the entire core structure above the impact zone “floating”.

That’s right. Mr. Hoffman is suggesting that the upper section of the South Tower just floated there completely supported by the exterior columns alone for a time (now mind you again, this “plausible hypothesis” of his would have to have been designed by a controlled demolitions expert (the emphasis is on the word CONTROLLED, by the way).

Now, this is where it gets REALLY weird.

The kicker charges then go off before the 1.8 million individual ceiling tile bombs take about 12 seconds to blow the floors out, two at a time all the way down to the ground floor.

Notice he doesn’t seem to need any more demolition materials in the core columns below the point of impact. I suppose he thinks some thing will just knock those 47 massive columns out of the way and into other buildings on it’s own?

He also doesn’t seem to address one very big problem. All of this is contingent on 1.8 million plus individual wireless receivers synchronized perfectly in the demolition sequence, all placed within the concrete and steel frame work of a massive building that is being blown to bits.

I hope they had very good reception in the towers.

Conclusion

Mr. Hoffman’s work is not quite ready for peer review, in my mind. Or maybe he will be receptive enough of constructive criticism to consider this one, who knows.

As anyone who knows what I do here can tell you, I am a firm believer in the fact that the towers were demoed by carefully controlled demolition. Where I tend to disagree with Hoffman and apparently many others in this field, is that I believe no controlled demo expert would put his career, his life, his family on the line by using untested materials on a project like this one.

This is different than any other controlled demolition in the past (with one possible exception); innocent people were going to die in the process and that in and of itself made this one the absolute last demo any skilled professional would take a chance on.

It’s one thing to mess up and have your insurance rates go up, it’s another to get the death penalty.

Controlled demolition experts leave next to nothing to chance. Every aspect is thought out, every mistake is planned for.  Nothing to chance. Nothing.

Though Mr. Hoffman’s heart was clearly in the right place, and I hope he takes this paper in the constructive manner in which it was intended, it is my conclusion that his “plausible theory” is anything but.  Based not only on a logical evaluation of what he has presented but also on the original work by Steven Jones and my own knowledge of the demolition process.

Though I still adhere to the theory that conventional demolition tools were used in the dropping of the Twin Towers, I considered this effort solely on the merits of the material presented.

It may in fact be possible that the material that Steven Jones and his fellow researchers have been studying is what brought down the towers, that has yet to be proven one way or the other by Steven Jones by his own admission, but one thing is for certain, it didn’t happen the way Mr. Hoffman has described in his paper.

This is a very good video. Keep two things in mind while watching this;

1. People’s unrelenting alliances with political parties,  despite mounting evidence…

2. People’s resistance to even discuss the solid evidence relating to the events of 9/11.

The following is a quick outline of what I believe happened to cause the collapse of the World Trade Centers on Sept. 11, 2001.  It is an attempt to show that conventional demolition materials could have been, and probably were used in the demolition process. This is only PART of a larger work that I am putting together incorporating technical information of PETN (det cord), findings of Steven Jones (iron rich micro-spheres), dust particle contents reported by several sources, images showing the different colored clouds formed during the demolition of the towers, lateral ejections of large (complete) sections of exterior column assemblies,  missing floor systems (trusses and floor pans), and images of the steel and concrete dust at ground zero.

This is only the images of my hypothesis of the demolition process. More info to follow.

DET CORD EXPLOSION DETAIL

(The images of human figures included in these are needed for perspective. It is not intended to be graphic in any way. They were only included after careful consideration and it is not my intent to cause undue harm or discomfort to anyone connected with those that lost their lives on Sept. 11th.  But too be honest, the vast majority of the innocent people that perished on that day died as a result of the “collapse” of the towers, and not from the initial impact of the planes. Therefore, though it is uncomfortable for me to include them, I feel I must for these two reasons.  We are talking after all about an act of murder, and leaving the images out, I believe would do a disservice to those victims who lost their lives when the towers came down. I apologise to all who may be offended by their inclusion in these illustrations, but know that care was taken in the decision to include them.)

[more images after the break]

FULL DETONATION WAVE

NEXT FLOOR DOWN

NEXT FLOOR DOWN

REMOVED FLOOR SYSTEMS

REMOVING CORE STRUCTURE

READY FOR COLLAPSE

With only the disconnected exterior column units supporting the structure, the remaining upper floors collapse in on the rest. The first stage is repeated all the way down, blowing out the floor systems prior to the detonation of the core columns. This is a different process that the “bottom up” typical demolition process,  as displayed on Building 7 some 6 hours later in the day on Sept. 11th.

As you can see, this process would explain the pulverization of the concrete floor systems and the piles of steel core support beams all located at ground zero right after the demolition of the towers, as evidenced by many photos, but perhaps best by this one.

AERIAL VIEW AS THE DUST CLEARED

Another closer angle of ground zero debris field…

SEPERATED CORE STEEL MEMBERS AND PULVERIZED CONCRETE

I look forward to any feedback as I am still working on this hypothesis.

Just an update on the WTC drawings that I am doing (more here).  I am modeling a 12 floor section of the Trade Centers and my little computer here doesn’t like rendering it all (poor thing) so I thought I would cut out 2 floors worth and share them with you guys. Some things are missing like the diagonal bracing in the core section and the “I” beams that span some of the openings in there for the floors. Also, I haven’t included the transverse trusses on page 2.

(click on image for full size)

Page 2 -

Core and Exterior Columns w/ Trusses

[more after the break]

As you can see, the trusses were an immense part of the structure of the buildings. As large and sturdy as the core was, the truss system was quite extensive.  The trusses and the concrete floors would have been a serious problem in the demolition process.  I think within all those metal spheres that Steven Jones found, lies the answer to what happened to 110 floors of all these trusses.

Page 1 -

Core and exterior columns w/ concrete floors

The concrete itself was reinforced lightweight concrete at 4″ thickness.  “Reinforced” means it had steel rebar running through it in a check board pattern.  There was also 5″ thick higher density concrete in the core where there were floors and not elevator shafts.  All this pulverized concrete is what coated lower Manhattan.

Core and exterior columns

Most people don’t have a clear understanding of the massive size and designed capacity of the core structure of the WTC towers.  That’s not their fault.  Many media outlets downplayed the structure in the first year or so after the attacks.  Considering that details about the design of the building were not that hard to come by, one has to ask why they would do such a thing.  Popular Mechanics and the PBS/NOVA efforts were probably the most glaring examples.

My drawing are based on the architectural drawings and several pictures you can find dating back to when they built the towers.  Pictures I have included at the end here, and the construction drawings (actually the architectural plans) can be found at the link on the right over there.

Let me know what you think. There is a reason I am doing all this, trust me. Just keeping you up to date.

Core construction (note the North Tower in background)

You can see the tension and compression bracing in this shot. Also, you can see some of the “I” beams used to support the floor systems as well. This was an incredibly strong core structure. What the MSM referred to as a “hollow tube”.

Exterior column assembly layout

As you can see, I have modeled my exterior columns exactly the same way as they were built. Each of these sections was 3 stories tall, welded together in the factory and installed as a unit.  They then bolted, and welded into place.  Again, when you see drawings of these, often you don’t have the detail included that you need to understand just how strong this design really was.

Installation process exterior columns

So, I hope you can see that I am working as closely as I can to what I have found to be the actual construction of the towers.  It’s not perfect, but I am working on it.

(just a note:  if you look at the floor there, that is prior to pouring the concrete. They haven’t yet installed the rebar either. But you can see the steel from the trusses poking up through the floor.  What that is, is part of the truss that runs up through the top cord of the truss, and then is actually embedded in the concrete when it is poured.  What that means is, when NIST tells you that the floors buckled 40″+ (even though Kevin Ryan tells us that the UL Lab tests only produced <2″ of deflection, which NIST eventually admits) they are trying to tell you that all those steel loops, embedded in that concrete, somehow shifted allowing the steel and the concrete to move independent of each other.)

Imagine the force it takes to propel not just one of these massive sections over 300 feet into another building, not two, but three. (Also note that one of the reasons that NIST’s consultant told them it wasn’t a controlled demolition (one of the two reasons he gave) was that not enough damage was done to the windows of surrounding buildings, as often happens with controlled demo (according to him, a controlled demo expert in charge of clean-up the next day).  Notice any damage to the windows?

Still together

Yesterday, during the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing ”Executive Power and it’s Constitutional Limitations“, as an argument for not opening an investigation into criminal acts by this administration, the same talking point came up time and time again; these “demented” people who call for impeachment are trying to “criminalise” political differences: the Criminalization of Politics. 

Now this would normally fall into the silly smoke screen category (especially after what we KNOW happened at the Department of Justice with Carl Rove’s help) …if we hadn’t heard it before. But of course the interesting thing about this is where we have heard it before.

The other day, there was a debate on NPR’s Democracy Now, between Glenn Greenwald and  Obama advisor Cass Sunstein about the need for impeachment. Sunstein made reference to a previous argument he had made at the recent NetRoots Conference about impeaching this administration seeming like criminalizing political differences.

“Prosecuting government officials risks a “cycle” of criminalizing public service, he argued, and Democrats should avoid replicating retributive efforts like the impeachment of President Clinton-or even the “slight appearance” of it.” Ari Membler on the Sunstein statement at the Netroots Conference from The Nation.

During the debate with Glenn Greenwald, Sunstein defended his previous comment by interjecting the notion that “egregious crimes” shouldn’t be overlooked. “When I talk about a fear of criminalizing political disagreement, I don’t mean to suggest that we shouldn’t criminalize crimes. Crimes are against the law, and if there’s been egregious wrongdoing in violation of the law, then it’s not right to put a blind eye to that.” C. Sunstein, Democracy Now.

Of course, that begs the questions; which “crimes” do we “put a blind eye to…” and, who decides? The Congress? Pelosi? Conyers? Dean? Obama?

The problem there, is that ALL of the aforementioned potential “deciders” are representatives of THE PEOPLE. Presumably there to do the WILL of the people. And by all accounts, the vast majority of The People in this country want there to be accountability from this administration for their reckless assault on the Constitution and our liberties. Yet, Sunstein is debating that that shouldn’t happen. So, who is really “the decider”?

But, even granting Sunstein his little correction about egregious wrongdoings, he his still quite off-base with the principle argument. 

A President should never to be allowed to get away with ANY crimes for he, above all others, must be held to a higher moral, legal, and ethical standard of any of us. Not the opposite. I made this same argument during the impeachment trial of President Clinton, when, in my opinion, he should have been impeached for lying to Congress and attempting to obstruct justice. It was quite clear.

But Sunstein goes even further in his blatant apologist’s rationalization of the crimes of this administration.

“Well, there has been a big debate among law professors and within the Supreme Court about the President’s adherent authority to wiretap people….the idea that it’s an impeachable offense to adopt an incorrect interpretation of the President’s power, that, I think, is too far-reaching. There are people in the Clinton administration who share Bush’s view with respect to foreign surveillance.” Sunstein.

The idea that the President or his staff may indeed avoid prosecution for their many crimes based on the notion that they can’t be held accountable for misinterpreting the law is completely disingenuous. The fact that an adviser to the presumptive candidate from the opposing political Party would advance this hogwash, in order to defend a criminal administration just months before the election, is, to say the least, very… revealing.

So, it is not surprising that several Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee, including Rep. Lungren, picked up on this talking-point and parroted it during the hearing yesterday. The logic being now that a leading member of the majority party has made the claim that this whole thing could be nothing more than criminalizing politics, it is no longer just a smoke-screen, but instead it’s a bi-partisan statement of fact. Not because Sunstein is correct in his interpretation, but because the Republicans on the committee can put-forward the argument and then use Obama’s adviser’s statement to muddy the waters of the debate, forcing any argument to run down Sunstein’s comment first.

It’s a layered distraction, pre-manufactured for the minority Party in the House of Representatives by a usually thoughtful, legal scholar who calls himself a democrat and who should have known better.  So, the next question must be, why would he do it, knowing that it would be picked up on and used to defend the rogue administration?

Layered distractions seemed to be the order of the day for the republicans in the committee yesterday. Both Trent Franks and Steve King, went through a rather short list of Democratic Party all-stars, when they tried to suggest that “everyone” believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

That argument was put to rest by panelist Vincent Bugliosi when he correctly pointed out that the reason that these people thought that there were weapons of mass destruction was because the administration had edited the intelligence estimate about Iraq so that it would better suit the war-mongers intentions of invading that country. They were basing their conclusions on the tainted evidence that Cheney’s “Office of Special Plans” had cherry-picked to justify going to war.

The circular logic of King and Lungren being obvious: Bush didn’t lie because he thought he was correct, and Clinton, Rockefeller, Albright, Kerry, Gore all thought the same thing (because of Bush’s lies). They were all just duped by the intel (that was created by Cheney’s OSP).

So again, the waters are muddied by the appearance of a bi-partisan consensus of misinformed agreement. Now remember what Sunstein said earlier? “There are people in the Clinton administration who share Bush’s view with respect to foreign surveillance.” Cass himself is also priming the pot for the bi-partisan cop-out meme. Again I ask, why?

Well, there may be one clue in the people they are quoting. Clinton, Rockefeller, Kerry, Gore, Albright… they are all deep political insiders with family ties to serious monied interests in this country. They are all players, so to speak, in what Greenwald calls the politico-class. Certainly, now, no matter what happens in November, Obama can be said to have joined that elite club of networked insiders in the investor/beltway club. As Nixon had his Kissenger and Clinton had his Albright, so to now does Obama have his Sunstein.

These people work on a level far beyond the limits of Party loyalty or agenda. They serve a class of people that don’t really care about anything more than maintaining the status-quo. As George Bush once said when addressing a fund raiser with “the haves and the have mores…”, “Some people call you the elite. I call you my base.”

And I would suggest to you here now, that it isn’t Bush or Cheney that the Sunstein’s of our political crisis are protecting, it’s that “base”. Because if you allow impeachment hearings to get underway, without any reservations I will promise you this: the corrupt connections between the super-monied class and this administration will have to be exposed. And when that happens, many in this country are deathly afraid that the majority of Americans will start to see this savage capitalist system for what it is: a detriment to both our quality of life and democracy as a whole. With the economy as it is, just how far reaching could the ramifications of that become?

That’s why the Sunsteins and the Kissengers and the Albrights dutifully tow the line of both Parties and neither simultaneously. They must do what is necessary to maintain the status-quo for the elite class that runs this country.

And that is why we shouldn’t be surprised when we see certain talking points blurring Party lines. Because at that level, there is only one line: the one we can’t step across, that divides us from them.

House to hear Impeachment debate today.

I wish I could tell you that this is going to be for real, but I can’t. I wish I could tell you Pelosi and Conyers hadn’t already made up their minds, but I can’t. Today at 9:00am, in the House Judiciary Committee, Kucinich and 12 others will be testifying in some kind of hearing that isn’t even called an “impeachment” hearing. This man, Bruce Fein, a republican, will one of those people allowed to testify.

He is probably the best and most persuasive advocate for impeachment. Let us hope that somehow his words and Kucinich’s and the others who are there to plea the case for the rule of law, will find some loop-hole into Conyer’s walled-off sense of civic duty; enough of a chink in his armor to make him honor his oath of office and the wishes of a vast majority of Americans… We can only hope. It will be covered live on CSPAN. I will put the link up later.

“We know it is right. Not because of democrats or republicans, but because it returns the United States to how the founding fathers wanted it to be.” Bruce Fein

by Scott Creighton

I wish to first thank each and every one of you for your continuing efforts to bring the serious questions that still permeate the official 9/11 investigations to light. I hope that in time, your efforts will rank among those of Daniel Ellsberg, Bob Woodward , and Carl Bernstein.

I also wish to congratulate you on the recent publication of your peer reviewed article “Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction“, published in The Open Civil Engineering Journal, Vol. 2 Issue 1, by Bentham Open. This is a huge step in the struggle for credibility in an atmosphere where any mention of discrepancies in the “official story” of  9/11 equates to professional suicide.

The courage it takes for you to continue your research and lectures is not lost on us and if I may be so bold as to speak for some of the 9/11 Truth seekers; thank you.

But this is by no means just a fan letter and I know your time is valuable, so I will get to the point.

 I would like to discuss some of your findings in your all too important study, “Extremely high temperatures during the World Trade Center destruction.”   and subsequent comments that you have made when discussing your findings.

Specifically; 

1. The iron-rich spheres have differing chemical compositions
2. The shear abundance of the spheres found in the WTC dust

I think I might be able to suggest an avenue of study that may shed some light on these facts.

The iron-rich spheres have differing chemical compositions

The work that you and others have produced detailing the residual chemical and physical signatures of the presence of Thermite and Thermate in the WTC dust has been extraordinary to say the least. But if I may be so bold, it would seem you are looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack full of nails.

Cutter charges are indeed an important part of the demolition process, but they are not, by far and away, the most abundant explosive charge used in terms of shear volume in a demolition.

The cutter charges you speak of do produce the type of evidence that you have pointed out several times and you have proven, in my opinion, their presence in the demolition of the World Trade Centers.

However, you mentioned in one of your lectures about the iron-rich spheres, that you and others have found many spheres of varying composition. I would like to suggest one possible explanation for that.

Detonating cord

Your work explaining how the core and exterior columns were moved out of the way of the falling debris by the use of “cutter charges” like Thermite or Thermate has been exceptional. However, in the demolition industry, these types of charges are not used to remove floor mass or concrete firewalls.

That work is accomplished by the detonating cord itself.

This cord, though used as a fuse to ignite the cutter charges and accurately link them together in a controlled demolition, is also a high explosive in and of itself.

“As a timing mechanism, detonation cord detonates at a very reliable rate (about 7000 – 8000 m/s), enabling engineers to control the pattern in which charges are detonated. This is particularly useful for demolitions, when structural elements need to be destroyed in a specific order to control the collapse of a building.” Wiki

“Cordtex” and “Primacord” are the most commonly used detonation cords. Primaline, a heavier yield Primacord, has a hard plastic casing and looks very similar to a heavy gage commercial wiring.

(I remember that one of the witnesses who observed the workers who came in during the weekend of the “power-down” at the World Trade Centers say that he saw many of them moving large spools of what looked like “brightly colored cable”. Primaline, like most commercial explosives, uses bright colors to differentiate between the cords grain loads.)

You see, this is the vehicle they use to break up the vast amounts of concrete flooring systems and turn them virtually into dust and at the same time. Also, these charges (for they are explosive charges themselves) are used simultaneously to break-up the metal floor pans under the concrete as well as the metal trusses that hold them up.

The heavier cord burns extremely hot and they use some of these in commercial demo applications to remove large sections of pipe (which means they will in fact, cut through certain gages of steel).

So here we have a possible avenue of research; since we know that the cutter charges are not used to break up the masses of concrete flooring, and we know that there are different chemical traces in the iron-rich micro-spheres that you have found in the WTC dust, it would seem likely that, as is standard practice in professional demolitions, some other charge was used. I suggest that you look into the residual trace element finger-prints of detonator cords such as Primline.

The presence of this product would go a long way to explain the different compositions of the micro-spheres (the chemical make-up of the Primaline is different than that of the Thermite and Themate cutter charges, and the metals that were affected by these charges would be different than that of the steel columns.)

The shear abundance of the spheres found in the WTC dust

In your study on the presence of the iron-rich micro-spheres found in the WTC dust you note:

“Iron-rich spherules were also observed in studies conducted by the RJ Lee Company and the USGeological Survey. In particular, a USGS report on the WTC dust provides two micrographs of “iron-rich spheres” and a “bulbous” or tear-drop-shaped silicate droplet.”

“Moreover, the RJ Lee report provides provocative data regarding the abundance of observed iron-rich spheres. A WTC dust sample acquired at 130 Liberty Street shows a “mean of composition” of “Fe spheres” of 5.87% which is very high compared with “Fe spheres” found in ordinary building dust of only 0.04%. As the report notes, the WTC dust has unusual identifying characteristics – in particular, the WTC dust in this sample has nearly 150 times (5.87/0.04) the amount of iron-rich spheres as ordinary dust.”

Even though there were many columns in the WTC that had to be “cut” in order for the building to come down in the highly controlled manner which they did, Thermite cutter charges could not have produced such a high yield of residual micro-spheres when compared to the shear volume of the mass of the concrete and other materials used in the buildings.

Imagine that a cutter-charge slices roughly and 1/8″ of material to ¼” of material when ignited. Even if they used two cuts per floor (which seems unlikely if, as you and Richard Gage have pointed out, the beams were pre-cut to roughly 30′ lengths in order to more easily transport) that would not explain the nearly 6% composition of micro-sphere in the dust.

It is more likely that something else produced micro-spheres in the process.

“Not only is it necessary for the material to have achieved extremely high temperatures to melt and so be able to form small spheres, it is also necessary that some violent physical disturbance occur in order to shatter the molten material into the sizes observed,” (from your study)

We have established that certain high yield detonator cord burns hot enough to melt thin gage metals. But to be more specific as to the exact chemical residues of each type of detonator cords potentially used would require more comprehensive study than I am qualified to produce.

But were you and your researchers to find trace elements of residual detonator cord explosives within the WTC dust, that would go along way to fill in the gaps of the story.

By observing the overall collapse time of the WTC building, we can see that they floors failed at a rate of about 10 floors per second.

What that would mean is if the detonator cord was used, as I suggest it must have been, it would have been “fished” in the ceilings, beneath the concrete flooring of the floor above and through the metal trusses that suspend the floor sections.

As that floor detonates, it would simultaneously eject the concrete flooring upward and the resulting molten metal from the trusses downward.

In 1/10^th of a second, the floor beneath would do the same thing, creating a two stage effect, “shattering the molten metal into the sizes observed.”

Then the force of the residual mass of the structure above would force the material outward in a lateral ejection of dust, as was observed.

I do not know if you and your fellow researchers have already tested for the residual trace elements of this type of explosive in the dust you have collected from the WTCs. And though it may be presumptuous of me to suggest any course of action, I feel that this is something that should not be overlooked.

In the overall design of a demolition project on such a massive scale, the volume of cutter-charge material compared to the volume of what-ever was used to break up those floors, must be relatively low.

Therefore I would hope that you and your colleagues will take this letter in the manner in which it was written; not as a criticism but rather a suggestion of a course of investigation.

If indeed this was an example of a controlled demolition, as I think you have come a long way towards proving, then something other than Thermite was used to link the cutter-charges, and to demolish the flooring systems.

It is my suggestion that you and your researchers look into detonator cords as one possible solution.

edit:

Though I am no chemical engineer, I will do my best to flush-out what info I can on the residual trace elements of Primaline.

At this point, I can tell you:

Primaline is composed of a thin outer plastic jacket surrounding a core of pentaerythritol tetranitrate. or PETN

“The heat of explosion is 5,862 kilojoules per kilogram[2], or 1.4 times that of TNT.”

and it’s chemical formula is PETN’s formula is C(CH2ONO2)4.

It has an explosive velocity of 8,400 m/s.

“PETN’spreparation involves the nitration of pentaerythritol with a mixture of concentrated nitric and sulfuric acid.”

I will look into forensic signatures, but that may be way over my head.

But I can tell you this; the use of this method of demolition is pretty commonplace for the larger companies doing this kind of work.

There was one company brought in to help with the clean up of the WTC area, 2 days after the 11th.

This company is the largest and best in the world at demolitions.

If your conclusions are correct about cutter charges being in the building, then something broke up those concrete floors.

If cutter charges were placed in the buildings, then it was demoed. Would you bring in the best demo team in the world, to clean up your evidence, if they weren’t involved in the first place? Wouldn’t you worry about them finding tell tale signs that only demo industry people would notice?

In Nov. 2005, Popular Mechanics did an article about controlled demolitions. They interviewed someone from CDI. In the first few paragraphs you find this…

“Everywhere, tangles of red and yellow cords snake across the floor and wind their way up the load-bearing columns.

“Those lines are detonating cord,” Doud warns. “They’ve got a PETN-based explosive in them. Pentaerythritol tetranitrate. Took me two years to learn how to say it and I still can’t spell it.”

I know you don’t like mentioning companies or pointing fingers, and that’s not what I am doing. All i am saying is, the best controlled demolition company out there was talking about using this product in 2005.

and they didn’t just invent it.

Not only that, but they hang coils of the stuff on the sides of the columns in order to control the direction the column flies in the demo.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/extreme_machines/1787846.html?pa…

It’s a good read.

As a matter of fact; remember that video of the democ expert that said, right off the bat, that Building 7 was controlled demolition? Well, I just saw an extended version of that interview, in which he talks about the process of how they could have done it. And the first thing he talks about is how they would have to run the “det cord”.

There are inexpensive ways to test for PETN residual traces. Anyone can get one of the kits and do it themselves. in fact, PETN is the primary HE in most US made missiles. It was the finding of trace elements of PETN that solved the Flight 800 case.

So therefore, any artifacts or untainted material from Ground Zero or the Pentagon, could be, and should be, checked for these trace elements.

NIST made a point to let us know that they hadn’t tested for these very trace elements then went on to say “Their presence wouldn’t NECESSARILY prove demolition.” Seems kind of odd to say about a criminal investigation involving the potential use of explosives; wouldn’t you say?