9/11: the most effective TV commercial in the history of Western civilization

August 27, 2007: Esteemed Scientist Disputes Official 9/11 Account

Lynn Margulis. [Source: Javier Pedreira]Lynn Margulis, a distinguished professor in the department of geosciences at the University of Massachusetts, describes the US government’s account of 9/11 as a “fraud,” and calls for a new investigation of the attacks. In a statement published on the website PatriotsQuestion911.com, she writes, “Certainly, 19 young Arab men and a man in a cave 7,000 miles away, no matter the level of their anger, could not have masterminded and carried out 9/11: the most effective television commercial in the history of Western civilization.” She calls 9/11 a “false-flag operation” that has been used to justify the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with “unprecedented assaults on research, education and civil liberties.” She compares it to the sinking of the USS Maine in 1898—which led to the Spanish American War—and the German Reichstag fire of 1933, which facilitated the rise of the Nazi party. Some have alleged that these earlier events were orchestrated by governmental powers. Margulis has previously written extensively on a wide range of scientific topics, making original contributions to cell biology and microbial evolution, and is best known for her theory of symbiogenesis. In 1999, she received the National Medal of Science, which is America’s highest honor for scientific achievement. Margulis says she came to her conclusions about 9/11 based on her own research and from reading two books about the attacks by retired theology professor David Ray Griffin (see March 1, 2004). She concludes her statement, “I suggest that those of us aware and concerned demand that the glaringly erroneous official account of 9/11 be dismissed as a fraud and a new, thorough, and impartial investigation be undertaken.” [University of Massachusetts, 11/4/2003; Daily Hampshire Gazette, 9/11/2007; Smith College Sophian, 9/20/2007]

9:59 a.m. September 11, 2001: Some Witnesses Think South Tower Collapse Resembles a Controlled Demolition

Deputy Fire Commissioner Thomas Fitzpatrick. [Source: City of New York]Numerous witnesses to the collapse of the south WTC tower think it resembles a demolition using explosives. Some initially believe this is what is occurring:
Reporter John Bussey watches the collapse from the Wall Street Journal’s offices across the street from the WTC. He says, “I… looked up out of the office window to see what seemed like perfectly synchronized explosions coming from each floor, spewing glass and metal outward. One after the other, from top to bottom, with a fraction of a second between, the floors blew to pieces.” [Wall Street Journal, 9/12/2001]
Deputy Fire Commissioner Thomas Fitzpatrick: “I remember seeing, it looked like sparkling around one specific layer of the building.… Then the building started to come down. My initial reaction was that this was exactly the way it looks when they show you those implosions on TV.” [City of New York, 10/1/2001]
Assistant Fire Commissioner Stephen Gregory: “I saw low-level flashes. In my conversation with Lieutenant Evangelista… he questioned me and asked me if I saw low-level flashes in front of the building, and I agreed with him… I saw a flash flash flash and then it looked like the building came down.… You know like when they demolish a building, how when they blow up a building, when it falls down? That’s what I thought I saw.” [City of New York, 10/3/2001]
Firefighter Richard Banaciski: “It seemed like on television they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions.” [City of New York, 12/6/2001]
Firefighter Joseph Meola: “As we are looking up at the building, what I saw was, it looked like the building was blowing out on all four sides. We actually heard the pops.… You thought it was just blowing out.” [City of New York, 12/11/2001]
Fire Chief Frank Cruthers: “[T]here was what appeared to be at first an explosion. It appeared at the very top, simultaneously from all four sides, materials shot out horizontally. And then there seemed to be a momentary delay before you could see the beginning of the collapse.” [City of New York, 10/31/2001]
Battalion Chief Brian Dixon: “I was watching the fire… the lowest floor of fire in the South Tower actually looked like someone had planted explosives around it because the whole bottom I could see—I could see two sides of it and the other side—it just looked like that floor blew out.… I thought, geez, this looks like an explosion up there, it blew out.” [City of New York, 10/25/2001]
Firefighter Timothy Burke: “Then the building popped, lower than the fire… I was going oh, my god, there is secondary device because the way the building popped I thought it was an explosion.” [City of New York, 1/22/2002]
Firefighter Edward Cachia: “It actually gave at a lower floor, not the floor where the plane hit, because we originally had thought there was like an internal detonation explosives because it went in succession, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then the tower came down.” [City of New York, 12/6/2001]
Firefighter Kenneth Rogers: “[T]here was an explosion in the South Tower… I kept watching. Floor after floor after floor. One floor under another after another and when it hit about the fifth floor, I figured it was a bomb, because it looked like a synchronized deliberate kind of thing.” [City of New York, 12/10/2001]
Reporter Beth Fertig: “The tower went down perfectly straight, as if a demolition crew had imploded it. I wondered if it was being brought down deliberately.” [Gilbert et al., 2002, pp. 78]
Paramedic Daniel Rivera: “[D]o you ever see professional demolition where they set the charges on certain floors and then you hear ‘Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop’? That’s exactly what—because I thought it was that.” [City of New York, 10/10/2001]
Battalion Chief Dominick DeRubbio: “It was weird how it started to come down. It looked like it was a timed explosion.” [City of New York, 10/12/2001]
The Guardian will report that police on the scene said the collapse “looked almost like a ‘planned implosion’ designed to catch bystanders watching from the street.” [Guardian, 9/12/2001]
However, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which conducts a three-year study of the WTC collapses, will reject suggestions that the WTC towers were brought down with explosives (see August 30, 2006). CTV will assert, “[F]lashes of light that seemed to indicate bombs detonating were not explosions. They were pockets of airs being forced out of windows as the sagging floors pushed downward.” [CTV, 9/12/2006]