I began questioning the events of 9/11 while working as a Site Manager for Underwriters Laboratories, or UL. My questions were a result of written and verbal communications I had with the top managers at UL, in which they described the company’s leading role in creating the original fire resistance plan for the WTC buildings.

A lot has been said about the destruction of the WTC, but one thing that can be said with certainty today is that, if any of the official explanations for the WTC were true, then Underwriters Laboratories should be the main focus of an ongoing investigation into criminal negligence. Here are some reasons why.

• UL tested the steel components (of all 3 WTC buildings that failed) for fire resistance. According to UL’s CEO, the company did this testing per the NYC code, which ensured that the floor assemblies would withstand a minimum of 2 hours of intense fire, and the column assemblies would withstand 3 hours of fire. On 9/11 one of the towers failed completely in less than one hour.
• UL also tested and certified the fireproofing used throughout the towers, and floor assemblies that were similar to those used in the towers.
• UL consulted for the PANYNJ on the fire resistance plan throughout the life of the buildings, including on the pre-9/11 fireproofing upgrades that, coincidentally, matched up very well with the floors of impact and failure.

Because of the thorough fire resistance plan, the tower’s structural engineer, John Skilling, was able to consider airliner impacts and the resulting jet fuel fires in his design. In a 1993 interview with the Seattle Times, he assured the public that, if an airliner was to hit one of the towers, people would die in the fire but [quote] “the building structure would still be there.”

• The WTC7 report produced by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, lists UL as the company that provided the fire resistance information for that building.

In a glaring conflict of interest, UL was paid to participate in the NIST WTC investigation, and helped to create the final fire-based explanation but was not held accountable for the fact that it was based on a series of fire resistance failures.

Because I’ve spent seven years following the official WTC investigations very closely, I’d like to make a few comments about those investigations.

Many of the people and companies that were involved should have raised suspicions from the beginning.

• Like UL, the contractors and specialists NIST used were dependent on good government relationships or on the political story itself for their livelihood. An example was Science Applications International, or SAIC, led by Dick Cheney’s former assistant, Duane Andrews. At the time, SAIC received more government contracts than any other company and it played an integral role in the NIST investigation, as well as in the previous 1993 bombing report for the WTC. Among its many other connections to 9/11, SAIC provided the “intelligence” behind the capture of “9/11 Mastermind”, Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
• Of course, NIST was led by people who were appointed by George W. Bush, including the directors of NIST and their boss, Bush’s long-time oil industry buddy and cabinet member, Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans.
• Many of the official investigators were specialists in explosives. But the odd thing about that was the WTC explanations they provided never had anything to do with explosives.
• What’s more, many of the NIST investigators were experts in the high-tech incendiary/explosive called nanothermite, which has been found in the WTC dust.
• Although the official story changed dramatically over the years, the “experts” behind those stories were largely the same, whether it be for the FEMA report, Larry Silverstein’s insurance claim report, the NIST report, or the Popular Mechanics book. For the towers they gave us the pancake theory, which was about floor failure only, and then they gave us a theory based on column-failure only, and then a core column shortening theory, and then the floor sagging pulling external columns inward theory. They first said that massive quantities of steel had melted and then they said it had only softened and then they said it had only weakened.
• For WTC7, those experts first said that it was diesel fuel fires that caused the near free-fall collapse, and then they said it was damage from the debris falling from the towers, and then they scrapped all of that and said it was only an office fire that made fully fireproofed floor beams fail. The stunningly obvious falsehood of the final story for building 7 was emphasized by the fact that NIST said the steel did the exact opposite of what it had done in the towers. In the towers, NIST claimed that the heat made the steel soften, weaken and sag. But when heat was applied to the steel in WTC 7, it remained firmly rigid as it expanded linearly, broke many shear studs, and pushed a girder off its seat.

What we now know is that the NIST reports are not only completely false, as they were probably meant to be, but those reports are also completely unscientific.

We know this because the physical tests performed by NIST did not support the fire-based hypotheses.

• Steel temperature tests, performed on the few steel samples saved, indicated steel temperatures of only about 500 degrees Fahrenheit, more than one thousand degrees below the temperature needed to soften steel and make it malleable.
• Floor model tests conducted by UL during the investigation showed that the floors would sag only 3 to 4 inches, even after exposure to fires that were hotter and longer lasting than those in the towers. This minimal sagging did not support the final story.
• After criticism of its draft report, NIST published a short description of a test conducted to evaluate possible fireproofing loss in the towers. This involved shooting a a few rounds from a shotgun at steel plates. The results from this test were a failure as well, in that, even if the airplanes could have been converted into thousands of shotgun blasts, the energy required to blast off all that fireproofing was just not there.

As a result of these failed tests, the conclusions NIST produced for the towers were based entirely on a computer model and the results of the physical tests were ignored. Not only that, but NIST failed to explain the actual “collapse” dynamics at all. NIST simply suggested a “collapse initiation sequence” and said that the actual collapse, which so many people around the world have questioned, was from that point of initiation, obvious and inevitable. An additional problem is that the public is not allowed to see the computer model, whereas true science requires transparency.

NIST avoided discarding its physical test results for WTC7 simply by not conducting any physical tests to support its WTC7 explanation. NIST’s conclusions for WTC7 are also based entirely on a computer model, and that computer model is, again, unavailable to the public

So there are several things to remember about the official explanations given for destruction of the WTC.

First, the three buildings that were destroyed on 9/11 were designed and built using fire resistance plans that were thorough and continually updated, and that ensured the buildings could not fail from fires. Unfortunately, the company that provided the scientific data for those plans, Underwriters Laboratories, has become mute on the subject, despite being paid for participating in the production of the official fire-based explanations. If the fire-based explanations were correct, we must conclude that UL was extremely negligent in its work and has not been held accountable.

Secondly, the people and companies involved in producing the ever-changing official theories for the WTC destruction were explosive experts who changed their story repeatedly but for whatever reason never considered the use of explosives. These people worked diligently for many years to establish a non-explosive theory for destruction of all three WTC buildings, and NIST has admitted that it did not test for explosive residues despite that requirement in the national standard for fire investigations, NFPA 921.

Finally, the official theories given for destruction of the WTC buildings were based on work that was completely unscientific, in that those theories contradict the physical tests performed, and are based on computer models that cannot be replicated or falsified. For these reasons, we know that the official fire-based theories for the WTC are completely false.

That leaves us with the demolition theory, which is now supported by a growing body of evidence that was ignored by the official investigators. This includes:

• Near free-fall acceleration
• Symmetrical “collapse”
• “Squibs” bursting from the sides of all three buildings
• Many eyewitness testimonies to explosions and flashes of light
• And dust clouds resembling pyroclastic flows from volcanoes

Much of the evidence points to the presence of thermitic materials, including thermate and nanothermite. This evidence includes:

• The molten metal witnessed in the rubble piles and pouring from the south tower
• The sulfidation and intergranular melting of steel samples as reported by FEMA, which the NY Times called “the greatest mystery of the investigation”
• The fires deep in the oxygen-poor pile at Ground Zero that could not be put out for months

• The extremely high temperatures evidenced by metallic and other microspheres, evaporated metals and silicates, found by USGS, RJ Lee and independent scientists in the WTC dust

• The unusual spikes in volatile organic chemical emissions measured by EPA and others at Ground Zero, suggesting abrupt, violent fires on specific dates, and other unusual species in the environmental monitoring data, also corresponding to specific dates

• The analytical results from independent scientists that confirm the presence of nanothermite in the WTC dust

I will leave it to my colleagues here today to expand on the evidence for the demolition theory. Thank you for listening and thanks for seeking the truth.