NBC News anchor Brian Williams is taking heat for having repeatedly lied to the public about an Iraq War experience that he never had. Williams has decided to take a few days off to see if the whole affair will blow over but that strategy is not likely to work given the legs that the story has grown. There is a way for Williams to turn it all around, although it would be tougher than anything he has done in the past. He could save face by coming clean on something important that he once reported and never mentioned again.
On September 11, 2001, Williams was covering the terrorist attacks of the day. Late that afternoon a third skyscraper collapsed at the World Trade Center (WTC) and Williams interviewed a New York City fireman named David Restuccio about it. Just after the building collapsed, NBC broadcast the live scene as Williams remarked, “This is like watching the collapse of an active volcano. And the dust from it is not unlike that from a volcano.” He brought Restuccio on and continued, “You guys knew this was coming all day.” Restuccio replied, “We had heard reports that the building [WTC 7] was unstable and that it would be best if it would either come down on its own or it would be taken down.”
This was the point at which a good journalist would have stopped and asked, “It would be taken down”? How could a 47-story skyscraper be “taken down” just like that, in the same place where two other towers had just experienced unprecedented collapse? Instead, Williams carried on as if he had not heard the remark. He went on for the next thirteen and a half years ignoring many questions about 9/11 and the official explanations for those crimes. For example, Williams reported on the “WTC meteorite,” said to be composed of once molten steel. He claimed that it was evidence of “temperatures as hot as the inner earth.” Yet Williams never returned to the subject to clarify that jet fuel-fed office fires cannot melt steel, nor has he reported on the compelling evidence for how steel could have melted at the WTC.
Many people knew that WTC 7 would come down, not just Restuccio. They didn’t think it might come down—they knew with certainty that it would. The collapse of the building was announced hours in advance and somehow BBC and CNN prematurely reported it as having collapsed long before it actually did.
However, the U.S. government position on the matter denies any suggestion of foreknowledge. And the officially reported explanation for the collapse of WTC 7, crafted by the government agency NIST over a period of 7 years, could not have been predicted by anyone. That explanation depends on a series of unpredictable factors that supposedly came together only minutes, or seconds, before the collapse took place. Moreover, the NIST explanation is known to be demonstrably false.
After the NIST WTC 7 Report was finally issued, California physics teacher David Chandler helped NIST to become more honest about the whole thing. That is, he helped NIST admit that WTC 7 was in free-fall for a period of its descent. In correcting itself, NIST admitted that the building “descended essentially in free fall, indicating negligible support from the structure below.” NIST clarified in its amended Report that “this free fall drop continued for approximately 8 stories.”
As Chandler made clear, buildings cannot free-fall through their own solid structure without the help of explosives. Others, including licensed structural engineers, have noted that many hundreds of high-strength steel bolts and steel welds would have had to vanish instantaneously for an 8-story section of the building to fall without any resistance. This is not possible except through demolition.
There is no doubt that increasing numbers of people will come to know about WTC 7 and its demolition. They will learn about the military and intelligence agencies that occupied the building, and about the powerful people like Donald Rumsfeld who had curious links to the building and yet lied about their knowledge of its destruction. And they will wonder why the media never covered the facts.
This is where Williams has a chance to use his past reporting on the WTC to regain the public trust. We know that reporters often lie to the public and they do it for a number of understandable, albeit despicable, reasons. But as Williams takes a few days off to consider his career in that cycle of deception, he might also consider what future generations will think and where the practices of intentional media deception will ultimately lead. Someone like Williams will eventually recognize the harm it does and use his or her celebrity status to openly call for the truth about WTC 7. It could be him.
Dig Within 
Kevin,
Hopeful idea but not likely considering his reaction to the feedback he received for “inconsequential” , no matter how embarrassing, lies. For him to step up to the plate and expose a lie with dire personal consequences is all but unthinkable.The gravity of Empire would squash him like a bug and he knows it.
Although it’s not news that “news” media people sometimes, if not often, lie, I’m nonetheless surprised by the amount of lying described in this short article. The USA doesn’t have the largest population of countries in this world but nonetheless has a population of 300 or more million people. To lie, blatantly and by omission, to this many people seems astounding. For a “nobody” to do it is one thing, but for public figures like Brian Williams to do it is a whole other matter when the subject is or should be of high concern to everyone; and 9/11 is of very high importance to us all, including globally.
He’ll hopefully “come clean” about this.
Kevin: Please do not hold your breath.
I posted a piece from your blog a couple of weeks ago and wanted to let you know. If this goes against your wishes I will remove it. See: Terrorism and the Evolution of Deception – http://notionalvalue.blogspot.com/2015/01/terrorism-and-evolution-of-deception.html
With the crimes going on above your head on a daily basis I doubt any news reader will take the time to rehash or question the governments official and wholly unbelievable 9/11 conspiracy theory.
See: Climate Engineering, How It Changed My World – http://notionalvalue.blogspot.com/2015/02/climate-engineering-how-it-changed-my.html
Brian Williams’ Lie: The Bigger Picture – http://notionalvalue.blogspot.com/2015/02/brian-williams-lie-bigger-picture.html
Thanks, and keep up the good works.
Thank you, Kevin Ryan, (a true hero) for so much excellent and informative work. AT some point it will have to become self-evident to enough people. Why would anyone interested in the truth remain silent about all of the troubling implications the facts of the 911/anthrax attacks reveal? They wouldn’t.
These people know they’re criminal gatekeepers. They call it, ‘patriotism’ but it’s really blind obedience, to a nation or paycheck, both are equally indefensible in this case.
Very little gets on TV that is not scripted and approved. But when complex events take place, with large numbers of news crews and witnesses capturing footage in real time and many people writing about it, bits of truth and inconsistencies get through the censorship screen. Sometimes absurdly so, like CNN & the BBC’s reporting the collapse of the WTC7 prior to it having done so. This is highly indicative of the degree to which the story was scripted and fed to the media that day, and in days & months that followed. And always, -as a matter of course.
Graeme MacQueen’s new book: THE 2001 ANTHRAX DECEPTION: THE CASE FOR DOMESTIC CONSPIRACY does an excellent review of the timeline and how the story was framed from the outset and by whom.
Still, inconsistencies abound in this case, almost wherever one looks. From Norman Mineta’s testimony, (despite the fact that it proves Dick Cheney allowed flight 77 to hit the Pentagon. He was in charge and the only action taken we can assume was a stand down “order”), the final report attempts to remove the Mineta’s words from history, (Claiming dirty Dick didnt get to the PEOC until after the flt. 77 hit the Pentagon. According to them, there was no foreknowledge), despite the fact that the video of Mineta testifying is on YouTube for all the world to see. The report went on to state that whomever funded the attacks was “of little practical significance” It failed to make any mention of WTC7’s implosion. And called obviously criminal insider trading that indicated foreknowledge of the attacks,, “highly suspicious’ but concluded there’s nothing to worry about because the push and pull stock bets had been linked “to a single institutional US investor with no conceivable ties to ‘al qaeda.’ Wow… talk abut putting the cart before the horse. There are seemingly endless such examples. It is a bureaucrat’s fairytale narrative that fluctuates between being unbelievable, contradictory, and at odds all manner of easily verifiable facts. None of this troubled, accessory after the fact Philip Zelikow, whose job it was to create a myth, -a fairytale.
It is The Emperor’s New Clothes (from hell), -only the ‘naked truth’ is so much more terrible to come to terms with. The big lie gets maintained because people know if they do not follow their boss’s instructions they will lose their jobs, as you know from firsthand experience. Then consider then who has the highest authority in our society. Sadly, people as honorable as you are rare. It has been revealing and instructive to see the so-called ‘progressive left’ in this country, people like Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, or Jeremy Scahill, *who shamefully states: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hnoi02VGr0 “And know that I say this after having watched Loose Change.” -Really Jeremy, Loose Change?? Geez,, What about the FEMA BPAT App C, or WTC7 in freefall, the 100 day fires, or the iron microspheres,.. how about the pulverized concrete, or the ‘Harrit 2009’ peer-reviewed (and still unchallenged) paper, the carbon nanotubes found in lungs of first responders, -or any of the rest of it??) -They all remain silent. Glen Greenwald, so far as I know, silent. What can one make of this? You address this issue on your piece about Chomsky. But it is still disturbing.. because it suggests the lot of them make up some kind of tolerated dissent where everyone knows the unwritten rules about what not to mention -even if it involves unprecedented treason, crimes against humanity and the end of due process in the US. It is good to remember that the Democratic Party has historically been the co-opter of any large grassroots movements.
This is the litmus test for credibility in journalism. Period. Otherwise, you’re just kidding yourself. I dont care how much you get paid. Any ‘journalist’ that remains silent on this issue is not only not a real journalist on the wrong side of history, but complicit after the fact, for knowingly covering it up with their silence. ‘Omission is the most powerful form of lie.” George Orwell.