A Combination of Circumstances

Often the logical construct - (statement 1 AND statement 2) is useful in describing circumstantial evidence. It's used to aggregate disparate statements, that in and of themselves, have a limited and local meaning, but collectively form a more complete picture.

This section substantiates the following logical statement:

Real estate companies headed by Larry Silverstein and Frank Lowy, acting as partners, obtained a lease on the Twin Towers in the summer of 2001, an improbably short time before September 11th 2001.
AND
The real estate company headed by Larry Silverstein developed and built Seven World Trade Center.
AND
Both Larry Silverstein and Frank Lowy had extremely close ties with Israel.
AND
Phenomena associated with the collapses of the Twin Towers and Seven World Trade Center were similar to phenomena associated with collapses caused by controlled demolition.
AND
All of the "muscle hijackers" on the flights that attacked the World Trade Center entered the United States after it was within the power of Larry Silverstein to close the deal with the Port Authority.

The World Trade Center Deals

Silverstein Properties and Westfield America were partners in the deal to lease World Trade Center office and retail space, along with GMAC and Lloyd Goldman.¹

On July 24, 2001, Larry Silverstein's real estate company, Silverstein Properties, Inc., formally leased the Twin Towers, Four World Trade Center, and Five World Trade Center, for ninety-nine years, in what was the largest real estate deal in New York City history, costing $3.2 billion.^2,3

In May of 2001, Frank Lowy's company, Westfield America, had completed a lease agreement for a ninety-nine year lease on retail space beneath the World Trade Center, at a cost of $127 million.⁴

Larry Silverstein and Seven World Trade Center

On May 26, 1981, Larry Silverstein, president of Silverstein Properties, announced plans for the construction of Seven World Trade Center on Vesey street. The expected cost was $260 million. On hand to witness the announcement were Port Authority officials, members of his family, and his public relations aides.¹ Silverstein's winning bid promised to pay the Port Authority $6.75 for each square foot of office space, along with 40% of the profits after he himself cleared the $6.75 per square foot threshold. Construction began in May, 1984.²

The problems of securing financing and a major tenant for the building weren't easily solved. Knowing that an agreement with a large tenant would secure financial backing, most prospective tenants asked for a share in the building's equity in return for an agreement. Silverstein wouldn't allow this. Financial backing was secured before the building's tenancy was resolved. The major lenders were the California Federal Savings and Loan Association and the Chase Manhattan Bank.³ In late 1988, Salomon Brothers announced it would move its headquarters into Seven World Trade Center. Silverstein said that Salomon Brothers would pay more than $1 billion over the ensuing twenty years.⁴

...and they made that decision to pull, and then we watched the building collapse

Seven World Trade Center collapsed at about 5:30 PM on September 11, 2001. On a 2002 PBS documentary, "America Rebuilds", Larry Silverstein made the following statement about activities associated with Seven World Trade Center that day:

I remember getting a call from the uh..fire department commander telling me that they were not sure that they were going to be able to contain the fire. I said, 'You know, we've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is..is pull it.' Ah, and they made that decision to pull, and then we watched the building collapse.

If by the phrase "pull it", Silverstein meant to demolish Seven World Trade Center, obviously there was no time to set up a controlled demolition of Seven World Trade Center on September 11th, yet this meaning seems to fit his use of the word "pull" in the final sentence - "...and they made that decision to pull, and then we watched the building collapse." On the face of it, it appears that on the spur of the moment, in front of the television cameras, he invented a plausible, yet impossible explanation for the collapse of the building - that the NYFD had demolished the building with explosives.

If, as his defenders say,¹ the discussion was about the contingent of firefighters in the building, and by the phrase "pull it", he meant "pull the contingent of firefighters out of the building," then:

• His use of the pronoun "it" is awkward. There are firemen, probably from a number of different units, in Seven World Trade Center trying to control the building's various fires. Do you think of them as a group, a contingent, an "it"? Try it yourself. Think of a group of firefighters in a burning house. They're all people, and they're all in a very dangerous situation. How do you describe them? How do you describe the act of getting them out of the building to safety?
• The collapse of Seven World Trade Center was the last weird thing to happen on September 11th, and it was super weird. Suddenly, a fifty storey building collapsed as though it had been made out of water instead of steel. Dan Rather, then an anchor for CBS News, was obviously disconcerted by the video of the collapse, and said that it looked like a controlled demolition. Larry Silverstein's statement, " ...and they made that decision to pull, and then we watched the building collapse" conveys the idea that this strange collapse followed naturally from the "decision to pull." If by the "decision to pull", he meant "pull the firefighter contingent out of the building," would he matter of factly add the phrase, "and then we watched the building collapse?"

Professor Steven Jones on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Buildings

The official version of the collapses of the World Trade Center buildings claims that the Twin Tower collapses were due to a combination of damage caused by the planes, fire-induced deformation of the steel structures of the Twin Towers, and gravity, and that the collapse of Seven World Trade Center was due to damage due to the collapses of the Twin Towers, fire-induced deformation of the building's steel structure, and gravity.

Professor Steven Jones, formerly of Brigham Young University, wrote a seminal paper on the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings, including Seven World Trade Center, which questioned this version of events.

The paper was unpublished, but continues to be widely available on the internet.¹

He put forward thirteen reasons for rejecting the official version of the collapses. These include:

• The existence of molten metal at Ground Zero, sometimes flowing, and sometimes in pools. Evidence for this came from various sources. Greg Fuchek, familiar with the Ground Zero environment, said that steel beams pulled from the wreckage sometimes dripped molten steel.² Sarah Atlas, a search and rescue worker, saw evidence of flowing molten metal at Ground Zero.³ Jones contends that evidence of glowing and molten metal at Ground Zero, weeks after September 11, 2001 is consistent with thermitic reactions - the use of thermite or a closely related substance, and inconsistent with an ordinary, jet-fueled fire.
• Evidence that a sample of steel in the Seven World Trade Center debris reached a temperature of approximately 1000°C, and was oxidized in the presence of sulphur.⁴ Jones points out that not only is this temperature higher than would be expected from the fire which occurred in Seven World Trade Center, but that the steel columns would have transported heat away from any heat source. He suggests that the use of thermate, or any variation of thermite containing sulphur, would explain the extremely high temperature reached by the steel on 9/11, as well as the presence of sulphur.
• Seven World Trade Center collapsed symmetrically, although damage to the structure of the building was random. Jones discusses cases where random structural damage caused asymmetrical collapses, while buildings demolished via controlled-demolition typically collapse symmetrically.
• There is no previous case of a steel-enforced high-rise building completely collapsing due to fires, yet fire was put forward as the primary cause of the collapse of Seven World Trade Center. There was also evidence that some of the steel beams in the debris of Seven World Trade Center were partially evaporated.⁵
• Horizontal plumes of smoke and debris, in a regular sequence, emerged from the upper floors of Seven World Trade Center during its collapse. Jones points out that the time interval between these ejections - .2 seconds - is much less than would be expected if they were expulsions of air due to collapsing floors. He also points out they they move up the side of Seven World Trade Center, which corresponds to the case of similar plumes or "squibs" in collapses caused by controlled demolition. In controlled demolition, these plumes are the direct result of explosions. Jones notes that similar plumes are seen in the collapses of the Twin Towers.
• The FEMA study of the collapse of the North Tower says that at the beginning of the collapse, the transmission tower on the roof of the building began to move vertically downward before the wall, suggesting that there was a failure in the building's central steel core.⁶ Jones asks, "What caused the 47 enormous steel core columns of this building, which supported the antenna, to evidently give way nearly simultaneously, if not cutter charges?"
• Eyewitness reports of explosions in rapid sequence:
  • Fire Fighter Edward Cachia⁷:

    [We] thought there was like an internal detonation, explosives, because it went in succession, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then the tower came down…It actually gave at a lower floor, not the floor where the plane hit.

  • Assistant Commissioner Stephen Gregory⁸:

    When I looked in the direction of the Trade Center before it came down, before No. 2 came down, ..I saw low-level flashes. In my conversation with Lieutenant Evangelista, never mentioning this to him, he questioned me and asked me if I saw low-level flashes in front of the building, and I agreed with him because I thought -- at that time I didn't know what it was. I mean, it could have been as a result of the building collapsing, things exploding, but I saw a flash flash flash and then it looked like the building came down.
    Q. Was that on the lower level of the building or up where the fire was?
    A. No, the lower level of the building. 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. And I didn't broach the topic to him, but he asked me. He said I don't know if I'm crazy, but I just wanted to ask you because you were standing right next to me… He said did you see any flashes? I said, yes, well, I thought it was just me. He said no, I saw them, too... I mean, I equate it to the building coming down and pushing things around, it could have been electrical explosions, it could have been whatever."

• Steel beams were ejected for hundreds of feet, and there was extensive pulverization of concrete.
• A gravity-driven explanation of the rapid collapses of the Twin Towers is inconsistent with the law of conservation of momentum. Jones points out that if, as in the official explanation of the collapses, the upper part of the buildings acted as a hammer to drive the collapses, then conservation of momentum requires that the resistance of the still-intact lower portions of the buildings should have slowed the collapse process. This didn't occur.
• The official version of the Twin Tower collapses requires temperatures of approximately 800°C in the buildings' steel columns, temperatures which Jones contends could not have been acheived by the short-lived jet-fuel fire, or by the succeeding, and also relatively short-lived, office fires.

D.G.