6 errors in NIST's 9/11 FAQ pages

In the end it wasn't the compelling arguments of the skeptics, but the incredibly bad arguments from the advocates of the official story, that finally pushed me over. It was how NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology, who did the official scientific investigation) pretended that they can't find anything at all indicating explosives in the World Trade Center. Not even worth testing for it, even though this is the normal procedure!... And how they brush off all the evidence indicating explosives, using some extremely weird scientific twists...

Here are six examples of their arguments, that make me, a master of science in bioengineering, certainly raise my eye-brows:

(The below examples are all from the NIST 9/11 FAQ page:
World Trade Center Investigation Frequently Asked Questions

and its sub-pages:
Questions and Answers about the Overall NIST WTC Investigation (9/19/2011)
Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC Towers Investigation (9/19/2011)
Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation (updated 6/27/12))

Quote:
[Some 200 technical experts - including about 85 career NIST experts and 125 leading experts from the private sector and academia - reviewed tens of thousands of documents, interviewed more than 1,000 people, reviewed 7,000 segments of video footage and 7,000 photographs, analyzed 236 pieces of steels from  from the wreckage, performed laboratory tests, and created sophisticated computer simulations of the sequence of events that occurred from the moment the aircraft struck the towers until they began to collapse.]

BEGAN to collapse... Meaning they never even attempted to figure out how they could continue to collapse symmetrically and totally, all the way to the ground. Without tipping or breaking apart. Such a total, symmetrical collapse is something that requires immense skill and experience to achieve with a skyscraper, when done on purpose, in a controlled demolition. See this youtube play list of some failed attempts (and some successful ones) for illustration:

Building collapses (Play list by me)

NIST is pretending that this part is so normal, it doesn't even deserve their attention! Despite this never having happened to a steel-framed building before or after this event.


Quote:
[Was the steel tested for explosives or thermite residues?

NIST did not test for the residue of these compounds in the steel.

/.../

As for thermite (a mixture of powdered or granular aluminum metal and powdered iron oxide that burns at extremely high temperatures when ignited), it burns slowly relative to explosive materials]

So they openly admit that they did not even test for explosives.

And yes, ok, thermite burns slowly, but nobody is actually suggesting thermite did it. But critics are suggesting nano-thermite might have done it, which is a much finer distribution of thermite.

When I studied combustion theory at Chalmers, I learned that fire and explosion is the same thing, explosion is only faster. Reaction speed can be achieved by making the fuel more finely distributed. Thus thermite is a combustion fuel, but nano-thermite is an explosive. Yet NIST does not even mention nano-thermite! Even though this is a FAQ asked by 2000 scientists here.

Quote:
[Analysis of the WTC steel for the elements in thermite/thermate would not necessarily have been conclusive. The metal compounds also would have been present in the construction materials making up the WTC towers, and sulfur is present in the gypsum wallboard that was prevalent in the interior partitions.]

Nonsense. A peer reviewed report of the findings of nano-thermite has been made by Danish chemist Niels Harrit et al:

Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe

He talks about red-grey chips of nanometer size, containing the said elements and burning vividly when ignited. Such chips, in large amount, do not just form spontaneously in a fire or a collapse. A nanometer is typically around 10 atoms wide. How could iron (not steel, btw) atomize itself spontaneously to that degree? And mix itself evenly with equally atomized aluminum and sulfur? I've taken a course in nanotechnology, and I was taught it's a highly advanced technology. Not something that just happens!

Quote:
[many thousands of pounds of thermite would need to have been placed inconspicuously ahead of time, remotely ignited, and somehow held in direct contact with the surface of hundreds of massive structural components to weaken the building.]

Hundreds of massive structural components? Many thousands of pounds of explosives? Why not just 10 or 50 pounds?

Doesn't it seem a bit weird that one second, tonnes of explosives are required to tear down a building, but the next second they conclude that zero explosives did it...? If the moderate case of 50 pounds is ruled out as too little, wouldn't the extreme case of zero pounds be automatically ruled out too, logically?

And just so you know, there was renovation work going on in the elevator shafts, in the months leading up to 9/11. The external renovation firm thus had the opportunity to place explosives on hundreds of massive structural components ahead of time, as 70% of the weight of the twin towers was being held up by their core, where the elevators were. And nano-thermite can be painted onto the targeted material.


Quote:
[NFPA 921, "Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations", is a recommended methodology for optimizing investigations. NFPA 921 acknowledges that each investigation is unique, and that some investigations will require broader procedures than it can accommodate. This was especially true for NIST’s WTC investigation]

NIST openly admits they did not follow the standard protocol for investigations of fires. This protocol states that when investigating fires with large-scale destruction, tests must always be made for explosives. They do not say that they broke the protocol BY not testing for explosives, but that is what they are accused of, and as you see, they do not deny it.

And when you know that that's how they broke the protocol, their explanation that there was a scope for a broader investigation doesn't really hold, does it? By all means, add more tests as needed and we will not protest, but why exclude tests that are normally required? Can't they do both?

Quote:
[21. Why does NIST state that a yellow stream of molten metal seen in some photographs pouring down the side of WTC2 was aluminum from the crashed plane /.../?

/.../ Pure liquid aluminum would be expected to appear silvery. However, the molten metal was very likely mixed with large amounts of hot, partially burned, solid organic materials (e.g., furniture, carpets, partitions and computers) which can display an orange glow, much like logs burning in a fireplace. The apparent color also would have been affected by slag formation on the surface.]

With the risk of repeating myself... nonsense!

I guess it helps to see the pictures of this bright shining, orange, dripping liquid:

If what NIST says were the case, if you could just melt aluminum in a big crucible, throw in some computers and office partitions, not even stirring it, and suddenly it would go from looking like mercury to glowing like the setting sun, then why is there no record of this ever having happened before or after? Why don't we perform such lab experiments in school? Why haven't even NIST themselves carried out this lab experiment, just to show that it was possible?... To back up their claim!

You can also see from the pictures that the color is uniform. Not just oriented to slug in the surface or pieces of furniture. Organic matter and metal spontaneously tend not to blend very well.

What this pouring liquid looks like is probably exactly what it is: A stream of molten steel, from the nano-thermitic reaction that has already started inside the building.


So, in order of appearance:
1) Weird scope for the whole investigation, leaving out crucial parts of great concern.
2) Pretending that thermite/thermate is the controversy, when it is about nano-thermite.
3) Claiming that there was no point testing for thermite/thermate because something similar could have formed spontaneously in the rubble, when nano-thermite certainly couldn't have.
4) Admitting that it takes huge amounts of explosives to demolish a building, and then concluding that zero explosives must therefore have been used.
5) Breaking protocol by not testing for explosives. They claim that their reason for not following protocol was that they needed BROADER procedures, but this does not address the controversy of why some tests were excluded, as this rather makes it a narrower procedure than the protocol dictates.
6) Claiming that molten aluminum can shine like molten steel, so long as some part of the liquid touches on a piece of furniture.


This was just a few of the weird science twists on the NIST 9/11 FAQ pages. And I didn't even mention the freefall of WTC7! (But you can hear and see their unbelievably weird explanation of that here, on youtube.)

 
But finally a bit of humor, to lighten up the mood! 🙂 You gotta watch this, if you have 3 min to spare:

Aamer Rahman - OSAMA BIN LADEN