10 Years from 9/11: Still Important Unanswered Questions

As we approach the 10th anniversary of this world changing event, we are finding that rather than gradually fading into the history books, this event is having an increasing impact on the world we live in and raising more and more complex questions as to what really happened and why much crucial information and evidence has apparently been held back or ignored by both the US government and the media.

The events of 9/11 were shocking and horrific. In their attempts to pursue the supposed perpetrators of these attacks, the US government has invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, has launched significant military action in Pakistan, with huge loss of innocent lives in these three countries, and a global war on terror has been launched against Al Qaeda. But were Al Qaeda the only terrorists involved? Were there possibly other forces and influences also involved that need to be more fully investigated and pursued? Do we really have all the facts and the full story about what happened on that day, or is the 9/11 story a lot more complex than has so far been presented? The evidence that is now emerging would strongly suggest that this is the case and therefore we need to ascertain the full facts if we are to have any chance of achieving true justice for the victims and prevent similar or worse attacks in the future.

Let us start by looking at the official process of investigation into 9/11. In 2003 a panel of 10 investigators was established to conduct a formal investigation into what happened, and this investigation was used to create the 9/11 Commission Report as a document which provided the official version of events. However, a steadily increasing number of people within the United States and around the world have been seriously questioning this official version of events as being incomplete or inaccurate. A rapidly growing amount of compelling evidence is being presented which suggests that at the very least some significant new questions need to be asked and that significant further investigations need to be undertaken if we are to get a more complete picture and an understanding of the full extent of what really happened.

A major factor for consideration is the enormous amount of scientific evidence and eye witness accounts now emerging which suggests that the three towers that collapsed on September 11 came down mainly as a result of explosive demolition as opposed to the spontaneous pancake collapses caused by the intense fire from the planes, as was hypothesised in the 9/11 Commission Report. If explosives were in fact the main cause of the collapses then this raises another whole level of complexity and intrigue to the events of 9/11. It raises questions as to how the terrorists gained access to such highly secure buildings with large quantities of explosives. One of the leading figures in bringing forward scientific evidence regarding the use of explosives is Richard Gage, founder of ‘Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth’ (AE911Truth). AE911Truth now includes no fewer than 1,500 professionally qualified architects and engineers from across the United States who all believe that the official explanation for the collapse of the three World Trade Centre towers requires a new investigation and a new explanation. The first and most important piece of the 9/11 puzzle, not known by most people, is that as well as the Twin Towers, a third skyscraper completely collapsed on that day. WTC Building 7 was a 47 storey high rise tower that was not even struck by a plane and yet it collapsed at around 5.20pm on September 11, falling at free fall speed for much of the collapse neatly into its own footprint.

Incredibly, for some reason the collapse of this huge building was not even mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report and has barely even been mentioned by the media apart from several initial reports on the actual day of the attacks. The fact that the WTC Building 7 housed the IRS, CIA, US Secret Services, and was the Emergency Management Command Centre for Mayor Rudy Giuliani, would have made it a highly attractive target for a terrorist attack. For the AE911Truth group, the nature of the collapse of Building 7 is the smoking gun for a wider 9/11 mystery that they say is screaming out for further investigation. For those who have not yet seen footage of this event, here is a link with several video clips of the collapse of WTC Building 7 shown by both CNN and CBS on the day. CNN reporter Dan Rather described the collapse at the time as being ‘reminiscent of a building deliberately destroyed by well placed dynamite to knock it down’. http://wtc7.net/

As can be seen in these videos, and as Dan Rather describes, the collapse looks very much like a perfectly executed controlled demolition rather than a spontaneous collapse caused by a few small fires that were already virtually extinguished by the time of the collapse. According to the enormous amount of scientific evidence that the AE911Truth professionals have gathered and presented, they say it is scientifically impossible for this collapse, and indeed the collapse of the Twin Towers, to have occurred in the manner of the official story. Their claim, supported and verified by many other independent scientists, is that the only plausible scientific explanation for the collapse of all three towers is controlled explosive demolition.

All the details of the extensive scientific evidence presented by the AE911Truth group, which clearly demonstrate the classic features of controlled demolition, can be found through their website at www.ae911truth.org. However, several important points to consider are that 118 first responder witnesses, including numerous fire fighters and police officers, made recorded statements that they heard and/or saw explosions going off in the three WTC towers that collapsed. This was widely reported by the media on the actual day of 9/11 but then was never mentioned again http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8XBxw7k8rk. For some unknown reason, all this media coverage and other video evidence of eye witness accounts of explosives was withheld from the official 9/11 investigation team and was only subsequently made available through repeated demands from the public over a number of years through the Freedom of Information Act. Hundreds of fire fighters in the United States who have also formed their own 9/11 truth group called ‘FireFightersFor911Truth’ are also demanding a new investigation. Here is a video of a speech given by Erik Lawyer, the founder of ‘FireFightersFor911Truth’, making an impassioned plea for a new investigation to find more conclusive answers about the cause of the death of over 300 of his colleagues.

In addition, the AE911Truth group has presented scientific evidence showing that traces of the extremely high tech military grade explosive substance, nano-thermite, which is produced at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, has been found throughout all the dust of the pulverised concrete from the towers in huge volume. This finding, which raises difficult questions, has been verified by a number of peer reviewed scientific studies from other scientists who are independent to AE911Truth. As stated by the scientists in this report in The Open Chemical Physics Journal in 2009, “the red/gray chips we have discovered in the WTC dust is active, unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology, and is a highly energetic pyrotechnic or explosive material”.

If indeed there is verifiable proof from scientists backed up by over 100 recorded eye witnesses that explosives were used to help bring down the three towers, and we have a track record in recent years of terrorists using explosives on high rise buildings within the United States, for example the bombing of the World Trade Centre in 1993 and Oklahoma City in 1995, then surely there should be an official investigation into the possible use of explosives on 9/11. But no such official investigation has ever been done. NIST (National Institute for Standards and Technology) which conducted the official investigation into the collapse of the three towers admit that they did not even bother to look for any evidence of thermite or other explosives purely on the basis that it would have been too difficult for the terrorists to get it into the building. NIST also claimed that there were no witnesses stating that they had seen or heard explosives, and that no video footage exists where loud explosions can be heard from Building 7. This claim is very clearly not correct.

For some unknown reason there seems to have been a deliberate effort by the US government, NIST, and the media to withhold significant information and evidence about these events from the public and from the official investigation team. For the collapse of a building the size and importance of WTC Building 7 to not even be mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report and to have virtually no subsequent mention made of it at all by the media is quite incredible and seems to be a point worthy of significant further investigation in its own right. This is particularly so in light of the fact that six out of the ten people on the official 9/11 investigation panel now state that vital information was withheld from them and that they were ‘set up to fail’. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0LBARGBupM . Why would the officials hold back critical evidence and not want to have this aspect of 9/11 investigated fully when it is clearly so crucial to knowing the full story about who did what, and how?

It is extremely difficult to imagine that Al Qaeda would have had the ability to gain sufficient access to these buildings with so much high tech explosives to take them down in the manner that the evidence presented here is suggesting. So surely in the interests of national security it must be a top priority of our officials to try to find out who did do this and how. There are a great many credible people now asking for these questions to be officially addressed and further investigated. As well as the ‘AE911Truth’ and ‘FireFightersFor911Truth’ groups, numerous other formal professional groups have formed and have been calling for a new investigation such as ‘PilotsFor911Truth’, ‘LawyersFor911Truth’, and ‘Scholars For 9/11 Truth & Justice’. Senior members of the Italian and Japanese governments have openly called for a new investigation and in October 2009, 80,000 citizens of New York signed a petition that was presented to the City of New York asking for a new investigation. This request was turned down.

So as we approach the 10th anniversary of this event that continues to change our world so profoundly, the questions surrounding the mysteries of 9/11 and the desire for a new and more wide ranging investigation are getting louder and more credible, and we have to seriously consider the possibility that the official version of events about what happened on 9/11, and who did what, may be very far from complete or accurate. With so much challenging scientific evidence being presented, and so many credible witnesses and professionals backing up this evidence and calling for a new investigation, including the families of the victims, then perhaps the 10th anniversary of this horrific and world changing event is a timely moment for all of us to consider this issue a little more carefully and critically, and to ask for some of these questions to be officially considered and fully investigated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIOC1J44RYw

Peter Drew is a concerned citizen who is an independent researcher on global politics and has a Masters Degree in Science from the University of Western Australia.

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