The Truth about 9/11 Truth

On the anniversary of 9/11, an excerpt from Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational, from the chapter "Truthers and Birthers"

In my 2022 book, Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational, I presented a three-tiered model to explain why people believe conspiracy theories (Proxy Conspiracism, Tribal Conspiracism, Constructive Conspiracism), which I have discussed at length on Joe Rogan and Megyn Kelly, and outlined in previous excerpts and reviews in Newsweek, Quillette, Big Think, Psychology Today, and The Independent.

Of course, conspiracists think that there’s only one reason they believe in a conspiracy theory, and that is because it is true! This roughly corresponds to my Constructive Conspiracism, where I argue that in most minds it is better to make a Type 1 false positive error of believing a conspiracy theory is true when it is not, than a Type 2 false negative error of not believing a conspiracy theory is true when it is—better safe than sorry.

In this film short titled “You Can’t Handle the Truthers”, Brian Dalton and I compile what Truthers believe really happened on 9/11. Although a compilation of multiple conspiracy theories, I promise we are not exaggerating in our humorous spin on this serious subject.

But conspiracists don’t traffic in psychological theories of belief. They’ve got arguments and evidence, and if you can’t answer their “what aboutism” claims as they go “anomaly hunting”, then that reinforces their belief in an actual conspiracy. 9/11 is a type specimen of the process, so here I will excerpt a few sections from my book related to why the World Trade Center buildings collapsed the way they did, including and especially Building 7, which has gained iconic status in 9/11 Truther circles.

With so many people digging into the rubble of 9/11 for the past 20 years they must have amassed enough evidence to convict the true terrorists. Let’s see what they’ve uncovered, beginning with where many 9/11 Truthers start: the melting point of steel. According to the organization 9-11 Research, steel melts at a temperature of 2,777 degrees Fahrenheit, but jet fuel burns at only 1,517 degrees Fahrenheit. No melted steel, no collapsed towers.[i] Thus, Truthers surmise, explosive devices must have been used to bring down the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings. Wrong.

In an article in the Journal of the Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society, M.I.T. engineering professor Dr. Thomas Eagar explains why:[ii] steel loses 50 percent of its strength at 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit; 90,000 liters of jet fuel ignited other combustible materials such as rugs, curtains, furniture, and paper, which continued burning after the jet fuel was exhausted, raising temperatures above 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit and spreading the fire throughout the building; temperature differentials of hundreds of degrees across single steel horizontal trusses caused them to sag, straining and then breaking the angle clips that held them to the vertical columns; once one truss failed, others failed, and when one floor collapsed (along with the ten stories above it) onto the next floor below, that floor then gave way, creating a pancaking effect that triggered the 500,000-ton building to collapse. Eagar concluded:

No designer of the WTC anticipated, nor should have anticipated, a 90,000 L Molotov cocktail on one of the building floors. Skyscrapers are designed to support themselves for three hours in a fire even if the sprinkler system fails to operate. This time should be long enough to evacuate the occupants. The WTC towers lasted for one to two hours—less than the design life, but only because the fire fuel load was so large. No normal office fires would fill 4,000 square meters of floor space in the seconds in which the WTC fire developed.

For a special issue of Skeptic on 9/11,[iii] we consulted a demolition expert named Brent Blanchard, who is Director of Field Operations for Protec Documentation Services, a company that documents the work of building demolition contractors. Since the rise in popularity of 9/11 conspiracy theories, he has been inundated with requests to explain why the buildings appeared to have “collapsed as if by a controlled demolition.”

Actually, if you search “building demolition” on YouTube you will find hundreds of video clips of buildings collapsing by controlled demolition. I could not find one that collapsed from the top down, as did the World Trade Center buildings, including building 7. Instead, what you see is what demolition experts tell us is how it is done: the charges are set to explode from the bottom up, the opposite of what was seen on 9/11.

Blanchard and his team of experts at Protec have worked with all major American demolition companies and many foreign ones to study the controlled demolition of over 1,000 of some of the largest and tallest buildings around the world. Their duties include engineering studies, structural analysis, vibration/air overpressure monitoring, and photographic services. On September 11, 2001, Protec had portable field seismic monitoring systems operating at other sites in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Demolition specialists were hired to clean up Ground Zero and remove the remaining damaged structures, and these experts called on Blanchard’s company to document both the deconstruction and the debris removal. Here are nine of the best arguments made by 9/11 conspiracy theorists and their rebuttal by Protec:[iv]

Claim #1: The collapse of the towers looked exactly like controlled demolitions.

Answer: No, they did not. The key to any demolition investigation is in finding out the “where”—the actual point at which the building failed. All photographic evidence shows World Trade Center buildings 1 and 2 failed at the point of impact. Actual implosion demolitions always start with the bottom floors. Photo evidence shows the lower floors of WTC 1 and 2 were intact until destroyed from above.

Claim #2: The World Trade Center buildings fell right down into their own footprint.

Answer: Not exactly. They followed the path of least resistance and there was a lot of resistance. Buildings of 20 stories or more do not topple over like trees or reinforced towers or smokestacks, primarily because they are mostly empty space designed for offices, with 95 percent of the structure’s interior consisting of nothing but air. Imploding demolitions fall into a footprint because lower stories are removed first. WTC debris was forced out away from the building as the falling mass encountered intact floors. As well, the collapse began on the side where the planes impacted, and so were tilted slightly toward that weakened collapse point, which you can clearly see in the numerous videos of the collapsing buildings.

Claim #3: Explosive charges are seen shooting out of windows from several floors just prior to collapse.

Answer: Air and debris can be seen being violently ejected from the building but not because of explosive charges but as a natural and predictable effect of rapid structure collapse of the upper floors on the lower floors thereby pushing out the smoke from the burning fires. As well, the impact and explosion of the airplane crashes into the buildings knocked off most of the fireproofing drywall material surrounding the steel beams, considerably increasing their vulnerability to flames.

Claim #4: Witnesses heard explosions.

Answer: All seismic evidence from many independent sources on 9/11 showed none of the sudden vibration spikes that result from explosive detonations. What people might have heard are common office items that explode in massive fires, such as cleaning supplies, CRT TVs and computer monitors, large motors with an oil reservoir for lube, like in elevator lift motors, tires in vehicles in the parking structure, and propane tanks.

Claim #5: A heat generating explosive (thermite?) melted steel at ground Zero.

Answer: No demolition workers report encountering molten steel, cut beams, or any evidence whatsoever of explosions or explosive charges.

Claim #6: Ground Zero debris—particularly the large steel columns from towers 1 and 2—were quickly shipped overseas to prevent scrutiny.

Answer: Not according to those who handled the steel. The chain of procession is clearly documented, first at ground Zero by Protec and later at the Fresh Kills site by Yannuzzi Demolition. The time frame (months) before it was shipped to China was normal.

Claim #7: WTC Building 7 was intentionally “pulled down” with explosives. The building owner himself was quoted as saying he decided to “pull it.”

Answer: Building owners do not have authority over emergency personal at a disaster scene. We have never heard “pull it” used to refer to an explosive demolition. Demolition explosive experts anticipated the collapse of WTC7, and also witnessed it from a few hundred feet away and no one heard detonations.

Claim #8: Steel-frame buildings do not collapse due to fire.

Answer: Many steel-framed buildings have collapsed due to fire. For example, on May 13, 2008, a large part of the tall concrete-reinforced steel architecture tower at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands caught on fire and burned, and shortly thereafter collapsed nearly straight-down collapse almost precisely into its own footprint.

Claim #9: Anyone who denies that explosives were used is ignoring evidence.

Answer: Most of our comments apply to the differences between what people actually saw on 9/11 and what they should have seen had explosives been present. The hundreds of men and women who worked to remove debris from ground zero were some of the country’s most experienced and respected demolition veterans. They of all people processed the experience and expertise to recognize evidence of controlled demolition if it existed. None of these people has come forward with suspicions that explosives were used.

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The collapse of World Trade Center building 7 (WTC-7) has grown in importance to conspiracy theorists, especially since standard non-conspiracy explanations for the demise of WTC buildings 1 and 2 became accepted. WTC-7, in fact, refers to two buildings at the World Trade Center site, very near WTC buildings 1 and 2, all developed by Larry Silverstein (who comes into conspiratorial play later). At 47-stories in height and built of red granite masonry, WTC-7 differs significantly from WTC 1 and 2 that, when they collapsed, their falling debris caused significant damage to WTC-7 that included extensive fires that burned all day. Since building 7 was not struck by a plane, and it did not collapse until 5:20pm on 9/11—hours after the twin towers collapsed—the cause of its collapse, say the conspiracists, must be different from that of WTC 1 and 2. According to wtc7.net, for example, “fires were observed in Building 7 prior to its collapse, but they were isolated in small parts of the building, and were puny by comparison to other building fires,” and that any damage from falling debris from WTC 1 and WTC 2 would have needed to be symmetrical to trigger the pancaking collapse of WTC 7.[v]

In point of fact, the fires burning in building 7 were extensive, not isolated. 9/11 conspiracy theorists tend to only show the north side of WTC 7, which does not look nearly as damaged as the other side. As the building burned all day, emergency response workers realized that collapse was imminent, and at 3pm that day they began evacuation of all emergency personnel. In fact, according to FDNY fire Chief Daniel Nigro, he and his firefighters noticed structural deformations of Building 7 hours before its collapse, and he said later, “I feared a collapse of Building 7 (as did many on my staff).” When the building did collapse, it went first on the south side of the building, which is where the most extensive damaged was from the falling debris of the WTC 1 and 2 buildings. The following photographs are from the FEMA analysis of the Building 7 collapse, their captions included.

Fires on the 11th and 12th floors on the east face of WTC 7.

Damage to the southwest corner of WTC 7.

View from the north of the “kink” or fault developing in WTC 7.

WTC 7, with a large volume of dark smoke rising from it, just visible behind WFC (left). A much smaller volume of white smoke is seen rising from the base of WTC 7. Note that the lower, light-colored smoke (right) is thought to be from the two collapsed towers.

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[i] 911research.wtc7.net This organization carries a disclaimer—“9-11 Research does not promote incivility, junk science, or ‘no-jetliner’ claims—to distance themselves from even more fringier elements in this community.”

[ii] Eagar, T. W. and C. Musso. 2001. “Why did the World Trade Center Collapse? Science, Engineering and Speculation.” Journal of the Minerals Metals and Materials Society, Vol. 53, 8-11

[iii] Mole, Phil. 2011. “9/11 Conspiracy Theories.” Skeptic, Vol. 12, No. 4. https://bit.ly/3gpfg6R

[iv] You can read his entire analysis at his Website www.implosionworld.com

[v] wtc7.net “The fall of Building 7 with all of the characteristics of a controlled demolition is the focus of the ongoing campaign called Remember Building 7.”

Michael Shermer is the Publisher of Skeptic magazine, Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, and the host of The Michael Shermer Show. His many books include Why People Believe Weird Things, The Science of Good and Evil, The Believing Brain, The Moral Arc, and Heavens on Earth. His new book is Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational.