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[Brant Gaede]

This is not the kind of "research" I was referring to.

The story that I linked to and excerpted from highlights the concerns you mentioned, and names names of scientists, engineers and others who were concerned at the time.

It's a decent place to start looking for the research you claim to have read, don't you think?

No. It's stuff you get slapped in the face with doing a Google search. Some of those names--one or two--might have worked for further work, but not from what I read.

The fires from the jet fuel had x-life. It is my very tentative understanding that the fires were sustained by what was already there. If the collapses had been delayed they may not have happened at all. However, I've not read anything about the collapses that wasn't bottom-line conjecture except how the steel that supported the floors gave way causing the imploding destructive cascades.

If you can believe some of these experts, the buildings should not have gone up as designed in the first place. They don't say that or if they don't, aren't quoted. At least one of those named was in a CYA mode. The guy in overall charge of the buildings starting in 1962. This is how stupid he is: they imagined a tower surviving a slow speed accidental hit by a Boeing 707, the largest commercial aircraft at the time. You can forgive not thinking of terrorists using airplanes before the fact--I never did--but not imagining 20-40-60 years into the future when the airplanes might be a tad larger. No?

What is absolute fact is the buildings were not built as designed in a critical area. They were built by a government agency, The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and free enterprise would never have built them at all into that saturated real estate market. The footprint itself was unobtainable for same at the time. From A to Z it was politics of one sort or another and a weird kind of natural justice for those who lost their property to eminent domain so Nelson Rockefeller could do his Albany thing in Manhattan. Yeah, Albany. You should see the shit he had built in Albany.

--Brant

Edited February 9, 2011 by Brant Gaede

[william.scherk]

The magazine is effectively defunct and has had its day and the Internet is good for an archive, especially if it ever comes with a search function. The big problem with the Internet is it takes too long to find the good stuff inside an issue.

Liberty has a very good search facility. I should have used it while doing Mr McCrabpant's homework -- as I was very much interested in seeing how a liberty/libertarian-oriented 'zine would come down as gloating over WTC destruction, in seeing what kind of American 'freedom' writer could possibly think 'America deserved it.' Having to read backwards and forwards in the PDF issues is the price you pay to check a premise.

Here's a link to a search older print issues at Liberty with key word 'terror.'

Brant, was your "research" on the asbestos issue derived from the work of Steven Milloy, by chance?

[william.scherk]

This is not the kind of "research" I was referring to.

The story that I linked to and excerpted from highlights the concerns you mentioned, and names names of scientists, engineers and others who were concerned at the time.

It's a decent place to start looking for the research you claim to have read, don't you think?

No. It's stuff you get slapped in the face with doing a Google search. Some of those names--one or two--might have worked for further work.

Well, which ones? Dr. Yogesh Jaluria, Dr. R. Brady Williamson, Guy F. Tozzoli, Robert Berhinig, James Verhalen, Dr. Irving J. Selikoff, Allen Morrison, Dr. Arthur Langer, Dr. Philip J. Landrigan? If not them, who? How does someone interested begin to find the support for your own confident statements of fact? What makes you able to judge the competence and conclusions of anyone else? What makes your conclusions solid and everything else conjecture?

Brant, you made a loose cite of the New York Times on one hand, saying that "a qualified engineer remarked in a letter to The New York Times, that any serious fire in one of the Towers would result in the building collapsing," but then on the other hand, another story from the New York Times is "pap." We can examine the one, but not the other.

What makes you an authority on the WTC?

[Brant Gaede]

Brant, was your "research" on the asbestos issue derived from the work of Steven Milloy, by chance?

No. And I never claimed any quality research by me, btw. I do get a kick out of reading some of the conspiracy theorists.

Unlike the attack on Pearl Harbor which was a tactical success but a strategic disaster of the first order, flying those airplanes into the WWC towers was absolutely brilliant on both levels. For a small investment in what was essentially bear-baiting, the "terrorists" got many times more than they could have imagined. I'm pretty sure the Untied States is working on its second trillion dollars in its world-wide "War on Terror." Islamic warriors have been and are being manufactured, effectively by the United States' continual war policies, by the boat-load. Etc.

--Brant

[caroljane]

Brant,

the "Untied States"?

You wish!

[BaalChatzaf]

Brant, was your "research" on the asbestos issue derived from the work of Steven Milloy, by chance?

No. And I never claimed any quality research by me, btw. I do get a kick out of reading some of the conspiracy theorists.

Unlike the attack on Pearl Harbor which was a tactical success but a strategic disaster of the first order, flying those airplanes into the WWC towers was absolutely brilliant on both levels. For a small investment in what was essentially bear-baiting, the "terrorists" got many times more than they could have imagined. I'm pretty sure the Untied States is working on its second trillion dollars in its world-wide "War on Terror." Islamic warriors have been and are being manufactured, effectively by the United States' continual war policies, by the boat-load. Etc.

--Brant

We had our chance to go on the War Path and make 2 trillion pay dividends for us. We blew it.

If thine enemy smite thee on they cheek, rip his head off and shit down his neck.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[william.scherk]

If thine enemy smite thee on they cheek, rip his head off and shit down his neck.

Sounds good. Practical, too. Make sure you clean up after yourself, and be home in time for dinner. We are having a tired old analogy fried in its own grease. Your favourite.

Edited February 9, 2011 by william.scherk

[Robert Campbell]

Don Heath seems to have been the guy who kept things organized, made the summer seminars work, probably would have prevented the decline in numbers of those sumsems.

The way I heard it, for him to stay (he was a Canadian) the organization had to do something for him legal-wise or paperwork-wise so that his visa wouldn't expire, so he could stay in the U.S. Apparently they didn't. They thought he was just a practical, nuts and bolts guy not an intellectual which is what they thought they needed.

Phil,

I don't know whether there was a visa issue or not.

I did hear that the circumstances of Don Heath's departure were a little more dramatic than your account suggests—that he and David Kelley ended up disagreeing rather profoundly about the direction IOS/TOC/TAS should take. A quotation from Paradise Lost was even attributed to Don.

Can't verify none of that...

Whatever the circumstances of Don Heath's departure, he did attend the 50th Anniversary event for Atlas Shrugged that TAS put on in Washington in 2007. That I can verify, 'cause I saw him there. I don't know know whether he's been to any other TAS events since he and David Kelley parted ways.

Robert Campbell

[Mark]

The following is from the newsletter Access to Energy, founded by Petr Beckmann and published by his chosen successor Arthur B. Robinson. It was written right after the 9/11 attack. That accounts for the numbers in the title, which are based on about 10,000 dead rather than 3,000. Of course that doesn't affect the point of the article.

Terrorists 1,000 and Enviros 5,000 (pdf)

After quoting one of the WTC designers saying that the towers were designed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707:

------------------------------------------------------

Not so widely quoted -- apparently spiked by most media -- was the statement, often made about the Trade Towers in the 1970s by expert in the insulation of steel building columns Herbert Levine, that "if a fire breaks out above the 64th floor, that building will fall down." See "Asbestos could Have Saved WTC Lives" by Steven Milloy, Fox News, September 14, 2001 at www.foxnews.com.

------------------------------------------------------

The "9/11 truth movement" is for the most part nutty, but that doesn't mean that U.S. government corruption didn't have a hand in 9/11. See for example:

The 9.11 Heroin Connection

by Daniel Hopsicker , September 6, 2006

Quoting the ARI Watch Links page about his website: About the drug connection between terrorist hijacker Mohamed Atta and the owner of the Venice, Florida flight school Huffman Aviation. “The biggest lie told about the September 11th attack was the first one: ‘19 hijackers moved through Europe and America unnoticed.’ ”

[Brant Gaede]

Brant, was your "research" on the asbestos issue derived from the work of Steven Milloy, by chance?

No. And I never claimed any quality research by me, btw. I do get a kick out of reading some of the conspiracy theorists.

Unlike the attack on Pearl Harbor which was a tactical success but a strategic disaster of the first order, flying those airplanes into the WWC towers was absolutely brilliant on both levels. For a small investment in what was essentially bear-baiting, the "terrorists" got many times more than they could have imagined. I'm pretty sure the Untied States is working on its second trillion dollars in its world-wide "War on Terror." Islamic warriors have been and are being manufactured, effectively by the United States' continual war policies, by the boat-load. Etc.

--Brant

We had our chance to go on the War Path and make 2 trillion pay dividends for us. We blew it.

If thine enemy smite thee on they cheek, rip his head off and shit down his neck.

We all know these sediments of yours. If you would limit repeating them to every four months for the newbies, you'll stop overloading Michael's server.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

the "Untied States"?

You wish!

I wish upon a typo!

--Brant

[william.scherk]

Not so widely quoted -- apparently spiked by most media -- was the statement, often made about the Trade Towers in the 1970s by expert in the insulation of steel building columns Herbert Levine, that "if a fire breaks out above the 64th floor, that building will fall down." See "Asbestos could Have Saved WTC Lives" by Steven Milloy, Fox News, September 14, 2001 at www.foxnews.com.

Brant was talking about 'research,' Mark, not 'journalistic pap.' The only thing we ever got from Herbert Levine were stories told and retold and re-embroidered. That particular 'statement' traces back to a retired Harvard prof of physics, Richard Wilson. Levine himself was long dead by 2001, and the prof never spoke to anyone but Milloy, a notable hack, and another hack, John Berlau. The lines suggesting Herbert spoke often "about the Trade Towers in the 1970s" is not born up by anything -- not even the report of Wilson, who recalled the item quoted from circa 1991. Levine was not an expert in insulation of steel building columns, but an inventor and businessman who made one of the first 'spray-on' asbestos mixes, back in 1948. Most of that paragraph is what you would expect from a nut like Robinson, invention and embroidery.

Beyond that, the clue that Wilson misremembers is that the orignal asbestos insulation was applied only to the 38th floor. Picking through the embroidery of conspiracy kooks and hacks merely turns up a lot of lint. We were looking for the "research" reported by Brant, not more Rashomon whoopee.

Time to call in Jesse Ventura!

Edited February 10, 2011 by william.scherk

[Brant Gaede]

Not so widely quoted -- apparently spiked by most media -- was the statement, often made about the Trade Towers in the 1970s by expert in the insulation of steel building columns Herbert Levine, that "if a fire breaks out above the 64th floor, that building will fall down." See "Asbestos could Have Saved WTC Lives" by Steven Milloy, Fox News, September 14, 2001 at www.foxnews.com.

Brant was talking about 'research,' Mark, not 'journalistic pap.' The only thing we ever got from Herbert Levine were stories told and retold and re-embroidered. That particular 'statement' traces back to a retired Harvard prof of physics, Richard Wilson. Levine himself was long dead by 2001, and the prof never spoke to anyone but Milloy, a notable hack, and another hack, John Berlau. Your commentary suggesting Herbert spoke often "about the Trade Towers in the 1970s" is not born up by anything but the report of Wilson, who recalled the item you quote from circa 1991. The clue that Wilson misremembers is that the orignal asbestos insulation was applied only to the 38th floor. Picking through the embroidery of conspiracy kooks and hacks merely turns up a lot of lint. We were looking for the "research" reported by Brant.

Time to call in Jesse Ventura!

Well, I have learned from this thread that my secondary sources were more likely tertiary ones. My personal point of interest has to do with the basic integrity of the structure used in the original construction, secondarily how good was the replacement insulation actually. I had just assumed it was crap and maybe it was, but now I'm not so sure. I was interested to learn that the builders front-ran the legislation that banned the use of asbestos. About asbestos: there are two basic types. One is only mildly carcinogenic and hardly at all if you don't smoke and it's the common type used commercially. The other is highly carcinogenic. I believe it has to do with the length of the fiber. Long and short respectively. To go back to the replacement, it may have been as good as the asbestos at the beginning, but significantly deteriorated with time. I think the common cancer caused by asbestos is mesothelioma which is in the sac that covers and contains the lungs. Steve McQueen died from it. I think he was exposed as a shipyard worker during WWII.

--Brant

[Mark]

Regarding Herbert Levine's statement quoted above, WSS wrote that it

... traces back to a retired Harvard prof of physics, Richard Wilson. ... the prof never spoke to anyone but Milloy, a notable hack, and another hack, John Berlau. Your [that is, Access to Energy's] commentary suggesting Herbert spoke often "about the Trade Towers in the 1970s" is not born up by anything but the report of Wilson, who recalled the item you quote from circa 1991. The clue that Wilson misremembers is that the original asbestos insulation was applied only to the 38th floor.

The following is from the book Eco-freaks by John Berlau, as seen on Google books:

------------------------------------------------------------------------

... except for a few commentators such as Steven Milloy, the "junk science" columnist for FoxNews.com, there has been very little coverage about one of 9/11's most important whistleblowers: the late scientist and inventor Herbert Levine.

Although he never envisioned a situation such as the 9/11 attacks, had Levine's words been heeded, much of the ensuing tragedy could have been avoided. Ever since the WTC complex was built in the early 1970s, Levine warned everyone he knew that the buildings were largely unprotected against fire. Harvard physicist Richard Wilson recalls Levine telling him in 1991, "Whenever I pass by there, I worry. If a fire breaks out above the 64th floor, that building will fall down." [37]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Unfortunately the footnote doesn't seem to be online.

Here's a link to an article by Steven Milloy, and a response by John Young, who says he's an architect, disagreeing with it:

http://cryptome.org/wtc-junksci.htm

[Philip Coates]

> that he and David Kelley ended up disagreeing rather profoundly about the direction IOS/TOC/TAS should take.

Robert, do you know what specifically the disagreement was?

[Philip Coates]

Brant, some excellent points in post #25.