“Consensus 9/11″ Panel: Seeking Truth, Dispelling Lies

February 1, 2012

Activist Post

By Stephen Lendman

Consensus 9/11 seeks “best evidence” proof to dispel official story falsehoods. It’s founded on:

(1) The opinions of respected authorities, based on professional experience, descriptive studies, and reports of expert committees.

(2) Physical data in the form of photographs, videotapes, court testimony, witness reports, and FOIA releases.

(3) Direct rather than circumstantial evidence.

Determining “best evidence” depends on “integrating individual professional expertise with the best available documentary and scientific evidence.”

Simplified Delphi methodology is followed. It’s often used “where published information is inadequate or non-existent.” As a result, experts use “best evidence” to determine truth.

9/11: The Seminal Event of Our Time

Lt. Col. Shelton F. Lankford, US Marine Corps (ret.) calls 9/11 “the watershed event of our lives and the greatest test for our democracy in our lifetimes.”

Calling the official explanation “impossible,” he cited “evidence of government complicity in the lead-up to the event, the failure to respond during the event, and the astounding lack of any meaningful investigation afterwards, as well as the ignoring of” subsequent evidence perhaps causing “the end of the American experiment….(O)ur republic and our Constitution remain in the gravest danger.”

Evidence revealed contradicts the official 9/11 story. It spawned a nightmarish decade of wars, torture, military tribunals, extraordinary rendition, assault on democratic freedoms, millions of deaths, and incalculable human misery.

Official 9/11 claims “are contradicted by facts that have been validated by a scientific consensus process,” using “best” and other strong evidence.

For example, bin Laden was blamed for 9/11. However, FBI charges against him excluded it. In fact, then FBI investigative publicity head, Rex Tomb, said no hard evidence connected him to it. Moreover, the 9/11 Commission also produced none.

Another example involves blaming jet impacts, fuel, and resulting fires for bringing down the Twin Towers. In fact, jet fuel reaches maximum temperatures no greater than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Steel begins melting only at 2,700 degrees or higher.

Yet, official reports claimed otherwise. They also said three causes only downed the buildings: jet impacts, fires and gravity. However, best evidence disproves this and other official claims.

WTC 7′s collapse is especially important. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) initially blamed structural damage combined with jet fuel fire. Then its final report blamed fire alone.

Click here for the full report.

WikiLeaks: Did al-Qaeda Plot Fifth Attack On 9/11?

February 2nd, 2011

The Telegraph

By: Steven Swinford

The disclosure, in US diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks, has raised suspicions that the three men were preparing to be a fifth suicide team, but aborted their attack at the last minute. Instead of boarding a domestic flight to the US capital they instead returned to Doha, via London.

Secret documents reveal that the men flew from London to New York on a British Airways flight three weeks before the attacks and allegedly carried out surveillance at the World Trade Centre, the White House and in Virginia, the US state where the Pentagon and CIA headquarters are located.

They later they flew to Los Angeles, where they stationed themselves in a hotel near the airport which the FBI has now established was paid for by a “convicted terrorist”, who also bought their airline tickets.

Hotel staff have told investigators they saw pilot uniforms in their room along with computer print outs detailing pilot names, flight numbers and times and packages addressed to Syria, Afghanistan, Jerusalem and Jordan.

On September 10 they were booked on an American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Washington, but failed to board. The following day the same Boeing 757 aircraft was hijacked by five terrorists and crashed into the Pentagon.

But, instead of boarding the American flight, the Qatari suspects – named as Meshal Alhajri, Fahad Abdulla and Ali Alfehaid – flew back to London on a British Airways flight before returning to Qatar. Their current location is unknown and the FBI have wlaunched a manhunt for them.

Investigators are also hunting a fourth man, Mohamed Al Mansoori, who they say supported the alleged terrorist cell while they were in the US.

The man, who is from the United Arab Emirates, previously lived in Long Beach, Los Angeles. His current location is also unknown, and US officials recommended that he is put on an international terror watch list because he “may pose a threat to aviation in the US and abroad”.

The details of the secret 9/11 team have emerged in a secret American government document obtained by the Wikileaks website and passed to The Daily Telegraph. It was sent between the American Embassy in Doha and the Department for Homeland Security in Washington.

The document, sent on 11th February 2010, states: “Mr Al Mansoori is currently under investigation by the FBI for his possible involvement in the 11 September 2001 attacks. He is suspected of aiding people who entered the US before the attacks to conduct surveillance of possible targets and providing other support to the hijackers.”

Details of the unknown 9/11 alleged plotters has never previously been disclosed. An official inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, indicated that the hijackers may have received assistance in Los Angeles but investigators did not publicly provide more details.

The 9/11 Commission report, published in July 2004, states that at least two of the hijackers previously visited Los Angeles but, at the time, investigators appeared to have little information on their movements. The report states they had a “brief stay in Los Angeles about which we know little”.

Only one person – Zacarias Moussaoui – has been tried and convicted over involvement in the 9/11 attacks as all the terrorists died in the crashed planes. Moussaoui, accused of being the twentieth hijacker, was sentenced to life in prison.

The secret American document contains detailed information about the movements of the three alleged Qatari plotters.

They took BA flight 185 from London to New York on 15th August, 2001, and the memo alleges that they subsequently conducted “surveillance” on potential targets ahead of the 9/11 attacks. It states: “They visited the World Trade Centre, the Statue of Liberty, the White House and various areas in Virginia.”

They then flew on an American Airlines flight from Washington to Los Angeles, arriving on 24th August and checking into a single room at a hotel near the airport. They paid for the room with cash and during the last few days of their stay requested that their room should not be cleaned.

The cable states: “Hotel cleaning staff grew suspicious of the men because they noticed pilot type uniforms, several laptops and several cardboard boxes addressed to Syria, Jerusalem, Afghanistan and Jordan in the room on previous cleaning visits.

“The men had a smashed cellular phone in the room and a cellular phone attached by wire to a computer. The room also contained pin feed computer paper print outs with headers listing pilot names, airlines, flight numbers, and flight times.”

While in the US, they were aided by Mohamed Ali Mohamed Al Mansoori. The secret document also states that the three Qatari men spent a week travelling with Mr Al Mansoori to “different destinations in California”.

Click here for the full report from the Telegraph

Ahmadinejad Doubts 9/11 Attacks

September 7, 2010

Breitbart

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has questioned the accepted narrative of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, saying it was still not clear who was behind them.

“Something happened in New York and still nobody knows who the main perpetrators of that act were,” Ahmadinejad told diplomats and newspaper editors late on Sunday while on a brief visit to Qatar.

“No independent people were allowed to try and identify the perpetrators,” he charged.

“They say terrorists were hidden in Afganistan and NATO mobilised all its resources and attacked Afghanistan,” he said.

“They say that in the Twin Towers, 2,000 people were killed. In Afganistan, so far more 110,000 have been killed.”

Ahmadinejad has on several occasions questioned the accepted version of the 2001 attacks by Al-Qaeda militants, which killed nearly 3,000 people in the United States.

In March, he referred to the attacks as “a big lie,” Iranian state media reported.

Iran is locked in a standoff with Western governments over its nuclear programme.

The UN Security Council imposed a fourth round of sanctions on June 9 over Iran’s failure to heed repeated ultimatums to suspend uranium enrichment, the sensitive process which can produce fuel for nuclear reactors or, in higly extended form, the fissile core of an atomic bomb.

The European Union, Japan and the United States have all imposed additional sanctions of their own, over and above the UN ones.

Western governments suspect Iran’s nuclear programme is cover for a weapons drive, something Tehran strongly denies.
Click here to read the full report

NIST Edited WTC 7 Footage To Hide Evidence Of Implosion

After filing a lawsuit that prompted NIST to release more than 3 terabytes of photographs and videos from their investigation into the collapse of the twin towers and WTC 7 on 9/11, the International Center for 9/11 Studies has obtained evidence that suggests NIST edited several videos of the collapse of Building 7 in order to hide evidence of a controlled implosion.

The Center filed a FOIA Request with NIST on January 26, 2009, seeking production of “all of the photographs and videos collected, reviewed, cited or in any other way used by NIST during its investigation of the World Trade Center building collapses.” Following several unsuccessful attempts to get NIST to even acknowledge receipt of the Request, the Center was forced to file a lawsuit on May 28, 2009. Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, the Request was assigned a reference number, and NIST began periodically releasing batches of responsive records.

The Center has now begun posting some of those images and videos online, the first batch of which is from an external hard disk drive “NIST WTC Investigation Cumulus Video Clips.”

In one of the clips, the video of which has been in the public domain for years, a loud, low-frequency boom can be heard just before the east penthouse of WTC 7 falls. Once the support columns that held up the penthouse are taken out, the rest of the building falls almost within its own footprint.

However, in subsequent clips released by NIST, where the camera is located nearer to the building, the collapse of the penthouse is clearly edited out of the footage.

“Several clips from the Cumulus database show signs of editing. In the two video clips below, the collapse of the penthouse of World Trade Center 7 is cut out of the video. These videos happen to have been filmed from close to WTC 7, and have a high quality soundtrack that would have picked up explosion sounds from the charges that severed the columns supporting the penthouse, especially the explosion heard in the last video clip presented,” comments the International Center for 9/11 Studies.

In another clip, the entire collapse of the building is edited out, the audio is removed and only restored after the building has fully collapsed.

The Center also obtained videos of the collapse of the twin towers that had obviously been edited, with sections deliberately removed. “There are many video clips in the Cumulus database that do not show collapse initiation – the only event even purportedly explained in the final report from NIST on the Twin Towers,” states the Center.

Another new video shows Michael Hess yelling for help from the 8th floor window of WTC 7. The clip reinforces the fact that the building had not sustained any substantial damage before its free fall collapse within 7 seconds.

As we documented for several years, the collapse of WTC 7 is the smoking gun confirming that the official story behind 9/11 is bogus. The collapse of Building 7 was reported before it happened by several news stations, including BBC and CNN.

The International Center for 9/11 Studies is now in the process of reviewing over 300 DVDs along with several external hard disk drives that contain a plethora of unseen photographs and video footage from ground zero. Judging by the small amount of damning footage already released, it’s highly probable that this data will provide a myriad of new contradictions both to the official 9/11 story as well as NIST’s own investigation into the collapse of the three buildings.

Click here to read the full report

White House: Obama Is ‘Obviously’ Christian

August 20th, 2010

Las Vegas Sun

President Barack Obama is a Christian who prays daily, a White House official said Thursday, trying to tamp down growing doubts about the president’s religion.

A new poll showed that nearly one in five people, or 18 percent, believe Obama is Muslim. That was up from 11 percent who said so in March 2009. The survey also showed that just 34 percent said Obama is Christian, down from 48 percent who said so last year. The largest share of people, 43 percent, said they don’t know his religion.

White House spokesman Bill Burton said most Americans care more about the economy and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and “they are not reading a lot of news about what religion the president is.” He commented on Air Force One as Obama headed for a vacation in Massachusetts on Martha’s Vineyard.

Burton added, “The president is obviously a Christian. He prays everyday.”

The survey, conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center and its affiliated Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, is based on interviews conducted before the controversy over whether Muslims should be permitted to construct a mosque near the World Trade Center site. Obama has said he believes Muslims have the right to build an Islamic center there, though he’s also said he won’t take a position on whether they should actually build it.

In a separate poll by Time magazine/ABT SRBI conducted Monday and Tuesday _ after Obama’s comments about the mosque _ 24 percent said they think he is Muslim, 47 percent said they think he is Christian and 24 percent didn’t know or didn’t respond.

In addition, 61 percent opposed building the Muslim center near the Trade Center site and 26 percent said they favor it.

The Pew poll found that about three in 10 of Obama’s fiercest political rivals, Republicans and conservatives, say he is a Muslim. That is up significantly from last year and far higher than the share of Democrats and liberals who say so. But even among his supporters, the number saying he is a Christian has fallen since 2009, with just 43 percent of blacks and 46 percent of Democrats saying he is Christian.

Among independents, 18 percent say Obama is Muslim _ up from 10 percent last year.

Pew analysts attribute the findings to attacks by his opponents and Obama’s limited attendance at religious services, particularly in contrast with Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, whose worship was more public.

Andrew Kohut, the Pew Research Center’s director, said the confusion partly reflects “the intensification of negative views about Obama among his critics.” Alan Cooperman, the Pew Forum’s associate director for research, said that with the public hearing little about Obama’s religion, “maybe there’s more possibility for other people to make suggestions that the president is this or he’s really that or he’s really a Muslim.”

Obama is the Christian son of a Kenyan Muslim father and a Kansas mother. From age 6 to 10, Obama lived in predominantly Muslim Indonesia with his mother and Indonesian stepfather. His full name, Barack Hussein Obama, sounds Muslim to many.

On Wednesday, White House officials did not provide on-the-record comments on the survey but prompted Pastor Kirbyjon Caldwell of Houston to call The Associated Press.

Caldwell, who said he has known Obama for years, said the president is a Christian who prays every day. He said he was not sure where the public confusion about the president’s religion came from, but he called false media reports about it “a 24-hour noise box committed to presenting the president in a false light.”

Six in 10 of those saying Obama is a Muslim said they got the information from the media, with the largest portion _ 16 percent _ saying it was on television. Eleven percent said they learned it from Obama’s behavior and words.

Despite the confusion about Obama’s religion, there is noteworthy support for how he uses it to make decisions. Nearly half, or 48 percent, said he relies on his religion the right amount when making policy choices, 21 percent said he uses it too little and 11 percent too much.

Obama is seen as less reliant overall than Bush was on religion. Even so, the 48 percent who say Obama uses it appropriately for decisions is similar to the 53 percent who said the same about Bush in 2004. Just over half in the new poll said Obama mentions his faith and prayer the right amount, about the same as said so about Bush in 2006.

At the same time, the poll provides broad indications that the public feels religion is playing a diminished role in politics today, with fewer people than in 2008 saying the Democratic and Republican parties are friendly toward religion.

With elections for control of Congress just over two months away, the poll contains optimistic news for Republicans. Half of white non-Hispanic Catholics, plus three in 10 unaffiliated with a religion and a third of Jews, support the GOP _ all up since 2008.

The survey also found:

_The Democratic Party is seen as friendly to religion by 26 percent, while 43 percent say the same about the GOP. That’s a 9 percentage point drop for Republicans since 2008, and 12 points lower for Democrats.

_Fifty-two percent say churches should stay away from politics, a reversal of the slim majorities that supported churches’ political involvement from 1996 to 2006.

The poll, overseen by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, involved landline and cell phone interviews with 3,003 randomly chosen adults. It was conducted July 21-Aug. 5 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

Click Here For The Complete Article

9/11 First Responders Bill Fails In House

July 30, 2010

WCBSTV.com

by Sean Hennessey

The topic of 9/11 was the center of an emotional storm on Thursday — this time in Washington, D.C. — as lawmakers debated healthcare funding for responders.

And has CBS 2 HD witnessed, the most heated moments were between two respected members of New York’s delegation.

During the debate over healthcare for 9/11 responders, politics got in the way of the people the bill is supposed to help.

“Thank God for our country that the first responders of 9/11 didn’t look for cover before they did what they had to do and lived up to their oath,” said Rep. Peter King (R-Long Island).

King called Democrats cowards for circumventing traditional House rules in an effort to avoid amendment issues like immigration that could come up during the midterm elections.

“This bill should be more important than a campaign talking point. You could have passed it any time during the past three and a half years but you want political cover,” King said.

That sent queens Democrat Anthony Weiner into a red-faced rage.

“The gentleman is wrong! The gentleman is providing cover for his colleagues rather than doing the right thing! It’s Republicans wrapping their arms around Republicans rather than doing the right thing on behalf of the heroes!” Rep. Weiner said.

“It is a shame! A shame!”

Watching it all from his home on Long Island was John Foal, a responder who lost half his foot in the days after 9/11.

“I’m utterly disappointed,” Foal said.

And he was sickened when the bill that would help him and thousands of others was rejected by a vote of 244-150, with 39 abstentions.

“I think they’re caught up in the partisan politics of Congress and at the end of the day thousands of men and women who risked their lives without prejudice now have to suffer,” Foal said.

Named after James Zadroga, an NYPD detective who died from respiratory disease related to 9/11, the $7.4 billion bill would provide healthcare and compensation payments to those still struggling with exposure to Trade Center toxins.

“We need healthcare. We need that compensation. So many men and women are financially burdened,” Foal said.

The bill’s sponsors said they’ll try and vote again in September, which means more waiting for those who’ve waited long enough.

Click here for the full report.

Bomber Linked To CIA-Controlled Terror Group

May 6, 2010

Prison Planet

By Paul Joseph Watson
A man arrested in Pakistan in connection with the Times Square car bombing attempt who had traveled with accused bomber Faisal Shahzad is a member of a terrorist organization that is controlled by British MI6 and the CIA.

Sheik Mohammed Rehan, who was arrested on Tuesday in Karachi, “Allegedly drove with Shahzad from Karachi to Peshawar on July 7, 2009, in a pickup truck, authorities said. They returned to Karachi July 22. It is not known why they went to Peshawar and whether they met with anyone there,” reports the L.A. Times.

Rehan is a member of the militant group Jaish-e-Muhammad, a terrorist organization that came to prominence in the mid-1990’s and has been involved in attacks in the disputed Kashmir border region between India and Pakistan. The group also helped carry out the December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament which brought India and Pakistan to the brink of nuclear war, tensions that proved very lucrative for British and American arms manufacturers who sold weapons to both sides.

“The December 2001 terrorist attacks on the Indian parliament — which contributed to pushing India and Pakistan to the brink of war — were conducted by two Pakistan-based rebel groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, both of which are covertly supported by Pakistan’s ISI,” writes Michel Chossudovsky. “Needless to say, these ISI-supported terrorist attacks serve the geopolitical interests of the US. They not only contribute to weakening and fracturing the Indian Union, they also create conditions which favor the outbreak of a regional war between Pakistan and India.”

Jaish-e-Muhammad, the group now emerging in connection with the Times Square incident, was founded by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the 9/11 bagman who delivered $100,000 from the United Arab Emirates to Mohammed Atta at the behest of General Mahmud Ahmed, then head of the ISI. Mahmud Ahmed, the man who ordered Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh to bankroll the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, was meeting with Republican Congressman Porter Goss and Democratic Senator Bob Graham in Washington DC on the morning of 9/11. In the days before and after the attack, Ahmed also met with CIA Head George Tenet as well as current Vice-President Joe Biden, then Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In a report on Jaish-e-Muhammad’s involvement in the murder of Daniel Pearl, who was investigating the ISI, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that the Pakistani government, “Believe that Saeed Sheikh’s power comes not from the ISI, but from his connections with our own CIA.”

Click here for the full report.

Ahmadinejad Says Osama Bin Laden is Living in Washington

May 5, 2010

Telegraph.co.uk

“Rest assured that he’s in Washington. I think there’s a high chance he’s there,” the Iranian leader told ABC television in an interview.

Without backing up the claim, the Iranian leader said he had “heard” that bin Laden was in the US capital.

“Yes, I did. He’s there. Because he was a previous partner of Mr. Bush,” he said referring to former President George W. Bush.

“They were colleagues, in fact, in the old days. You know that. They were in the oil business together. They worked together. Mr bin Laden never co-operated with Iran but he co-operated with Mr. Bush,” Mr Ahmadinejad said.

He added that, at any rate, US officials ought to know the extremist Islamic leaders whereabouts.

“The US government has invaded Afghanistan in order to arrest bin Laden. They probably know where bin Laden is. If they don’t know he is, why did they invade? Could we know the intelligence?” he asked ABC.

“First they should have tried to find his location, then invade, those who did not know about his location first they invaded and then they tried to find out where he is, is that logical?”

Click here to read the full report

Big Brother Is Watching You, New York

May 5, 2010

Google.com

by Sebastian Smith

New York officials say they could stop attacks like the attempted Times Square car bomb by expanding a controversial surveillance system so sensitive that it will pick up even suspicious behavior.

New York is already a heavily policed city, with 35,000 officers and a counterterrorism bureau — the first of its kind in the country — partnering the FBI.

But Saturday’s failed terrorist bomb in the Times Square tourist hot spot has provided the authorities with a new argument for expanding a sometimes controversial security blanket of cameras, sensors and analytical software.

The system “will greatly enhance our ability and the ability of the police to detect suspicious activity in real time, and disrupt possible attacks,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday.

The high-tech system, modeled on the “ring of steel” in London’s financial district, is already in service in lower Manhattan, where Wall Street and the World Trade Center reconstruction site are located.

Headquartered at 55 Broadway, the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative goes far beyond the traditional hodgepodge of police cameras, such as the 82 devices installed around Times Square.

Instead, an integrated system maintains an unblinking eye, not just watching, but constantly collecting license plate numbers and video of pedestrians and drivers, as well as detecting explosives and other weapons.

An important component of the program is coordination between the police network and private businesses’ cameras, something that has not been established in Times Square, causing detectives significant extra work.

Also, a separate, but similar program called Operation Sentinel plans to log every vehicle entering Manhattan island by scanning their license plates and checking for radiation.

Last October, Bloomberg announced plans to expand the lower Manhattan system into Midtown, including the Times Square area.

On Sunday, New York police chief Raymond Kelly reiterated the plan and used the occasion to press for more federal funding from Washington.

Kelly also gave details about the system, explaining how the aim is for “analytic software” allowing experts to make sense of raw information in real time.

For example, alarms would trigger when cameras noticed an unattended bag or a car circling a block too many times to be considered normal, Kelly said.

“This is a whole new area for us,” he told Fox News. “We’re very enthusiastic about it.”

Bloomberg said the city has budgeted “more than 110 million dollars to expanding the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative and incorporating it with the Midtown Manhattan Security Initiative.”

That large-scale, yet simultaneously detailed intelligence gathering clearly pays in some terrorism investigations.

Officials point out that acquiring the ingredients for a bomb or weapons exposes plotters to precisely the kind of surveillance New York is promoting.

Kelly noted on Fox News that Afghan immigrant Najibullah Zazi found it “very difficult to get explosives” for his plan to bomb the New York subway system. A major piece of evidence against him was security camera footage of a shopping trip for chemicals in Colorado.

Similarly, although the Times Square bomber tried to disguise the car, it was still quickly traced, providing detectives with an important lead.

But while law enforcement officials tout a brave new world of security, rights groups fear a “big brother” presence violating fundamental privacy.

The New York Civil Liberties Union has sued the Department of Homeland Security in an attempt to extract more information about the Manhattan security system and to

know how the information will be used, shared and stored.

The irony is that the lowest tech responses can sometimes best the most sophisticated gizmo.

The misfiring of a device hidden in the underpants of a Nigerian passenger and the quick reaction by others on the US-bound flight prevented potential tragedy in a December 25 attempted airliner attack.

And in Times Square, a vigilant street vendor and nearby beat cop — not a computer — raised the alert on the suspicious vehicle.

“Think about the street vendor. Think about the passengers on the flight on Christmas Day,” said Republican congressman Pete Hoekstra.

“All of these people perhaps were the difference between a major disaster and actually what happened: a failed terrorist attack.”

Click here to read the full report

WTC Leaseholder Wanted To Demolish Building 7 On 9/11

April 23, 2010

PrisonPlanet.com

by Paul Joseph Watson

A Fox News hit piece against Jesse Ventura and the 9/11 truth movement written by former Washington D.C. prosecutor Jeffrey Scott Shapiro inadvertently reveals a shocking truth, that World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein, who collected nearly $500 million dollars in insurance as a result of the collapse of Building 7, a 47-story structure that was not hit by a plane but collapsed within seven seconds on September 11, was on the phone to his insurance carrier attempting to convince them that the building should be brought down via controlled demolition.

Writing for Fox News, Jeffrey Scott Shapiro states, “I was working as a journalist for Gannett News at Ground Zero that day, and I remember very clearly what I saw and heard.”

“Shortly before the building collapsed, several NYPD officers and Con-Edison workers told me that Larry Silverstein, the property developer of One World Financial Center was on the phone with his insurance carrier to see if they would authorize the controlled demolition of the building – since its foundation was already unstable and expected to fall.”

In February of 2002 Silverstein Properties won $861 million from Industrial Risk Insurers to rebuild on the site of WTC 7. Silverstein Properties’ estimated investment in WTC 7 was $386 million. This building’s collapse alone resulted in a payout of nearly $500 million, based on the contention that it was an unforeseen accidental event.

“A controlled demolition would have minimized the damage caused by the building’s imminent collapse and potentially save lives. Many law enforcement personnel, firefighters and other journalists were aware of this possible option. There was no secret. There was no conspiracy,” writes Shapiro.

However, obviously aware of how it would impact his insurance claim, Larry Silverstein has consistently denied that there was ever a plan to intentionally demolish Building 7.

In June 2005, Silverstein told New York Post journalist Sam Smith that his infamous “pull it” comment, which has been cited as proof that Silverstein planned to take down the building with explosives, “meant something else”.

In January 2006, Silverstein’s spokesperson Dara McQuillan told the U.S. State Department that the “pull it” comment meant to withdraw firefighters from the building (despite the fact that there were no firefighters inside WTC 7 as we shall later cover). There was no mention whatsoever of any plan to demolish the building before it fell.

Shapiro’s faux pas has unwittingly let the cat out of the bag on the fact that Silverstein was aggressively pushing for the building to be intentionally demolished, a claim that he has always vociferously denied, presumably to safeguard against putting in doubt the massive insurance payout he received on the basis that the collapse was accidental.

For over five years since the infamous PBS documentary was aired in which Silverstein states that the decision was made to “pull” the building, a construction term for controlled demolition, debunkers have attempted to perform all kinds of mental gymnastics in fudging the meaning behind the WTC leaseholder’s comments.

“I remember getting a call from the fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, ‘We’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it. And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse,” said Silverstein.

Debunkers attempted to claim that Silverstein meant to “pull” the firefighters from the building due to the danger the structure was in, and this explanation was also later claimed by Silverstein’s spokesman, however, both the FEMA report, the New York Times and even Popular Mechanics reported that there were no firefighting actions taken inside WTC 7.

“While I was talking with a fellow reporter and several NYPD officers, Building 7 suddenly collapsed, and before it hit the ground, not a single sound emanated from the tower area. There were no explosives; I would have heard them. In fact, I remember that in those few seconds, as the building sank to the ground that I was stunned by how quiet it was,” writes Shapiro in his Fox News hit piece.

Shapiro’s contention that the 47-story building simply collapsed into its own footprint within seven seconds without making a sound, a feat only ever witnessed in world history on 9/11 alone, is contradicted by numerous other first-hand eyewitnesses.

Contradicting Shapiro’s claim that the collapse of the building was quiet, NYPD officer Craig Bartmer stated that he clearly heard bombs tear down Building 7 as he ran away from its collapse.

“I walked around it (Building 7). I saw a hole. I didn’t see a hole bad enough to knock a building down, though. Yeah there was definitely fire in the building, but I didn’t hear any… I didn’t hear any creaking, or… I didn’t hear any indication that it was going to come down. And all of a sudden the radios exploded and everyone started screaming ‘get away, get away, get away from it!’… It was at that moment… I looked up, and it was nothing I would ever imagine seeing in my life. The thing started pealing in on itself… Somebody grabbed my shoulder and I started running, and the shit’s hitting the ground behind me, and the whole time you’re hearing “boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.” I think I know an explosion when I hear it… Yeah it had some damage to it, but nothing like what they’re saying… Nothing to account for what we saw… I am shocked at the story we’ve heard about it to be quite honest,” said Bartmer.

EMT Indira Singh, a Senior Consultant for JP Morgan Chase in Information Technology and Risk Management, told the Pacifica show Guns and Butter, “After midday on 9/11 we had to evacuate that because they told us Building 7 was coming down. If you had been there, not being able to see very much just flames everywhere and smoke – it is entirely possible – I do believe that they brought Building 7 down because I heard that they were going to bring it down because it was unstable because of the collateral damage.”

The host asked Singh, “Did they actually use the word “brought down” and who was it that was telling you this?,” to which Singh responded, “The fire department. And they did use the words ‘we’re gonna have to bring it down’ and for us there observing the nature of the devastation it made total sense to us that this was indeed a possibility, given the subsequent controversy over it I don’t know.”

Click her for the full report

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