As can be seen from previous posts, the Four Corners airing of a BBC documentary on the possible causes of the collapse of WTC-7, and attempts to debunk the related conspiracy theories has provoked something of a storm in the channel. As I can not be remiss in my duty to the channel, I acquired a copy of this documentary from the usual place, and will now present my opinion.

Firstly as this is a BBC documentary, you can expect a reasonable degree of objectivity and impartiality, at least at the outset, and the documentary begins well, outlining the case that the 911 Truth movement have mounted against the official narrative. It remains focused, does not deviate into peripheral issues concerning the Bush administration, War on Terror, oil, Israel, whether the planes were robotically controlled or holograms, and so on. Nor does it waste any time setting up strawman cranks and attention seekers as representatives of 911 Truth, instead it confines itself to talking to experts in the field, scientists, architects, demolition experts, etc. who have dissented from the orthodox view.

This approach is vastly more welcome than the Michael Moore style documentary/polemic that has polluted this field in recent years. Where this sort of documentary is problematic is that it is all the more insidious by its apparently reasonable and objective approach, and sleight of hand combined with a sufficiently authoritative tone, where it not so much argues the case on scientific merits, but invites the viewer to side with respectability.

But firstly the arguments the documentary covers are as follows:

1. That no planes hit WTC-7 and it is the first and only high-rise building in the world to collapse purely due to fire. At least a hundred other high rise buildings have experienced major fires, and burned for far longer, and in all cases the steel structure remained intact.

2. Also, that in Madrid a high-rise where the steel frame was not fireproofed burned for a full 24 hours, with no collapse, whereas WTC-7 collapsed in a mere seven hours, though it had heavy fireproofing.

3. Experiments have been conducted with steel frame structures, where no collapse occurred, in spite of temperatures being in the range of 1000 degrees Celsius, rather than the 600 degrees Celsius claimed for WTC-7. These first three points are made by Richard Gage, an architect of “Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth”.

4. WTC-7 housed offices of the Secret Service, CIA, Department of Defence, Office of Emergency Management, that would have overseen management of the disaster if it had not itself been destroyed. Also destroyed were files relating to Enron and other corporate fraud.

5. On the day of the attack, the fire alarm system of WTC-7 was undergoing testing, with many false alarms sounding off, all of which were to be ignored. This testing also made it impossible to determine where the real fires were when they broke out.

6. A fire protection engineer, Scott Grainger, contends that the fires could only have been sporadic, the fire would have to be uniformly spread to cause collapse.

7. Larry Silverstein's infamous use of the phrase “Pull it” with regards to WTC-7 is ambiguous at best, some believe he meant to demolish the building, others that he meant only to evacuate the area. These seem to be incautious words, given that he had only recently taken out a 3.5 billion insurance policy on WTC. Whatever he meant by these words, they are contradicted by Fire Chief Daniel Nigro, who says that any decision to evacuate the area was his alone, and that no consultation with the owner of the building was necessary, or made in this case.

8. The BBC news reported the collapse of WTC-7 before it actually happened, with even the live feed showing it still standing in the background. Here the BBC can be expected to be defensive, and it is attributed to 'confusion' of the day. However this 'mistake' turned out to be correct.

9. A Dutch demolitions expert, Daniel Jowenko, was asked to view the footage of the WTC-7 collapse, and immediately recognised it as a controlled demolition. He did not know he was viewing footage from 9/11.

10. To counter the theory that WTC-7 experienced a controlled demolition, Mark Loizeaux, of one of the largest US demolition firms, says that it takes months to set up a demolition, with hundreds of explosive charges, and miles of detonating cord. Something which can not be done in secret. Also an explosion would have blown out the windows on all sides, whereas WTC-7 windows were only damaged on the WTC facing side.

11. Dr Gene Corley, lead the FEMA investigator on WTC, and denies any possibility of a controlled demolition. Corley has also conducted investigations on controversial sites such as the Oklahoma City bombing, the Waco Branch Davidian compound fire. Anyone interested in that investigation should have a look at the documentary film “Waco: The Rules of Engagement” (1997).

12. Steven Jones, a professor of physics believes he has evidence that a demolition could have been induced by thermite fires started on or near the steel support beams. To this end he has analysed dust from the WTC-7 site, finding tiny molten iron spheres, which are precipitated into the surrounding air. These spheres can only be produced at temperatures of 5000 degree Celsius, far in excess of any conventional fire.

13. Thermal imaging from a NASA plane over ground zero indicated the presence of very high subterranean heat sources, even days after the collapse.

14. An alternate explanation for the presence of the iron spheres is that they were produced by welding torches after the collapse. But no information is presented as to what proportions of spheres in the dust are expected from what can only be fairly brief and sporadic welding work post-collapse.

15. Mark Loizeaux counters that this can not be done, but does not explain why, only citing himself as an authority that it can not be done. Richard Gage submits that Loizeaux is not an impartial witness, as he has many major contracts with the US government.

16. Some discussion on the matter of the source of smoke and fire and WTC-7, but footage of fires within WTC-7 would tend to support Professor Steve Jones' theory of a thermite induced conflagration.

17. Returning to the premature BBC reports of the collapse of WTC-7, whatever the case is, the BBC had 'lost' the tapes, but it turned out that they were misclassified by year. The narrator says “We found them”, as if the documentary itself has identified with the anti-conspiracy position.

18. A case is made that WTC-7 is unique in that it is built over an electricity sub-station, and required longer than average floor-beams due to restrictions on where columns could be placed. Hence there was more pressure on the floor beams when subject to fire.

19. After some sound-bites from various random voices of orthodoxy, Richard Clarke, “Chief Counter-Terrrorism Advisor” says that a governmental conspiracy is impossible, as governments are not competent enough to keep secrets. Though this is obviously disingenuous as anyone with a passing familiarity with government experiments on unwilling subjects knows.

Perhaps the documentary makers thought it was outside the parameters of what they set out to do, but Professor Steve Jones theory of a thermite induced structural weakening really warrants far more attention. The documentary ticks them off the list, but the brief attempt at rebuttal is extremely weak indeed, and nothing else in its pro-orthodoxy contentions contradicts the thermite theory.

Others have not been so short with Professor Jones, and his work has been featured in Project Censored's top censored stories for 2007.

This brief article presents far more information concerning Jones' theory that the documentary chose not to present:

Jones claims that the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) ignored the physics and chemistry of what happened on September 11 and even manipulated its testing in order to get a computer-generated hypothesis that fit the end result of collapse, and did not even attempt to investigate the possibility of controlled demolition. He also questions the investigations conducted by FEMA and the 9/11 Commission. 

WTC 7, which was not hit by hijacked planes, collapsed in 6.6 seconds, just .6 of a second longer than it would take an object dropped from the roof to hit the ground. “Where is the delay that must be expected due to conservation of momentum, one of the foundational laws of physics?” Jones asks. “That is, as upper-falling floors strike lower floors—and intact steel support columns—the fall must be significantly impeded by the impacted mass. 

Steel supports were “partly evaporated,” but it would require temperatures near 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit to evaporate steel—and neither office materials nor diesel fuel can generate temperatures that hot. Fires caused by jet fuel from the hijacked planes lasted at most a few minutes, and office material fires would burn out within about twenty minutes in any given location. 

Molten metal found in the debris of the WTC may have been the result of a high-temperature reaction of a commonly used explosive such as thermite. Buildings not felled by explosives “have insufficient directed energy to result in melting of large quantities of metal,” Jones says. 

Also from another article.

First, he said, video showed a yellow, molten substance splashing off the side of the south Trade Tower about 50 minutes after an airplane hit it and a few minutes before it collapsed. Government investigators ruled out the possibility of melting steel being the source of the material because of the unlikelihood of steel melting. The investigators said the molten material must have been aluminum from the plane.

But, said Jones, molten aluminum is silvery. It never turns yellow. The substance observed in the videos "just isn't aluminum," he said. But, he said, thermite can cause steel to melt and become yellowish.

Second, he cited video pictures showing white ash rising from the south tower near the dripping, liquefied metal. When thermite burns, Jones said, it releases aluminum-oxide ash. The presence of both yellow-white molten iron and aluminum oxide ash "are signature characteristics of a thermite reaction," he said.

Another item of evidence, Jones said, is the fact that sulfur traces were found in structural steel recovered from the Trade Towers. Jones quoted the New York Times as saying sulfidization in the recovered steel was "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the (official) investigation." But, he said, sulfidization fits the theory that sulfur was combined with thermite to make the thermite burn even hotter than it ordinarily would.

Jones said a piece of building wreckage had a gray substance on the outside that at one point had obviously been a dripping molten metal or liquid. He said that after thermite turns steel or iron into a molten form, and the metal hardens, it is gray.

He added that pools of molten metal were found beneath both trade towers and the 47-story WTC 7. That fact, he said, was never discussed in official investigation reports.

Also one should take note of Processor Jones' background, in that he is not some perpetual motion machine crank, but has enjoyed a significant career as a physicist, which only ended due to his association with the 911 Truth movement. Given the professional hazards encountered by scientists, engineers, and architects who deviate from orthodoxy in matters related to 911, it can only make you wonder how many other, less brave, experts who are also quietly disparaging of the official reports.