Investigation Demanded Based on FOIA Release Info

Dr. William Pepper speaking for AE911Truth and ReThink911 in Times Square on September 11, 2013On behalf of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, esteemed human rights attorney William F. Pepper has written to the U.S. Department of Commerce's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) demanding that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST,” a non-regulatory agency within the Commerce Department), for which OIG has oversight responsibility, “be directed to produce a corrected analysis and report on the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7.”

The demand was triggered by the discovery that the official steel fabrication drawings of Building 7’s construction, released in response to a FOIA request, reveal critical structural features that were inexplicably missing from consideration in the NIST report on the collapse of Building 7. Specifically, as explained in the recent article “MaladmiNISTration” by David Cole, upon close examination of the depiction, in Frankel shop drawing #9114, of the connection between Column 79 and the adjacent girder–a connection that NIST claimed had failed–one can see another steel element in the drawing that NIST had never mentioned, i.e. “stiffener plates,” that were specified at the end of the girder and welded in place to both sides of the web and to the bottom flange.

Actual views of the girder connection to Column 79 from Frankel drawing #9114Depiction of girder connection to Column 79 in the NIST WTC 7 Report

Pepper noted that if a satisfactory response is not received in a timely manner, he will be calling the Inspector General personally. The OIG responded to Pepper by referring the matter to NIST. Of course, referring the matter to the agency accused of the fraudulent omissions in the first place is clearly unacceptable. 

If headway is not made there, litigation could follow. Tony Szamboti, a mechanical engineer involved in structural design in his professional work, and an AE911Truth petition signatory, has stated that he is asking people to forward the initial letter from Bill Pepper and the response from the Department of Commerce to all members of Congress asking that they ensure that NIST is responsive in an open and transparent way.

This is the political component that Mr. Pepper said would be important in order to apply enough pressure to ensure an appropriate response when we first discussed sending the letter to the Inspector General.

Tony Szamboti on Fox News with Geraldo RiveraPreviously, Szamboti had noted that "The discovery of the girder stiffener plates in drawing #9114 is a game changer, because this drawing covers the exact location where NIST says the collapse initiated and the stiffeners on the girder would make the NIST alleged collapse mechanism impossible."

As Cole has written in his article, "NIST's failure to show these stiffeners or take them into account in its analysis is yet another area where the omissions and incorrect statements are so egregious, anyone who understands these issues must by now begin to question NIST's motives."

Feeling strongly that the stiffeners revelation is the strongest evidence yet of fraudulent omissions by NIST, Szamboti, Cole, and other professionals at AE911Truth began asking what could be done from a legal perspective. Szamboti reached out to his contacts in the 9/11 Truth community, and Bill Pepper stepped forward. Eventually, a strategy was developed with the ultimate goal of forcing a whole new and independent examination into the collapse of Building 7 by either NIST itself or, better yet, an independent group.

As Pepper put it in the letter that he sent to the Inspector General on December 12, 2013, "Avoidance through stonewalling and prolonged silence will no longer suffice. This will not go away...Silence from your office or a rejection of this reasonable request may prompt my clients to seek legal recourse and to raise this issue with their colleagues in Europe where a number of government officials and professionals have long been critical of the official U.S. Government's position and explanation of the destruction of the WTC on 9/11."

Included in Bill Pepper’s letter to the Inspector General was the DVD by AE911Truth: “9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out.”

It should be noted that the OIG pledges publically, “to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the Department of Commerce's programs and operations. The OIG also endeavors to detect and deter waste, fraud, and abuse. OIG monitors and tracks the use of taxpayer dollars through audits, inspections, evaluations, and investigations. The Inspector General keeps the Secretary of Commerce and Congress fully and currently informed about problems and deficiencies relating to Commerce's activities and the need for corrective action.”  [Emphases added.] 

In consideration, especially, of the stiffeners issue, our desired outcome is that the OIG will consider Pepper’s letter, evaluate  the  analysis provided in the letter, detect that NIST’s report on the unprecedented collapse of Building 7 is  fundamentally flawed, if not fraudulent, and  declare that the corrective action needed is a true and honest investigation into the free-fall collapse of Building 7 based on all the evidence, including the missing stiffeners and also the evidence for explosive demolition. Will the OIG take its mandate seriously? Is such a scenario feasible, or even possible?  With your participation in our upcoming campaign, we think that it is. Stay tuned for the Action Alerts.  

As legal and other strategies are being weighed, the issue has picked up steam on the internet. Most prominently, OpEdNews, a U.S. based alternative news website, has published an objective, unbiased article discussing the controversial official account of the destruction of WTC 7 on September 11, 2001. In the article, OpEdNews contributor Andrew Mills focuses on the letter sent by Pepper to the OIG and concludes that “[T]his is court-room level evidence of impropriety involving the preparation of the WTC 7 report, and will clearly be an embarrassment to NIST. It shows that the demand for a new WTC 7 investigation by those skeptical of the Report's conclusions was in order all along. Even if nothing else is re-investigated about 9/11, the collapse of Building 7 richly deserves a thorough investigation.”

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