Gov. Gary Locke, nominee for Secretary of Commerce

NIST's Half-Admission of Yet Another 9/11 Smoking Gun

The U.S. Senate will hold a confirmation hearing this week on the nominee for Secretary of Commerce, Gov. Gary Locke. This cabinet position oversees the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), the government agency responsible for investigating and reporting on the destruction of World Trade Center Building 7. NIST tried to avoid admitting that there was any freefall acceleration when the building came down on September 11, 2001. All the way to their draft final report on August 26, 2008, nearly seven years after the event, the NIST report's lead authors held firmly to their position that freefall did not occur.

Once NIST invited comments on its draft report, it was more or less forced to accept the indisputable explanations based on the publicly available videos proving that freefall had occurred. David Chandler, a high school physics teacher and AE911Truth researcher, provided the most compelling argument in a video seen widely on YouTube.

In their final report issued November 20, 2008, the NIST report's authors stated they had made a more detailed examination, and found a 2.25-second period in which the center roofline exhibited a "freefall drop for approximately 8 stories." Chandler had measured a 2.5-second period. For all practical purposes, the time period can be thought of as two seconds.

The NIST report did not state the significance of a freefall drop. The significance is that during that period of freefall, all of the gravitational energy (also known as potential energy) is converted to energy of motion (also known as kinetic energy). There is no energy available for doing other work, such as breaking up structural columns or hurling structural pieces out of the way. Figure 1 is an illustration depicting these points.

NIST tried to hide its admission of freefall from public view, by not listing it in the description of the changes it made in response to public comments. Admitting to freefall leads directly to the question, what source of energy eliminated the eight stories of building structure? Evidently the NIST authors didn't want to go there. The chart (figure 2) below speaks for itself. They tried to hide their dramatic change of position, that WTC7 did fall freely for two seconds. Gravitational forces alone can't come close to explaining how the building came down.

The two attached figures are intended as aids in explaining the NIST-freefall issue to influential non-technical people. U.S. senators and Gov. Locke need to receive this information early this week so the matter can be handled responsibly during the confirmation hearing.

If President Obama keeps his promise to restore science to its rightful place — above politics — there is a chance these two seconds will indeed live in infamy, with a full recognition of what they tell us about the nature of the 9/11 attacks, the Pearl Harbor of the 21st century. If, instead, he and his eventual Commerce Secretary bury these two seconds and their clear meaning, the infamy will fester and spread underground, continuing to undermine the public's understanding of what really happened on 9/11.

Figure 1 — Click here for printable PDF

Figure 2 — Click here for printable PDF