The catastrophic destruction of the World Trade Center complex is said by government reports to have resulted from structural failure due mainly to fires initiated by the impacts of the airplanes. A closer look at the evidence reveals a much more disturbing crime.

Apart from the fact that no steel-framed high-rise building has ever collapsed due to fire prior to or since Sept. 11, the manner in which the buildings came down is itself a substantial cause for re-investigation. A collapse due to fire would likely proceed gradually with large deformations visible in the building’s perimeter, with the building tipping over slowly in the direction of the steadily weakening structural members – to the path of least resistance.

Yet the Twin Towers both came down quite suddenly, without warning, and without any “jolts” that would indicate the upper mass impacting the lower mass. The smooth rate of descent was measured at 2/3 of free-fall. In other words, the building was accelerating (traveling faster and faster second by second) straight down through what should have been the path of greatest resistance – the 80,000 tons of structural steel below that was at least five times stronger than necessary to resist this load. Physicists and other experts agree that this could have happened only if the underlying supporting structures were removed ahead of the falling upper building mass. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) acknowledges that each building was destroyed in fewer than a dozen seconds, and that they “came down essentially in free-fall”.

For the New York City firefighters on the scene, this rapid destruction without any notice was well beyond their prior experience. Sgt. James Canham, in the oral histories of 118 first responders, put it this way: “This changed all the rules. This went from a structure to a wafer in seconds - in seconds. I couldn’t believe the speed of that tower coming down. I heard the rumble. I looked up. Debris was already 50 feet from the ground...”

More than a hundred first responders reported experiencing explosions and/or flashes of light as the destruction commenced. Much of this evidence was also captured on video by multiple cameras. EMT Captain Karin Deshore, in a Nov. 7, 2001, New York Times interview, described the astonishing events like this: “Somewhere around the middle of the World Trade Center, there was this orange and red flash coming out. Initially it was just one flash. Then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building and that building had started to explode. The popping sound - and with each popping sound it was initially an orange and then a red flash came out of the building and then it would just go all around the building on both sides as far as I could see. These popping sounds and the explosions were getting bigger, going both up and down and then all around the building.” There are many similar accounts in this astonishing series of oral recordings effected by NYC Fire Commissioner, Thomas Von Essen, but kept hidden by the city of New York until it was ordered by a federal appeals court to release them to the New York Times.

Initially it was just one flash. Then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building and that building had started to explode.
--Karin Deshore, in a Nov. 7, 2001, New York Times interview

Also captured on video and still photos were isolated explosive jets of material expelled from the sides of the structure 20-60 stories below the so-called “crush zone”. These precisely mimic what are known as “squibs” in the controlled demolition industry. Normally such charges are used to cut structural steel members so that the structure is able to fall with little to no resistance. The stack of 110 four inch thick concrete floors in both towers, each an acre in size, are missing from the rubble pile where photos reveal only a two-story pile of metal debris.  A gravitational collapse should have left a pile of floors about 20 stories tall.

As the WTC skyscrapers disintegrated before the eyes of stunned observers, steel framing sections weighing nine tons were hurled up to 600 feet away. This required an explosive force capable of ejecting these perimeter wall units at up to 70 mph as if shot out of a cannon. Some 90,000 tons of concrete and metal decking were pulverized, creating pyroclastic-like flows (hot gases with suspended solids) similar to those observed and filmed during the explosion of the Mt. St. Helens volcano.

When the clouds of dust settled, what was left were remarkably symmetrical 1,400 foot diameter debris fields consisting mainly of completely dismembered structural steel framing. Although the media often repeats that the Twin Towers’ concrete floors came down like a series of stacked pancakes, there were in fact no pancaked floors to be found in the photos or videos of the debris piles. “There’s no concrete... it was pulverized,” gasped Gov. Pataki at his first visit to the site.

The mass media and government officials continue to exclude this topic from public conversation. We encourage you to join us in speaking out.

For further documentation and analysis of the evidence at the destruction of the World Trade Center see the DVD “9/11: Blueprint for Truth – The Architecture of Destruction” available at AE911Truth.org.