If you believe in controlled demolition, a question: Why? What motive?

[HamdenRice]

I would like to ask people who believe in controlled demolition what the motive was for causing the collapse of the towers. I ask those who are skeptics not to post in this thread; there are plenty of opportunities elsewhere to debate whether there was CD or not.

But what troubles me about the CD theory is what the purpose would be. If the government was complicit in 9/11, wouldn't they have accomplished all they needed to accomplish just by having the planes fly into the buildings? I'm kind of agnostic, but leaning toward complicity theories, but the part I don't get is "why" demolish the buildings?

[spooked911]

1. Several reasons:

1) death toll and overall shock value greatly increased by the collapse of those the WTC structures-- they wanted to shock Americans out of complacency and create blood-lust for war. The collapse of the WTC towers created the vast majority of the deaths on 9/11.
2) destroy financial records of fraud, that is probably why they did WTC7 and the Pentagon as well.
3) insurance scam for Silverstein-- or perhaps this was his payoff for keeping quiet?

[Informed Citizen]

2. What he said (nt)

[Kevin Fenton]

3. Good question

"If the government was complicit in 9/11, wouldn't they have accomplished all they needed to accomplish just by having the planes fly into the buildings?"
Yes, they would have accomplished most of it by having the planes fly into the buildings, but I don't think the government knew the hijackers were coming.

However, I do think the WTC was blown up. The explosives were put in the twin towers after the 1993 bombing (say in the mid 90s) to stop a repeat bombing being successful (the 1993 aim was to topple one tower on to the other, which would then fall on a large chunk of Lower Manhattan). This would account for why the bombers made so many mistakes (wrong tower first, too much explosives, too fast, too many squibs) - they only had an hour or so to reprogramme the firing sequences.

7 is maybe like Silverstein said - the fire department didn't think they could fight the fire, so after they got everybody out they blew it up. Buildings are blown up all the time, nobody died in 7, it's not as though its demolition is particularly morally reprehensible or anything.

[Roachman]

5. I've heard this before

Are there sources for the claim that the buildings were pre-wired for explosives?

If they are, that would explain how Silverstein could have decided to pull WTC7, but then why doesn't the official version accept that?
Just to avoid the inferences for 1 and 2?

[Kevin Fenton]

7. No sources

AFAIK there are no sources (at least no reliable sources) for the claim the buildings were pre-wired for explosives. It's just guesswork/inference (take your pick). If the WTC was destroyed by explosives then they were either put there (i) just before the attacks in preparation for them, or (2) some time before them, for some other reason. I think the twin towers were destroyed by explosives and that if they had been wired specifically for the attacks they would have been wired better, so that leaves me with (2).

If 7 was pre-wired (and I'm not saying it was) then that would give us a very strong inference that 1 and 2 were. It also might cause problems with the insurers. Another reason is the way it would spin; the last thing they would want on the news is the little postscript that in addition to the two skyscrapers knocked down by terrorists, one was blown up by the government.

[MercutioATC]

8. Has anybody EVER heard of a building pre-wired with explosives???

It's been presented here as a normal thing (to deal with hurricane damage, by one report).

Give me ONE instance where a building was built with explosives built into the structure.

[Kevin Fenton]

9. Lots of reports

There are lots of reports of buildings being pre-wired with explosives. However, none of them concern civilian buildings in the US or, AFAIK, any sort of democratic or free country. For example, here (former Eastern Bloc capital) the word is that corner buildings were designed to collapse across crossroads, thus cutting the path for a NATO advance. While this sort of thinking was certainly possible at the height of Stalin-era paranoia, there's no evidence to show that any explosives were ever put into residential/office buildings (I'm sure it's not that unusual to have a military facility in a hazardous area wired). If you heard that residential buildings were pre-wired for demolition in, say, North Korea, would it seem that incredible to you?

I very much doubt that most (or even any other) buidings in New York were pre-wired. However, my argument is that the WTC was (1) one of if not the world's leading terrorist target(s) - it had been attacked before (in 1993) and subsequent credible threats against it were made, (2) if the WTC collapsed it would cause untold devastation to Lower Manhattan - it's not just the people (the 1993 bombers hoped for 250,000 fatalities - more than would result from a small nuclear device - their aim was to collapse the North Tower onto the South Tower, which would then collapse itself) or the value of the real estate that would be destroyed, it's the value of the information that would be lost (how much is the information in Lower Manhattan worth, do you think? what if a falling tower hit the NYSE for example?). Luckily, lead bomber Ramzi Yousef spent his money on flying home first class rather than building a bigger bomb. The plan nearly came off and lots of people must have been aware of this threat and must have taken steps to deal with it. If it wasn't pre-wiring the buildings to take them down quickly in the event of another attack, what was it? The flowerpots subsequently placed around the towers? I guess a determined bomber could get past a couple of flowerpots.

[MercutioATC]

10. So you're suggesting the buildings were retrofitted with explosives?

You DO realize that it would take hundreds of holes drilled into supports and hundreds of charges to do that, right? Just look into what goes into the controlled demolition of a building. It's not simply a matter of placing a few charges here and there.

[petgoat]

14. Van Romero said it would not take many charges

"It could have been a relatively small amount of explosives placed in
strategic points," Romero said. The explosives likely would have been
put in more than two points in each of the towers, he said.

Van Romero is a New Mexico Tech explosion expert.

http://www.world-action.co.uk/explosives.html

If you believe the zipper theory as presented in the NOVA animation, the
building was a house of cards: One failed truss "clip" and the next
truss fails, and then the next and then the floors unzip and it's just
wee wee wee all the way home.

[MercutioATC]

15. Wouldn't it also work that way if a truss failed due to a plane crash?

It also seems silly that professional demolitions companies use so many charges when just a few will do....

[petgoat]

16. If the zipper theory is correct, a plane crash could initiate

the unzipping and the collapse just as well as explosives could. But
NIST (the latest official theory) doesn't subscribe to the zipper
theory. NIST insists that the truss "clips" were so strong that sagging
floors buckled the perimeter columns.

Whether MIT will bother to defend their theory in the face of official
opposition will be interesting to see.

Why do pro demolishers use so many charges? Conventionally-framed
buildings are arrays of columns and beams; if they are not brought down
all at the same time, chaotic collapse could result. This is one reason
the absolutely symmetrical center-first collapse of WTC7 is so
unbelievable. How could random fires or random structural damage result
in a textbook controlled collapse?

[Kevin Fenton]

32. Where's the problem?

(1) You generally claim that it only took a few columns to go (due to the fire) to get the whole building to collapse, so why would hundreds of holes be needed? You seem to be contradicting yourself here.
(2) Anyway, I don't see any problem drilling hundreds of holes. If you have a good drill it shouldn't take long. I'm sure the CIA has a good drill or is capable of procuring one.
(3) In any case, why would the explosives have to be put in holes drilled in the steel, rather than simply being attached to the steel.

[philb]

12. There was a lot of documentation on fraud, crime,etc. in WTC7 & expensive

equipment that was abandoned without much effort to save it. Very strange. They abandoned the building before it was damaged. And didn't take precautions to make potential problems with electrical and fuel systems safe. Someone even turned off the fire alarm in WTC7 the night before 9/11. This all seemed really strange. A fire chief couldn't believe they made no attempt to save the building.

[philb]

13. If the planes simply flew into the buildings & killed a few people, it

wouldn't have had nearly as much impact. 9/11 attack seems to have been really poorly planned and to have had little chance of success unless they knew that many unlikely events would occur such as total incompetance or stand down by the military, and small groups of poorly armed hijackers getting access to well trained pilots through locked doors with the pilots having communications with flight attendants to warn them, and a button they just needed to push to warn FAA but didn't and pilots having the ability to easily prevent the hijackers taking over the plan- yet none of them did it. Very strange. The majority of commercial and military pilots on record say it couldn't have happened as per the official story. And there is an obvious cover-up by authorities of what happened with the flights, failure to release tapes of flight attendant calls, failure to release black boxes, failure to release monitoring videos at the pentagon, no access to much of the evidence by independent groups at WTC or Pentagon, etc. Cover up of Saudi connections to Bush Admin. and to 9/11 events. Why all the cover-up.

Its clear 9/11 was used hugely to carry out the PNAC goals and plans.
So PNAC clearly benefited. Silverstein also benefited hugely.
There were big winners and big losers. So clearly there were some who stood to gain by such events and did gain by the occurance.

[petgoat]

4. In a Culture War, You Fight With Images

The collapsing towers are an image to last ten thousand years. Every
person who worked in every highrise felt viscerally threatened. Bush
wanted this sense of vulnerability.

Mere fireballs are tired hollywood effects. After the fires burned
out, the buildings would stand as a monument to Bush's failure to
prevent it, and to the power of modern structural science.

Only through collapse could the firemen and the police be made heroes,
and aid the rallying behind the troops that might make a sustained
fight for Iraq possible.

Before 9/11 the NYPD had suffered many scandals involving shooting
unarmed citizens 46 times in the back, sodomizing a prisoner with a
toilet plunger, and NYPD officers had stood by and watched when a mob
stripped and molested women at a parade in Central Park in 7/01.

9/11, the way it happened, made authority popular again.

I think all four planes were a necessary part of the impression
created.

Flights 11 and 175: All highrises (and thus civilization) are
vulnerable to attack by thugs with boxcutters

Flight 77: Soldiers too died, so don't anyone dare criticize the
military's failure to respond (never mind that 100 of the 125 dead on
the ground at the Pentagon were civilian construction workers and not
military people). The pictures of the fire at the Pentagon were
essential to make the impression of the raging infernos at the WTC,
because we never got a chance to see how bad those fires were.

Flight 93: Heroic vigilante citizens rose up against the evil ones,
and we should do the same. Since the hijackers were bent on suicide,
the lack of air interception of the planes was a moot point. Flight
93 also allows the tougher-minded to believe that the military did
finally get its act together and shoot down one of the planes.

Dr. George Lakoff has analyzed the image of the tower collapse in
terms of a metaphorical assault on the physical human body--the
plane is a bullet, the tower is the body, the fireball is the blood,
and the collapse is the body falling to earth and dying.

In this way, 9/11 has its visceral effect on us, and revenge on 9/11
can in some ways invoke impulses for revenge on the JFK assassination.
But see how the image loses power if the tower remains standing? It's
as if JKF was shot in the head--and lived!

I can not positively assert a CD theory, but the fact that the steel
was destroyed, and the shifting stories about the wtc7 collapse are
very very very suspicious.

The Cold Civil War of the Red/Blue Culture War was already ongoing
when 9/11 opened a second front: Christian-Judeo v. Islamist. 9/11
allowed the Bushcists to equate the liberals with terrorists. You're
with us or against us, Bush said.

[pox americana]

6. Real estate scam + political bonanza

Who benefited? The Bush administration got everything they wanted including re-election, which was probably rigged but at least close enough for a plausible claim of a legitimacy.

But I think it started as a real estate scam. The WTC had always been a money loser for the PA, tales of a turnaround notwithstanding, and WTC 7 was facing costly asbestos removal. So why not pull the plug and collect the insurance, especially since certain midtown developers needed tenants, not 200 acres of cheap office space downtown, and were happy to play ball.

And the mysterious developers? Why the New York Times and soon-to-be mayor Michael Bloomberg, both pouring millions into risky midtown office towers. Funny how that works.

And there's absolutely no way those collapses were the result of fires or plane crashes.

[Sterling]

18. Yes you nailed it.

great post.

[pox americana]

19. thanks, it's amazing how badly

intelligent people will behave if they think they'll get away with it. Unfortunately they probably will.

[Wilms]

20. I agree that real estate played a supporting roll.

Of course, everybody loves those dearly departed towers now that they're gone. But that doesn't represent the general feeling toward those buildings before they went down.

I think those buildings were "in the way" and that could have attracted assistance from the building owners.

Plus all the other stuff mentioned on this thread, including that it already was targeted (do we really know what happened in '93) helping to make it all plausible.

[pox americana]

21. Yep, I'll bet several interested parties

had eureka moments right after the '93 attack, or even before: "Hey, if they really knocked 'em down, I could make a killing!"

It's also possible that Bloomberg and the NYT decided to greenlight their huge towers based on unofficial tips that the WTC was not long for this world. They're both in the news business, after all.

[pox americana]

22. And we can't forget Time-Warner

which also just got through building a mammoth midtown office tower. Funny how all those media guys got the same idea at the same time, ain't it?

[pox americana]

31. Or the Hearst Corp., which is, yes, building a midtown office tower.

That's the "Popular Mechanics" Hearst Corp, which commenced construction of a 42-story eyesore on top of its old six-story headquarters near Columbus Circle last June.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearst_Tower

[pox americana]

37. And you know what's REALLY odd?

Swiss Re, which made that huge payout to Silverstein, also just built a 42-story highrise in London, finished in 2004, the infamous 30 St. Mary Axe, also known as the Gherkin:



http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/30_St_Mary_Axe.html

[dflprincess]

11. PNAC's desire

for a "new Pearl Harbor"

[Sterling]

17. The WTC had toxic materials. And DT NYC is the choicest real estate

in the universe. IMHO they wanted a targeted that would shock people, the WTC was a liability because of materials like asbestos and what not and they wanted to limit damage to the rest of DT NYC.

[petgoat]

23. Why weren't the planes sufficient?

A related question was: If the building was wired to explode, why
bother with the planes?

The answer is that the lesson of a demolition would be "Beware of Middle
Eastern men moving quantities of boxes into your skyscraper." It's a
manageable fear, a job for Building Security.

The lesson of the planes "destroying" the towers is "Panic! Middle
Eastern men with box cutters can attack your building without warning at
any time! We must wage holy war on the Muslim fanatics! It's
Armageddon time!"

Just as the 1993 bombing failed to motivate a war, the limited number of
deaths from "mere" plane crashes would not have justified one either.
Not even the Pentagon attack would have justified it--because the
Pentagon's failure to defend itself would have been highlighted had the
WTC story been less horrifically distracting.

[rman]

25. Terrorists rigging the buildings is kinda weak, implausible even,

in the minds of many people, since many people now argue that it's impossible for anyone to plant large amounts of explosives there without being notices by someone who isn't in on it.

"Beware of US maintenance and construction personnel moving quantities of boxes into your skyscraper."

I'd think anyone would have to admit that's actually more plausible then terrorists planting explosives.

[petgoat]

26. Terrorists rigging the buildings

Van Romero said it would not take a whole lot of explosives if they were
planted in key points. Radio control would eliminate the worry of the miles of detonation cord.

If tenants simply stayed overnight in the building they'd pretty much
have it to themselves.

[rman]

27. Then you'd first need some terrorists to become tenants.

I'd be easier if some tenants became terrorists.

[petgoat]

28. The easiest way for terrorists to become tenants

would be to buy an existing business that had an office in the
building. Al Qaeda was heavily into the opium business. Financial
Times cites a study by Simon Reeve, a London journalist, that claims
that by early 1999 bin Laden earning up to $1 billion a year from
Afghan opium.

http://specials.ft.com/attackonterrorism/FT3FJ5RJMUC.html

Ptech was able to install software in clients like the White House,
the FAA, the Air Force, and the IRS despite the fact that one of its
founding financiers, Yassin al-Qadi, had been under FBI investigation
as a suspected terrorist financier since 1998.

Since Ptech has still not been investigated properly, despite Indira
Singh's quest, the notion that an al Qaeda business entity was able to
buy control of WTC tenants that escaped investigation doesn't seem
unreasonable. Since the presence of "explosive tenants" in the WTC
would be highly embarrassing to Marvin Bush's security company, it's
even possible that the WTC towers were blown up right in front of the
whole world and the US is covering that fact up.

[rman]

24. To create a large disaster, to muster popular support for war in Iraq.

primarily

[killtown]

29. #1 Reason: the WTC was a money loser

Here's a good article (and it's not a conspiracy article) about what i think is the #1 reason they were demo'd...

"...the so-called Twin Towers at the World Trade Center were hated by many New Yorkers, who before September 11, 2001 would have been happy if the goddamned things had never been built and after September 11th are glad that they're gone.
Built for an enormous amount of money between 1966 and 1970 by the Port Authority of the State of New York...the Twin Towers were always money-losers as rental properties and required huge subsidies (tens of millions of dollars a year) from the State of New York to remain solvent. Because all of the windows in both towers were sealed up tight...the WTC complex was ludicrously costly to heat and light. Furthermore, visiting business men and women weren't satisfied to remain within the WTC's purportedly self-sufficient universe, and wished to venture (and shop and do business) outside of it. In the 1980s, advances in information and telecommunication technologies decentralized the financial markets, which in turn "rolled back" the necessity for foreign institutions to be in close physical proximity to each other, Wall Street and the rest of lower Manhattan, which is precisely what the gigantic size and centralized location of the Twin Towers were intended to provide.
In New York City, obsolete buildings are infrequently saved, whatever their historical or architectural interest. Most often, they are simply torn down and replaced. The only thing that saved the Twin Towers from demolition was the fact that they were filled with asbestos, which would be released into the air if the buildings were destroyed by controlled explosions. In 2000, the Port Authority calculated that it would cost $1 billion -- i.e., much more money than the Port Authority could afford to spend -- to remove the asbestos before the buildings were destroyed. And so the Port Authority was stuck with the Twin Towers, that is, until 26 April 2001, when it found a consortium of business interests (Westfield America, led by Larry Silverstein, the owner of the building at 7 World Trade Center) that was willing to lease the property. Supposed to last for 99 years, the $3.2 billion lease mandated that the Port Authority continue to pay taxes on the property. "This is a dream come true," Silverstein said at the 23 July 2001 celebration of the lease's signing. "We will be in control of a prized asset, and we will seek to develop its potential, raising it to new heights."
And so, quite paradoxically, the mass-murdering hijackers who destroyed the Twin Towers by flying fully fueled passenger airplanes into them did Westfield America an immense favor. Even though Westfield America would obviously have preferred that both the planes and the buildings were unoccupied (save for the hijackers themselves) at the time that the former were used to destroy the latter, the terrorists got rid of the towers quickly, efficiently -- the towers fell down instead of over -- and in such a way that Westfield America didn't have to pay for any of it, including the asbestos, which was "removed" from the site by the wind, the rain and the search-and-rescue teams employed by the City of New York in the months after the buildings exploded, collapsed and gave off thick clouds of toxic dust." - New York Psychogeographical Association (11/30/01)

So think about it, Larry Silverstein buys a money losing complex and just six weeks later the complex is totally destroyed by the most bizarre incident and because of a coincidental clause in his insurance policy, the attacks were counted as two separate events and the court awards him double his insurance payout. Silverstein profits over a BILLION dollars from this.

See my WTC 7 "pull it" page for more info.

I also believe they were demo'd (especially the 7) to destroy sensitive documents/information.

Also, can you imagine if the planes crashed into them and they DIDN'T collapse???

:wow:

[pox americana]

30. Yep, that's what it boils down to.

And isn't it "paradoxical" that 9-11 turns out to be just another flagrantly illegal scheme to funnel capital from the public weal into the pockets of anybody with the wherewithal to keep BushCo in power.

p.s. great first post, welcome to DU!

[Ferry Fey]

33. Role of Marvin Bush's company?

"Since the presence of "explosive tenants" in the WTC would be highly embarrassing to Marvin Bush's security company" -- petgoat

What was the role of Marvin Bush's security company?

Would they have had the mandate to check the bona fides of all prospective tenants?

Or were they just in the business of supplying guys in uniforms to watch the doorways, checking burglar alarms, etc?

[SittingBull]

34. Destroying the evidence

if Operation Northwood planes were used.


At the pentagon there were no unwelcome viewers, because it's US property. Remember the missing pictures?

[musette_sf]

35. (1) destroy all evidence.

(2) kill all possible survivors with stories to tell.

(3) create huge distraction.

among many, many other things.

[petgoat]

36. Rehabilitate the image of the NYPD

which was best known for shooting unarmed citizens, sodomizing a
prisoner with a toilet plunger, and standing by and doing nothing while
a mob molested women at a parade. Buffing up the image of the police
was a necessary part to creating assent to a police state. That's
assuming state-sponsored terrorism.

A two-stage attack is a common terrorist ploy. First you explode a bomb
to cause injuries and draw rescuers; then you explode another one to get
the rescuers.