The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report About 9/11 Is Unscientific and False [Paperback]

David Ray Griffin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 8, 2009

At 5:20 in the afternoon on 9/11, Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapsed, even though it had not been struck by a plane and had fires on only a few floors. The reason for its collapse was considered a mystery. In August 2008, NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) issued its report on WTC 7, declaring that "the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery" and that "science is really behind what we have said." Showing that neither of these claims is true, David Ray Griffin demonstrates that NIST is guilty of the most serious types of scientific fraud: fabricating, falsifying, and ignoring evidence. He also shows that NIST's report left intact the central mystery: How could a building damaged by fire--not explosives--have come down in free fall?

"David Ray Griffin has provided a comprehensive dismantling of NIST's theory about WTC 7, according to which it suffered global collapse because of ordinary building fires. Besides showing that NIST committed massive scientific fraud, Griffin also points out that NIST was able to complete its theory only by affirming a miracle: a steel-framed high-rise building coming down in free fall even though explosives had not been used to remove its columns."--Richard Gage, member of American Institute of Architects; founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth

"A definitive study of what happens when political concerns are permitted to override science and the scientific method. With intellectual finesse worthy of a scientist, Griffin shows that NIST's WTC 7 report has no scientific credibility. A must read for all concerned with the restoration of science to its `rightful place' in our democracy."--John D. Wyndham, Ph.D., Physics, Cambridge University; former Research Fellow at the California Institute of Technology

Editorial Reviews

Review

"David Ray Griffin has written a powerful book that asks disturbing questions and seeks to debunk myths about September 11. It is provocative, well-researched, and beyond convincing."--Rosie O'Donnell

"During my 33 years as a research physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory, it was my great joy to be able to contribute to the advancement of science without the slightest interference by NRL officials. So I was sickened to read in David Ray Griffin's assiduously researched book of unequivocal evidence for massive scientific fraud committed by a politicized NIST. I implore President Obama to end the subversion of science at NIST and open a new, unfettered, investigation of the 9/11 attacks." --David L. Griscom, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Physical Society

"If you consider it important that the US government's science agencies provide truthful information to the public, this book by David Ray Griffin is a must read. It shows beyond a shadow of doubt that NIST's report on the `collapse' of WTC 7 did not tell us the truth." --Dwain Deets, former Director for Research Engineering at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center

Review

"During my 33 years as a research physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory, it was my great joy to be able to contribute to the advancement of science without the slightest interference by NRL officials. So I was sickened to read in David Ray Griffin's assiduously researched book of unequivocal evidence for massive scientific fraud committed by a politicized NIST. I implore President Obama to end the subversion of science at NIST and open a new, unfettered, investigation of the 9/11 attacks."--David L. Griscom, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Physical Society

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Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Olive Branch Pr (September 8, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566567866
• ISBN-13: 978-1566567862
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #188,412 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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143 of 151 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars WTC7: The definitive "must read" analysis of the U.S. Federal Government cover-up September 9, 2009

By E. Woodworth

Format:Paperback

Many people are unaware that at 5:20 PM on September 11th, a third massive building in the World Trade Center complex suddenly and inexplicably collapsed at free-fall speed into its own footprint.

"Seven", a handsome 47-storey steel-frame building constructed in 1987, stood about 300 feet north of the North Tower. Though other buildings in the complex stood closer to the towers and were damaged by falling debris, none were structurally obliterated and reduced to the neat pile of rubble that was the strange destiny of this monolithic structure. (It's rapid, mysterious straight-down collapse is commonly featured on youtube and Google video.)

WTC7 had the dimensions of a football field and would have defined the skyline in any city but New York or Hong Kong.

Early attempts were made by insurance companies, and by the Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA), to explain this unprecedented global collapse of a steel-frame high rise building. Meanwhile, NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, toiled away for seven years at finding inputs for its computer simulations that would show how office fires could bring down a steel building.

Professor Griffin's book is the history and refutation of the fluctuating and self-contradictory explanations which emerged through a series of interim NIST studies and which culminated in its final 729-page report in November 2008. NIST's conclusion: WTC7 was the first steel-frame building in history to be structurally demolished by fire alone.

The contortions required to put a scientific face on this claim were ludicrous in the extreme.... In order to exclude the possibility of a controlled demolition, it was necessary to overlook a great deal of prima facie physical evidence which attended the collapse. Several television anchors covering the scene on 9/11 had commented that, in Dan Rather's words, "Amazing, incredible, pick your word. For the third time today, it's reminiscent of those pictures we've all seen too much on television before, where a building was deliberately destroyed by well-placed dynamite to knock it down."

Dan Rather's comments were supported by photographic and video evidence of horizontal squibs emanating from the windows, and of a vertical row of windows blown out just as the building started to collapse.

Berkeley Professor Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl's reported that a steel I-beam from WTC 7 had been partially vaporized - a phenomenon which required heat (over 5,000 degrees F.) far exceeding the temperatures NIST projected from a jet-fueled hydrocarbon fire causing office contents to burn.

The "New York Times" had referred to the extremely thin melted steel, with holes like Swiss cheese, as the "deepest mystery" about WTC 7. Such evidence was simply left out of the NIST report: what NIST was unable to contort, it simply overlooked.

These are but two of many physical anomalies, including molten iron running like lava beneath the buildings, and beams pulled from the rubble weeks later, dripping molten steel, which the NIST reports left out, and which Dr. Griffin has documented from written reports and eyewitness accounts.

There is also strongly suppressed testimonial evidence. That the British Government would use its broadcaster, the BBC, to make, and then remake within 3 months, two nearly identical documentaries on WTC 7, is evidence that a great deal hangs on the public perception of this building's demise. If Seven fell to reports of explosions and therefore controlled demolition, which is what the BBC attempts to refute, then Britain's ally the United States would have some serious explaining to do on the world stage.

The story of Barry Jennings' suppressed evidence is certainly one for the history books, and is first told in its fullest available detail here - though much remains unanswered and should be pursued through formal investigation.

Jennings, the respected and credible emergency coordinator/deputy director of the Emergency Services Department of the New York City Housing Authority, was trapped with New York City's corporation counsel, Michael Hess, in a north-facing WTC 7 stairwell for about 90 minutes, soon after the first Tower was hit at 8:56 AM. Later that morning and afternoon, Jennings and Hess both reported clear and unmistakable evidence of horrific explosions, heat, and smoke, below their position on the 8th floor, during the time before the first tower fell at 10:28.

Hess later changed his story about the explosions, but Jennings stuck to his guns. Jennings, aged 53, whose testimony the BBC prominently challenged in both documentaries, was suddenly admitted to hospital and died in late August 2008, just days before the release of the final NIST report on Seven - and in between the two BBC documentaries. There was no obituary, and no detective has been able to pursue (let alone establish) the cause of his death.

A great strength of Griffin's book is that it explains, in layman's terms, the principles of scientific method which are normally followed in scientific investigations, and then demonstrates how the varieties of fallacious reasoning which negate these principles destroy the validity of NIST's Final Report.

Griffin's chapters are peppered with such analyses. In the end it becomes clear that the NIST report is not just invalid - it's demonstrably fraudulent in its violations of scientific method. Its computer simulations completely fail to incorporate the mass of photographic and testimonial evidence that points to evidence of controlled demolition, and much of its input data is contradicted by photographs contained in the report itself.

The 22 manifestly hollow claims supporting the fire "hypothesis" are neatly summarized at the end of the book.

In summary, the NIST Final Report on Building 7 goes far beyond incompetence: it's a defensive political document -- a travesty of the scientific method, and one which should be widely reported to the agencies which uphold the standards of scientific inquiry into truth.

This reviewer believes that it is critically important that this book be read by millions of people across the land. It is the lever that will open the can of worms underlying the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Lack of knowledge about these events is allowing an apparently misled President Obama to up the ante in Afghanistan, without meeting what should be a groundswell of public resistance. At the same time he is wasting vital resources which could be directed towards alternative energy solutions for the far more critical problem of global warming.

If enough people read this book, perhaps an impartial commission will be forced into being to truly investigate the fate of Seven, and following upon its inevitable conclusions, the fate of the Towers, which remain standing in our minds as ghostly icons of fear supporting the vastly misguided global war on terror. Read more ›

78 of 83 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Spotlight Exposing Criminal 9/11 Cover-Up by US Government Agency September 9, 2009

By Thomas C. Fletcher

Format:Paperback

In THE MYSTERIOUS COLLAPSE OF WORLD TRADE CENTER 7, David Ray Griffin provides an overwhelmingly convincing case that the latest official US government account of the events at "Ground Zero" on September 11, 2001, is false. He examines in detail the whole series of publications by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) purporting to explain the highly "mysterious" collapse of World Trade Center 7, a 47-story steel-framed skyscraper across the street from the North Tower, which was not struck by a plane and yet collapsed into its footprint, at nearly free-fall speed, shortly after 5pm that day.

That the sudden collapse of Building 7 constitutes a "mystery" is an admission of the major media and NIST itself, which for years said it was having a hard time understanding what had occurred. After a long series of preliminary attempts, admitting that a full explanation had not been achieved, NIST issued its "Final Report" in November 2008, claiming to present a scientifically-verified and complete account of the causes of the building's collapse. As critics of the ever-changing official explanations point out, however, the "mystery" is the result of failure by government and media to consider the most likely explanation, one that accords with a vast amount of physical and testimonial evidence, which is that the building was brought down by controlled demolition.

As Griffin brilliantly demonstrates throughout this powerful indictment, NIST, a purportedly scientific agency of the federal government, has produced an official "explanation" that fails to follow basic scientific principles and meet established scientific standards.... The publication of its "Final Report" therefore amounts to nothing less than scientific fraud, which when committed by a federal science agency is a criminal act. Despite its claims to have produced a final, definitive, scientific report on WTC 7's collapse, NIST in fact has ignored, suppressed, or distorted all the evidence for controlled demolition, while fabricating fake "evidence" to support its own "explanation."

In the Introduction, Griffin lays out the background to NIST's "Final Report", surveying the agency's earlier "interim" reports and the evolution of its attempts to explain the "mystery." In its "Final Report", NIST abandoned its earlier claim that structural damage from debris from the North Tower was a significant cause of Building 7's collapse, asserting that the principal cause was very hot and long-lasting fires of office materials in the building set ablaze by the falling debris.

Part I of the book, "NIST's Unscientific Rejection of the Most Likely Theory," examines in six chapters the methods used by NIST to avoid considering controlled demolition as a possible explanation of the building's collapse. Controlled demolition is the most likely hypothesis because never before 9/11 had a steel-framed skyscraper collapsed due to fires. All previous instances of sudden, rapid collapse of such buildings into their footprints had been the result of intentional, controlled demolition using explosives. As Griffin demonstrates in Part 1, a very large amount of physical and testimonial evidence supporting the "most likely hypothesis" exists, and it was all ignored, dismissed, or distorted by the authors of the "Final Report."

In Chapter 1, "NIST as a Political, Not a Scientific, Agency," Griffin shows that NIST, as an agency of the Commerce Department, was under tight political control by the Bush administration. He quotes from a whistleblower from the agency who described in detail how political appointees in the "front office" vetted every scientific statement issued by NIST, and how the statements were then vetted by "the HQ staff of the Department of Commerce," the National Security Agency and the Office of Management and Budget.

In Chapter 2, "Some Principles of Scientific Method," Griffin begins by considering what constitutes scientific fraud, and then distinguishes between scientific fraud in the strict sense and in a broader sense. Scientific fraud in the strict sense has been committed by NIST if it can be shown that i) the agency has fabricated evidence to support its claims; ii) that it has falsified evidence; or iii) that it has ignored relevant evidence. Scientific fraud in the broader sense has been committed by NIST if it can be shown that it violated further scientific principles, including these: extra-scientific considerations should not be allowed to determine conclusions; an investigation should begin with the most-likely hypothesis; straw-man arguments should be avoided; unprecedented causes should not, without good reasons, be posited to explain familiar occurrences; and scientists should not make claims implying that laws of nature have been violated.

In Chapter 3, "NIST's Refusal to Begin with the Most Likely Hypothesis," Griffin establishes that the most likely hypothesis to consider in attempting to explain the collapse of WTC 7 must be that it was brought down by controlled demolition using explosives, for two reasons. First, no steel-framed skyscraper prior to 9/11 had ever collapsed for any reason other than demolition; on 9/11, however, and in one small area, three such buildings came down, purportedly due to fires, and in the case of the Twin Towers, additional damage caused by airliner impacts. (In his earlier book, DEBUNKING 9/11 DEBUNKING, Griffin has already demonstrated that NIST's "explanation" for the disintegration and fall of the towers does not stand up to rational scrutiny.) Second, the collapse of WTC 7 "exemplified many of the signature features of the type of controlled demolition known as implosion": the collapse started from the bottom and was sudden and total, the building came straight down and fell at close to free-fall speed, its concrete was pulverized to dust, and the debris pile was relatively small (p. 27). When fires result in "high-order damage," evidenced by shattered structures, pulverized debris, and significant lateral ejections of material, guidelines established by the National Fire Protection Association in its "Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations" mandate official agencies to investigate the possibility of explosives, but NIST never undertook any such investigation.

In Chapter 4, "NIST's Ignoring of Physical Evidence for Explosives," Griffin lays out the physical evidence suggesting that the building was brought down by controlled demolition: video evidence of "squibs" of smoke and pulverized material blown laterally out of the building as it collapsed; a vertical row of blown-out windows from the 29th to the 37th floors, unexplainable by NIST's account; molten metal in the debris under the building; an array of scientific reports of extremely high temperatures, far above the temperatures which could be reached by fires burning in office materials, as proposed by NIST; thinning and sulfidation of steel recovered from the building; extreme heat and unusual emissions at the collapse site for months afterwards; and red/gray chips found in dust from the building's collapse, which on analysis by independent researchers Steven Jones, Kevin Ryan, Niels Harrit, and others, proved to be nanothermitic, derived from a very advanced type of explosive. NIST in its "Final Report" failed to take any of this evidence into account, simply pretending it did not exist.

In Chapter 5, "NIST's Ignoring of Testimonial Evidence for Explosives," Griffin first reviews NIST's prior ignoring of testimonial evidence for explosions in the Twin Towers before their disintegration. He then presents in detail a wide array of testimonial evidence supporting the most-likely hypothesis, implosion. These testimonies came from credible witnesses, including a New York Daily News reporter and a New York Police Department officer located outside the building before it came down, who heard explosions inside it; detailed accounts from two high-level NYC employees, Barry Jennings and Michael Hess, of their experiences inside the building that morning, where they heard and felt large explosions before the Twin Towers had collapsed; testimonies, again from highly credible witnesses, to foreknowledge of the building's collapse; premature television reports that the building had come down, before it had actually collapsed; and even witnesses to Fire Department of New York personnel announcing that the building was going to be "brought down." Griffin shows that NIST either ignored this evidence or went to great lengths to distort it by constructing an elaborate false chronology of the testimonial evidence which it could not simply ignore.

In Chapter 6, "NIST's Straw-Man Arguments against Explosives," Griffin analyzes the reasons presented by NIST for its refusal to investigate the possibility that explosives were responsible for WTC 7's destruction. He shows that they employed "straw-man" arguments based on highly-implausible scenarios for the types and quantities of explosives used and then argued that these scenarios are ... implausible! The principal scenario NIST focused on, needless to say, was not one that has been proposed by any actual independent researchers as a plausible one. Griffin then shows that high-level personnel at NIST, including four directors from 2001 to 2008 as well as key advisors to the agency, had extensive professional involvement with and expertise in the technology of nanothermitic materials, the very type of explosive proposed by independent researchers as most likely to have been used on 9/11. Indeed, as Griffin details, NIST is engaged in partnerships with academic and federal government research units around the country to develop nanothermitic technologies.

In Part II, "NIST's Unscientific Arguments for Its Own Theory," Griffin dissects the arguments made by the agency in putting its own "explanation" forward. He shows in detail the failure of the authors of the "Final Report" to adhere to standard scientific principles, including their failure to base their analysis on empirical facts and physical tests (preferring "black box" computer models in which any parameter can be tweaked until the desired result is obtained), their distorting of data or fabrication of "data," and their failure to eliminate glaring internal contradictions within their arguments.

In Chapter 7, "NIST's Theory of an Unprecedented Collapse: an Overview," Griffin provides an overview of the complex theory promulgated by NIST. He first explores NIST's claim that the collapse of the building was unprecedented. NIST makes this claim implicitly in advancing its own candidate for the principal causal mechanism, thermal expansion of steel from office-materials fires. Because there is no known prior case in which thermal expansion of steel caused a steel-framed skyscraper to collapse, but there are many cases of implosion of such buildings, NIST's proposal raises the question whether it violated the scientific principle to avoid invoking unprecedented causes to explain familiar occurrences. Then Griffin surveys the major features of the NIST "explanation" to orient the reader for the detailed discussion in following chapters.

In Chapter 8, "The Initiation and Spread of Fires: NIST's Unempirical Account," Griffin examines closely NIST's claim that the fires in WTC 7 started as a result of the rain of debris which hit the building when the North Tower disintegrated and fell. He shows that NIST's claims that fires in the building started at this time (10:28 am) are unsubstantiated, and that the fires therefore could not have burned for as long as NIST contended they did. He points out that NIST itself admitted that most of the fires in the building may have started quite a bit later in the day, in the middle and late afternoon, and thus have burned for less than three hours and even as little as 40 minutes.

In Chapter 9, "Fire and Steel Temperatures: Implausible Claims Based on Distorted Data," Griffin shows that NIST's claims regarding the temperatures reached by the fires themselves and the steel structure of the building exposed to those fires are both wildly exaggerated. This extreme overestimation was made possible by the use of computer models, which were manipulated by NIST "investigators" to achieve the desired result (the agency had used the same method in its earlier reports on the destruction of the Twin Towers). There is in fact no evidence to support the fire temperatures or the fire durations claimed by NIST. In a similar manner, NIST "simulated" the temperatures reached by the steel structure of the building, and claimed wildly implausible temperatures for which there is no actual evidence, based on the assumption (contrary to fact) that steel has no thermal conductivity!

In Chapter 10, "From Thermal Expansion to Global Collapse: Fabrications and Contradictions," Griffin shreds the last pillar of NIST's account: its claim that thermal expansion of steel floor beams and girders caused "global collapse." He shows that this claim is based on highly implausible assumptions, outright fabrications, denial of the existence of structural elements that did in fact exist, and fabrication of a "differential thermal expansion" result from its computer simulations by modeling heating of the steel beams but not of the floor slabs! Griffin delivers the coup de grace by showing that NIST was forced to admit that WTC 7 did indeed fall at free-fall speed for more than two seconds during its collapse, which would only be possible if all resistance to the fall had been eliminated by removal of the lower portion of the building by explosives. This demonstrates that NIST has resorted to a miraculous "explanation" of the collapse of Building 7, in which no explosives were used and yet free-fall still occurred, and has thus violated the scientific principles of non-contradiction and impermissability of claims implying that laws of nature have been violated.

In the "Conclusion," Griffin summarizes the many ways in which standard principles of scientific investigation were violated by NIST in its "Final Report." On this basis, he concludes that the Report is false, and then discusses the implications of this fact. The only possible conclusion is that WTC 7 was demolished "by domestic terrorists with the ability to plant explosives in it and then to orchestrate a cover-up" (p. 255). If this is true of Building 7, it must be true as well of the Twin Towers. When these conclusions are drawn, it is clear that the entire basis and pretext for the ongoing war in Afghanistan (and now Pakistan) is false. Muslims did not bring down these buildings. The events of 9/11 were quite simply the largest, most heinous false-flag operation of all time.

THE MYSTERIOUS COLLAPSE OF WORLD TRADE CENTER 7 by David Ray Griffin is an epoch-making book, of tremendous importance for our future. Griffin has shone a spotlight on the Achilles' heel of the US government's account of 9/11. NIST's failure to defend the official story of the collapse of WTC 7 lays bare the weak spot that will make it possible for us to bring this monster down and stop the wars of aggression abroad and the growing police-state at home. You owe it to your country and the world to read this book. Read more ›

70 of 76 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Weakest Link in the Implausible Official Story September 14, 2009

By Joel S. Hirschhorn

Format:Paperback

As a former professor of metallurgical engineering and senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment my only complaint is that I did not write this superb book. Once again David Ray Griffin has demonstrated his first class analytical capabilities. His intellectual achievements give remarkable credibility to the 9/11 truth movement that I proudly support. I too have long argued that the unusual collapse of WTC 7 more than any other event on 9/11 provides proof positive that the official story still supported by the government, nearly all of the mainstream media and far too many Americans is surely a fraud, a lie and a shameful historic blot in American history. How people can still condemn 9/11 truthers for believing that the US government in some way had a hand in creating the 9/11 tragedy is even more mind boggling than the official story itself. This book should be required reading in every American school. Here is the really big and critical question: Will the mainstream media give this newest Griffin book the attention it so richly deserves? I fear not. Any true pursuit of justice must look backward and accept the possibility of terribly painful findings. If President Obama truly believed in pursuing justice he would not only read this book but more importantly use his powers to get a new, comprehensive and credible investigation of 9/11. Does Obama have the integrity to do this? I fear not.

40 of 44 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars NO MYSTERY HERE, FOLKS........ September 11, 2009

By David R. Wayne

Format:Paperback

There is no mystery here because highly respected historian David Ray Griffin spells it oud loud and clear for all who dare to hear--

1. No airplane hit WTC 7 on 9-11 (there was no burning jet fuel so do not even go there!).

2. WTC 7 collapsed symmetrically into its own footprint in precisely the manner of controlled demolition, because it was controlled demolition.

3. A well-orchestrated cover-up immediately obfuscated the above facts. What else can it be called when CNN and BBC both announce that the building collapsed before the event actually took place?

There is much, much more. You owe it to yourself to read this one, cover-to-cover!