On September 11, 2001, at 5:20 PM, the 47-story World Trade Center Building 7 collapsed into its footprint, falling more than 100 feet at the rate of gravity for 2.5 seconds of its seven-second destruction.
Despite calls for the evidence to be preserved, New York City officials had the building’s debris removed and destroyed in the ensuing weeks and months, preventing a proper forensic investigation from ever taking place. Seven years later, federal investigators concluded that WTC 7 was the first steel-framed high-rise ever to have collapsed solely as a result of normal office fires.
Today, we at Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth are pleased to partner with the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) in releasing the draft report of a four-year computer modeling study of WTC 7’s collapse conducted by researchers in the university’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The UAF WTC 7 report concludes that the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11 was caused not by fire but rather by the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.
(Editor’s note: In response to reader comments, the photo illustrating this story was replaced to show Building 7. It’s an image from the ae911truth.org website.)
The leading program in Alaska for engineering at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and an organization called “Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth,” have created a partnership in an investigative study of what brought down Building 7 of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
The release of the draft report on Sept. 3 triggered a two-month public comment process.
The draft report concludes that fire did not cause the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11, contrary to the conclusions of the several national private engineering firms and the government’s National Institute of Standards and Technology.
The study concludes that the collapse of WTC 7 was instead a “global failure involving the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.” According to the study’s authors:
“The UAF research team utilized three approaches for examining the structural response of WTC 7 to the conditions that may have occurred on September 11, 2001. First, we simulated the local structural response to fire loading that may have occurred below Floor 13, where most of the fires in WTC 7 are reported to have occurred. Second, we supplemented our own simulation by examining the collapse initiation hypothesis developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Third, we simulated a number of scenarios within the overall structural system in order to determine what types of local failures and their locations may have caused the total collapse to occur as observed.”
Yesterday morning, attorneys from the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, together with more than a dozen family members of 9/11 victims, filed a petition with the interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey S. Berman, demanding that he present evidence of unprosecuted federal crimes at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, to a special grand jury.
David Meiswinkle, Esq., of the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, at a press conference on the steps of New York City Hall, holds the petition just filed with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
According to the 52-page petition, which is accompanied by 57 exhibits, federal statute requires the U.S. Department of Justice to relay citizen reports of federal crimes to a special grand jury. The unprosecuted crime alleged to have taken place on 9/11 is the bombing of a place of public use or a government facility — as prohibited under the federal bombing statute or 18 U.S.C. § 2332f — as well as a conspiracy to commit, or the aiding and abetting of, said offense.
The petition states, “The Lawyers’ Committee has reviewed the relevant available evidence . . . and has reached a consensus that there is not just substantial or persuasive evidence of yet-to-be-prosecuted crimes related to the use of pre-planted explosives and/or incendiaries . . . on 9/11, but there is actually conclusive evidence that such federal crimes were committed.”
A federal grand jury has broad powers to investigate the alleged crimes and to return an indictment for signature and prosecution by the U.S. Attorney. The petition notes, “If any crime ever warranted a full special grand jury inquiry, the mass murder of thousands on our nation’s soil on 9/11 clearly does.”
Lawyers’ Committee Executive Director Mick Harrison expressed “cautious optimism” that the U.S. Attorney would fulfill his mandatory duty to present the reported evidence to a grand jury, his optimism based on the fact that the law offers the U.S. Attorney no discretion in whether to do so. However, in the event the U.S. Attorney does not bring forth the evidence to a grand jury, Mr. Harrison said, the petitioners reserve the option of bringing a mandamus action in federal court. A mandamus action, if successful, would compel the U.S. Attorney to fulfill his legal obligation.
Bob McIlvaine, one of 15 victims’ family members who signed the petition to the U.S. Attorney, speaks at the April 10th press conference at New York City Hall following the filing of the petition.
For the time being, the Lawyers’ Committee will let the process run its course. “We intend to step back now for a reasonable time and be respectful of the confidential nature of the grand jury proceedings, although we have offered to assist in the presentation of this evidence to a special grand jury,” Mr. Harrison commented.
This will not be the first time that interim U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman has dealt with crimes that intersected with U.S. national security matters. According to The New York Times, “In 1987, Mr. Berman was hired by Lawrence E. Walsh to serve in the independent counsel’s office in Washington, which was then investigating the Iran-contra affair.” The newspaper reported that Mr. Berman “helped convict Thomas G. Clines, a former senior operative for the Central Intelligence Agency, on tax fraud charges related to the Iran-contra affair.”
However, any expectation that Mr. Berman will make good on his duty to present the reported evidence to a grand jury must be tempered by the fact that, immediately prior to his appointment as U.S. Attorney, he was a law partner of former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, whose role in destroying physical evidence of the crimes in question is well-documented. Still, the mandatory nature of the law and the redress available through a mandamus action mean it is well worth the attempt to put the evidence in front of a grand jury, in the opinion of the Lawyers’ Committee.
The Culmination of Hard Work and Collaboration with AE911Truth
The voluminous and detailed petition filed by the Lawyers’ Committee and backed by more than a dozen 9/11 family members is the culmination of years of hard work and collaboration. It all began when several attorneys who signed the AE911Truth petition started working together in 2014 and later decided to form this organization.
On the 15th anniversary of 9/11, AE911Truth and the Lawyers’ Committee held a two-day symposium called Justice In Focus at New York City’s Cooper Union. There, several expert witnesses affiliated with AE911Truth testified before a distinguished panel of attorneys representing the Lawyers’ Committee, including the late Ferdinando Imposimato, Honorary President of the Supreme Court of Italy.
Today, that testimony makes up a significant portion of the 52-page petition and 57 exhibits filed with the U.S. Attorney. Videos of the Justice In Focus symposium can be viewed in AE911Truth’s video gallery. The above-mentioned expert testimony is in the video titled “Sunday Morning Events” as well as in the videos of Dr. Leroy Hulsey and Dr. Graeme MacQueen.
Legal panelists evaluate the evidence given by more than a dozen AE911Truth technical and building professionals, who testified at the September 2016 Justice In Focus symposium.
In the year and a half since that landmark event, AE911Truth has collaborated with the Lawyers’ Committee on developing civil litigation strategies for pursuing 9/11 Justice. Most recently, AE911Truth provided technical feedback on the petition to the U.S. Attorney and conducted outreach on behalf of the Lawyers’ Committee to mobilize victims’ family members to sign the petition.
AE911Truth will follow with great interest any developments related to the pending grand jury petition and report on them as news becomes available.
In the meantime, the Lawyers’ Committee is inviting all members of the public to add their names to the grand jury petition. We heartily encourage all supporters of 9/11 Truth and Justice to visit the Lawyers’ Committee website and sign the petition, so that the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York will know that thousands of people are watching.
