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Journalistic Honesty , and Telling People What They Want To Hear.

posted 16 years ago by mothmancold
10 replies | jump to latest

So a while back i was shown this documentary by a friend of mine. And i gave it any and all chances that i could give something, but this movie was one of the worst examples of dishonesty in media ever.

But somehow it has managed to become insanely popular, which boggles my mind.

But then again, telling people what they want to hear beats out prostitution as the worlds oldest profession. So i shouldn't really be surprized.

And the problem is in regards to 9/11 the only real explination is telling people something they have been trying to avoid hearing from the dawn of time.

Life is both random and violent, and no matter how well designed something is, there is always the ability for it to fail.

People like to think we are eternal, and that we can make ' fool proof' things. From buildings to morals, this is completely untrue, and though that is a scary thought, you can't just ignore it. And you certainly can't just bury it under tons of conspiracy theories.

Now instead of going through on a point by point basis, i am simply going to adress a few main problems the film itself has. If you would like an in depth analysis of the film i suggest.

http://www.loosechangeguide.com/LooseChangeGuide.html

So first i would like to discuss the lack of sources , or context for just about every quote the film uses.

This film has an insane habit of throwing out many many quotes on screen with no context, nor sourcing of the quote itself. This is a huge red flag to journalistic dishonesty. Why would they feel the need to omit such information? And more to the point, why would they not feel the need to put the quotes on screen for an appropriate amount of time, instead of just trying to overwhelm people with as many as they can bust out in 30 seconds?

And the quotes themselves serve more to villify, or pimp out than to provide any actual information. And quotes that are meant to be taken as scientific evidence, are given very little supporting information.

Really the entire film comes off as a drunk trying to argue, it yells a point as loud as it can, with little care to if the claims it is making are factual or simply opinion.

Now a good example of this is the quote from the film

"Newsweek reports that a number of top Pentagon brass cancel their flight plans for the next morning. "

( it would due well to note that the film itself infers that this report happened on 09/10/01, but the report was from 09/24/01.)

Yes, 14 days later, there was an article about WOMD's that mentioned that some pentagon officials had cancelled thier travel plans. The officials were never named, nor were the airlines, or even if they were planning on taking a plane.

And another problem is data mining , the producers go through huge reports, in efforts to find any information that seems it COULD have a connection to 9/11.

For example this quote ( which btw, is out of a multiple page report)

"the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."

This is in reference to military spending in experimental areas, a' la star wars. But that is never mentioned, the quote is just left out there in order to make people think about pearl harbor and 9/11 at the same time.

If one reads the full report, it is quite obvious that it is talking about the lack of spending for new military advancements. And the reasons for this, such as the general lack of large conflicts, or any real reason to change or update military technology.

For f sakes people, of course when taken out of context certain quotes are spooky. But that is why the context needs to be given.

And as a final point on this, if the military wants money for new weapons research, what is the last thing they would want to do?

Show that the enemy isn't updating their tactics or wasting money on advanced weapons, just using the same old, find something big and explosive and ram it somewhere unpleasent tactics.

Which brings me to my second major flaw in this film.

Assuming at the same time that there is this giant conspiracy, perpretrated by people who were more devious and intellegent than the government has ever seen ( remember even in the corrupt as hell nixon era, someone found out, without the internet, without a cell phone camera every 2 feet, the entire plan fell to s hi te ) yet, these same people were rock stupid enough to leave all of this ' evidence' around for people to find, YET not enough evidence for anyone to trace it back.

Come on. Think of what this is enforcing as ideals.

the government is an all controlling power capable of nearly perfect plans, yet there is always a way for the common man to find this out and bring it to light.

So we have the safety of the government being omnipotent , and the ego stroke of us being able to trump them.

Who wouldn't want to hear that? Off the top of my head it is the basic plot of

David and goliath

the matrix

Soylent green

I could go on and on, but you get the gist. And it is obvious it is no coincidence that the purveyors of this film used a tried and true moral to create a phenomena. Their hook was that the hero is not some fictional charecter, but the viewer, who is now one of the people who can see the truth.

Which of course means the complete lack of evidence is a part of the conspiracy, not evidence that there wasn't one.

Now my third gripe is the simple factual innacuracies. Sure some have been removed, but they shouldn't have been in there in the first place. It is the responsibility of the maker of a documentary to make sure what they are saying is fact. And even moreso if the subject matter of the documentary is controversial.

By all means if you think you have evidence, present it, but when you don't take the basic steps needed to ensure your evidence is correct, well you are either a moron, or simply trying to spin some bull to people.

Prime example is the quote that John Ashcroft stated taking private jets due to a threat assesment from the fbi.

First, he did not simply take chartered jets everywhere, only on buisness excursions the rest of the time he used normal jets.

And somehow the makers of the film could not find this info? I can't really believe that. If they found that he stopped taking the jets they were looking at the same transcript i was , and if they looked down a few inches they would see that the statement that he stopped taking comercial jets, is simply false.

Another great example of this is bin ladens supposed medical care at the american hospital in dubai. This is a report that ahs no confirmation and in fact the only evidence for it is in a french newspaper by a source that will not reveal themselves.

Then we get to the bomb sniffing dogs. This is by far my favorite claim in the film, and it even had me thinking " wow that is very strange. ".

What they neglect to mention is bomb sniffing dogs were not commonplace, and were only brought in two weeks prior due to bomb threats. Same with the extra security working 12 hour shifts.

And then we come to the audio they use, If your an audiophile like myself, you have noted that the audio all sounds.... funky. Like it has been edited.

As a specific example

" Hi, Boston Center TMU, we have a problem here. We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York. And we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out."
NORAD Command " Is this real or exercise? "

" No, this is not exercise, not a test. "

" Do we wanna think about scrambling an aircraft? "

This is two seperate conversations spliced together. Not something i would expect someone with plenty of evidence to have to use.

Then there is the editing, you know as an ameteur editor, i will have to say that thier talent for editing is great. They manage to be able to pick out a lot of points of the images that give people certain impressions.

Such as not showing the south side of wtc7 , the movie manages to avoid showing this , and visually gives one the impression the towers were solid untill the moment of collapse.

(I am sure everyone reading this has watched enough westerns to know this trick, two gunfighters draw two shots are heard, we see what looks to be the victorious man from behind. And it isn't untill we see the other side of him that we know he is hurt. )

It is a basic editing trick, except the twist is never showing the other side, inventive, but dishonest.

Then they use a much more ham fisted technique, where theys imply crop off people's audio to only talk about the side that didn't look damaged.

Two words, exit wound. A bullet shaped object goes in easy, comes out hard.

I mean FFS people, firefighters were told not to even bother with WTC7 very quickly because of how obvious the damage was.

Finally i would like to adress the experts they bring in.

When they bother to quote thier sources it is painfully obvious they are just picking the first wingnut to rally to the cause.

[–] MasterShake_2015 16 years ago

Very nicely written, always liked this one...

Avery loves this one and as the Popular Mechanics guys said, they cite things from the first few days and ignore the rest, I wish they would have nailed Avery on this..

"Miller was among the very first to arrive after 10:06 on the magnificently sunny morning of September 11. Once he was able to absorb the scene, Miller says, "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there were no bodies there. It became like a giant funeral service."
Thousands of people -- the locals estimate up to 1,000 a week -- have arrived at an old coal-mining access trail called Skyline Road, where finally they can see what remains of Flight 93: nothing. "There's not really much to it, is there?" Wally Miller often says to families and other visitors who are bewildered by what they don't see.

BUT OF COURSE THEY DON’T QUOTE MILLER AFTER THE HOLE EXCAVATION…..

Immediately after the crash, the seeming absence of human remains led the mind of coroner Wally Miller to a surreal fantasy: that Flight 93 had somehow stopped in mid-flight and discharged all of its passengers before crashing. "There was just nothing visible," he says. "It was the strangest feeling." It would be nearly an hour before Miller came upon his first trace of a body part." - Washington Post (05/12/02)

Although he downplayed his own role in the case of Flight 93, Miller’s involvement was well documented by the media.
“As coroner, responsible for returning human remains, Miller has been forced to share with the families information that is unimaginable,” reported The Washington Post. “[T]he 33 passengers, seven crew and four hijackers together weighed roughly 7,000 pounds. They were essentially cremated together upon impact. Hundreds of searchers who climbed the hemlocks and combed the woods for weeks were able to find about 1,500 mostly scorched samples of human tissue totaling less than 600 pounds, or about eight percent of the total.”
http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=21155

Andromeda KKKs – The Eva Braun for a New Millennium!

[–] mothmancold 16 years ago

Thanks. I am glad you brought up the flight 93 thing.

The part that really irks me about this movie is that it just lies bold faced, no apologies.

I mean everyone expects a bit of fudging in any opinionated documentary. It happens, and is nothing to get too worked up about. And usually fudged info is easy to spot, in cotrast to the real info.

Now at first glance, my reaction was " okay, so all of this s hi t is said very matter of factly. and they are using real organizations and people. So i will wait till the end and check out the sources. "

And i watched with an open mind and some ' facts ' actually seemed reasonable.

Untill you look into them ..... at all.

Honestly i have seen a lot of biased things in my time. I love watching things from people who don't share my opinion, no other way to learn how to debate really. But usually when i look into it later, i find most of the facts were at least technically correct, or any glaring errors are things that could be missed reasonably. But this was just a bunch of data mining, propaganda, and ham fisted editing techniques.

That worked really well.

Honestly i have to give them credit, they manage to play to the conspiricy nut in all of us.

Personally i have always thought something wierd was up with flight 93. And when they went on about nothing being found, and all that stuff, my critical thinking was bound and gagged for a bit.

( now don't get me wrong, i simply thought something was wierd, maybe that it was shot at by the government or something. Not that there was any huge conspiriacy)

But a small amount of research not only disproved thier crap, but managed to change my opinion as well.

I am just awed by the sheer dishonesty of this documentary, and how this sleazy piece of garbage manages to get away with simply making crap up as it goes along. I am all about free speech, especially considering most of my views are not what most of society thinks, but lying and trying to hide behind free speech is degrading to the entire concept of free speech.

If i could say one think to the collection of putz's that made this, entertainment is entertainment and facts are facts. But trying to use entertainment to attempt to prove incorrect facts, and outright lies is scuzzy, and belittles the art of the documentary.

[–] MasterShake_2015 16 years ago

I totally agree with everything you said, it's not slanted or biased as many are (which much as you say, bias with at least honesty is informative, it sharpens and clarifies ones point, or may even challenge it, even though it is tipped in one sides favor).

LC unfortunately is a insult to intellectuals on all sides, an insult to the Bush administration (I'm a Liberal and don't like our president at all but one must remain honest to retain creditability) and an insult to the families as it just stirs the pot with falsehoods.

----------------------------

On the United 93 part in the early days I thought it was possible, till I found out the CT'ers mapquested the two points of the debris field which led to a 8 mile debris field, BECAUSE IT TOOK A ROAD AROUND THE LAKE. The debris field was a bit over a mile and other than a turbine at 300 years (a two second bounce at the speed the plane hit the ground) it was all light paper and such that blew out the tail as the nose crushed. Anything with any weight with very slight exceptions was in the pit.

For whatever it is worth, I have be debunking this crap for a few years here and since it is always the same claims, saved much of my posts in cut and paste.

Preaching to the choir. FYI

------------------------------

95 percent of Untied 93 was recovered

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/24/inv.pennsylvania.site/index.html
United 93 plane parts and passenger articles.

http://www.911myths.com/html/flight_93_photos.html

http://www.chasingthefrog.com/reelfaces/united93/planepart1.jpg

http://www.chasingthefrog.com/reelfaces/united93/debris1.jpg

http://www.chasingthefrog.com/reelfaces/united93/debris2.jpg

http://www.chasingthefrog.com/reelfaces/united93/personaleffects_lg.jp g

http://www.chasingthefrog.com/reelfaces/united93/talignani_license.jpg

The hemlocks caught fire. The jet fuel pooled. The wind played with paper scraps: a Bible page, some bank-machine receipts, the corner of a business card.
Fox stepped over a seat back. He saw a wiring harness, and a piston. None of the other pieces was bigger than a TV remote.

He saw three chunks of torn human tissue. He swallowed hard.
"You knew there were people there, but you couldn't see them," he says, home now, the kids playing in the background. "You try not to let it sink into you too much."

He'd assumed it was an accident. A Cessna, maybe. A spark in the fuel tank. A stuck rudder. He didn't connect it to the other planes, still crashing on cable TV.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_90823.html

In the grisly accounting of a jetliner crash, it comes down to pounds: The people on Flight 93 weighed a total of about 7,500 pounds. Miller supervised an intensive effort to gather their remains, some flung hundreds of yards. In the end, just 600 pounds of remains were collected; of these, 250 pounds could be identified by DNA testing and returned to the families of the passengers and crew.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/dave_barry/3972 571.ht

The remains and belongings of 40 people who died when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a western Pennsylvania field Sept. 11 will be returned to their survivors, the county coroner said.

Officials identified remains through fingerprints, dental records and DNA. They had been stored at a temporary morgue in Somerset.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/02/26/national/main502203.shtml

Those items, such as a wedding ring and other jewelry, photos, credit cards, purses and their contents, shoes, a wallet and currency, are among seven boxes of identified personal effects salvaged from the site. They sit in an El Segundo, Calif., mortuary and will be returned to victims' families in February.

"We have some property for most passengers," said Craig Hendrix, a funeral coordinator and a personal effects administrator with Douglass Air Disaster Funeral Coordinators, a company often contacted by airlines after devastating crashes.

Since receiving the personal effects of Flight 93 passengers from the FBI in early November, Douglass has been preparing the items for return. For example, about two weeks ago, FBI agents presented the wedding ring and wallet of passenger Andrew Garcia to his wife, Dorothy, in Portola Valley, Calif.

Around Thanksgiving, Jerry and Beatrice Guadagno of Ewing, N.J., received word that their son Richard's credentials and badge from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had been found by the FBI at the crash site.
"It was practically intact," Richard's sister, Lori, said of the credentials, which were returned in their wallet. "It just looked like it wasn't damaged or hadn't gone through much of anything at all, which is so bizarre and ironic.

Hendrix said the personal effects that survived the crash were ejected from the plane at the moment of impact.

http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011230flight931230p3.asp

WING MARKS
http://physics911.ca/gallery2/d/7325-6/pacrash.jpg

Andromeda KKKs – The Eva Braun for a New Millennium!

[–] mothmancold 16 years ago

You hit on something i just started to think about this weekend.

( after a trip to niagra falls, which has either graffitti, or stickers going on about 9/11 being an inside job, about every 20 feet. )

I am a liberal as well as a canadian who hates the way the united states is ran. But everytime i start questioning this stuff to others who believe this, i am suddenly accused of being some conservative lover of americanisim.

No, i simply pride myself on reaching my conclisions through evidence. Not through the majority opinion of people who think the way i do.

I mean sure, i would love to be able to say that the united states did this, it would give me a lot of ammo when ripping on them. But i can't simply stop researching because i found someone who has a media presence and is showing something that would be beneficial to my way of thinking.

I hear so many people going on about how anyone who dons't think it was a conspiracy is just being spoonfed, or giving into some fear of reprisal ( hunter s thompson, one of my major influences made comments to this effect. ) , which is simply false.

The problem is that liberals have been seeing the conservatives screw up so much that when they have an accusation leveled at them, how a huge portion of us are simply assuming it is correct, and trying to find evidence of it, as oppossed to doing unbiased research into the facts of the case.

It is simply part of a startling trend for liberalisim to be more about shocking people and pissing people off than helping people, or finding truth. In fact i would venture to state i am noticing a huge streak of dogmatisim in a large portion of my fellow liberals. The dogma being, if it can be pinned on a conservative, pin it.

Instead of embodying the values of progress and reform, it now seems to be a case of fighting fire with fire, using the same type of lies that we have been hearing from them to try and sully thier reputation. But that is the reason we want reform, so that politics do not have to be filled with lies and b.s.

My motto is that there is only so much pounding ones head against a wall that a person can do. Meaning, that stale ideas that show no promise shouldn't be adheared to due to tradition. But the problem is, one still has to research large events on a case by case basis.

I mean if the conservatives try to implement a policy that i don't like, sure i am going to laugh it off. And probably not give it much thought, from thier past actions i can get a good guage of what they want to do and why they want to do it.

But to pin a tragedy on them, just because someone who tries to seem underground and controversial says to? That is b.s. plain and simple especially when the group claiming it ( at the VERY least in this casE) is obviously just an attention/money craving organization.

I mean to boil down my opinion to its basest form.

If i could find evidence i would pin the common cold on consevatives in general. I like to see them twist in the wind. But i am not about to listen to some ass hole in a tinfoil hat just so i can. Just because i hate a certain way of thinking, dosn't mean that anyone who disagrees with them is right, that is promoting everything i hate.

[–] samsan_lee 16 years ago

"Life is both random and violent, and no matter how well designed something.."

Follow the money. There were put options on both United and American Airlines, Silverstein made millions, the defense contractors made millions.

One equation;

How much would CACI, Titan, KBR, Haliburton, Blackwater (the real danger to America via FEMA) and Carlyle Group have made if THERE WERE NO Iraq War?

use your common sense. They needed an event to whip up the public to go to war. SEC Stockwatch had cases on several companies which were conveniently destroyed when the "pulled" WTC 7....they had to retrofit the buildings due to Asbestos...what better way than to demolish it?

How much did they have before the war, how much did they make after the war?

"The bigger the lie, the more they believe it"
-Goebbels

[–] MasterShake_2015 16 years ago

Follow the money. There were put options on both United and American Airlines

Yes, A major public profit loss warning was issued and more put options had been exercised earlier in the year, so!

Insight reported that there were repeated spikes in put options on American Airlines during the year before Sept. 11 (June 19 with 2,951 puts, June 15 with 1,144 puts, April 16 with 1,019 and Jan. 8 with 1,315 puts). In the same period, United Airlines had slightly more action (Aug. 8 with 1,678 puts, July 20 with 2,995, April 6 with 8,212 and March 13 with 8,072).
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/6/2/62018.shtml

So it seems the American trades were the highest they'd been in the previous year (assuming the 4,516 figure it correct), although there may be reasons for that (see elsewhere). The United Airlines trades were less than half the spikes in April and March, though, suggesting they weren't as unusual as some people claim.

And that raises a problem for another aspect of this story, a claim originated by Mike Ruppert and retold here by David Ray Griffin:

These purchases were for two and only two airlines: American, and United, the two airlines whose planes were used in the attacks. And also, for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, which occupied 22 storeys of the World Trade Centre. The price of these shares did of course plummet after 9/11. As the San Francisco Chronicle said, "these unusual purchases, which resulted in profits of at least tens of millions of dollars, raise suspicions than the investors had advance knowledge of the strikes".

For our purposes, the most important implication of this story follows from the fact that US intelligence agencies monitor the market looking for signs of imminent, untoward events. These extraordinary purchases therefore would have suggested to intelligence agencies that in the next few days, United and American airliners were going to be used in attacks on the World Trade Centre. That is fairly specific knowledge.
http://www.911blogger.com/2005/04/proper-release-of-griffin-in-madison.html

This is applying hindsight in a fairly dramatic manner, and it’s also leaving out crucial information: the American puts followed the trading day after the company had released a major profit warning, when you’d expect investors to believe the shares had further to fall, and the United Airlines trade volumes were lower than the spikes that occurred in March and April. If a United Airlines spike of 8,072 in March didn’t suggest an imminent attack, then why should 3,150 puts in September have any more effect?

THIS IS TIGER-http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/154422/?tag=Cartman

[–] MasterShake_2015 16 years ago

Silverstein made millions, the defense contractors made millions.

WRONG!

Silverstein lost 2.5 billion.

In its court papers, Swiss Re shows how Silverstein first tried to buy just $1.5 billion in property damage and business-interruption coverage. When his lenders objected, he discussed buying a $5 billion policy. Ultimately, he settled on the $3.5 billion figure, which was less than the likely cost of rebuilding.

http://www.forbes.com/2003/09/11/cx_da_0911silverstein.html

The actual court ruling awarded Silverstein 2.2 Billion, not factoring in attorneys fees. CREDIT TO JINGPAW,. THANKS!
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Larry-Silverstein-WTC6dec04.htm

And of course this isn't profit for Silverstein. The money is being provided for him to rebuild the WTC complex, and it turns out that's quite expensive ($6.3 billion in April 2006

$2.2 billion in insurance money, $6.3 billion in costs?

Silverstein Properties and the Port Authority continue to be guided by a lease each signed six weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The lease stipulates that should the complex be destroyed, Silverstein must continue to pay the $120 million a year rent in order to maintain the right to rebuild. Mr. Silverstein has tried to persuade the Port Authority that his closely held company is capable of rebuilding while meeting its massive rent payments. The rent is currently being paid from insurance proceeds, draining the amount available for rebuilding.
www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Larry-Silverstein-WTC6dec04.htm

$120 million dollars a year? So in the five years between the attacks and that article being written, Silverstein has paid out over $600 million on rent alone

6.3 billion in costs, 600 million in rent for ground with no building or revenue, almost 7 Billion in cost and 2.2 Billion in a insurance payout,

In a recent settlement the Port Authority agreed to pay half of the rebuilding cost which results in…..
A loss of about 2.5 billion for Larry Silverstein what a moneymaker!

The World Trade Centre
The super cracks it

May 24th 2007 | NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition
At long last, the developer and the insurers reach a deal

Eyevine

“I DON'T think anyone thought it would ever end,” said Eric Dinallo, New York state's insurance superintendent. But it has. In the early hours of May 23rd, seven insurance companies that had been refusing to pay out on claims related to the World Trade Centre site agreed to hand over $2 billion to bring the saga to a close. It was, they said, the largest single settlement in the history of the industry.

The payout will be split between the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, and Larry Silverstein, its developer, who took over a 99-year lease on its buildings weeks before they were destroyed on September 11th, 2001. The deal resolves all outstanding claims over the attacks and ends more than five years of often ugly legal manoeuvring, during which the insurers accused Mr Silverstein of profiteering and he lambasted them for ducking their duty.

Mr Silverstein had contended that the attacks should be counted as two separate insurance events, entitling him to double the payout. The courts backed him, up to a point: some insurers were told they could treat it as a single incident, others as two events, depending on the phrasing of their policies. Mr Silverstein won a total of $4.68 billion in lawsuits—around two-thirds of what he had sought—but until this week had collected only $2.55 billion.

Though he pronounced himself pleased with this week's deal, he had to make concessions, such as abandoning his claim that the insurers owed more than $500m in interest accrued during the squabble. The insurers, for their part, dropped their insistence that they owed not a penny until the rebuilding was finished, probably in 2012. But it was Mr Dinallo who made it all happen. In March, after taking office, he made it a priority to break the deadlock. Meetings were convened in Delaware, Paris and Geneva, and heads banged together. New York's governor, Eliot Spitzer, helped with a final push.

Mr Spitzer hailed the settlement as being of “monumental importance”. It removes the last big obstacle to redeveloping Ground Zero, and opens the way to issue tax-free bonds and tap other sources of private financing. The entire project is expected to cost at least $9 billion. That will pay for five skyscrapers, shopping areas, a train station (already under construction) and possibly a hotel. The centrepiece will be the much-redrawn Freedom Tower, rising to a symbolic 1,776 feet.

THIS IS TIGER-http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/154422/?tag=Cartman

[–] MasterShake_2015 16 years ago

which were conveniently destroyed when the "pulled" WTC 7

On the pull it statement

"In the afternoon of September 11, Mr. Silverstein spoke to the Fire Department Commander on site at Seven World Trade Center. The Commander told Mr. Silverstein that there were several firefighters in the building working to contain the fires. Mr. Silverstein expressed his view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building."

On September 9, 2005, Mr. Dara McQuillan, a spokesman for Silverstein Properties, issued the following statement on this issue:

Seven World Trade Center collapsed at 5:20 p.m. on September 11, 2001, after burning for seven hours. There were no casualties, thanks to the heroism of the Fire Department and the work of Silverstein Properties employees who evacuated tenants from the building.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) conducted a thorough investigation of the collapse of all the World Trade Center buildings. The FEMA report concluded that the collapse of Seven World Trade Center was a direct result of fires triggered by debris from the collapse of WTC Tower

In the afternoon of September 11, Mr. Silverstein spoke to the Fire Department Commander on site at Seven World Trade Center. The Commander told Mr. Silverstein that there were several firefighters in the building working to contain the fires. Mr. Silverstein expressed his view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building.

Later in the day, the Fire Commander ordered his firefighters out of the building and at 5:20 p.m. the building collapsed. No lives were lost at Seven World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

As noted above, when Mr. Silverstein was recounting these events for a television documentary he stated, “I said, you know, we've had such terrible loss of life. Maybe the smartest thing to do is to pull it.” Mr. McQuillan has stated that by “it,” Mr. Silverstein meant the contingent of firefighters remaining in the building.
http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Sep/16-241966.html

THIS IS TIGER-http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/154422/?tag=Cartman

[–] MasterShake_2015 16 years ago

they had to retrofit the buildings due to Asbestos...what better way than to demolish it?

Wrong, It had been encapsulated, it did not need to be removed, it was only in the lower half of one tower and the WTC's were exempt for NYC fire codes.

Since we are on the subject of fire proofing, let me touch on something which keeps being repeated by the so called "scholars". They keep suggesting that lease owner Larry Silverstein had a very good reason to blow up the towers.
THE CLAIM
Fetzer: My impression has been that there were a couple of problems with the towers and it may have been that they were chronic problems. One of course was that it was laden with asbestos and that any proposal to remove that asbestos which was used as a coating on the steel as I understand it would have been a gargantuan task at incredible expense. Can anyone imagine for example of constructing scaffolding around a 110 story building? And second of all that there were difficulties with occupancy that Larry Silverstein wasn’t getting a full return on his investment from the ordinary use of the buildings, because a tremendous large numbers of offices were unoccupied. Whole floors and sections of the buildings.

THE FACTS

The fact is that asbestos in the towers was limited to floors only up to the 38th floor of WTC 1 and it was encapsulated. There was no asbestos in WTC2 .

"Several materials were considered for the sprayed thermal insulation. The exterior columns required insulation not only for fire protection but also to control column temperatures under service conditions. Alcoa recommended for the exterior columns the use of a sprayed material produced by U.S. Mineral Products, Co. known as BLAZE-SHIELD Type D. The same material was eventually selected for the floor trusses and core beams and columns. This product, however, contained asbestos fibers. On April 13, 1970, New York City issued restrictions on the application of sprayed thermal insulation containing asbestos. The use of BLAZE-SHIELD Type D was discontinued in 1970 at the 38th floor of WTC 1. The asbestos-containing material was subsequently encapsulated with a sprayed material that provided a hard coating. A green dye was added to the encapsulating material so that the asbestos containing SFRM could be identified. Thermal protection of the remaining floors of WTC 1 and all of WTC 2 was carried out using BLAZE-SHIELD Type DC/F, a product that contained mineral wool (glassy fibers) in place of the crystalline asbestos fibers. On the basis of tests, it was reported that the thermal properties of BLAZE-SHIELD Type DC/F were equal to or "slightly better" than those of BLAZE-SHIELD Type D"

There was no clean up order or need for one!

THIS IS TIGER-http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/154422/?tag=Cartman

[–] axel-50 15 years ago

Well one fact is that documentary making isn't journalism, many believe that it should be but when you look at the most famous and popular documentaries the majority of them don't follow journalistic ethics. But I agree that loose change is a really bad movie because of the simple fact that they didn't have any real evidence to support their claims.