The NIST World Trade Center Report:
A New Standard for Deception
Kevin Ryan
911 Truth Conference: Revealing the Truth, Reclaiming Our Future
Chicago, IL June 4, 2006
Introduction
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I’m a former manager at Underwriters
Laboratories (UL), fired for publicly questioning
the October 2004 draft NIST WTC report
NIST* is a government agency, reporting to Bush
cabinet member Gutierrez (Commerce). The
director of NIST is also a Presidential appointee
NIST’s WTC report is a product of the Bush
Administration (i.e. Bush Science)
*National Institute of Standards and Technology
“Bush Science”

The Bush Administration has been “deliberately and
systematically distorting scientific fact in the service
of policy goals”
Open letter from 60 prominent scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates

“We found a serious pattern of undermining science
by the Bush Administration”
Union of Concerned Scientists

“[We] found numerous instances where the
Administration has manipulated the scientific process
and distorted or suppressed scientific findings”
House Committee on Government Reform
Important WTC collapse considerations
• No tall buildings have ever collapsed from fire,
but on 9/11, we’re told there were three
• No building exhibiting all the characteristics of
demolition has ever NOT been a demolition
• 99.7% of steel evidence destroyed despite
outraged cries from public and fire experts
• More than a year passed before full
investigation began
Demo remembers
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The collapse of the WTC towers looked like a
classic controlled demolition, said Mike Taylor of
the National Association of Demolition
Contractors, “It cascaded down like an implosion”
“It appeared to me that charges had been placed
in the building” -- Ronald Hamburger, structural
engineer and contributor to FEMA and NIST
reports
Official investigations never considered
demolition
Early support for the official story

“Experts” said jet fuel fires melted the
steel
•
•
•
•
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•
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BBC (Chris Wise, etc.)
Scientific American (Eduardo Kausel)
NOVA video (Matthys Levy)
Henry Koffman from USC
Tom Mackin from Univ. of Illinois
The New Scientist
Temperatures exaggerated
• National Geographic Today - 2,900 F
• A&E /History Channel video – 2500 F
Jet fuel fires melted steel?
• Steel melts at ~2800 F
• Jet fuel fires burn at maximum of ~1500 F
unless in special combustion chamber
• Gas temps are not steel temps
• Thermodynamic calculations suggest steel
temperatures in impact zones could have
reached maximum of 600 F
Where are the real experts?
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Our nation’s air defenses don’t stand down
Terrorists don’t come back to life after
stealing our freedoms
Tall buildings do not collapse from fire
Because these are unique events, there
are no experts on these subjects
But there is always an official explanation
for terrorist events

Disturbing questions about the OKC Murrah
Building bombing
• Survivors reported multiple explosions
• Many media reports and witness accounts of undetonated bombs left in building
• FBI confiscated videos and would not release them
• Experts said demolition charges required

Official story stuck with one guy, one truck bomb
• Small group of engineers provided report
Official “investigations” into the collapse of
the WTC buildings
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ASCE
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FEMA BPAT
• Turned ASCE investigation into an “assessment”
• Report released May 2002
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Silverstein/Weidlinger
• report released October 2002
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NIST
• report released September 2005
ASCE Team = Murrah Building Team
Initial ASCE team
leaders (9/14/01)
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•
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Gene Corley
Charles Thornton
Paul Mlakar
Mete Sozen
Other volunteers
OKC Murrah building
report authors
•
•
•
•
Gene Corley
Charles Thornton
Paul Mlakar
Mete Sozen
ASCE says there are 1.5 million US engineers.
Why so few when it comes to terrorism?
Pre-determined conclusions
• Gene Corley -- knew once the jets hit the building that
the WTC would collapse as it did, “I just didn’t know
when it was going to happen”, said Corley
(reported by St. Petersburg Times)
• Charles Thornton -- "Karl, we all know what caused the
collapse."
(From Karl Koch’s book Men of Steel)
• Shankar Nair -- "Already there is near-consensus as to
the sequence of events that led to the collapse of the
World Trade Center.”
(Chicago Tribune September 19, 2001)
The first official leaders
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Gene Corley in charge of ASCE investigation
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NYC put Thornton-Tomasetti in charge of site
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Richard Tomasetti (Thornton’s partner) “cleared”
the decision to recycle the steel, later saying had
he “known the direction that investigations into
the disaster would take, he would have adopted a
different stance.”
Anyone smell a rat?
Restrictions on ASCE investigation
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No access to blueprints
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Not allowed to ask for help from public
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Team members threatened with dismissal for
speaking to press
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No access to steel until first week of October
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FEMA obstruction
FEMA BPAT
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ASCE expanded and was named FEMA BPAT
• John Gross, NIST engineer with oil and gas history
• Therese McAllister, Greenhorne and O’Mara (G&O)
• Other government contractors (Arup, Hughes)
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When FEMA took over, $1 million was
allocated, but only $100,000 was spent by
December
At the same time, Bush was telling us “It
costs a lot to fight this war. We have spent
more than a billion dollars a month…”
By January, it was a half-baked farce
• Bill Manning, editor of Fire Engineering magazine, said
the “official investigation…is a half-baked farce that may
already have been commandeered by political forces
whose primary interests, to put it mildly, lie far afield of
full disclosure.”
• Dick Cheney called Senate leader Tom Daschle and
asked him to “limit the scope and overall review of what
happened [on 9/11]”, claiming resources would be
pulled from the War on Terrorism. President Bush met
with Daschle privately and asked him to limit the
investigation.
Meanwhile
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Astaneh-Asl, a lone scientist working on a
National Science Foundation study, got
access to the steel before the ASCE/FEMA
team
“The impact did nothing to this building”
(reported by CNN)
“So now we know, the column did not fail,
it was a failure of the floor in most cases”
(reported by Wired)
Who would design a building for plane
crashes but forget the jet fuel fires?
• Eduardo Kausel – The WTC buildings were designed
to withstand Boeing 707 impacts but were “never
designed for the massive explosions nor the
intense jet fuel fires that came next – a key design
omission.”
• Loring Knoblauch (CEO of UL) – the jet fuel fires
were not “reasonably foreseeable.”
• What? How would the planes get to the buildings?
Who would really do this?
Not the WTC’s design Engineer
• Towers designed by John Skilling
• Skilling had this to say in 1993 when asked if
he considered plane crashes in his design.
“Our analysis indicated the biggest problem
would be the fact that all the fuel would dump
into the building. [But] the building structure
would still be there.”
City in the Sky, Glanz and Lipton
Where’s the fire?
Windsor building, Madrid, February 2005
Twin towers shortly after WTC2 hit
ASCE / FEMA findings
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April 2002 NOVA video by commentators
Corley and Thornton
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Fireproofing easily blown off
Floors collapsed
Columns buckled outward
May 2002 final FEMA report
• “a pancake-type of collapse of successive
floors”
June 2002 – NIST drafts plan
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National Institute of Standards and
Technology
• Director is Presidential appointee
• Repository for national reference standards
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First meeting included “Public” comments by
•
•
•
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Gene Corley
Richard Tomasetti
Shankar Nair
Other contributors to official reports
FEMA authors become NIST authors
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FEMA Chapter 1 authors
• Therese McAllister: co-wrote NIST report 1-6 and 1-7
• John Gross: co-wrote NIST report 1-6 and 1-7
• Ronald Hamburger: NIST contributor
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FEMA Chapter 2 authors
• Ronald Hamburger: see above
• William Baker: NIST contributor, Freedom tower
• Harold Nelson: co-wrote NIST report 1-5 and 1-7
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FEMA chapter 5 authors (WTC 7)
• Ramon Gilsanz: co-wrote NIST report 1-6F
• Harold Nelson: see above
Oct 2002 - Silverstein / Weidlinger report
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Corley and Thornton-Tomasetti involved in
study to establish Silverstein insurance claim
Report results
• No floor failure of any kind
• Column failure only
• Directly contradicts FEMA report, NOVA video and
most other experts (e.g. Astaneh-Asl)
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Apparently floor failure would have meant
design failure and therefore “one event”
They knew from the start what happened?
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”Experts” Towering Inferno
• Steel melted
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FEMA
• Floor failure: “A pancake-type of collapse of successive
floors”
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Silverstein/Weidlinger
• Column failure only
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NIST
• External column failure from sagging floors and softened
core columns ,etc…leading to pile driver collapse
(TNRAT – They’ll Never Read All This theory)
TNRAT
Demo points out
characteristics of demolition
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Sudden onset
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Straight down
Nearly free-fall speed
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Total collapse
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Sliced steel
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Pulverization of
concrete
Dust clouds
Horizontal ejections
(squibs)
Demolition rings
Sounds of explosions
Pools of molten steel
All supported by photographic evidence and
eyewitness testimonies
Sept 2005 - The NIST WTC Report
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42 sub-reports and
10,000 pages
Only for Twin Towers
Like others, focused only
on political story
Same people as FEMA
TNRAT
NFPA 921 used?
Standard for fire investigation
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Sec 6-5: Important to remember that conflict of
interest should be avoided
• NIST used specialists/contractors who were dependent
on government contracts or on the official story itself
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Sec 12-4: Unusual residues …could arise from
thermite, magnesium or other pyrotechnic
materials
• NIST report does not mention FEMA’s puzzling sulfur
residue
Our focus
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NIST’s stated goals
• Goal 1 – Why and How three buildings
collapsed
• Goal 3 – What design factors should have
prevented this?
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NIST’s approach and final story
• 5 methods to investigate
• 7 steps to collapse
NIST’s investigation methods
A. Review of documents
B. Interviews with eyewitnesses
C. Analysis of steel
D. Laboratory tests
E. Computer Simulations
A. NIST’s review of documents
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Reports of original design claims?
• No, many relevant claims not mentioned
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Fire resistance test data (e.g. UL test
documents)?
• No, documents came up missing
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Skilling’s fire resistance analysis?
• No, documents missing
Original design claims
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“The World Trade Center towers would have an inherent
capacity to resist unforeseen calamities.”
For the perimeter columns (83% of total columns), “live
loads on these columns can be increased more than
2,000% before failure occurs.”
One “could cut away all the first story columns on one side
of the building, and partway from the corners of the
perpendicular sides, and the building could still withstand
design live loads and a 100 mph wind from any direction.”
All quotes from Engineering News-Record, 1964
A. Were the WTC steel components tested
for fire resistance?
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NIST said they found no documents, yet states
the buildings were rated as Class 1B (3 hours for
columns and 2 hours for floors)
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Underwriters Laboratories’ CEO -- UL tested the
steel to NYC code (meaning 40 years ago)
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Port Authority -- “there are no test records in our
files”
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ASTM E119 is used for testing both steel
components and floor assemblies
ASTM E119 Time-temperature curve
A. UL comments on testing the WTC steel
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September 2001
• Loring Knoblauch, UL’s CEO, told staff that UL had certified the
steel used in the WTC
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November 2003
• I asked Knoblauch in writing about UL’s involvement, and he
responded in December confirming details.
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“We tested the steel with all the required fireproofing on,
and it did beautifully.”
“As we do not do follow-up service on this kind of product,
we can give an opinion only on the test sample which was
indeed properly coated.”
“We test to the code requirements, and the steel clearly
met [the NYC code] requirements and exceeded them.”
A. Our “Public Safety Guardian” (UL) lying?
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August 2004
• UL performed tests of WTC floor models
• Floors barely affected and didn’t collapse
• Loring Knoblauch resigned suddenly
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October 2004
• NIST report update showed contradictions

November 2004
• My letter to NIST became public
• UL quickly backtracked, saying
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“No evidence” any firm tested the steel
They played only a “limited” role in investigation
B. NIST’s performance on interviews
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NIST started planning for eyewitness interviews in
April 2003
(7 months after start of investigation, and 19 months after 9/11)
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By October, still no NIST interviews and no NIST
access to NYC interviews
NYC finally agreed to allow NIST access to original
interviews by December 2003
…but only in NYC offices (sound familiar?)
B. Eyewitness interviews not used
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Paramedic Daniel Rivera – “[Did] you ever see
professional demolition where they set the charges
on certain floors and then you hear ‘Pop, pop, pop,
pop, pop?’…I thought it was that.”
Witness Timothy Burke – “the building popped, lower
than the fire…I was going oh, my God, there is a
secondary device because the way the building
popped. I thought it was an explosion.”
Firefighter Edward Cachia – “It actually gave at a
lower floor, not the floor where the plane hit. We
originally thought there was like an internal
detonation, explosives…”
Assistant Commissioner Stephen Gregory -- “I
thought…that I saw low-level flashes…[at] the lower
level of the building. You know like when they
demolish a building?”
B. Eyewitness interviews not used
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Firefighter Richard Banaciski – “It seemed like on
television [when] they blow up these buildings. It
seemed like it was going all around like a belt, all
these explosions.”
Deputy Commissioner Thomas Fitzpatrick – “My
initial reaction was that this was exactly the way it
looks when they show you those implosions on TV.”
Battalion Chief Brian Dixon – “the lowest floor of the
fire in the south tower actually looked like someone
had planted explosives all around it
because…everything blew out on the one floor.”
Firefighter Kenneth Rogers – “there was an
explosion in the south tower…I kept watching. Floor
after floor after floor. [It] looked like a synchronized
deliberate kind of thing.”
C. Analysis of steel
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Most of the steel evidence destroyed
• Tomasetti decision (Thornton’s partner)
• 236 samples saved for testing (0.3%)
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NIST tests
• Paint test indicated low steel temps (480 F )
“despite pre-collapse exposure to fire”
• Microstructure test showed no steel reached
critical (half-strength) values
NIST comments before and After
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Before steel temperature analysis
(12/02/03)
• “Regions of impact and fire damage
emphasized in selection of steel pieces.”
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After steel temperature analysis
(final report)
• “None of the samples were from zones where
[high] heating was predicted.”
D. Laboratory tests
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Tests to prove loss of fireproofing?
• Fifteen rounds from a shotgun
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Workstation burn tests
• Gas temperatures, not steel temperatures
• Used double the average amount of jet fuel
• Used “Over-ventilation”
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UL floor model tests evaluated Pancake
Theory
Pancake Theory
• “I could see it in my mind’s eye: The fire
burned until the steel was weakened and the
floors above collapsed, starting a chain
reaction of gravity, floor falling upon floor upon
floor, clunk – clunk – clunk, the load gaining
weight and momentum by the nanosecond,
unstoppable. Once enough floors collapsed,
the exterior walls and the core columns were
no longer laterally supported and folded in.” -Karl Koch
(from Koch’s book Men of Steel)
WTC floor model tests by UL (Aug 2004)
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Used less fireproofing than was known to exist in
WTC1, and then reduced fireproofing further
Used “maximum load” (i.e. applied doubled the
weight known to have been on floors)
Heated floors according to ASTM E119
Minimal floor sagging
No floor collapse
“The results established that this type of
assembly was capable of sustaining a large
gravity load, without collapsing, for a substantial
period of time relative to the duration of the fires
in any given location on September 11th.”
NIST comments before and after
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Before UL floor tests
• “[Tests will] determine the fire rating of typical
WTC floor systems under both as-built and
specified conditions”
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After UL floor tests
• “The Investigation Team was cautious about
using these results directly in the formulation
of collapse hypotheses”
E. Computer Simulations
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Input parameters could be tweaked
“Realistic” parameters tossed in favor
of “More severe” parameters
Animations generated to “compare
with observed events”
E. NIST’s computer simulated
“animations”
Does your future depend on these cartoons?
NIST’s investigative practices were
deceptive and unscientific
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Documents needed just happened to be missing
Eyewitnesses to demolition characteristics were
ignored
Physical tests that disproved pre-determined
conclusions were downplayed or ignored
Entire theory is built on fudged, inaccessible
computer simulations
TNRAT
NIST’s Final, Computer-Based Story
1. The aircraft severed “a number of columns”
2. Loads were redistributed (from -20% to +25%)
3. Insulation (fireproofing) was widely dislodged
4. High temperatures softened columns and floors
5. Some floors began to sag
6. Sagging floors pulled exterior columns inward
causing them to buckle
7. Instability spread around entire building
“Global collapse ensued”
1. How many columns were severed?
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NIST now admits only a small percentage
of columns were severed
• 14% in WTC1
• 15% in WTC2
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But since one “could cut away all the first story columns on
one side of the building, and partway from the corners of
the perpendicular sides, and the building could still
withstand design live loads and a 100 mph wind from any
direction”, we know the buildings could withstand > 25%
column loss without a problem.
2. How much load was re-distributed?
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NIST says loads on some columns were
decreased (as much as 20%) and other loads
were increased (up to 25%).
But again, since the original design claims were
that, “live loads on these [perimeter] columns
can be increased more than 2,000% before
failure occurs”, these columns should have
supported the extra load and much, much more
So far, no reason to even suspect collapse
3. Fireproofing widely dislodged?
“The towers would not have collapsed under the
combined effects of aircraft impact and the
subsequent multi-floor fires if the insulation had
not been widely dislodged or had been only
minimally dislodged by aircraft impact.” -- NIST
What does “widely dislodged” mean?
3. NIST must have done extensive testing
to prove fireproofing was widely dislodged!
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No, they shot 15 rounds from a shotgun at nonrepresentative samples in a plywood box
(were they in a hurry?)
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No evidence that Boeing 767 would transform
into so many shotgun blasts
(many thousands would be needed)
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Shotgun test actually proved fireproofing could
not have been widely dislodged because the
energy was simply not available
No energy left to dislodge fireproofing
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NIST says 2500 MJ of kinetic energy from
plane that hit WTC1
• Calculations show that all this energy was
consumed in crushing aircraft and breaking
columns & floors*
• Shotgun tests found that 1 MJ per sq meter
was needed to dislodge fireproofing
• For the areas in question, intact floors and
columns had > 6000 sq meters of surface area
*Calculations by Tomasz Wierzbicki of MIT
4. How hot could the steel have become?
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NIST now says about 4,500 gallons of jet fuel were
available to feed fires. This would have provided
590,000 MJ of energy.
Office furnishings in the impact zone would have
provided 490,000 MJ of energy.
Using masses and specific heats for materials heated,
a maximum temperature in the impact zone can be
calculated.
The result is less than 600 degrees F
• Assuming fuel burnt with perfect efficiency, that no hot gases left the
impact zone, that no heat escaped by conduction, and that the steel
and concrete had an unlimited amount of time to absorb all the heat.
Steel Temperatures Discussed (F)
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
Paint test
Calculated
Steel at half
strength
Steel Forged
ASTM E119
TV Program
Steel melts
Review
NIST Story and Problems
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Column breakage (14%)
weakened building, then
external columns saw up
to 25% increases in total
load
Fireproofing “widely
dislodged”
High steel temps
required for long time
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Can lose an additional 30
or more before challenging
design claims; external
columns designed to
withstand 2000%
increases in live load
No evidence that Boeing
767 would transform into
thousands of shotgun
blasts; no energy available
to dislodge fireproofing
Tests and calculations
show steel temps were
way too low
5. Some floors began to sag?
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Only very slight sagging is visible in NIST photos
from UL tests (and no collapse)
After two hours* in high temp furnace, the deck
of 35 ft floor model sagged only a few inches in
the middle, and the major joist parts did not sag
at all
NIST’s computer turned this into dramatic 42 inch
sagging, with joists bending downward severely
*Remember, WTC2 collapsed after only 56 minutes and
WTC1 fires on south face had only ~ 45 minutes
6. How did the sagging floors pull exterior
columns inward causing them to buckle?
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Over 30 columns would have to be pulled in to
challenge design claim
What new force did a few inches of deck sagging
apply to those 30+ columns? NIST says 14 kips
per truss seat were applied but does not
adequately explain how this challenged the
designed axial load of 1174 kips per column
What tests did NIST do to prove inward buckling,
and was the application of the results consistent?
The triple double bare steel computer result
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“An exterior wall section (9 columns wide and 9
floors high) was found to bow inward when floor
connections applied an inward force.”
(computer result for one case out of nine)
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Same report says sagging area only 5 floors high!
NIST had to exaggerate temperatures (1300 F),
apply these temps for 90 minutes, strip all
fireproofing, and then double the height of the
inward pull zone to produce even a hint of inward
bowing from fire*
*Note: There are other ways to produce bowing and
buckling of columns – just ask Demo
7. Instability spread around entire
building perimeter?
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Buildings fell at nearly free-fall speed. How fast
would instability have to spread first? How much of
the ~10 sec fall time could be spared?
Perimeter of building was 832 feet. If complete in 0.5
seconds, speed of “instability spread” would have
been >1100 mph (Mach 1.5)
“A steel structure, generally speaking, does not
collapse suddenly when attacked by fire. There are
unmistakable warning signs, namely, large
deformations.”
Hart, Multi-Storey Buildings in Steel, Halsted Press
NIST’s collapse initiation sequence:
What would objective scientists have found?
1. Relatively few columns were lost on impact
2. Remaining columns had considerable extra capacity
3. Fireproofing could not have been widely dislodged
4. Steel could not have softened at the temps found
5. Even at higher temps and longer periods tests
showed minimal sagging of floors
6. Forces were not produced to pull columns inward
7. “Instability spread” would have taken much more
time and would not result in uniform free-fall
NIST’s computer story is Bush Science
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The parameters NIST originally considered
“realistic” were discarded because computer
results “did not compare to observed events.”
“More severe” parameters were substituted until
animations gave the desired result
NIST will not release 6,899 photographs and
6,977 segments of real video footage
“Global collapse ensued?”
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What about resistance of floors below? If these floors
each caused hesitation of only half a second, an extra
40 seconds would be needed.
What about the observed squibs? (Pile-driving is not
Pancaking)
What about the large pools of molten metal observed
in the basement areas of both Towers and WTC 7?
What about the sulfur residue found on the steel?
The NIST WTC report is false because…

They did not explain why and how the buildings
collapsed, and their investigation was deceptive
and unscientific at every step

They reported findings that were in direct
contradiction to their physical testing

They omitted or distorted many important facts
•
•
•
•
•
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Original design claims and John Skilling’s analysis
Resistance from building structure below
WTC 1 antenna moving first
Pools of molten metal lingering for weeks
Numerous eyewitness testimonies about explosions
Sulfur residue on steel
Researchers call for examination of the
demolition hypothesis

Demolition squibs seen ejected from floors far
from impact zone
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Everything pulverized
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Molten metal found under rubble piles of all three
buildings for weeks
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Site cleaned up by “Controlled Demolition, Inc.”
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Many reports of explosions and flashes of light
WTC 7
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Would have been tallest building in 33 states
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Collapsed in 6.6 seconds
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Larry Silverstein, leaseholder for all three
buildings -- “I said…maybe the smartest thing to
do is pull it. And [the fire department
commander and I] made that decision to pull and
we watched the building collapse.” PBS, 2002
FEMA -- “the collapse was due primarily to fire,
rather than any impact damage from the
collapsing towers”
It takes weeks to plan and implement
a controlled demolition
Thank you for listening
and watch out for more rats and elephants
Demo
TNRAT