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On the 22nd anniversary of 9/11, some still question mysterious ‘controlled’ collapse of Building 7

September 11, 2023 | | Print Article

As the nation remembers the nearly 3,000 people who lost their lives on 9/11, 22 years ago, in the heinous attack on the World Trade Center, many on social media still have questions about the mysterious “controlled collapse” of Building 7, the third structure that fell that fateful day.

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a nonregulatory Federal agency within the Commerce Department, Building 7 was “a 47-story office building located immediately to the north of the main World Trade Center (WTC) complex.”

There is nothing nefarious about Building 7’s (a.k.a. “WTC 7”) collapse, the NIST reported following an investigation in 2010.

“The heat from the uncontrolled fires [in the Twin Towers] caused steel floor beams and girders to thermally expand, leading to a chain of events that caused a key structural column to fail,” the agency stated. “The failure of this structural column then initiated a fire-induced progressive collapse of the entire building.”

The NIST continued:

According to the report’s probable collapse sequence, heat from the uncontrolled fires caused thermal expansion of the steel beams on the lower floors of the east side of WTC 7, damaging the floor framing on multiple floors.

Eventually, a girder on Floor 13 lost its connection to a critical column, Column 79, that provided support for the long floor spans on the east side of the building (see Diagram 1). The displaced girder and other local fire-induced damage caused Floor 13 to collapse, beginning a cascade of floor failures down to the 5th floor. Many of these floors had already been at least partially weakened by the fires in the vicinity of Column 79. This collapse of floors left Column 79 insufficiently supported in the east-west direction over nine stories.

The unsupported Column 79 then buckled and triggered an upward progression of floor system failures that reached the building’s east penthouse. What followed in rapid succession was a series of structural failures. Failure first occurred all the way to the roof line-involving all three interior columns on the easternmost side of the building (79, 80, 81). Then, progressing from east to west across WTC 7, all of the columns failed in the core of the building (58 through 78). Finally, the entire façade collapsed.

 

For many so-called “conspiracy theorists,” that explanation has always been unsatisfactory, and with trust in the government at an all-time low, the questions surrounding the building and its orderly descent into a pile of rubble remain.

Those who are prone to diving down rabbit holes will point to the tenants of Building 7 as the reason for its destruction.

“Anthropomorphically speaking, Building 7 simply knew too much,” stated New York Magazine in 2011.

“It is a provocative supposition,” the outlet said of the theory, “especially when one examines the extraordinary list of tenants paying rent to developer Larry Silverstein on that fateful day.”

New York Magazine continued:

These include the Department of Defense, the Secret Service, the IRS, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (many records, including probably much-damning evidence in the Citibank–WorldCom financial scandal, disappeared forever). The mortgage was held by the Blackstone Group, then headed by Pete Peterson, the chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations. In addition, it is inevitably stated by conspiracists that the board of directors of the security company employed by the building included Marvin P. Bush, the president’s younger brother.

If the 9/11 attacks were, as truthers often said, a plot in the mode of the Nazis setting the Reichstag fire, thereby justifying the worldwide war on terror and domestic fascist control, it would be hard to believe that at least some of Building 7’s paranoia-inducing tenants were not in on it.

 

On X, the theory is being discussed once again.

“I believe it was all about WTC 7 and what was in there…….” stated one user. “The BBC reported the collapse of WTC 7 approximately 20 minutes before its actual collapse on 9/11. They even had their reporter deliver this news as Building 7 stood tall in the background.”

“Don’t forget about the missing $2.3 Trillion!” the user added. “Missing just before 9/11……”

Melissa Fine
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