As someone who got started down the path of doing independent journalism by researching the events of September 11, 2001, I’ve taken an interest in Tucker Carlson’s investigate series “The 9/11 Files” and have been sharing my thoughts about each episode and providing additional context and documentation.
I covered episode one, “The CIA’s Secret Mission Gone Wrong”, here:
I covered episodes two and three, respectively titled “The Cover-Up Commission” and “They Could Have Stopped It”, here (where I have a different take on how the attacks could have been prevented):
I was particularly interested to watch episode four since it deals with the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC 7), an event I have researched extensively in the past.
It also briefly discusses evidence of informed trading, plus the infamous “dancing Israelis” and the Israeli “art students” spy ring that may have been involved in surveilling al-Qaeda operatives in the US prior to the attacks.
Here are my comments about the fourth episode.
Episode 4: ‘From Cover-up to Conspiracy’
Here is the description provided for this episode of “The 9/11 Files”:
From the mysterious collapse of Tower 7 to reports of explosive residue in the rubble, the official 9/11 story leaves more questions than answers. Why did some reporters announce attacks before they happened? How did foreign governments know more than U.S. intelligence? And who profited from airline stock trades right before the attacks? We uncover the strange facts, hidden intelligence, and unanswered questions that demand a new investigation into 9/11.
Watch Episode 4 here (also on Rumble):
The Unexplained Collapse of WTC 7
The episode starts out explaining how World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC 7), a 47-story skyscraper north of the Twin Towers, collapsed completely into its own footprint while achieving free-fall acceleration in what appears to be a controlled demolition.
Watch the collapse here:
The official explanation for the collapse is that falling debris from the collapse of WTC 1 initiated fires in WTC 7, and office fires burning in the northeast corner of floor 12 heated a 13th floor beam, causing the beam to thermally expand and push a girder attached to column 79 off its seat. Due to the loss of lateral support from that girder, the column buckled and collapsed, initiating a progressive failure of floors and columns resulting in the global collapse of the whole building.
Carlson’s treatment of WTC 7 is very basic. By necessity, since it’s only a half-hour episode, he cruises through some main points without delving into the details. His take is that it is reasonable to ask questions about how the official explanation could be correct when, well, we can alternatively just believe our own eyes—and the laws of physics.
He explains how WTC 7 housed offices for the Office of Emergency Management (OEM), the US Secret Service, the CIA, and the Department of Defense, and how the building was “almost entirely ignored” in the 9/11 Commission Report.
In fact, the only references in the 9/11 Commission report to WTC 7 were in the context of the building headquartering the OEM, which was activated that morning in response to the planes being flown into the Twin Towers. The collapse of Building 7 was ignored entirely in the report—warranting not even a footnote!
Don’t you find that a curious omission?
Carlson also relates how most of the physical evidence was destroyed or shipped off to China instead of being preserved for forensic investigation into how all three buildings collapsed.
He cites a New York Times article additionally mentioning “the deepest mystery” of how steel collected from WTC 7 had melted—which cannot be explained by temperatures reached in office fires.
I covered that same information in my 2011 article “The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Case Far From Closed“:
And while NIST claims that no steel was recovered from WTC 7, it could not have been unaware of a sample that was recovered and studied by a team from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The steel had been severely corroded, showing signs of intergranular melting and sulfidation, with a “swiss cheese”-like appearance. The New York Times referred to this piece of steel as “Perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation”, and the team’s findings and recommendations for further study were published as Appendix C of the report of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Although NIST was tasked with carrying out the recommendations of the FEMA report, it ignored Appendix C altogether and implicitly denied the very existence of this steel.
Dr. Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, a professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, who headed up a separate effort with funding from the National Science Foundation to investigate the steel and recover important evidence, also recovered a piece of steel from WTC 7. He described steel flanges that “had been reduced from an inch thick to paper thin” to the New York Times. “Parts of the flat top of the I [of the “I-beam”], once five-eighths of an inch thick, had vaporized,” he observed.
The reason so little steel was recovered from WTC 7 is that it was quickly destroyed after having been removed from the site during the search and rescue operations. Engineers across the country were outraged by the destruction, prompting Bill Manning, editor-in-chief of Fire Engineering magazine, to write an editorial lambasting the official investigation under FEMA as “a half-baked farce”.
With respect to NIST’s fire-induced collapse hypothesis, Carlson reasonably asks,
If there was just one failure point, then why does video evidence show the building coming down symmetrically all at once at freefall acceleration in what more closely resembles what’s called a global collapse, where all the supporting columns are severed simultaneously?
Actually, that is a bit misleading because, while NIST’s report did refer to the collapse as a “progressive” failure, it also acknowledged the “global collapse” of the building “as a single unit” at free fall acceleration.
The fundamental point of Carlson’s question remains, though, as to how the observed global collapse can be reconciled with the hypothesis put forth by NIST of a progressive failure caused by office fires.
Instructively, in its draft report released for public comment, NIST tried to deny free fall, which drew criticisms since the downward acceleration of the building is measurable. Thus forced to do a proper measurement, NIST admitted free fall in its final report. Consequently, NIST was also forced to reconcile that admission with its fire-induced collapse hypothesis.
That was no easy task.
NIST tried to accomplish that feat by claiming that, during what it calls “Stage 1” of global collapse, the interior columns had already failed—as indicated by the visible collapse of the penthouse prior to onset of global collapse—and perimeter columns were buckling, leading to “Stage 2” where free fall acceleration is admittedly observed.
In other words, NIST’s claim is that during the mere 1.75 seconds of “Stage 1”, all of the building’s perimeter columns went from doing their job to losing all structural integrity—such that they offered no measurable resistance for the following 2.25 seconds of “Stage 2”, where the building collapsed over 18 stories as a single unit straight downward into its own footprint at the acceleration of gravity.
The most fundamental problem with this attempt to reconcile free fall with NIST’s hypothesis is that “Stage 1” of the global collapse never occurred.
As I showed in my 2011 paper “Video Analysis of NIST’s Claim of a 5.4 s Collapse Time Over 18 Stories for WTC 7” (downloadable as a PDF here), NIST’s claim of a “Stage 1” of collapse is scientifically fraudulent.
NIST completely fabricated it, as I summarized just last month in this post:
Refer to that post for the fuller details. To very briefly summarize, using a video of the collapse taken at an upward-looking angle, NIST tried to pass off inward displacement of the north facade of the building as downward movement—the initiation of global collapse. They knew better, but they had to invent this “Stage 1” to conceal the fact that free fall occurred with sudden onset.
Here’s a clip of this being explained by David Chandler, who played a key role in getting NIST to admit free fall, and who cited my analysis in this 2011 presentation:
Chandler, Ted Walter, and Tony Szamboti also wrote about this a couple years ago in a paper titled “The Instantaneous Free Fall of World Trade Center Building 7 and NIST’s Attempt to Hide It“, available at the website of the International Center for 9/11 Justice, a resource I highly recommend checking out.
Here is the significance of free fall succinctly stated: The sudden onset of global collapse at free fall acceleration means that all of the building’s potential energy was converted to kinetic energy, which means there was no energy available to do the work of buckling columns as required by NIST’s fire-induced collapse hypothesis.
That’s not a “conspiracy theory”—it’s the law of conservation of energy.
NIST’s hypothesis is falsified by observation. Instructively, NIST’s computer simulation looks nothing like the actual collapse.
There are numerous other examples of scientific fraud in its report, too, like the fact that the fires in the northeast of floor 12 had already burned out well before the time that NIST’s computer model required there to be raging fires there to heat the beam. But the rest is all pretty superfluous in light of the sudden onset of collapse at a rate indistinguishable from the acceleration of gravity.
Again, I’m not proposing a conspiracy theory, just making a scientific observation. If it logically follows that there must have been some conspiracy that NIST’s fraudulent report was intended to cover up, well, then, as Arthur Conan Doyle’s character Sherlock Holmes says, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
Draw your own conclusions.
In all these years, I have yet to see anyone reconcile free fall with the fire-induced collapse hypothesis. Instead, the only response I ever receive from people convinced of the official story is that it couldn’t possibly have been free fall!
The problem with that, again, is that it is measurable. Denying observable facts can’t make them go away.
Carlson doesn’t go that deeply into it, but he does cite a four-year study into the collapse by a team led by Dr. J. Leroy Hulsey, Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). The team’s final report, “A Structural Reevaluation of the Collapse of World Trade Center 7“, concludes that “fire did not cause the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11, contrary to the conclusions of NIST”. Instead, “the collapse of WTC 7 was a global failure involving the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.”
So far, so good, but then Carlson argues,
One issue with the controlled demolition hypothesis is that the widely circulated video of the building coming down is selectively edited. In fact, the building did not exactly collapse all at once. It came down in two stages.
That’s a reference to the same video I shared above, recorded by a camera at street level. Carlson then shows a different video taken from a higher angle, which he calls “the unedited video” and describes as showing “the penthouse collapsing first”.
This is all nonsensical, though.
First, the street-level video isn’t “selectively edited”. It is uncut footage showing the building from shortly before the collapse through the building’s disappearance from view.
Second, it makes no sense to describe a completely different video as “the unedited” one. It’s just a different video that is also uncut.
Third, the collapse of the penthouse can be clearly seen in the street-level video, too!
I can’t imagine why Carlson would have included this argument, as though controlled demolition proponents were depending on a “selectively edited” video, which is just plainly false. (Also, the street-level video happens to be the same one that NIST used to measure free fall! Hence, it is the one I examined in my own video analysis.)
When Carlson speaks of “two stages” of collapse, he’s evidently not referring to NIST’s fraudulent claim of a “Stage 1” (unless he’s completely misunderstanding it). Instead, he just means that the core columns failed first, and hence the disappearance of the penthouse shortly prior to the onset of global collapse.
But this ends up just being a strawman argument because nobody denies this. It’s rather understood by everyone who’s seriously researched the collapse that the core columns were the first to go—just like in a classic controlled demolition!
I was glad to see Carlson also mention the finding of thermitic materials in the dust from the building collapses, as reported by researchers in 2009 in The Open Chemical Physics Journal. An archived copy of that study can be downloaded here.
But he tries to cast doubt on this, too, by crediting NIST with investigating the possible use of explosives and arguing that, while NIST did not itself test for thermitic materials, thermite “burns slowly relative to explosive materials and would require several minutes in contact with a massive steel section to heat it to a temperature that would result in substantial weakening.”
Carlson’s conclusion is that thermite is an unlikely material to be used for controlled demolition.
However, that conclusion, like the lame response from NIST that he’s accepting at face value, reflects a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of the thermitic residues found in the dust. This wasn’t regular thermite, but nano-thermite (or “super-thermite”), which can be used for explosive applications.
Here’s information about that from researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under the US Department of Energy about this (emphasis added):
Controlling composition at the nanometer scale is well known to alter material properties in sometimes highly desirable and dramatic ways. In the field of energetic materials component distributions, particle size, and morphology, effect both sensitivity and reactivity performance. To date nanostructured energetic materials are largely unknowns with the exception of nanometer-sized reactive powders now being produced at a number of laboratories. We have invented a new method of making nanostructured energetic materials, specifically explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics, using sol-gel chemistry.
The government lab researchers specifically mention the nanocomposite application for the reaction between iron oxide and aluminum—i.e., thermite.
And here’s what Department of Defense researchers have said about how this nano-thermite could be effectively utilized (emphasis added):
Energetic materials are a major component of weapons systems used by all branches of the US military…. In recent years researchers have found that energetic materials/ingredients that are produced on the nanoscale have the promise of increased performance in a variety of ways including sensitivity, stability, energy release, and mechanical properties…. One current promising nanocomposite being pursued … involves the use of Fe2O3 which is generated using the sol-gel method. The reason that Fe2O3 is chosen is because its thermite reaction with UFG aluminum is very exothermic…. As sol-gel materials and methodology advances, there are a number of possible application areas that are envisioned. These include … high-power, high-energy composite explosives.
Now, I don’t know whether nano-thermite was used to help bring down WTC 7, but I do know that office fires cannot reach temperatures hot enough to melt steel, whereas the finding of this material in the dust along with iron-rich microspheres resulting from their ignition could help to explain what the New York Times described as perhaps “the deepest mystery” about the collapse.
I’ve yet to see any proponents of the fire-induced collapse hypothesis explain that one.
Evidence of Foreknowledge
After his treatment of WTC 7, Carlson discusses the unusual trading of put options in the days prior to the attacks, which are investments that pay off when a stock drops. High volumes of put options were placed on American Airlines and United Airlines, whose planes were hijacked, as well as various companies with offices in the World Trade Center.
Often in this series so far, Carlson shows documents on the screen but doesn’t explain what it is we’re looking at. Here, he does this again with respect to put options without naming the source, but I found it to be this Truthout article.
I’ve written about this topic in the past, too. See the first section on “Insider Trading” in this 2005 article for a detailed discussion:
I also published several articles about it at Foreign Policy Journal (which I discontinued in 2020 in large part to focus my efforts on combatting the lockdown madness and coerced mass vaccination endgame). In particular, for more information, see these two:
- “Black 9/11: A Walk on the Dark Side” by Mark Gaffney
- “Evidence for Informed Trading on the Attacks of September 11” by Kevin Ryan
After a brief discussion of the unusual trading, suggesting that someone knew the attacks were coming and tried to profit from that foreknowledge, Carlson gets into how numerous foreign intelligence agencies had information about the plot.
Here, the focus turns to Israel, and Carlson discusses the infamous “dancing Israelis” as well as the “art students” spy ring that was uncovered. I wrote about all of this, also, in the following 2008 article:
Here’s a relevant excerpt:
Reports of investigations into Israeli spying within the U.S. had emerged early in 2001. After 9/11, Fox News reported that according to investigators the Israeli intelligence operatives of a large spy ring may have gathered information in advance about the attacks of 9/11, but that the evidence for this was classified.
As part of the operation, Israelis posed as art students. Under the guise of selling art, they targeted government officials at their offices or homes, including members of the military, the DEA, the FBI, and other law enforcement and intelligence personnel.
One group of the Israeli “art students” lived at 4220 Sheridan St. in Hollywood, Florida, just down the street from the 3389 address where Mohammed Atta and three of the other 9/11 hijackers lived.
In addition, almost all the call records and billing for U.S. phone companies is handled by an Israeli-based private communications company called Amdocs Ltd. The NSA had warned other U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies about the potential security breaches that this situation might make possible.
There was some evidence that wiretaps were indeed being compromised. Law enforcement officials observed that suspects under surveillance suspiciously changed their behavior after wiretaps began, according to officials who spoke to Fox News.
It’s known that the DEA had also been investigating Israeli organized crime involved the multi-billion dollar ecstasy trade.
The FBI had also been investigating Amdocs and there were fears that even the telephone lines in the White House, which were installed by Bell Atlantic and Amdocs in 1997, might have been compromised.
According to a leaked DEA report from that agency’s investigation into the Israeli spy ring, one of the “art students” who was arrested was held on a $10,000 bond that was placed by an Israeli man named Ophir Baer who was in the U.S. under employment by Amdocs.
Another Israeli company, Comverse Infosys, was responsible for providing wiretapping for U.S. law enforcement. But, again, there was a fear among U.S. agencies that the wiretaps themselves could be intercepted by unauthorized parties through a back door in the Comverse system. Adding to these fears was the fact that Comverse was reimbursed for up to half of its research and development costs by the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade.
Comverse was partnered with an Israeli messaging service company called Odigo. The Israeli paper Haaretz reported that workers at Odigo, which had offices near the World Trade Center, had received warnings on the morning of September 11 of an impending attack. The Washington Post confirmed that two employees of Odigo had “received text messages warning of an attack on the World Trade Center two hours before terrorists crashed planes into the New York landmarks.”
There is no direct evidence that the Israeli government or any Israeli nationals were involved in 9/11. In fact, Mossad had reportedly warned the U.S. intelligence community of an impending attack, including the potential that it might come in the form of hijackings. The possibility remains that Israeli intelligence came across the information leading to its warnings to the U.S. during the course of the extensive operation that was broken up in 2001.
It looks like the final episode of the series is next to be released (for those who don’t already have early access as subscribers). I’ll watch it when it comes out on YouTube and Rumble and share my comments, if I find anything worth commenting on.
In conclusion, I agree with Tucker Carlson that what’s needed is a real investigation to determine the answers to so many legitimate questions about the events of 9/11—and who all was involved.
Of course, for that to happen would require investigators willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads, which you and I both know is not going to happen. So, in lieu of such an investigation, it will remain up to us do do our own open-source intelligence analyses and draw our own conclusions.
Share your own thoughts about the episode in the comments below!
Update: I have now completed my series of posts commenting on “The 9/11 Files”. Read more:
The so-called hijackers were never found on any airport security feeds showing them boarding the flights in question. They were never hijackers they were distractions.
Their names were on the flight manifests. However, I question in particular the ability of Hani Hanjour to pilot the plane that hit the Pentagon.
9/11 Hijackers Not on Flight Manifests?
https://www.jeremyrhammond.com/2010/04/05/911-hijackers-not-on-flight-manifests/
Hani Hanjour: Al Qaeda’s Top Gun
https://www.jeremyrhammond.com/2010/04/17/al-qaedas-top-gun/
Real investigators with subpoena power are needed.
Very much so.
Of course Mossad “warned” (reportedly) of impending attacks (possibly via highjackings).
Similar to the famous presidential daily briefing about bin Laden’s “determination” to strike the U.S., this was part of the set-up to later sell believability for the narrative they were to use for the events of the day.
I’m not sure the PDB on “OBL Determined to Strike” was part of a set-up since the original narrative was that there was no warning, no intel to suggest such a plot at all. However, the report of Israel warning of some plot beforehand is one I could see being essentially planted in the media, if we assume that Israel was actually involved in the plot’s orchestration.
I think it’s a fair “assumption” that elements of US, Israeli, and Saudi intelligence were involved. I’m not sure the PDB was a CIA “plant,” but it stands to reason when one grasps the “falsity” of the false flag. The White House did initially do the “we couldn’t imagine” routine, but that doesn’t deter my suspicion that the PDB was CIA “planted” to later “have something on record” to bolster the false flag narrative. But that detail is of no importance, of course, to the overarching truth of 9/11 being a false flag operation.
I don’t believe it was a false flag operation in the sense that it was done by Party A with the intent of making it look like Party B was responsible. I think it’s more complicated than that. The way the puzzle pieces fit together to me is that al-Qaeda was involved, and the operation was facilitated by what you might call the Deep State.
If party A facilitates an operation in ways without which the operation could not have even “got off the ground” so to speak, and party B gets wholly blamed for the operation, with no recognition of the true perpetrators, it is indeed a false flag.
But I would go further than that and contend that 9/11, as it unfolded, was not planned or executed by Al-Qaeda.
To define how I’m using the term, a “false flag” operation would be one in which Party B wasn’t actually involved at all.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/false-flag
https://greydynamics.com/glossary/false-flag-operation/
I am convinced al-Qaeda was involved. Two of its operatives were tracked into the country by the CIA, for example. Others had a route through Jeddah, where it seems visas were being issued in relation to CIA recruitment efforts during the 1990s, when it allied with al-Qaeda and other extremist groups in the Balkans. Michael Springmann blew the whistle on that operation. This was not unlike how the CIA later funneled arms from Saudi Arabia and Qatar to the groups including the Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.
Jeremy,
Thanks for taking the time to contribute your analysis on this documentary. I have been trying to stomach my way through the video series(TC is such a phony honeypot/gatekeeper for the current generation) as so much has already been analyzed/theorized over this affair. Its a NO GO zone like all the other state sponsored events. My wild ass conjecture is the Langley boys facilitated the initial Saudi entry into the country (visas,keeping FBI bozos at bay) and then once it became apparent that any flying of commercial aircraft was a ludicrous selling point…they opened up a joint mission with the MOSSAD folks to stage the rest(the obvious public display of behavior at various strip clubs and bars in Florida,etc). The famous boxcutter boys may have had names on the manifest but they(as mentioned above) probably didnt enter any planes that day. The intel duo then took full scale advantage and used controlled demolition on WTC7 and perhaps the other two buildings although the pulverized attribute of the WTC1 and WTC2 dust does indeed leave the door open for some other possibilities.
So the real perps allowed the development of the cover story…cave dwelling boxcutters taking down towers inside the infidels palace….while actually performing themselves the real mastery of the day.
Just add in the usual massive propoganda by the empires talking heads and its off to “war” we go once again to “defend” our western values. It’s all very formulaic.
I think we can all agree to a significant extent that if we are looking for truth in these types of events we really cant put much, or any, value in the institutions that perpetuate these events.
Yeah, that’s a very good point. Tucker’s core conclusion is that there needs to be a real investigation. But that just leads to the conundrum of the government still investigating itself.
It’s one of those events where I don’t think we’ll ever get the answers we need, so what really happened will always be a matter largely of conjecture. I do not think your own conclusion is an unreasonable interpretation of events. It aligns with my own thinking as to a best hypothesis.
I briefly spoke with a consulting construction/demolition engineer in my role as a limousine driver. I asked him on his thoughts and his reply surprised me. He told me that he was in London on 9/11 and watching the TV (as we all were) with others from various professions. Someone turned to him and asked him of his thoughts and he, not believing the footage that he was watching, told them that he thought the collapses to be impossible! He reiterated this to me, telling me that in his professional opinion, a building like that could not possibly be affected by planes crashing into it as it was constructed specifically to withstand that.
Yeah, that was the initial reaction of lots of people, including architectural and engineering professionals. Many still insist we’ve been lied to. You’re probably aware of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.