of 19
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The eye-catching headline on the issue's
cover is "9/11 LIES", with "DEBUNKING"
and "Conspiracy Theorists" being much
smaller. Is this a subconscious appeal to
peoples' suspicions that the official story is
a lie?
9-11Research essays
NOTE: This critique served as a mockup for an print article that appeared in Issue 10 of Global Outlookmagazine.
It examines the feature article in the March 2005 issue of Popular Mechanics: 'DEBUNKING 9/11 LIES'. The Global
Outlookarticle based on this is more detailed than this early version. See these related documents:
Popular MechanicsAttacks Its "9/11 LIES" Straw Man: The original critique of the Popular Mechanicsarticle, first
published on 911Research on February 7, 2005. The current critique grew out of this much shorter critiqe.
Popular Mechanics' Deceptive Smear Against 9/11 Truth: A more detailed critique of the article, including the entire
text of the original.Popular Mechanics' Assault on 9/11 Truth: Sharing the same name as this critique, this longer version served as the
final prototype ofr the Global Outlookarticle.
Popular Mechanics' Assault on 9/11 Truth
by Jim Hoffman
created 4/12/05; published 6/15/05
The Hearst-owned Popular Mechanics targeted the 9/11 Truth
Movement (without ever acknowledging it by that name) with a cover
story in its March 2005 edition. [1] Sandwiched between ads and features
for monster trucks, NASCAR paraphernalia, and off-road racing are
twelve dense and brilliantly designed pages purporting to debunk the
myths of 9/11.
The article's approach is to identify and attack a series of claims which
it asserts represent the whole of 9/11 skepticism. It gives the false
impression that these claims, several of which are clearly absurd,
represent the breadth of challenges to the official account of the flights,
the World Trade Center attack, and the Pentagon attack. Thus it purports
to debunkconspiracy theorists'physical-evidence-based claims, without
even acknowledging that there are other grounds on which to question
the official story. Indeed many 9/11 researchers don't even address the
physical evidence, preferring instead to focus on who had the the means,motive, and opportunity to carry out the attack. I summarize some of
this evidence at the end of this article.
While ignoring these and many other facts belying the official story, PM
attacks a mere 16 claims of its choosing, which it asserts are the most prevalentamong conspiracy
theorists. PMgroups these claims into four topics, each of which is given a richly illustrated two- or four
page spread. Since nearly all the physical-evidence-based challenges to the official story fall within one o
another of these topics, the article gives the impression that it addresses the breadth of these challenges.
However, for each topic, the article presents specious claims to divert the reader from understanding the
8/15/2019 Popular Mechanics' Assault on 911
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James Meigs, appointed editor
of Popular Mechanics in May
2004, trashes skeptics of the
official story of 9/11/01 as
irresponsible disgracers of thememories of victims, apart from
"we as a society."
issue. For example, the three pages devoted to attacking the Twin Towers' demolition present three red-
herring claims and avoid the dozens of points I feature in my presentations, such as The Twin Towers'
Demolition[2]
The article brackets its distortion of the issues highlighted by 9/11 skeptics with smears against the
skeptics themselves, whom it dehumanizes and accuses ofdisgracing the memories of the victims, and
repeatedly accuses of harassing individuals who responded to the attack. More important, it misrepresents
skeptics' views by implying that the skeptics' community is an undifferentiated army that wholly embrace
the article's sixteenpoisonous claims, which it asserts are at the root of virtually every 9/11 alternativescenario. In fact much of the 9/11 truth community has been working to expose many of these claims as
disinformation.
The Lies Are Out There
This article has a page of
Editor's Notes, The Lies
Are Out There, written by
James Meigs, whoseprevious columns have
praised military
technology (such as the
UAVs used in Fallujah).
Meigs places outside of
society anyone who
questions the official
version of events of
9/11/01:
We as a society accept
the basic premise that a
group of Islamist
terrorists hijacked four airplanes and turned them
into weapons against us. ... Sadly, the noble
search for truth is now being hijacked by a
growing army of conspiracy theorists.
Meigs throws a series of insults at the conspiracy
theorists, saying they ignore the facts and engage in
elaborate, shadowy theorizing, and concludes hisdiatribe by saying:
Those who peddle fantasies that this country
encouraged, permitted or actually carried out the
attacks are libeling the truth -- and disgracing the
memories of the thousands who died that day.
Besides trashing the skeptics, and conflating this
country with its corrupt leaders, Meig's attempts to
legitimate PM's investigation, saying:
We assembled a team of reporters and
researchers, including professional fact checkers
and the editors of PM, and methodically analyzed
all 16 conspiracy claims. We interviewed scoresof engineers, aviation experts, military officials,
eyewitnesses and members of the investigative
teams who have held the wreckage of the attacks
in their own hands. We pored over photography,
maps, blueprints, aviation logs and transcripts. In
every single instance, we found that the facts used
by the conspiracy theorists to support their
fantasies were mistaken, misunderstood, or
deliberately falsified.
This sounds impressive, but the article provides no
evidence to back up these claims. It provides no
footnotes to source its many assertions, and despite
the scores ofexperts listed in its final section the
article cites only a handful of them, and mostly to
refute its straw-man claims.
Moreover, bold unsubstantiated claims in the articl
-- such as PM's assertion that there was only a
single interception in the decade before 9/11/01 --don't inspire confidence in PM'sprofessional fact
checkers. It echoes the discredited assertions of
official reports such as FEMA's World Trade Cente
Building Performance Study and the 9/11
Commission Report. It provides no evidence PM
investigated the attack -- only evidence that it
investigated the 9/11 Truth movement in order to
determine how best to discredit it through
misrepresentation.
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9/11: DEBUNKING the MYTHS
PMdevotes an entire page to this dramatic photograph by
Rob Howard showing Flight 175 approaching the South
Tower. Unsupported claims that the plane was not a jetliner
have been the staple of efforts to discredit the 9/11 Truthmovement for over a year. The selection of this as the
centerpiece image is one of an array of techniques Popular
Mechanicsuses to falsely identify the 9/11 Truth movement
with a campaign cleverly used to discredit it through
associating it with claims for which there is no evidence,
such as the claim that this plane carried a missile-firing
pod.
The main article consists of an introduction and four
sections, each devoted to a topic, spanning six two-
page spreads. The topics contain a total of sixteen
poisonous claims, which PMpurports to refutewhile it identifies them as the beliefs of all in the
growing army ofconspiracy theorists. The four
sections are:
THE PLANES, in which PMuses nonsensical
claims about the jet that crashed into the South
Tower to bury the incredible lack of military
response to the attack.
THE WORLD TRADE CENTER, in which PM
pretends to debunk the controlled demolition of the
Superficially, the four topics appear to address the
major physical evidence issues brought up by the
skeptics (while ignoring the mountains of evidence
of foreknowledge, motive, and unique means
possessed by insiders). However, the sixteen most
prevalent claims made by conspiracy theorists
which it attacks are mostly specious claims, many
of which were probably invented to discredit
skepticism of the official story in the first place. Th
article debunks the more specious claims, and uses
distortion and falsehoods to counter serious claims.
Thus the approach of the article is to set up and
attack a straw man of claims that it pretends
represent the entirety of the skeptics' movement.
The list includes many of the same claims that wer
debunked in 2004 by the websites 911review.com,
oilempire.us, and questionsquestions.net.
PMprovides no evidence for its assertion that the
claims it attacks are representative of the army of
conspiracy theorists. It cites at least one website fo
each of its claims, but the websites are notrepresentative of the 9/11 Truth Movement. It
makes no mention of911Research.wtc7.net, the
highest-ranking 9/11 Truth website returned by a
Google search using "9/11". Several references are
anonymous posts to sites that don't exercise editori
control. To my mind, the 17 websites PMmentions
fall into four categories:
Sites with a high profile in the 9/11 TruthMovement that maintain a high standard of factual
accuracy: emperors-clothes.com, OilEmpire.us, and
StandDown.net.
Sites with a high profile in the 9/11 Truth
Movement that post a wide range of articles or
endorse positions without carefully vetting their
accuracy: Prisonplanet.com, Rense.com,
WhatReallyHappened.com, reopen911.org, and
AttackOnAmerica.net.
Sites that I've never heard of or don't focus on
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Twin Towers and Building 7 by advancing a series
of red-herring claims and misrepresenting the case
for demolition.
THE PENTAGON, in which PMattacks the claim
ofconspiracy advocates that the Pentagon was hit
by an object other than a jetliner, while hiding the
position of respected 9/11 Truth activists that this
claim is a hoax.
FLIGHT 93, in which PMattacks the claim thatFlight 93 was shot down with transparently
specious arguments.
9/11: sandiego.indymedia.org, BlogD.com,
ThinkAndAsk.com, ForbiddenKnowledge.com, and
WorldNetDaily.com.
Sites that have actively promoted hoaxes:
911inplanesite.com, LetsRoll911.org,
911review.org, and PentagonStrike.co.uk.
While entirely avoiding the most prominent 9/11
Truth sites, PMrepeatedly mentions the leastcredible. For example, it repeatsLetsRoll911.org
three times.
Before proceeding to its 16 points, the article's
introduction levels more insults at the skeptics --
extremists, some of whose theories are byproducts
of cynical imaginations that aim to inject suspicion
and animosity into public debate. It begins by
asking you to type "World Trade Center conspiracy
into Google.com, and claims thatMore than 3000books on 9/11 have been published-- an incredible
claim.
The sixteen "claims" attacked by the article are
described here under the headings taken from the
article, which indicate either the claim, the counter
claim, or a broader issue.
THE
PLANES
CLAIMS ATTACKED BY POPULAR
MECHANICS
In this section PMattacks four claims, two ofwhich are valid points about the lack of military
response, and two of which are hoaxes about the
the plane that crashed into the South Tower. The
hoaxes bracket the valid claims, which PM
dismisses with 9/11-Commission-like denials.
Intercepts Not Routine
CLAIM: It has been standard operating procedures
for decades to immediately intercept off-course
planes that do not respond to communications from
air traffic controllers. ...
PMdismisses this "claim," excerpted fromOilEmpire.us with the following sweeping 'fact':
In the decade before 9/11 NORAD intercepted only
one civilian plane over North America: golfer
Payne Stewart's Learjet, in October 1999.
This bold assertion flies in the face of anAssociated
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This image, which appears in the
article, is found (with the same red
oval) on a pod-debunking page of
QuestionsQuestions.net, yet the
article contains no mention of the
site.
Where's The
Pod
CLAIM:
Photographs and
video footage show
... an object
underneath the
fuselage at the base
of the right wing. ...
The pod-plane idea
has been used for
over a year to
discredit skepticism
of the official story.
It's not surprising
that it leads the 16 claims. The article mentions thesiteLetsRoll911.org and the videoIn Plane Site,
both of which feature the pod theory. It is absent
any mention of sites debunking the pod claims,
such as OilEmpire.us, QuestionsQuestions.net,
and 911Review.com.
No Stand-Down Order
CLAIM: No fighter jets were scrambled from anyof the 28 Air Force bases within close range of
the four hijacked flights. ... Our Air Force was
ordered to Stand Down on 9/11.
Here, the article falsely implies that emperors-
clothes.com and StandDown.net both claim that
no jets were scrambled to pursue any of the four
commandeered jets. It then attacks this straw man
by relating some details of the Commission's
timeline (without sourcing the Commission's
Report) to suggest that interceptors were
scrambled, but that ATC couldn't find the hijacked
flights because there were too many radar blips.
The article makes no mention of the many
problems with NORAD's account of the failed
intercepts, but relates the following incredible
assertion by NORAD public affairs officer Maj.
Douglas Martin that there was a hole in NORAD's
radar coverage:
It was like a doughnut. There was no coverage
Press report of scramble frequencies that quotes the
same Maj. Douglas Martin that is one ofPM's cited
experts, Maj. Douglas Martin, [3]
From Sept. 11 to June, NORAD scrambled jets or
diverted combat air patrols 462 times, almost
seven times as often as the 67 scrambles from
September 2000 to June 2001, Martin said.
It is safe to assume that a significant fraction ofscrambles lead to intercepts, so the fact that there
were 67 scrambles in a 9-month period before
9/11/01 suggests that there are dozens of intercepts
per year. To its assertion that there was only one
intercept in a decade, the article adds, without
evidence, that rules in effect ... prohibited supersoni
flight on intercepts and the suggestion that there wer
no hotlines between ATCs and NORAD.
Flight 175's Windows
CLAIM: ... [Flight 175] definitely did not look like a
commercial plane ... I didn't see any windows on th
sides.
That the South Tower plane had no windows is one
of several ludicrous claims made by theIn Plane Sit
video, and, like the pod-planes claim, is dismissed b
the simplest analysis.
Like the other image in the article's pages on the flights, this one can
be found on of QuestionsQuestions.net. PMneeded look no further
than the analysis long available on the websites of "conspiracy
theorists" to attack the straw man claims it dishonestly associates with
the same researchers.
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in the middle.
This absurd idea that NORAD had no radar
coverage over much of the continental US is
distilled from the 9/11 Commission Report.
Predictably, the article makes no mention of
evidence that war games were being conducted on
9/11/01 and that false radar blips were deliberately
inserted onto FAA radar screens.
FACTS IGNORED BY POPULAR
MECHANICS
The Hijacker Evidence Void
There is no known evidence placing the allegedhijackers on the planes:
Six of the alleged suicide hijackers turned up alive
after the attack -- a fact that the 9/11 Commission
failed to even acknowledge. [4][5][6][7]
There is no public evidence that the remains of any
of the alleged hijackers was recovered.
None of the flight crews on the targeted aircraft
reported hijackings to Air Traffic Control, either by
radio or the 4-digit hijacking codes.None of the contents of recovered voice data
recorder black boxes has been made public, even
though the 9/11 Commission has closed its doors.
The FBI released its list of hijacking suspects within three days of theattack. Five of the named suspects proclaimed their aliveness and
innocence after seeing their mug shots on news reports. Yet the 9/11
Commission repeated the same list of suspects without even
acknowledging that there were any problems with their identities.
Chain of Miracles
The hijacking scenario alleged by the official story is
virtually impossible:
Several of the alleged hijackers frequented strip
Failures in Depth
The official timeline of the military response to th
attack went through several revisions, all of which
are unbelievable. According to both the 2001
NORAD timeline and the 2004 9/11 Commissiontimeline:
NORAD learned of the hijackings only after long
and inexplicable delays. For example, NORAD's
timeline blames the FAA for 18 and 39-minute
delays in reporting the deviations and transponde
shut-offs of Flights 11 and 77.
Once it learned that Flights 11 and 175 were
headed to New York City, NORAD failed to
scramble interceptors from nearby Fort Dix orLaguardia, choosing instead the distant Otis base
in Falmouth, MA.
Once it learned that Flights 77 and 175 were
headed to the Captial NORAD failed to scramble
interceptors from Andrews Air Force base (just 1
miles from the Pentagon), choosing instead the
distant base in Langley, VA.
Fighters already in the air were not redeployed to
pursue the jetliners. For example, two F-15s
flying off the coast of Long Island were notordered to fly cover over Manhattan until after th
second tower was hit. [10] The F-15s from Otis
supposedly reached Manhattan a few minutes
after the second tower hit, but were not
redeployed to pursue Flight 77, which was heade
toward the capital.
F-15s and F-16s scrambled to intercept the attack
jetliners were flown at less than one-third of their
top speeds.
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bars, consumed alcohol and pork, were rude in
public, and left copies of the Koran behind; yet they
supposedly committed suicide out of fanatical
devotion to Allah. [8]
The takeovers of the four jetliners were staggered
over a one-hour period; yet any rational planner
would have executed the takeovers simultaneously.[9]
The hijackers supposedly enjoyed 100% success in
taking over the flights with "box cutters" in spite of
the crews of the remaining flights having knowledge
of the first takeover.
None of the alleged hijackers had flown jets before.
Each of the four flights commandeered for the attack either originated
from airports far from their targets or flew hundreds of miles west
before turning around.
Stand-Down Implementation
PM's rehashing of the 9/11 Commission's
incompetence theory is absent any mention of the
two methods likely used to freeze the air defenses
A June 1st order consolidated intercept authority
in the Secretary of Defense, requiring its approva
for any intercepts that might involve deadly forceThis order stripped commanders in the field of
autonomy in responding to crises such as 9/11/01[11]
Multiple war games were conducted on the day o
9/11/01. While one exercise,Northern Vigilance
involved the redeployment of interceptors far
from the northeast corridor, other exercises,
Vigilant Guardian and Vigilant Warrierlikely
confused the coordination of response to the
attack.
The site OilEmpire.us provides evidence of five
war games right after the passage quoted by PM,
so the omission of this information is likely
intentional. [12]
Investigation Prevention
The crashes were not seriously investigated:
The NTSB was not allowed to study the crashes.[13]
Recordings of interviews with air traffic
controllers were destroyed. [14]
The 9/11 Commission repeated the FBI's origina
list of suicide hijackers, without even
acknowledging that six of them reported
themselves alive after the attack. [15]
THE
WORLD TRADE
CENTER
CLAIMS ATTACKED BY POPULAR
PMgoes to lengths
to explain the
"puffs". It quotes
NIST lead
investigator Shyam
Sunder saying
When you have a
significant portion
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At about seven seconds after the South
Tower's top stated to plunge, the event
has become quite explosive. The red
arrow points to puffs of dustemerging
from the mechanical floor, about ten
floors below the zone of total
destruction. If those puffsare due to
the floors pancaking, then what is
producing all of the dust in the
explosion above, the floors containing
the only concrete in the tower?
MECHANICS
In this section, PMattacks five claims of which only
two are valid: that the Twin Tower collapses ejected
clouds of concrete dust, and that Building 7 was
destroyed through controlled demolition. The other
three claims are red herrings and are used to
overshadow the valid claims. PMdismisses the valid
claims -- which are only the tip of the iceberg of
evidence of controlled demolition -- withmisdirection, omissions, and hand-waving.
Widespread Damage
CLAIM: ... OTHER EXPLOSIVES (... such as
concussion bombs) HAD ALREADY BEEN
DETONATED in the lower levels of tower one at the
same time as the plane crash.
The article's lead point in the World Trade Centertopic is an obscure idea that explosives in the
basements of the towers damaged the lobbies at
about the time the planes hit. This claim is difficult
to find in 9/11 skeptics' literature, and is entirely
distinct -- in both the support that exists for it, and
the support that it provides for "conspiracy theories" -
- from the contention that explosives brought down
the towers (56 and 102 minutes after the plane
crashes).
Puffs Of Dust
CLAIM: ... The concrete clouds shooting out of the
buildings are not possible from a mere collapse.
They do occur from explosions. ...
Here PMtakes its claim -- the only valid one among
the four relating to the Twin Tower collapses -- from
an advertisement in theNew York Times for the book
Painful Questions. By titling this section Puffs Of
Dustrather than "Explosions of Concrete", and by
showing only a photograph of the early part of a
collapse, the article minimizes the explosiveness of
the event.
of of a floor
collapsing it's
going to shoot air
and concrete dust
out the window
without explaining
where the concrete
dust came from, or
even attempting to
quantify the amount
of dust that should
be expected in the
absence of
explosives.
PMfails to acknowledge any of the global collaps
features that researchers often cite as proving
demolition, such as verticallity, explosiveness,
pulverization and rapidity -- features abundantlydocumented in the extensive body of surviving
photographs and videos. [16][17] Instead it implies
that conspiracy theorists rely on the opinion of
expert Van Romero:
Numerous conspiracy theorists cite Van Romero
an explosives expert and vice president of the
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology,
who was quoted on 9/11 by the Albuquerque
Journal as saying "there were some explosive
devices inside the buildings that caused the
towers to collapse."
"I was misquoted in saying that I thought it was
explosives that brought down the building," he
tells PM. "I only said that that's what it looked
like."
The following excerpts from theAlbuquerque
Journal article make it difficult to accept the
explanation that Romero was misquoted.
The collapse of the buildings appears "too
methodical" to be a chance result of airplanes
colliding with the structures. ... "My opinion is,
based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes
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The article features this image of the South Tower's collapse, taken
about 2.5 seconds after the top started to plunge. It was taken by
Gulnara Samoilova, who risked her life to take the photograph from a
vantage point that would be engulfed by thick toxic dust in under 20
seconds.
t t e or ra e enter t ere were some
explosive devices inside the buildings that
caused the towers to collapse." ... "It would be
difficult for something from the plane to trigger
an event like that." [18]
PMquotes Romero denying that his retraction wa
bought:
"Conspiracy theorists came out saying that thegovernment got to me. That is the farthest thing
from the truth. This has been an albatross around
my neck for three years."
PMfails to mention that Van Romero was named
chairman of the Domestic Preparedness
Consortium in January 2001, that his Institute
received $15 million for an anti-terrorism program
in 2002, or thatInfluence Magazine tapped him as
one of six top lobbyists in 2003, having secured$56 million for New Mexico Tech. [19][20][21][22
"Melted Steel"
CLAIM: ... The first lie was that the load of fuel
from the aircraft was the cause of structural
failure. No kerosene fire can burn hot enough tomelt steel. ...
The article implies that skeptics' criticism of the
official account that fires weakened the towers'
structures is based on the erroneous assumption that
the official story requires that the fires melted the
steel.
In fact, the fire-melts-steel claim was first
introduced by apologists for the official story within
days of the attack. On September 13, the BBC
quoted "structural engineer" Chris Wise as saying:
It was the fire that killed the buildings. There's
nothing on earth that could survive those
temperatures with that amount of fuel burning.
The columns would have melted, the floors would
have melted and eventually they would have
collapsed one on top of each other. [23]
The more sophisticated column failure and truss
PMreproduced two sets of charts from the Palisade
station with different time scales, falsely accusing
revisionists of misleading by showing only the
charts with the compressed time scales:
On that graph, the 8- and 10-second collapses
appear--misleadingly--as a pair of sudden spikes.
Lamont-Doherty's 40-second plot of the same
data (Graph 2, above) gives a much more
detailed picture: ...
Incidentally, the claim that that the towers collapse
in 8 and 10 seconds is contradicted by video
recordings, which show that both collapses took
between 14 and 16 seconds. [27]
PMreproduces these two different charts of the same events. The
graph on the left represents 30-minute time spans, whereas the
graph on the right represents 40-second time spans. PMaccuses
WhatReallyHappened.com of selectively displaying only the chart
on the left to falsely imply that the seismic signals were sudden
spikes. In fact, that website reproduced the following graphic from
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failure theories, advanced in subsequent days and
weeks, are the subject of detailed analysis and
debunking in my talkThe World Trade Center
Demolition. [24]
Even in attacking this straw-man claim, PM
misrepresents the physics of fires, claimingJet fuel
burns at 800to 1500F ... Steel loses about 50
percent of its strength at 1100F ... And at 1800it isprobably at less than 10 percent. Here the article
implies that flame temperatures and steel
temperatures are synonymous, ignoring the thermal
conductivity and thermal mass of steel, which wicks
away heat. In actual tests of uninsulated steel
structures subjected to prolonged hydrocarbon-
fueled fires conducted by Corus Construction Co.
the highest recorded steel temperatures were 680F.[25]
Seismic Spikes
CLAIM: ... The strongest jolts were all registered
at the beginning of the collapses, well before
falling debris struck the earth. ...
This claim -- widespread among websites attacking
the official story -- was refuted in 2003 by
911Research.wtc7.net. [26] Instead of simply
refuting this straw-man claim, PMmakes its ownspecious claim that the seismic records prove that
the towers were not destroyed with explosives:
The seismic waves--blue for the South Tower, red
for the North Tower--start small and then
escalate as the buildings rumble to the ground.
Translation: no bombs.
That the strongest spikes recorded the rubble hitting
the ground proves nothing about the presence or
absence of explosives, whose seismic signaturewould be minimal.
The collapse of each of the Twin Towers on 9/11/01
generated small earthquakes which were observed
by seismologists up to 265 miles away from Lower
Manhattan, and recorded by half a dozen seismic
recording stations within 25 miles. The most widely
referenced seismic charts were produced by the
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Palisades.
Lamont-Doherty that combined charts with both time scales.
[28]PMfraudulently accuses
WhatReallyHappened.com of misleadingly
displaying a chart that it does not. However, that si
is nonetheless incorrect in asserting that the
strongest signals were at the beginning of thecollapses. If one magnifies the amplitude scales of
the charts, as in the graphics below, it becomes
apparent that a signal several times the magnitude o
the baseline signal begins about ten seconds before
the large spikes in each case.
Here are zoomed-up portions of the Palisades charts for the South
and North Tower collapses, showing 20-second intervals during
which the collapses started.
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WTC 7 Collapse
CLAIM: ... the video clearly shows that it was not
a collapse subsequent to fire, but rather a
controlled demolition. ...
PMexcerpts this claim from 911review.org, a
website that promoted pod-plane and other no-plane
hoaxes before vanishing about the time the PM
article was published. The article simply repeats the
site's claim without directing the reader to where
they can see videos, such as on wtc7.net. [29]
"progressive collapse" of Building 7:
What our preliminary analysis has shown is that
if you take out just one column on one of the
lower floors, it could cause a vertical
progression of collapse so that the entire section
comes down.
Note the guarded language Sunder uses to describe
the extent of the collapse. The reader is led to
believe that the collapse of a "section" could lead to
the total collapse of the building, when in fact there
are no examples of total progressive collapse of
steel-framed buildings outside of the alleged cases
of the Twin Towers and Building 7. [30]
FACTS IGNORED BY POPULAR
MECHANICS
The (Short) History of Fires Downing
Steel-Frame Buildings
Fires have never
caused the total
collapse of a steel-
framed high-rise
building. There are a
number of examples
of severe fires in
high-rise buildings,
and none caused total
collapses. Several of
these fires were
apparently more
Features of the Twin Towers' Collapses
Beyond
Puffs of Dust
The collapses of the Twin Towers exhibited many
features that can be explained only by controlled
demolition:
The towers fell straight down through themselves
maintaining radial symmetry,
The towers' tops mushroomed into vast clouds of
pulverized concrete and shattered steel.
The collapses exhibited demolition squibs shootin
out of the towers well below the zones of total
destruction.
The collapses generated vast dust clouds that
expanded to many times the towers' volumes --
more than occurs in typical controlled demolitions
The towers came down suddenly and completely,
a rate only slightly slower than free fall in a
vacuum. The flat top of the North Tower's rubble
cloud revealed in the above photo show the rubble
falling at the same speed inside and outside the
former building's profile, an impossibility unless
demolition charges were removing the building's
structure ahead of the falling rubble.The explosions of the towers were characterized b
intense blast waves that shattered windows in
buildings 400 feet away.
The steel skeletons were consistently shredded into
short pieces which could be carried easily by the
equipment used to dispose of the evidence.
Eyewitnesses reported explosions before and at the
outset of the collapses.
Features of WTC 7's Collapse Avoided byPM
PMmentions none of the physical features of
WTC7's collapse that are signatures of controlled
demolition:
The building collapsed in a precisely vertical
fashion.
The building collapsed at almost the rate of free-
8/15/2019 Popular Mechanics' Assault on 911
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This photo shows the First Interstate
Bank Building fire in Los Angeles.
severe than the fires
in the three World
Trade Center
buildings on 9/11/01,
exhibiting ongoing
window-breakage, large emergent flames, light
smoke, and spreading areas of fire. In contrast the
fires in the South Tower did not spread, and
showed diminishing flames and black smoke. Thefires in Building Seven remained limited to small
portions of single floors.
The following table gives a rundown on the extent
and duration of other high-rise fires compared to
the 9/11/01 fires.
building year duration floors burned
One Meridian Plaza 1991 18 hours 8
First Interstate Bank 1988 4 hours 4
Caracas Tower 2004 17 hours 26
North Tower 2001 1.8 hours ~6
South Tower 2001 0.9 hours ~3
Building 7 2001 3 hours ?
fall.
The building collapsed into a tidy pile of rubble.
These photos show the verticality of Building 7's collapse -- a
signature feature of controlled demolition. The skyscraper was
transformed from an erect structure to a tidy pile of rubble in about
6.2 seconds -- only a fraction of a second slower than the speed of
free-fall in a vacuum.
Who Controlled the World Trade Center?
Facts about the ownership, insurance, and securityof the World Trade Center show that insiders had
the means, motive, and opportunity to demolish the
buildings:
The World Trade Center passed into private contro
on July 24, 2001 via a 99-year lease to a consortiu
headed by Silverstein Properties. [31]
Silverstein promptly secured an insurance policy
covering "terrorist attacks". [32]
In the wake of the attack, Silverstein sued theinsurance companies to obtain twice the value of
the policies, based on the two jet impacts being
"two occurrences", and eventually won. [33]
Security for the WTC was provided by Securacom
a company with ties to the Bush family. [34]
Bomb-sniffing dogs were pulled from the WTC th
week before the attack. [35]
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THE
PENTAGON
CLAIMS ATTACKED BY POPULAR
MECHANICS
In this section, PMattacks three often-repeated
claims by proponents of the theory that no jetliner
crashed into the Pentagon. Like other mainstream
media attacks on 9/11 Truth, the article gives no
hint that many skeptics consider this theory a hoax,
and avoids the persuasive arguments against it. [36]
Instead, PMbackhandedly promotes the theory
thorough sloppy and implausible refutations of the
three claims. Meanwhile, PMtotally ignores the
many facts about the Pentagon attack that point to
an inside job.
Big Plane, Small Holes
CLAIM: ... How does a plane 125 ft. wide and 155
ft. long fit into a hole which is only 16 ft. across?
...
Here the article cites the claim on reopen911.org
that the hole in the Pentagon was "only 16ft.
across", and mentions French author Thierry
Meyssan, who asserted that a truck bomb ormissile -- not an aircraft -- hit the Pentagon. The
article again implies that this idea is gospel among
9/11 skeptics, giving no clue that there is
controversy about the issue in 9/11 skeptics'
circles. [37] The errors section of911review.com
and pages on other 9/11 skeptics' sites have long
debunked Meyssan's wildly inaccurate description
of a 16-foot-diameter entry hole. [38]
PMcites the ACSE's estimate of the entry hole's
width as 75 ft based on analysis of column
damage, while avoiding the more accessible
photographic evidence that a 90-foot expanse of
the facade was breached. [39]
Intact Windows
CLAIM: ... photographs showing "intact
windows" directly above the crash site prove "a
It is counterintuitive to think that an aircraft could be reduced to
confetti by an impact with a reinforced barrier, but that is exactly what
this crash test demonstrated.
FACTS IGNORED BY POPULAR
MECHANICS
The Undefended Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the most
powerful military machine in world history:
The Pentagon was hit at around 9:40 AM, over an
hour into the attack and over a half hour after the
second tower was hit. [40]
The Pentagon is surrounded by restricted airspace,and presumably has missile batteries that would fire
on any approaching aircraft failing to identify itself
as friendly.
The Pentagon is 11 miles from Andrews Air Force
Base, which housed two combat-ready fighter
wings. The website of the D.C. Air National Guard
had boasted that its mission was "To provide
combat units in the highest possible state of
readiness." Despite scramble times of under five
minutes, we are told no interceptors made it into thair before the attack. [41]
If You Have to Hit Us ...
The attack targeted the nearly empty portion of the
Pentagon:
The west wing of the Pentagon was undergoing
renovation, and was sparsely occupied. [42]
Most of those killed in the attack were in the Naval
8/15/2019 Popular Mechanics' Assault on 911
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missile" or "a craft much smaller than a 757"
struck the Pentagon.
Here the article misrepresents an argument by
skeptics of the official account of Flight 77's crash
by stating that the issue is intact windows "near the
impact area," when the skeptics point to unbroken
windows in the trajectory of portions of the Boeing
757.
PMuses this part to backhandedly promote the
Pentagon Strike flash animation, which appears to
serve the same function as this article: discrediting
skepticism by associating it with sloppy research
and easily disproven ideas.
Flight 77 Debris
CLAIM: ... In reality, a Boeing 757 was neverfound ...
Here the article drops a URL for Pentagon Strike a
second time, in case the reader missed the first one.
The lack of aircraft debris following the Pentagon
crash has been noted by many people as
suspicious, but it is not surprising, considering the
nature of the crash. In 1988 Sandia National
Laboratories conducted a crash test in which an F-
4 Phantom was crashed into a concrete barrier at
480 mph -- similar to the estimated speed of the
Pentagon attack plane. The test impact resulted the
entire aircraft being reduced to small pieces no
more than a few inches long. PMavoids any
evidence as compelling as the Sandia crash test to
explain the lack of large debris, but cites the
incredible statement of blast expert Allyn E.
Kilsheimer that "I held in my hand the tail section
of the plane, and I found the black box."
Operations Center, which housed the Office of
Naval intelligence, a rival of the CIA. [43]
The attack killed only one general and no admirals.
The top brass, including Donald Rumsfeld, occupie
the opposite side of the sprawling building.
Top-Gun Piloting by an Incompetent
The attack plane executed extreme maneuvers toattack the west wing:
The plane made a spiral dive, turning 270 degrees
and losing 7000 feet in two minutes, to crash into
the west wing.
The plane flew in at such a shallow angle that it
clipped lamp posts on the highway over 500 feet
from the building, and plowed into the first floor of
the facade.
The alleged pilot of Flight 77, Hani Hanjour, was sincompetent that he was refused rental of a single-
engine Cessna, yet he supposedly executed
maneuvers that many pilots think are beyond the
skill of any human pilot. [44]
FLIGHT
93
CLAIMS ATTACKED BY POPULAR
MECHANICS
In this section, PMattacks four claims pointing to
This explanation for
the far-flung debris
has the same problem
as PM's explanation
for the roving engine:
a jetliner flying
straight into the
ground fast enough to
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Whereas PMdisplays a map showing
only a corner of Indian Lake to claim
it is less than 1.5 miles from the
crash site, this map shows the entire
lake, which is up to three miles away
the shoot-down of Flight 93. In contrast to the
previous section, most of these claims are valid, yet
PM's refutations are once again unconvincing. Why
does Chertoff backhandedly validate the skeptics on
this issue when he demonstrates such masterful use
of the straw-man technique in the first two sections?
Perhaps because this section is designed as a
distraction from the core facts that prove that the
attack was an inside job: the shoot-down of Flight93 is entirely consistent with the rest of the official
story, and is thus a safe "limited hangout".
The White Jet
CLAIM: ... [Flight 93] was downed by "either a
missile fired from an Air Force jet, or via an
electronic assault made by a U.S. Customs airplane
reported to have been seen near the site minutesafter Flight 93 crashed. ...
Here the article counters the idea that a small white
jet reported by eyewitnesses had anything to do with
the crash by relating a detailed account by the
aviation director of the company that owned the
business jet, David Newell. According to Newell,
the co-pilot of the jet, Yates Gladwell, was
contacted by FAA's Cleveland Center to investigate
the crash immediately after it happened. According
to PM:
Gladwell confirmed the account but, concerned
about ongoing harassment by conspiracy
theorists, asked not to be quoted directly.
Roving Engine
CLAIM ... The main body of the engine ... was
found miles away from the main wreckage site withdamage comparable to that which a heat-seeking
missile would do to an airliner.
Here PMcites an exaggeration found in a story on
Rense.com, a site that specializes in UFOs. The far-
flung debris field of the Flight 93 crash site along
with the eyewitness accounts make a strong case
that the plane was shot down. PMargues that
engine parts being found 300 yards from the main
site is reasonable for a simple crash, because airline
accident expert Michael K. Hynes, who investigated
bury itself in a large
impact crater would
not be likely to fling
debris skyward. Even
if it did, a light breeze
would have to transport the debris through the air
two miles to Indian Lake Marina, and more than six
miles to New Baltimore, where eyewitnesses
reported descending confetti, according to the Post
Gazette. [45]
F-16 Pilot
CLAIM ... Major Rick Gibney fired two Sidewinder
missiles at the aircraft and destroyed it in midfligh
at precisely 0958
In the final point, the article takes on the allegation
by retired Army Col. Donn de Grand-Pre that thepilot who shot down Flight 93 was Major Rick
Gibney. The article states that Gibney was flying a
F-16 that day, but it was not on an intercept
mission; rather it was to pick up Ed Jacoby Jr., the
director of the New York State's Emergency
Management Office, and fly him from Montana to
Albany, NY.
PMdelivers its closing ad hominem attack on
skeptics in the voice of Ed Jacoby:
I summarily dismiss [allegations that Gibney shot
down Flight 93] because Lt. Col. Gibney was
with me at the time. It disgusts me to see this
because the public is being misled. More than
anything else it disgusts me because it brings up
fears. It brings up hopes -- it brings up all sorts
of feelings, not only to the victims' families but to
all individuals throughout the country, and the
world for that matter. I get angry at themisinformation out there.
FACTS IGNORED BY POPULAR
MECHANICS
PMcompletely ignores eyewitness accounts that
describe the trajectory of the plane into the ground
unnamed witness: Says he hears two loud bangs
before watching the plane take a downward turn
8/15/2019 Popular Mechanics' Assault on 911
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the crash of TWA Flight 800 in 1996, states parts
could bounce that far "when you have high
velocities, 500 mph or more." This theory is at odds
with the eyewitness reports that the plane
plummeted almost straight down.
Indian Lake
CLAIM ... [Residents] reported what appeared to
be crash debris floating in Indian Lake, nearly 6
miles from the immediate crash scene. ...
The article devotes this point to the confetti seen
over Indian Lake, which it asserts is less than 1.5
miles southeast of the impact crater, explaining that
this distance is easily within range of debris blasted
skyward by the heat of the explosion from the blast.
of nearly 90 degrees. [46]
Terry Butler: "It dropped out of the clouds." The
plane rose slightly, trying to gain altitude, then
"it just went flip to the right and then straight
down." [47]
unnamed witness: It makes a high-pitched,
screeching sound. The plane then makes a sharp,
90-degree downward turn and crashes. [48]
Tim Thornsberg "It came in low over the treesand started wobbling. Then it just rolled over
and was flying upside down for a few seconds ...
and then it kind of stalled and did a nose dive
over the trees." [49]
Tom Fritz: He hears a sound that "wasn't quite
right" and looks up in the sky. "It dropped all of
a sudden, like a stone." [50]
9/11 MYTHS DEBUNKED
Having slain the conspiracy theory army's poison-spewing 16-headed dragon of9/11 LIES -- PMdeclares
the enemy vanquished, titling its final section 9/11 MYTHS DEBUNKED. On page 128, PMreveals its su
of armor -- a list of over 70 experts that it foundparticularly helpful. The titles and names on this page ar
supposed to back the many assertions the article makes in the main section, but the article gives no
indication of what experts or reports back up many of its key assertions. In fact, only two of PM's expertsattempt to directly refute claims I consider valid:
Maj. Douglas Martin defends the incompetence theory of the failure of military response.
Shyam Sunder attempts to explain the "puffs of dust" shooting out of the South Tower as the result of
floor "pancaking", and attempts to explain the collapse of Building 7 by likening it like a house of cards.
PMcites other experts to counter valid claims without it being clear that they are addressing the issue at
hand. For example PMcites airline accident expert Michael K. Hynes as asserting that aircraft parts can
bounce over 300 yards in high-speed crashes, without clarifying whether he is addressing the crash of
Flight 93: a vertical plunge into soft ground.
MORE FACTS IGNORED BY POPULAR MECHANICS
Foreknowledge
A privileged group acted as if they had
foreknowledge of the attack.
Several people received warnings not to fly
canceled plans to fly on 9/11/01, including John
Investigation Obstruction
The Bush administration thwarted any genuine
investigation of the attack.
Not a single official was demoted or reprimanded
for the failure of the military to defend New York
8/15/2019 Popular Mechanics' Assault on 911
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Ashcroft then-San-Francisco-mayor Willie Brown,
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, author Salman
Rushdie, and a group of top Pentagon officials.
Over tenfold increases in put options on the stocks
of the two airlines used in the attack -- American
Airlines and United Airlines -- were recorded in
the week before the attack. [51]
CEOs from the World Trade Center attended a
breakfast meeting hosted by billionaire WarrenBuffett at Ofutt Air Force Base in Nebraska on the
day of the attack.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld disclosed on
the eve of the attack that $2.3 trillion in
transactions was unaccounted for, burying the
scandal in the shadow of 9/11.
Complicit Behavior
Top officials behaved in a complicit manner duringthe attack.
President Bush remained seated in a televised,
known location (reading "My Pet Goat" with
second-graders) long after being informed that the
country was under attack.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers
remained in a meeting with Max Cleland as the
attack unfolded. [52]
Brig. Gen. Montague Winfield reported that "For30 minutes we couldn't find" Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld. [53]
Montague Winfield, National Military Command
Center commander, arranged for Capt. Leidig, a
rookie on the job, to relieve him of duty at 8:30
AM on 9/11/01. Winfield returned to his command
post after the attack was over.
City and Washington DC on 9/11/01.
NORAD head Richard Eberhart and JCS Chairma
Myers were promoted after the attack.
The Bush administration stalled the creation of a
special commission for over 400 days. [54]
George W. Bush initially named as head of the
commission coup and cover-up architect Henry
Kissinger, but he declined to serve to maintain the
secrecy of his client list.[55]
The figurehead chairof the commission would be Thomas Kean and Le
Hamilton, both with ties to the Dept. of Homeland
Security, but the actual work of the Commission
was directed by Philip Zelikow, a Bush
administration insider.
No Evidence Against Suspects
Officials have produced no evidence linking the
supposed perpetrators to the attack.
The December 2001 bin Laden confession video i
an obvious fraud. [56]
Not a single suspect has been convicted for
involvement in the attack either in the United
States or abroad. [57] FBI director Mueller admitte
that "not a single piece of paper" linked the
officially named suspects to the attack. [58]
The Osama in the video released on 12/7/01 by the
Pentagon (left) has a different facial structure that
the Osama pictured in earlier media reports (right).
Conclusion
Others have pointed out that the Popular Mechanics article is full of errors and sloppy analysis. While I
agree, I believe that the article's shoddiness is engineered to achieve certain ends -- such as drawing
attention toward red-herring issues. For example, PMis unpersuasive in debunking the Pentagon no-
jetliner theories and the Flight 93 shoot-down claim. The sloppiness is apparently part ofPM's strategy o
setting up and attacking straw-man arguments: It leaves some its straw men relatively unmolested,
8/15/2019 Popular Mechanics' Assault on 911
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presumably because they have value in distracting from the facts that conclusively refute the official story
Popular Mechanics may have elevated the straw-man argument to a sophistication never before seen,
wherein specious arguments are nested within specious claims. The entire article is a kind of straw man
because it addresses only physical evidence topics while ignoring other bodies of evidence. Of the four
topics, one is a likely a hoax, and the other is incidential to the falsity of the official story. The other two
topics contain a mix of valid and specious claims, and the valid claims are attacked with false, deceptive,
and straw-man arguments.
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[2] The Twin Towers' Demolition, 911research.wtc7.net,http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/towers/index.html
[3] Military Now Notified Immediately of Unusual Air TrafficEvents,AP, 8/12/02, http://www.wanttoknow.info/020812ap
[4] Revealed: the men with stolen identities, telegraph.co.uk,9/23/01
[5] Hijack 'suspects' alive and well,BBC, 9/23/01,http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1559151.stm
[6] Dead Saudi Hijack Suspect Resurfaces, Denies Involvement,AllAfrica.com, 9/24/01, http://allafrica.com/stories/200109240325.html
[7] 'Suicide hijacker' is an airline pilot alive and well in Jeddah,Independent.co.uk, 9/17/01,http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story
[8] Manager: Men spewed anti-American sentiments,AP, 9/14/01,http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/14/miami-club.htm
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[12] The 9/11 Stand-Down Why there was NOT a 'stand down'order, OilEmpire.us, http://www.oilempire.us/standdown.html
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INDEPENDENT GRAND JURY INVESTIGATION,JusticeFor911/org , 10/28/04,http://www.justicefor911.org/Original_Complaint_10-28-04NY.php
[14] FAA Managers Destroyed 9/11 Tape, the Washington Post,5/6/04, p www.washingtonpost.com,http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6632-2004May6.html
[15] The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions,Olive Branch Press, 2004, p 20
[16] Photographic Evidence of the Twin Tower Collapses,911Research.wtc7.net,http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/photos/index.html
[17] Video Evidence of the Twin Tower Collapses,911Research.wtc7.net,http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/videos/index.html
[18] Explosives Planted In Towers, N.M. Tech Expert Says,
9/11/01, http://www.911truth.org/readingroom/whole_document.php?
[28] Video Evidence of an Explosion at the Base of WTC 1,WhatReallyHappened.com ,http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/shake.html
[29] Videos Show Building 7's Vertical Collapse, wtc7.net,http://www.wtc7.net/videos.html
[30] Progressive Collapse, 911research.wtc7.net,http://911research.wtc7.net/disinfo/collapse/progressive.html
[31] Governor Pataki, Acting Governor DiFrancesco LaudHistoric Port Authority Agreement to Privatize World
Trade Center, Port Authority on NY & NJ, 7/24/01,http://www.panynj.gov/pr/pressrelease.php3?id
[32] Reinsurance Companies Wait to Sort Out Cost ofDamage,New York Times , 9/12/01, p C6
[33] Double Indemnity, law.com, 9/3/02,http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id
[34] Secrecy surrounds a Bush brother's role in 9/11 securitySmirkingChimp.com , 1/20/03,http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid
[35] Heightened Security Alert Had Just Been Lifted,NYNewsday.com, 9/12/01,http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/manhattan/wtc/ny-
nyaler122362178sep12,0,6794009.story
[36] The Pentagon attack, http://oilempire.us/pentagon.html/>
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[38] Pentagon Attack Errors, 911review.com ,http://911review.com/errors/pentagon/index.html
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[40] Timeline in Terrorist Attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,Washington Post, 9/12/01, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpsrv/nation/articles/timeline.html
[41] DCANG Yanks its Mission Statement,http://911review.com/coverup/dcang.html
[42] Pentagon, a Vulnerable Building, Was Hit in LeastVulnerable Spot,Los Angeles Times, 9/16/01,http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-
091601pentagon,0,2818328.story
[43] Navy Command Center, The Washington Post
[44] A Trainee Noted for Incompetence,New York Times , p10, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res
[45] Investigators locate 'black box' from Flight 93; widensearch area in Somerset crash,post-gazette.com , 9/13/01http://post-gazette.com/headlines/20010913somersetp3.asp
46 Cleveland Newschannel 5, 9/11/01
8/15/2019 Popular Mechanics' Assault on 911
19/19
article_id
[19] VP Van Romero Named Chairman of Domestic PreparednessConsortium,NMT,http://infohost.nmt.edu/mainpage/news/2002/11jan05.html
[20] Wall Street Journal Names Tech 'Hot School', NMT,http://infohost.nmt.edu/mainpage/news/2001/wsj.html
[21] New Mexico Tech Vice President Romero Named a TopLobbyist,NMT,http://infohost.nmt.edu/mainpage/news/2003/18dec01.html
[22] Tech Receives $15 M for Anti-Terrorism Program,NMT,http://infohost.nmt.edu/mainpage/news/2002/25sept03.html
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[47] Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 9/12/01
[48] Cleveland Newschannel 5, 9/11/01
[49] WPXI Channel 11, 9/13/01
[50] St. Petersberg Times, 9/12/01
[51] Suppressed Details of Criminal Insider Trading LeadDirectly Into the CIA's Highest Ranks,
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[54] The Great Conspiracy, 2004
[55] Thomas Kean named to 9/11 panel, 12/16/2002,http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2002-12-16-kean_x.htm
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[57] 9/11 suspect in Germany released,MSNBC.com , 4/7/04ttp://msnbc.msn.com/id/4683144/
[58] Robert S. Mueller, III, Director, FBI, CommonwealthClub of California, FBI.gov,http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/speeches/speech041902.htm