Nano-thermite and Cognitive Dissonance: A 9/11 Film Review

By Richard Edmondson

I spent the evening of Saturday, September 10, watching the new, full-length documentary, 9/11: Explosive Evidence, Experts Speak Out. The film fundamentally changes the playing field, in my opinion. When this many architects, engineers, physicists, chemists, geneticists, explosives and demolitions experts, and others—all top experts in their fields—agree that the World Trade Center buildings were brought down by means of controlled demolition, it has to be regarded as incontrovertible proof. No one can any longer argue otherwise and still retain a shred of credibility.

9/11: Experts Speak Out is a two hour sixteen minute video produced by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth released in conjunction with this year’s 10^th anniversary observance of the attack that plunged America into a headlong spiral of war, repression, and bloodshed. At its most basic level, the video completely demolishes the official U.S. government account of events of that day, particularly the “scientific findings” propounded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, findings which include the almost absurd notion that Building 7, never even hit by an airplane, was brought down—caused to collapse, literally at free-fall speed, directly into its own footprint—by means of a mere office fire. One by one, each expert interviewed discusses how such would be virtually impossible, that never before in history, at any fire at any steel-reinforced high rise building, has such a collapse due to fire ever occurred.

“Steel structural frame buildings, high rise buildings, simply do not collapse due to fire,” says Scott Grainger, a licensed fire protection engineer who specializes in forensic engineering. “There has never been, until 9/11, an experience where a high rise building, steel-framed, completely collapsed. There have been fires that burned longer in similar structures without any collapse.”

But it goes much further than that. The film gets into the science of nanotechnology, the means through which matter is manipulated on an atomic or molecular scale, though the material is presented in simple terms that even laymen can understand. Standard fires—and even fires caused by jet fuel explosions—do not produce enough heat to melt steel beams. Under conditions at the Twin Towers, the jet fuel would have burned at about 750 degrees Fahrenheit.

“If you have a flame at 750 degrees, you could hold that flame under a steel beam forever and you’ll never reach a high enough temperature to bend steel, let alone melt it,” said physicist Robert Podolski.

“In an office fire, you cannot generate enough heat to melt steel, and yet we have evidence of molten iron,” said Kathy McGrade, metallurgical engineer.

The melting point of steel is 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit, and to attain such a temperature level requires an “incendiary” element—such as thermite, a compound of iron oxide and aluminum, which when ignited sustains an extreme heat reaction creating molten iron. In just two seconds, thermite can reach temperatures of more than 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Independent analysts—not government investigators—found precisely such an element in dust samples taken from the 9/11 site.

“In the dust we found what we characterize as unreacted thermitic material in the shape of some very tiny red-grade chips, which have different properties, and in the reaction they produce molten iron, which is the prime indication of a thermitic reaction, and such a reaction can be used to destroy steel structures,” said Dr. Neils Harrit, associate professor of chemistry at University of Copenhagen.

But there’s a problem. Old fashioned thermite produces large amounts of heat, but it is not an explosive. Videos of footage taken on 9/11, however, show debris shooting out of the buildings in all directions at some 70-80 miles an hour—indicative of an explosion.

“What we have found was a modern, highly advanced version of thermite—called nano-thermite,” said Harrit.

Steven Jones, physics professor emeritus at Brigham Young University, elaborates further:

The formulation of nano-thermite as described by national laboratory publications also implies the presence of carbon. Very typically, the organic is used with nano-thermite in order to produce gas, that is a very high pressure gas, that makes the nano-thermite an explosive. We do have descriptions from the Livermore Laboratory in particular of how they fabricated this. To fabricate it is not so easy. This is discussed in our paper in the Open Chemical Physics Journal published in April of 2009. So far none of these papers have been refuted in the literature, scientific literature.

Perhaps some of the more impassioned comments given in the course of the video are those of Erik Lawyer, of Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, who discusses a government manual entitled NFPA 921, a document which established national standards for professionals to follow in conducting fire and explosion investigations and which was in effect in 2001—but was not followed. Says Lawyer:

The manual gets into thermite and it says that if you have melted steel or concrete, which we had on 9/11—there’s videos of it, people can see it—we should test for it. It says if we have melted steel or concrete, we test for thermite. So the fact that they’re not testing for it is crazy. We had 3,000 Americans murdered, and we had the first three high steel collapses, we have all these reports of explosions, we have the vans pulled over, we have the history of terrorists using explosives. It’s absolutely ridiculous. There’s no excuse for it. It’s criminal, in my opinion, it’s absolutely criminal that they refused to follow the national standards, and the national standards say that they should be testing that for explosives.

But not only did officials fail to test for thermite, they even seem to have attempted to sabotage any possible investigation of the event by deliberately destroying mountains of evidence—including shipping tons of steel off to China for recycling. All of it. Gone. Vanished. Nonetheless, the presence of the nano-thermite in the dust samples is and remains a smoking gun, one that has been verified by at least three independent experts.

“This is material that is of military use that really shouldn’t be there,” concludes chemical engineer and metallurgist Jason Cheshire, also interviewed on the film.

Military use.

An especially interesting question, one which gets raised towards the tail end of the film, is that of why so many people, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, evidence such as that presented in this very documentary, continue to cling to the official version of events of ten years ago. For answers to this, the filmmakers turn to a number of clinical psychologists. One of them is Fran Shore, a psychotherapist and licensed professional counselor from Colorado who has been in practice for 20 years:

What I’ve learned is that as humans each of us have a world view, and that world view is usually formed in great part by the culture we grow up in. When we hear information that contradicts our world view, social psychologists call the resulting insecurity cognitive dissonance. For example, with 9/11, we have one cognition, which is the official story of 9/11, what our government told us, what our media repeated to us over and over—that 19 Muslims attacked us. On the other hand, we have what scientists, researchers, architects, engineers are now beginning to tell us, which is that there is evidence that shows that the official story cannot be true. So now, we’ve lost our sense of security. We are starting to feel vulnerable. Now we’re confused.

The documentary, as I say, establishes, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the buildings were brought down by explosives, not by airplanes or office fires. Moreover, they were explosives strategically placed so as to cause all steel beams to disintegrate simultaneously resulting in the buildings—as numerous videos show—collapsing in their own footprints. The question then becomes, who did it? Who placed the thermite charges in the buildings? This is territory the documentary doesn’t get into, but let’s tread there, shall we?

Those who conduct criminal investigations normally start by asking themselves who had a) the motive, b) the means, and c) the opportunity. Let us look at some of the possible 9/11 suspects and see how well they stack up against these three criteria.

Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda, if it even exists, in 2001 was led by a terrorist mastermind hiding out in a cave in Afghanistan. This at any rate is the official storyline. Certainly, the organization had the motive—hatred of U.S. foreign policy. But did it have the means or opportunity to plant the explosives in the buildings? This would have required having access to the inside of the World Trade Center buildings over a period of several weeks, possibly even months, for according to demolition experts it would have taken that long to complete the wiring and emplacement of the explosives. Presumably at some point the Al-Qaeda operatives would have encountered building security, which was handled by the Jewish firm, Kroll Associates. Logic would force us to conclude, then, that Al-Qaeda lacked the opportunity, and would therefore have to be eliminated as a suspect.

The CIA

Certainly the CIA has a long history of carrying out covert operations in furtherance of U.S. foreign policy, and its reach has been proven to be considerable. The CIA, for instance, has overthrown governments in Chile, Guatemala, Iran, and elsewhere. No doubt it would have had the capability of carrying out a clandestine operation in its own backyard, and would have had the explosives expertise necessary to wire the three buildings. But what known U.S. foreign policy objective would have been served by such an exercise? Under the criteria listed above, then, the CIA would have to be eliminated as a prime suspect, for no clear motive, i.e. foreign policy objective, would have been served.

Larry Silverstein acting on his own

Larry Silverstein is the Jewish businessman who obtained a 99 year lease on the entire World Trade Center complex in July of 2001 and then collected a whopping $4.5 billion insurance settlement after the attack. Certainly Silverstein had the motive, and as the leaser/owner of the property he also would have commanded access to the buildings. But if we keep in mind what the experts in the film say about nano-thermite and its relatively recent development as a military technology, then doubt begins to emerge as to his capability of carrying out such an operation on his own. Silverstein is a successful real estate developer, but he is not a known expert in the field of nanotechnology. Probably therefore he would have to be eliminated as a prime suspect.

Israel, with help from rogue elements within the U.S. government and other operatives in America

Unlike Silverstein, the Israeli Mossad would have had the scientific expertise, and therefore the means, and with Silverstein’s cooperation it would also have had the opportunity for carrying out the operation. Moreover, the Mossad, like the CIA, has a long history of carrying out covert operations and has proven, also like the CIA, that its reach is considerable. Also a number of Israeli foreign policy objectives would have been served by drawing America into a war in the Middle East, one of which would have been the elimination of Saddam Hussein, who in 2001 was awarding $25,000 to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. We have to conclude then that from what we know, this is probably our most likely suspect, for it meets all three criteria.

9/11: Explosive Evidence, Experts Speak Out may be downloaded for $9.95, in which case you have the option of burning it onto a CD, or you may watch it on a pay-per-view basis for $5.95. Click here and take your choice.

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