Within a month of 9/11, NYC Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, a 30-year NYFD vet, set up interviews with Fire, Port Authority Police and EMT first responders to record their initial impressions of what they experienced on September 11th.
The stories of 503 men and women ran to 12,000 pages. Graeme MacQueen, a recently retired religious studies professor, read them all. In addition to the heartrending nature of many of the stories, the consistent theme was of hearing, feeling and seeing explosions, a controlled demolition. MacQueen (McMaster University, Ontario, Canada) narrowed down the testimony of 118 first responders as especially court-worthy testimony. But he notes the entire testimony was excluded by the 9/11 Commission, as well as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).Video prepared for the Vancouver 9/11 Truth Conference, June 22-24, 2007

Excellent CBC documentary about the various conspiracy theories around 9/11. Asks thought-provoking questions without falling into paranoïd delusions. The Bush family, the Saudi Royals and the Bin Ladens, all part of the same gang? Watch and judge for yourself...

Note 1 Some people have suggested that the Twin Towers were poorly constructed

No one has had the ability to prove that the towers were poorly constructed. Yet our major media has suggested, in TV programs and printed articles, that (1) the buildings were poorly constructed; (2) the structural steel used in their frames was defective; (3) the fireproofing of this steel was inadequate.

In fact, the buildings were "over-engineered." This means that each floor could bear many times its weight, and the endo- (inside) and exo- (outside) steel skeletons actually constituted two frames, not just one. The core (inside frame) was composed of 47 steel columns made of 4-inch-thick steel at the base (go to a construction site and ask to see an I-beam for an example of what structural steel is like). The exterior frame was made of 236 columns, plus four corner columns.

Kevin Ryan (Google his articles) of Underwriters' Laboratories, the global testing giant that certified the WTC steel decades ago, has exposed UL's strange acceptance of the decree that the structural steel failed, even though not a single one of the test models failed. Ryan drew attention to this while at UL, wondering why his company was willing to put its reputation in question. He was fired immediately.

The New York Times reported that when the planes hit the towers, the impact knocked the asbestos fireproofing off the structural steel, and the fires that ensued attacked unprotected steel. This caused certain floors to fail, and the falling floors brought down the floors beneath them, resulting in a pancaking of the entire tower. Twice!

In fact, the towers' tremendous strength explains how they continued to stand after the airplanes plowed into them. They would have stood for many more years, with their gaping holes, if no repairs were conducted. Instead, they came down in approximately 10 seconds, which suggests that something other than the plane impacts was involved.

Note 2 Jet fuel is refined kerosene. Airliners use "Jet A" kerosene and the military uses "JP 4" kerosene. Regardless, neither grade burns hot, or would melt the inside of a jet engine.

Jet A is the same stuff burned in conventional steel wall heaters. In an open-air office fire such as that at WTC (called a "dirty burn") kerosene or any hydrocarbon will burn at around 500-700degrees Fahrenheit. The FEMA report on 911 said that the jet fuel burned off after a few minutes and the fires from the office furniture and carpets were about 560 degrees. The special structural steel of the WTC has over 98% of its strength at those temperatures, and the WTC was built to hold 5 times its load.

In a "controlled burn" (where oxygen and fuel are regulated in an optimal mix), jet fuel will reach a maximum temperature of 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, which is still not anywhere near the temperature required to weaken the steel girders of a building to the point that the entire building plummeted to the ground. Yet molten steel was reported below the towers, suggesting that a very powerful "fuel" was used, set to burn or explode BELOW the building, not at its top. Thermite, an HTA (high-temperature accelerant) typically used in military operations, would have been able to liquefy the steel. Thermite can reach a temperature of 4500 dF in 2 seconds, and steel begins to melt at 2750 dF.

Professor Steven Jones (Google him), a physicist at Brigham Young University, came forward in November 2004 with a published paper on the possibility of thermite having been used at the WTC on 9/11. His research continues, and he has now found not only solidified drops of molten metal in a dust sample from the WTC, but evidence of sulfuric granulation (a "eutectic reaction") on the structural steel, which suggests that thermate, an enhanced form of thermite, was involved in the destruction of the towers.

Note 3 The hijackers were said to be 19 Arabs from Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries.

Yet none of the passenger lists revealed Arab names. Somehow these hijackers boarded the planes at Logan, Newark and Dulles airports, took them over, and directed them into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, PA. The passenger lists came to us not from official agencies, but from news outlets. No official agency (neither the FAA, the FBI, or the airlines) has ever released a passenger manifest or list.) Still, the FBI provided a list of the hijackers, complete with photos, within 48 hours of the 9/11 event.

In addition, the FBI claimed to be aware of Arabs training at flight schools throughout the country. Although several FBI agents had attempted to warn their superiors of suspicious activities well before 9/11, these warnings were ignored. (Google Sibel Edmonds, Colleen Rowley, "Able Danger.") The question is: If federal entities were involved in the 9/11 plan, why WOULD they investigate themselves?

Who were the "Arabs" in training at the flight schools? Google Daniel Hopsicker's work and Webster Tarpley's book "Synthetic Terror." It is possible these men were double agents, not even Arabs, "patsies" or assets of inside intelligence organizations. At any rate, they were enrolled in flight schools in order to validate the story that would come out when the towers were struck. Flight-school instructors reported that the "Arabs" were extremely incompetent, both as students and as pilots. They had trouble operating the smallest and simplest of planes. Question: So how could they re-program huge Boeings and fly them to New York and elsewhere? (Plane paths are now controlled by computers. You cannot just look out of the window and take the plane to New York.)

Also, the captains of all four planes failed to send out any distress signals (there are codes pertaining to hijackings). Why did they give up their aircraft so easily?

Another question to ponder: Were there any hijackers at all? We have one security camera image of "Mohammed Atta" supposedly at Portland, ME airport, but there are two time stamps on the single image. Also, Boston Logan did not have security cameras in operation on 9/11. WHY?

Note 4 What happened to the passengers? Nobody knows!

There are anomalies in the passenger lists themselves, and many who supposedly died on the flights are not listed in the United States Death Registry.

Frankly, this particular question can't be answered without a valid determination of what hit the towers, the Pentagon and the field in Shanksville. Were these passenger planes, military substitutes, or something else? The question then devolves into whether you believe the government's story. If you do, then you must ask yourself: (1) why they lied and said they didn't know it could happen despite their surveillance of the alleged hijackers for months before; (2) how they could produce names so soon after the event; and (3) why did they work so hard to prevent even a basic investigation into the purported crashes of four airliners -- the only airline crashes in American history that have never been investigated?

The people who made these decisions know who flew the planes (if anybody actually did), but you and I may never. The suppression of evidence by the government is central to our unwillingness to believe what we have been told. Under traditional rules of American jurisprudence, neither Osama bin Laden nor any Arab could ever be convicted of the 9/11 crimes, because no convincing proof that they did it has ever been presented.

As the planes wandered in the sky for over an hour, they passed over several airports and military bases. Did they come down at any of these and were they swapped for other craft? What did happen to the passengers? No matter where they went, they are assumed to be dead. If indeed they died, the issue of "wrongful death" (especially as our air-defense fighter jets seem NOT to have been deployed when necessary that day) becomes something Americans can pursue with their state legal representatives (District Attorneys, US Attorneys, State Attorney Generals). Missing persons from the 9/11 planes were residents of many different states. Your legal representatives have subpoena power in this kind of matter, and can charge individuals in the federal government with responsibility.