September 11 conspiracy theorist offers prize
 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jimmy Walter has spent more than $3 million (1.5 million pounds) promoting a conspiracy theory the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States were "an inside job" and he is offering more cash to anyone who proves him wrong.

The millionaire activist is so convinced of a government cover-up he is offering a $100,000 reward to any engineering student who can prove the World Trade Centre buildings crashed the way the government says.

"Of course, we expect no winners," Walter, 57, heir to an $11 million fortune from his father's home building business, said in a telephone interview from California on Wednesday.

He said a panel of expert engineers would judge submissions from the students.

Next month, he also launches a nationwide contest seeking alternative theories from college and high school students about why New York's World Trade Centre collapsed. The contest offers $10,000 to the best alternative theory, with 100 runner-up awards of $1,000. Winners will be chosen next June.

The World Trade Centre's twin towers were destroyed after hijackers slammed two commercial airliners into them. The attack in New York killed 2,749 people.

Various official investigations give no credence to Walter's theory. A September 11 commission spokesman did not return calls seeking comment.

Walter insists there had to be explosives planted in the twin towers to cause them to fall as they did, and also rejects the official explanation for the damage done at the Pentagon (news - web sites).

"We have all the proof," said Walter, citing videotapes and testimony from witnesses.

"It wasn't 19 screw-ups from Saudi Arabia who couldn't pass flight school who defeated the United States with a set of box cutters," he said. He dismissed the official September 11 commission report, saying, "I don't trust any of these 'facts.'"

Walter has spent millions of dollars to bolster support for his case, running full-page ads in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker and Newsweek, as well as alternative newspapers and 30-second TV spots.

He points to a Zogby poll he commissioned last summer that showed 66 percent of New Yorkers wanted the 9/11 investigation reopened.

Walter has spent about 30 percent of his net worth on his efforts.

"I am a patriot fighting the real traitors who are destroying our democracy. I resent it when they call me delusional," he said.

He's a useful idiot.

Notice this idiot is spending his father's hard-earned money. He probably hasn't earned a dime his whole life. Also, it strikes me that there's a marked difference between providing proof and convincing an unhinged idiot.

That's how we churn inherited wealth back into the system. Get some freak to blow the legacy money on stupid ventures.

We should put our great minds to work and usbmit a proposal to him about UFO's being ivnvolved. I mean, a UFO with exotic materials probably hit the Pentagon and that's why there's not enough debris. The military scooped it up and trucked it piecemeal to Area 51. I'll bet we can make some pictures that prove it is linked to the Elders of Zion and the Illuminati.

I discussed the early analysis by the two MIT engineers Eagor and Musso with an engineering friend of mine last week. He agreed that there was nothing in their analysis which explained why the core of the two towers fell.

Did anybody look into propagation of harmonic resonances? I'm thinking that the collapse was aided by vibrations as the floors collapsed. The floors are regularly spaced. As one floor pancaked to the next, the vibration would travel through the structural steel at a faster rate than through the air (sound travels with speed directly proportional to teh density of the medium through which it travels). It would reach the ground and reflect back up the tower.

At some point in that collapse, the vibration wave train projected downward by the collapse would coincide with the returning wave. I wonder how many harmonics the building would have? I'll bet that if you solved for the velocity of sound through the structural steel and the rate of floor collapse that you would end-up with a series of nodes in which energy would build faster than the floors collapse, weakening them before the tower collapsed onto them. You would then have a general failure instead of the pancake stack model.

I don't see the need for any conspiracy theories. The floor the plane crashed in was sprayed with tons of jet fuel, causing a catastrophic fire. Iron loses it's strength as it gets heated, the floor collapses, the building pancakes.

The computer models I have seen (I think it was the FEMA study) did not show the steel in the core reaching a temperature high enogh (450c) to lose its structural properties. I think the highest temperatures were 175c. But even if the core steel at the level of the fire failed, why did the whole core come down?

How did the core, which is essentially as long pillar of continuously joined steel, collapse? The floor steel yes. The core??
I don't know about the harmonics.

I saw something about this and they said it was welds and bolts that gave way not the actual I-Beams.

The floor was not designed to hold a 757 either.

From what I have read, you're correct. The connections between the steel floor joists and the inner core and outer load bearing walls gave way. But that still leaves the question of how the core itself could come down. In that scenario, each floor disconnects from the external walls and internal core and pancakes down. But why did the core and outer walls come down?

Here's a link to the early report from MIT: (I'm typing it in, so I hope it works)

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html

As Botsnst points out, all kinds of forces are in play. The floors above the fire had tremendous weight. I fail to see how anyone could estimate the temperture of the fire - there were combustables, hot-burning fuel and even more importantly, oxygen available in abundance. In addition, at that altitude, there may have been wind drafts that acted like bellows in a black smith's fire, or these drafts may have been created by the tornadic effect one sees in firestorms. If one raises the estimated temperture of the fire, the collapse of the building becomes obvious. The core would snap due to lateral forces as the building swayed at that point. After that, gravity would do the rest. As in most science, the most obvious theory is the one that is most likely true. A plane hit the building. A fire insued. The building collapsed. The building collapsed because of the fire and structural damage, caused by a plane hitting it.

I was an ironworker for a number of years. Essentially all these buildings are tied together with pins - either bolts or hot rivets, but they are pins none the less. If it was all welds, the building would be too stiff and snap like a toothpick from harmonic forces in the earth and.or wind shear. Bolts and pins have a little give to them - they can microscopically twist and turn to accept these forces. The "core" is the same - it is not some continous piece of iron, plates and pins hold it together. At strategic places, the girders and beams are connected by "moment welds" - super strong welds placed there to hold the building together in the event of an earthquake. This was not an earthquake.

That brief was written in 2001. Have they written a follow-up in which the points they raised are addressed?

Also, my favorite, harmonics, isn't mentioned. Remember the Tacoma Narrows. http://www.enm.bris.ac.uk/research/nonlinear/tacoma/tacoma.html

A fully loaded 757 weights 250,000 pounds.

A lot of that weight would have been quickly consumed. Aluminum goes up quick. My personal theory is the fuel tank ended up between the central core uprights - the super critical four central columns. They don't have to break to cause a catastrophe, they just have to bend a little. When they bend, the floors above drop a little, and a gravitional force is created that accelarates and intensifies the bending, until the tensile point of the steel is reached, and it breaks. A combinition of on board oxygen containers and a bellows-blast of air thru the hole made by the plane into this fuel heated those four columns until they could bend a little. The slight bending would have created a force on the central columns from the upper floors that looked like this \ /
. As the upper floors sagged in the middle, all these forces would have been pushing in on the central columns from the top and sides. When they snap, the mega tonnage from the above floors now drop feet, not inches. Fageddaaboutit.

Weight hell, F=ma. That's where the action is.