PlaguePuppy's Café

 

And Sanctuary For The Unspeakable Truth

 

An ongoing attempt  to come to terms with the realities
behind the events of 9/11

 

 

 

Where The Merinos Stand:

An Aperiodic Update

April 15, 2011

A long time has passed since the update below, and in the interim I have learned that my true medical diagnosis is something quite different from what I had thought.  Despite the best efforts of the Stanford Neurology Department about two years ago, their somewhat tentative diagnosis of a variant form of ALS has proved to be mistaken.  To be fair, unusual diseases often take a long time to declare themselves, and in the early stages similar symptoms may be signs of widely different diseases. 

Thanks to a perceptive family dentist and a tongue biopsy I finally learned that I actually have a condition called amyloidosis, a rare disease that I had never seen in 30 years of Family Practice.  It involves deposition of an amorphous protein material in various tissues of the body, including tongue, kidneys and heart muscle.  It turns out that amyloid also has an affinity for myelin, the lipid based sheath that acts as insulation on the long axons of nerve cells, and triggers a reaction that destroys the neuron. 

All of the peculiar neurologic symptoms that I had been experiencing for several years, as well as the muscle wasting I experienced came from this attack by the amyloid protein on the myelin of various nerves.  Loss of sensory nerves had caused the hand numbness, and loss of the motor nerves led to "denervation atrophy," a process whereby muscles no longer getting signals from a motor nerve melt away to nothing but a wisp of fibrous tissue.  Denervation atrophy is also the process seen in ALS, and the distribution of the atrophy (proximal muscles, mostly hip and shoulders) was also consistent with ALS.

Amyloidosis is really an end process, not a disease per se, and can be caused by a number of underlying diseases that all lead to production of large amounts of the amyloid protein, such as chronic infections and autoimmune disease.   As it turns out in my case I am one of about 10% of all those with amyloidosis in whom it is caused by Multiple Myeloma, a malignant disease involving abnormal plasma cells in the bone marrow.  Plasma cells are the part of the immune system that make antibodies to fight infection, cranking up quickly to make lots of the specific antibody needed to fight current infection.  Those bumps you feel in your neck with colds and flu are lymph nodes swollen with lots of plasma cells, and shrink up again as the infection clears and the plasma cells shut down. 

In Multiple Myeloma a renegade clone of plasma cells begins growing uncontrollably, ignoring the normal signals to shut off, and make large amounts of an incomplete immunoglobulin molecule - in my case something called the kappa light chain.  These build up in the blood and deposit in various tissues, where they undergo re-folding into the amyloid protein.

This is relatively good news to the extent that MM, despite being technically a malignant process, tends to follow a more gradual course than ALS, and in some cases may respond to chemotherapy.  The defective plasma cells do not grow especially rapidly, and in my case are only taking up a small amount of the bone marrow space and have not metastasized to bone.  Of course they do continue to make kappa light chains, so accumulation of amyloid may continue over time, and there is no way to undo the damage done to the nerves and muscles.

Despite this my overall condition has shown some gradual improvement, I am continuing to do office-based medicine part time, and have finally decided to return to updating this web site.  My thanks and best wishes to those of you who have offered me encouragement over the years.  I will try to write more over the next few weeks, both on my own struggles and on the current state of "9-11 Truth" and my thoughts on recent developments in this ongoing and still profoundly unresolved subject.

--JK

 

 

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Update and Apologia:

A Personal Note

6/07/2009

 

For those of you who have followed this website and encouraged my efforts in the past, I would like to apologize for my unexplained neglect of the Café over the past two years.  This does not reflect any loss of interest,  but unfortunately results from a medical problem that has overtaken me, and my efforts to keep my small medical office open despite these problems.  This condition was ultimately diagnosed as an atypical form of ALS, a rare disease that involves the loss of motor neurons, which in turn leads to denervation atrophy of the muscles.

 My symptoms began insidiously with night sweats and profound fatigue perhaps as much as seven years ago, well before my talk in New York in 2004, along with hand numbness that I first took to be carpal tunnel syndrome.  At this point (2002-2005) I was doing a lot of keyboarding in and blamed the hand problems on overuse.  In early 2006 I had arthroscopic carpal tunnel releases on both wrists, and actually improved for about a year before abruptly worsening again.

By late 2007 I was getting serious muscle weakness in the legs, and lost much of the strength and sensation in my hands.  Throughout this time I was still working full time in the office with my wife Patti, continuing to do non-hospital primary care.  She was an RN when I met her in the late 1980s, when we both worked in the ER at Visalia Community Hospital, and she completed PA (Physician Assistant) school a few years ago, after working in the office as nurse/ office manager since I started my solo practice in Tulare in 1997.  Since graduation she has worked as a in the practice as a full time practitioner, and without her help it would not have survived my recent difficulties.

By mid 2008 I had dislocated a shoulder and hip because of muscle weakness, and got two muscle tears with only minimal trauma, and finally decided to quit working completely in August.  What has happened since then is a long and complex story that I will not try to explain in detail at this point, except to say that I have found at least some of the answers to the origins of my disorder, and have been able to alter the course of the degenerative process enough that it has actually stabilized and begun a gradual trend of improvement.

In fact there has been enough improvement that I have been able to return to the office part time, and I have begun to be optimistic that the hand numbness is also improving and may eventually disappear.  To be explicit about the measures that seem to have helped (without for now going into all the implications of these), they include stopping Lipitor, which I had been taking for several years and which seems to cause ALS in susceptible people, along with taking a number of supplements and herbs to improve mitochondrial function (one of the things that is damaged by statin drugs like Lipitor) and encourage nerve and membrane repair. 

More recently I also became aware of the role of a number of "stealth pathogens" in causing neurodegenerative diseases like ALS and MS, as well as various autoimmune and other degenerative disorders.  These pathogens include species of mycoplasma, the Lyme disease organism (Borrelia burgdorferi, a spirochete not unlike the syphilis organism, and likewise well adapted to attacking the nervous system - in its time syphilis was called the great imitator), as well as certain strains of viruses.  This gets into some very deep waters very quickly, as it appears certain that stains of mycoplasma (e.g. M. frementans) at large in the population have been weaponized in biowarfare labs and were a major contributor to Gulf War Syndrome.

In viewconsideration of this, and having seen unidentified bacterial accretions in my blood under live cell microscopy, I have also started on immune support and antibacterial/antiviral herbs, including an Amazon Rainforest formula developed specifically for mycoplasma developed by Leslie Taylor and used by Garth Nicolson in some of his protocols.  Since I began using these a little over a month ago there has been a noticeable improvement in the stiffness and numbness in my hands, as well as in mental clarity and physical stamina.  Treatment has to continue for months, as mycoplasma is good at hiding deep in tissues, but early results look encouraging and the regimen hasn't caused any problems for me so far.

 -- To be continued...

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Looking Out or Looking In?

   The NORAD Papers

"Testifying before the 9/11 Commission General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the commission in response to NORAD’s mission, "I can't answer the hypothetical. It's more - it's the way that we were directed to posture, looking outward."1 This is utterly false. As we will see below NORAD, since its inception, was tasked to monitor and intercept aircraft flying over American and Canadian air space seven days a week, 24 hours a day."   (more)

From DNotice.org

 

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George Washington's Blog:

14 Structural Engineers Now Publicly Challenge Government's Explanation for Destruction of the World Trade Center

 

Two professors of structural engineering at a prestigious Swiss university (Dr. Joerg Schneider and Dr. Hugo Bachmann) said that, on 9/11, World Trade Center 7 was brought down by controlled demolition (translation here)

Kamal S. Obeid, structural engineer, with a masters degree in Engineering from UC Berkeley, of Fremont, California, says:
 

"Photos of the steel, evidence about how the buildings collapsed, the unexplainable collapse of WTC 7, evidence of thermite in the debris as well as several other red flags, are quite troubling indications of well planned and controlled demolition"

Ronald H. Brookman, structural engineer, with a masters degree in Engineering from UC Davis, of Novato California, writes:
 

"Why would all 110 stories drop straight down to the ground in about 10 seconds, pulverizing the contents into dust and ash - twice. Why would all 47 stories of WTC 7 fall straight down to the ground in about seven seconds the same day? It was not struck by any aircraft or engulfed in any fire. An independent investigation is justified for all three collapses including the surviving steel samples and the composition of the dust."

continued

 

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A new article from Sojourners Magazine:

At the Hour of Our Death

Is a proper burial for World Trade Center victims a justice issue?  Diane Horning's vigil for the conscience of America.
by Rose Marie Berger

Excerpt:

The proper burial of the dead has been called “the last office of humanity.” The 15th-century poet-philosopher Giambattista Vico identified it as among the three characteristics, along with religion and marriage, of a civilized society. “[From] these three institutions are the origin of all civilizations and therefore they must be most devoutly guarded by all,” Vico wrote, “so that the world should not again become a bestial wilderness.”

IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING the collapse of the Twin Towers, firefighters and others began the painstaking task of recovering the remains of their lost comrades and hundreds of civilians using a “hand and shovel” digging method. To find and return remains to family members for proper burial was a matter of honor, dignity, and respect for the dead. But political expediency took precedence over basic human decency. “[Then-mayor Rudy] Giuliani wanted to make sure that the Trade Towers were at ground level before he left office,” Kurt Horning told me, “which is why they went to the ‘scoop and dump’ method once they recovered the gold.”

According to The London Times, a billion dollar cache of gold and other precious metals had been buried beneath the Trade Center. “The Comex metals trading division of the New York Mercantile Exchange kept 3,800 gold bars … worth more than $100 million” in vaults in the basement of one of the WTC buildings, reported the Times. Comex also held almost $220 million worth of other companies’ gold and more than $430 million worth of silver.

On Oct. 30, 2001, workers at Ground Zero unearthed the cache. With more than 100 heavily armed federal agents standing guard, police and firefighters were redeployed from recovery efforts to load up armored trucks with the treasure. Within hours of finding the gold, Giuliani stopped the recovery effort and pulled workers off the pile.

The “scoop and dump” method was for clearing the site, not recovering the dead. Earthmovers and steam shovels scooped up debris at Ground Zero and dumped it in trucks that took it to barges. It was floated up the Arthur Kill tidal strait and then trucked to the Fresh Kills Landfill to be sifted for remains and personal effects. According to the sworn testimony of workers there, whole bodies were still in the wreckage. Taylor Recycling’s site supervisor for the Fresh Kills sifting job, Eric Beck, testified in conjunction with a law suit the World Trade Center Families have brought against the city of New York, “I vividly remember our finding a man’s full chest and the full body of a man still dressed in a suit.” Beck also testified that Department of Sanitation workers were told to take the fines (the sifted, screened, and washed soil)—in effect the cremated remains of WTC victims—and use them to pave roads and fill in pot holes.

Link to article - free registration required

 

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Indira Singh with Justice for 9/11 Steering Committee member Kyle Hence

The Journey of a Wall Street
Whistleblower

Guns and Butter interview with 
Indira Singh:
Part 1 - Her experience as an EMT on 9-11
Part 2 - Down the Ptech rabbit hole

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Interview with Jim LaPenna,  9/11 First Responder

 

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Breathless Audacity:
How the White House Betrayed the Real Heroes of 911


by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber

The largest study yet of lung problems among 9/11 rescue workers shows bad news.  "Nearly 70 percent of the rescue and cleanup workers who toiled in the dust and fumes at ground zero have had trouble breathing, and many will probably be sick for the rest of their lives," reports Amy Westfeldt.  The study, conducted by the Mount Sinai Medical Center, monitored the health of nearly 16,000 ground zero workers. The volunteers who dug through the rubble in search of survivors inhaled dust laden with asbestos, pulverized concrete, mercury and toxins that will leave many of them chronically sick for the rest of their lives.

From firedoglake.com

 

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Remains of 9/11 victims 'to spend eternity' in city rubbish dump

 

By Charles Laurence in New York Telegraph 10/10/2004

"The remains of hundreds of victims of the September 11 attacks are to be permanently buried in the world's largest rubbish dump, to the consternation of their grieving relatives.  In the aftermath of 9/11, more than half a million tons of dust and ashes from the Twin Towers were taken to the sprawling Fresh Kills landfill site on Staten Island.

"More than 100 years' worth of refuse from New York City had accumulated at the dump before it was finally closed just six months before the attacks. The rubble from the World Trade Center ended up covering some 48 acres.

"Relatives were assured that ashes would be returned after they were sorted, but city authorities have since balked at the estimated $450 million cost of transferring them again. Instead they have promised to lay a 2,200-acre park on top of the dump, whose rotting contents smell strongly of methane, and to erect a memorial to the victims."

WTC FAMILIES FOR PROPER BURIAL 

 

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Mysteries of the Twin Towers:

A Survey of the Available Evidence 
On the Collapse of the
World Trade Center Towers

By
Rodger Herbst, Bachelor of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Master of Engineering

 

 

 

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PANTHER-ACROSS-THE-SKY
Tecumseh and the New Madrid Earthquake

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 Now with  Xenon™ coating for hack-proof  protection!

 

 

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OK, About Those Merinos

June 23, 2011

You'll have to excuse the obscure merino joke, but one of the formative experiences of my early teen years growing up just outside of Boston was running into a copy of the Harvard Lampoon with a strange series of cartoons of stylized sheep on one of my expeditions to Cambridge.  This was in the early 1960s when most of the sidewalks in Cambridge were still made of brick, and almost no building in town was taller than three stories.  The book stores and magazine stands of Harvard Square were my refuge from the banal world of suburban high school life, and the gateways to a mysterious world of big ideas and countercultural mysteries.  My discovery of "See the Merinos" was something of a revelation: here was the product of a profoundly twisted but irresistible sense of humor that offered hope that my own sensibility was not just a one-off outlier of the human species.

Much later, through the magic trivial fact finding powers of the internet I discovered that these cartoons were done by Christopher Cerf  and Michael Firth, and later printed in Cerf's book The World's Largest Cheese, published in 1968.  I recently found a used copy that had been discarded by the Russell Kansas Public Library (a fate shared by another of my favorite books, Riddley Walker).  Christopher Cerf was the son of Bennett Cerf, the co-founder of Random House, and worked there as a senior editor from 1963-70.  He later became better known for his songwriting contributions to Sesame Street and writings for the National Lampoon, which he helped to found in 1970.

The merino cycle opened with a dictionary definition of merino: "A hardy gregarious breed of fine-wooled white sheep, originating in Spain..."  followed by a series of cartoons based on variations of the phrase "See the merino standing there, with his long shaggy hair."

Things get progressively sillier as the phrase and accompanying drawings morph through a series of homonyms of the original couplet, starting innocently enough with 'hair' going from the pleural to the singular.  Then 'hair' becomes 'Eire'  as in Ireland, and then 'air' as in a piece of music, and later to a bearded old dude with a hay fork.  The reference in the title to the left is to a variation where the words 'merino standing' refers to a piece of paper marked "How the Merinos Stand," the paper itself having the necessary shaggy hair.

 There's more of course, including the incomparable thumber Enos  and a rendering of Merino George and his son George Jr., but in the interest of fair use I will leave the rest to those brave enough to seek out their own copy of The World's Biggest Cheese.  I suggest starting with the discard bin of your local public library, where you might also be able to pick up a copy of Russell Hoban's remarkable book Riddley Walker, another testimonial to the quirky but unbounded creativity of the human mind, for free or cheap.

 

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My 9/11/2004 NYC Talk on Collapse Forensics

A re-posting on YouTube of a talk that I gave in New York City on 9/11/2004 at a conference called "9/11, Confronting the Evidence."  The previous most-visited copy of this talk on YouTube has been taken down, so I am re-posting the copy I have.  Since it runs ~14 minutes I have clipped it at 10 minutes and will upload the rest of it as a separate video.

A Google video of the whole conference can be found here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?doc...

 

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Original material from the old homepage:

  Who is PlaguePuppy and what's this about being an "MIT Engineer"?

  "Confronting the Evidence" - Video of talk from NYC 9-11-2004 conference, with annotations

   Video Archive

   Photo Gallery

  "Collapse Update" - An early collection of photo/video      evidence with some commentary

  Some Observations from the Firefighters of Engine 7

  The Strange Collapse of the Spire

  The Strange Collapse of the Spire - Part 2

  The Lone Gunmen - Pilot Episode: Chronicle of a Death Foretold

  Dust Trails - More puzzling evidence for the disintegration of metal during the collapse

  Explosions in the North Tower lobby and basement reported at the time of first plane crash

  Nails in the coffin of WTC-7: A rapid series of small squibs near the roof of WTC-7 at the beginning of the collapse

  Expert Opinion Revisited: Van Romero's first unguarded comments on the role of explosives

 
Physics of the WTC Collapse - Formerly at IndyMedia Ontario, published September 2002 (link fixed)

 

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More recent writings from Pup:

* My YouTube user page: Plaguepuppy's Channel

* A brief response to an email about the "no-planer" issue, and some preliminary thoughts about nukes

 

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Kevin McPadden,
9-11 First Responder

A former Air Force medic,  Kevin McPadden was on station just north of WTC-7 up to the time of the collapse, and actually heard the demolition countdown and explosions as the building started to fall.

Later in the segment Richard Gage discusses the WTC-7 and twin tower collapses as controlled demolitions.

This clip is from "9-11 Truth Rising," a documentary about the 9-11 truth movement.

A more detailed interview with him is also on YouTube here.

 

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A Very Bad Day In Southern Manhattan:
Why Merrill Lynch Employee David Long Thinks
9/11 Was An Inside Job

On May 8, 2009, members of Truth Action Ottawa interviewed Mr. David Long, who was in downtown Manhattan the morning of September 11, 2001.  Mr. Long recounts everything he saw and heard that morning, including multiple streams of molten metal pouring from the buildings before they fell, and the sounds of multiple explosions as the buildings came down.

Truth Action Ottowa

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A Forensic Analysis of 9/11

Professor Graeme MacQueen's lecture at the University of Waterloo,
introduced By Richard B. Lee, March 19, 2008.

An elegant and compelling deconstruction of the official explanation for the WTC collapses on 9-11, and especially the "sledgehammer hypothesis."

 

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118 Witnesses:
The Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers

Graeme MacQueen:

"One of the greatest mysteries of September 11, 2001 is the collapse of the Twin Towers. Claims that explosions contributed to the collapses were made on 9/11 and have persisted, but studies supportive of the U.S. government’s account of events have ignored or denied these claims. A great deal is at stake in this debate. If explosions were critical to the collapses, the official al Qaeda narrative may need to be radically altered or abandoned altogether.

"In January, 2006 an article by David Ray Griffin appeared entitled, "Explosive Testimony: Revelations about the Twin Towers in the 9/11 Oral Histories." Drawing on a collection of oral histories from the New York Fire Department (FDNY), Griffin argued the case for controlled demolition of the towers. I found myself intrigued by the data he had used and impressed by his method, but I decided there was room for further research.

I wanted answers to two questions:

(1) Are the roughly 31 witnesses to explosions quoted by Griffin the total of all witnesses to explosions in these sources, or are there others he does not mention?

(2) Are there witnesses in these sources whose testimony supports the non-explosive collapse of the Towers—the U.S. government’s perspective?

"I decided to read the primary sources in order to answer these questions. This paper gives the results of my research. I am interested, in this paper, in direct perception and immediate interpretation. I want to know what witnesses saw, heard and thought on 9/11 at the scene of the crime.

"Although I shall discuss briefly the fact that some witnesses later changed their minds about what they had experienced, this is not my central focus. I do not claim to have proven that the Towers were brought down with explosives, but I believe the eyewitness testimony assembled and discussed here strengthens the argument that explosions were critical to the collapses."

Graeme MacQueen's Homepage

 

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World Financial Center buildings stand before the smoldering WTC site in this view from the west, just across the Hudson River.  The memorial to the Katyn Forest Massacre in the foreground sits at Montgomery Street at Exchange Place in Jersey City, New Jersey.

 

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"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling private power." - FDR

 

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9/11 Bombshell:
WTC7 Security Official Details Explosions Inside Building


Says bombs were going off in 7 before either tower collapsed

 

Excerpt from interview on the Alex Jones Show:

[...]We can reveal that the individual concerned was asked to report to building seven with a city official after the first attack on the North tower but before the second plane hit the South Tower and before their eventual collapse, in order to provide the official with access to different floors of the building.

The city official he was escorting was attempting to reach Rudy Guiliani, who he had determined was inside building 7 at that time. According to Avery and Burmas this official now works for Guiliani partners.

The individual was also asked to provide access to the Office Of Emergency Management on the 23rd floor of the building, this was the so called "bunker" that was built inside WTC7 on the orders of Rudy Guiliani.

When he got there he found the office evacuated and after making some calls was told to leave immediately.

It was at this point that he witnessed a bomb going off inside the building:

"We subsequently went to the stairwell and were going down the stairs, when we reached the sixth floor, the landing that we were standing on gave way, there was an explosion and the landing gave way. I was left there hanging, I had to climb back up and now had to walk back up to the eighth floor. After getting to the eighth floor everything was dark."

The individual in a second clip detailed hearing further explosions and then described what he saw when he got down to the lobby:

"It was totally destroyed, it looked like King Kong had been through it and stepped on it and it was so destroyed I didn't know where I was. It was so destroyed that had to take me out through a hole in the wall, a makeshift hole I believe the fire department made to get me out."

He was then told by firefighters to get twenty blocks away from the area because explosions were going off all over the World Trade Center complex.

 

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9/11 in Context:
The Strategy of Tension Gone Global

Guns and Butter, January 24, 2007

From Serendipity, one of the pioneering voices for 9-11 truth:

BF: This is Guns and Butter. I'm Bonnie Faulkner. Today on Guns and Butter: Tod Fletcher. Today's show: "9/11 In Context: the Strategy of Tension Gone Global." Tod Fletcher is a 9/11 researcher and writer. Under the pen-name Max Kolskegg he has posted online a three-part series of articles on 9/11 in its historical and political-economic context: After Genoa: Reform or Revolution? 9/11: A Desperate Provocation by U.S. Capitalism  and 9/11 In Context: Plans and Counterplans.

 

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Propping Up the War on Terror:
Lies about the WTC by NIST and Underwriters Laboratories
  

by Kevin Ryan

 

Excerpt:
At the time of the floor tests, I worked for Underwriters Laboratories (UL). I was very interested in the progress of these tests, having already asked some sensitive questions. My interest began when UL's CEO, Loring Knoblauch, a very experienced executive with a law degree from Harvard, surprised us at the company's South Bend location, just a few weeks after 9/11, by saying that UL had certified the steel used in the WTC buildings. Knoblauch told us that we should all be proud that the buildings had stood for so long under such intense conditions. In retrospect it is clear that all of us, including Knoblauch, were ignorant of many important facts surrounding 9/11 and did not, therefore, see his statements as particularly important.

Over the next two years, however, I learned more about the issues, like the unprecedented destruction of the steel evidence and the fact that no tall steel-frame buildings have ever collapsed due to fire. And I saw video of the owner of the buildings, stating publicly that he and the fire department made the decision to "pull"---that is, to demolish---WTC7 that day,16 even though demolition requires many weeks of planning and preparation. Perhaps most compelling for me were the words of a genuine expert on the WTC. This was John Skilling, the structural engineer responsible for designing the towers.17 (The NOVA video, incidentally, gave this credit to Leslie Robertson. But Robertson, who never claimed to have originated the design, was only a junior member of the firm [Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson], and Skilling was known at the time to be the engineer in charge.) In 1993, five years before his death, Skilling said that he had performed an analysis on jet plane crashes and the ensuing fires and that "the building structure would still be there."