October 26, 2007

STAR TRIBUNE
Letters Editor
425 Portland Avenue
Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55488

Just having lived in New York does not provide former President Bill Clinton the evidence to entitle him to tell the State Theater audience on October 23 whether 9/11 either was or was not an inside job.  The fact remains that fire alone has never before or after 9/11 caused a protected steel framed building, where the girders are insulated by asbestos or some other insulation, to collapse.

Although the House Committee on Science's May 1, 2002 hearing on 9/11 did not say whether 9/11 was an inside job, all three of the authorities who testified confirmed that no protected steel framed building had ever before collapsed solely because of fire. 

Dr. W. Gene Corley from the American Society of Civil Engineers and Chair of the Building Performance Assessment Team for 9/11 said that "...prior to these events, no protected steel frame structure, the most common form of large commercial construction in the United States, has ever experienced a fire induced collapse." 

Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr., Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said "The Twin Towers and WTC 7 (World Trade Center 7) are the only known cases of total structural collapse where fire has played a significant role." 

Dr. Jonathan Barnett, Professor of Fire Safety Studies at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said "up until 9/11, we never had a collapse of a protected steel building." Only controlled demolition, using carefully positioned and timed explosives, has ever collapsed a building down on to the area it was standing on. 

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde;
The government has made a factual claim about protected steel framed buildings and fire that dare not be true again.

                    Sincerely
                    Robert Halfhill