The Collapse of World Trade Center 1, 2, & 7
Eyewitness Accounts Confirm Explosive Charges

From Webster Tarpley
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/collapseofWTCeyewitnessreportsexplosions07feb05.shtml
Feb. 7, 2005

This is the html version of the file http://www.reopen911.org/Tarpley_ch_6.pdf.

Chapter VI

THE COLLAPSE OF WORLD TRADE CENTER 1, 2, AND 7
We now reach the center of the tragedy, the hecatomb of innocent airline passengers and office workers occasioned by the unprecedented and inexplicable collapse of the two World Trade Center towers. Here is where vast numbers of ordinary persons were immolated by the terrorist controllers for the sake of their insane geopolitical plans. Coming from a family which lived in New York for six decades after about 1910, having lived in New York City (Flushing, Queens) from the age of 4 to the age of 16, having attended New York City public schools from the first grade through the twelfth (PS 23, PS 20, JHS 185, Flushing High School), having worked in the city for a year as an adult living in Brooklyn, and having had an uncle who was a New York City policeman, the author is as much of a New Yorker as anyone. 9/11 has marked a decisive new step downward in the city?s decline, and the bitter recognition of this tragic situation can only spur on the exposure of the actual process involved in 9/11.

THE KEY: SECONDARY EXPLOSIONS
According to the official version, which the 9/11 commission hardly comments on, the twin towers fell because of the impact of the planes and of the effects of the subsequent fires. The problem is that this is physically impossible, as we will show. The fall of the towers thus depends on some other cause: controlled demolition of some kind is the only possible hypothesis. The key to seeing beyond the official version is to chronicle the presence of secondary explosions, since these are the tell-tale signs of controlled demolition. When we examine the literature, we find a multitude of references to such secondary explosions. Louie Cacchioli, aged 51, was a firefighter attached to Engine Company 47, based uptown in Harlem. ?We were the first ones in the second tower after the plane struck,? Cacchioli recounted later. ?I was taking firefighters up in the elevator to the twenty- fourth floor to get in a position to evacuate workers. On the last trip up a bomb went off. We think there were bombs set in the building.?

Cacchioli was trapped in an elevator but was able to escape with the help of some fireman?s tools. (People Weekly, September 24, 2001) Auxiliary Fireman Lt. Paul Isaac Jr. also spoke of bombs in an interview with internet reporter Randy Lavello. Isaac had served with Engine Company 10 in lower Manhattan during the late 1990s, so he knew the area around the WTC. Isaac said that many New York firemen were very concerned about the ongoing cover-up of why the World Trade Center collapsed. ?Many other firemen know there were bombs in the buildings,? he revealed, ?but they are afraid for their jobs to admit it because the higher-ups forbid discussion of this fact. There were definitely bombs in those buildings.? Among those suppressing real discussion about what had happened, Isaac cited the neocon heavy

James Woolsey, who had been CIA Director under Clinton, who had become the New York Fire Department?s antiterrorism consultant. (Marrs 34) Teresa Veliz was a manager for a software development firm. She was on the 47th floor of the North Tower when American 11 struck. Veliz was able to reach the ground level at about the same time that the South Tower collapsed. Flung to the ground in total darkness, Veliz and a colleague followed another person who happened to have a flashlight. As she narrated later: ?The flashlight led us into Borders bookstore, up an escalator, and out to Church Street. The explosions were going off everywhere. I was convinced that there were bombs planted all over the place and someone was sitting at a control panel pushing detonator buttons. I was afraid to go down Church Street towards Broadway, but I had to do it. I ended up on Vesey Street. There was another explosion. And another. I didn?t know which way to run.? (Murphy; Marrs 34) Ross Milanytch viewed the scene from the 22nd floor of a nearby building. He reported seeing ?small explosions on each floor.

And after it all cleared, all that was left of the buildings, you could just see the steel girders in like a triangular sail shape. The structure was just completely gone.? (America at War; Marrs 34) Steve Evans, a reporter for the BBC, happened to be in the South Tower that morning. ?I was at the base of the second tower, the second tower that was hit,? he reported. ?There was an explosion ? I didn?t think it was an explosion ? but the base of the building shook. I felt it shake ? then we were outside, the second explosion happened and then there was a series of explosions?.We can only wonder at the kind of damage ? the kind of human damage ? which was caused by those explosions, those series of explosions.? (Christopher Bollyn, American Free Press; http://www.zeitenschrift.com/news/wtc/_wahrheit.ihtml)

Fox 5 News, a New York television channel, was able to catch on videotape a large white cloud billowing out near the base of the South Tower. The newsman commented: ?There is an explosion at the base of the building?.white smoke from the bottom ?something has happened at the base of the building? then, another explosion. Another building in the World Trade Center complex?.? (Marrs 35) Tom Elliott was at work at his desk in the offices of Aon Corp. on the 10 rd floor of the South Tower just before 9 AM. When the North Tower was hit, he decided to leave the building and began walking down the stairs with a small group of people. At the 7th floor, Elliott was encouraged by a woman to disregard the announcement on the public address system that there was no need to evacuate. When Elliott had reached the 67th floor, United 175 struck the South Tower, above where he was. Elliott later told a reporter what he was able to observe after that: ?Although its spectacularly televised impact was above Elliott, at first he and those around him thought an explosion had come from below. An incredible sound ? he calls it an ?exploding sound? ? shook the building and a tornado of hot air and smoke and ceiling tiles and bits of drywall came flying up the stairwell. ?In front of me, the wall split from the bottom up,? Elliott recounted. Elliott was able to get out of the South Tower by 9:40. (Christian Science Monitor, September 17, 2001)

At 11:56 AM, NBC News broadcast a segment in which reporter Pat Dawson summarized a conversation he had just had with Albert Terry of the FDNY. Terry had told the reporter that he had about 200 firefighters in the WTC buildings at around 9 AM. Then, Terry said, he had heard a kind of secondary explosion. Dawson: Just moments ago I spoke to the Chief of Safety for the New York City Fire Department, who was obviously one of the first people here after the two planes were crashed into the side, we assume, of the World Trade Center towers, which used to be behind me over there. Chief Albert Terry told me that he was here just literally five or ten minutes after the events that took place this morning, that is the first crash. The Chief of Safety of the Fire Department of New York City told me that shortly after 9:00 he had roughly ten alarms, roughly 200 men, trying to effect rescues of some of those civilians who were in there, and that basically he received word of a secondary device, that is another bomb, going off. He tried to get his men out as quickly as he could, but he said that there was another explosion which took place. And then an hour after the first hit here, the first crash, that took place, he said there was another explosion that took place in one of the towers here. So obviously, according to his theory, he thinks that there were actually devices that were planted in the building. One of the secondary devices, he thinks, that [detonated] after the initial impact he thinks may have been on the plane that crashed into one of the towers.

The second device, he thinks, he speculates, was probably planted in the building. So that?s what we have been told by Albert Terry, who is the Chief of Safety for the New York City Fire Department. He told me that just moments ago. (Wisnewski 135-136) Proponents of the official version have attempted to explain some of these explosions as having been caused by gas escaping from leaks in gas mains, but this cannot account for the phenomena described by Terry. Nor can such other explanations as exploding transformers, etc. Ann Thompson of NBC reported at 12:42 PM that she had reached the corner of Broadway and Fulton on her way to the World Trade center that morning when she heard an explosion and a wall of debris came toward her. She took refuge in a building. When she came out again about 10:30, she heard a second explosion. Firemen warned her about another explosion. (Wisnewski 136; Trinkhaus, 4 ff.) The eyewitness Michael Benfante told a German TV camera team: ?As I was leaving, I heard it.

I looked back, and the top of the North Tower was exploding. And even then I did not believe that the whole tower could fall. I thought, only the top exploded and is now going to fall on me. I turned around again and ran away. I felt the rumble of the explosions, the thunder of the collapsing building.? (German ARD network, ?Tag des Terrors ? Anschlag aus heiterem Himmel,? August 30, 2002, Wisnewski 136) A reporter tried to film a standup with the WTC in the background, but was interrupted by the sound of an explosion: ?We can?t get any closer to the World Trade Center. Here you can see the firemen who are on the scene, the police and FBI officers, and you see the two towers ? A huge explosion! Debris is coming down on all of us!? (?Verbrechen gegen die Menschheit,? West German Television, Cologne, July 24, 2002; Wisnewski 136)

Yet another eyewitness reported: ?We heard a huge explosion, and everything got black. Glass was falling down, people were getting hurt when the glass hit them. It was a big explosion, everything got dark, this here is not snow, it?s all from the building, a horrible nightmare.? ?I was on Sixth Avenue and I had just tried to call somebody when I heard an explosion and saw how the people were throwing themselves on the ground, screaming and crying, I looked up and saw all that smoke, as the tower came down, and all that smoke in one tower.? (Segment by Oliver Voegtlin and Matthias Fernandes, NTV, September 11, 2001) Another European documentary showed a man with glasses recovering in a hospital bed who recalled: ?All of a sudden it went bang, bang, bang, like shots, and then three unbelievable explosions.? (?Terror gegen Amerika,? RTL, September 13, 2001) An eyewitness who worked in an office near the WTC described his experiences to a reporter for the American Free Press.

He was standing in a crowd on Church Street, about two and a half blocks from the South Tower. Just before the South Tower collapsed, he saw ?a number of brief light sources being emitted from inside the building between floors 10 and 15.? He saw about six of these flashes and at the same time heard a ?a crackling sound? just before the tower collapsed.? (Christopher Bollyn, American Free Press, December 2, 2001; Wisnewksi 137) Kim White, 32, who worked on the 80th floor of the South Tower, was another eyewitness who reported hearing an explosion. ?All of a sudden the building shook, then it started to sway. We didn't know what was going on,? she told People magazine. ?We got all our people on the floor into the stairwell . . . at that time we all thought it was a fire . . .We got down as far as the 74th floor . . . then there was another explosion.? (Christopher Bollyn, American Free Press, December 2, 2001) A black office worker wearing a business suit that was covered with dust and ashes told the Danish television network DR-TV1: ?On the eighth floor we were thrown back by a huge explosion.? (Wisnewski 138) The German network SAT 1 broadcast a report featuring survivors who also were talking about explosions. One of these eyewitnesses, by the name of Tom Canavan, was cut off in mid-sentence by two FBI agents who barged in, grabbed him as he was speaking, and hustled him away; this scene was captured on tape. (Wisnewski 138)

NBC TAPES SHOW CONTROLLED DEMOLITION EXPLOSIONS
In his best-selling study and also in his prime-time special broadcast on German television in August 2003, Gerhard Wisnewski employed out-takes from NBC News cameras near the World Trade Center to provide actual examples of what are almost certainly controlled demolition charges being detonated. On the NBC tape, we see the two towers burning and emitting clouds of black smoke. Then, at about frame 131 of the tape, there emerges a cloud of white-grey smoke along about two thirds of the 79th floor of the South Tower. Two thirds of the southeast fa