Inexcusable error.

In publishing your "Conspiracy Theories" issue (THE NEW AMERICAN, May 2, 2005) endorsing the official account of 9/11, you . made an inexcusable error.

On page 16 you quoted an engineer: "As soon as fire hits steel, it loses strength fast and those towers had relatively lightweight steel beams spanning large distances. The building was supported by the steel outer walls."

Ridiculous! It was supported by 236 outer wall columns and 47 sturdy central steel columns. Leslie Robertson, the WTC structural engineer, stated, "I designed it for a 707 to hit it.... I believe that the building could sustain multiple impacts of jet liners."

The heating of steel is affected by temperature and time. Jet fuel (call it kerosene) does not burn at a high temperature and would have burned off completely in a maximum of ten minutes. After that, all that was burning were office furnishings.

Fire never brought down a steel-framed building, yet on one day we are expected to believe (and sadly TNA believes) that three such buildings fell because of fire!

The third building, WTC 7, was even more clearly a controlled demolition. A brick dropped from the roof would hit the ground in 5.95 seconds. The whole building collapsed neatly into its footprint in less than 7 seconds! It was free-falling because interior explosions were removing resistance to its fall, as in the Twin Towers, which also collapsed at almost free-fall speed.

If that doesn't convince you: in the case of WTC 7, Larry Silverstein, the WTC leaseholder, actually stated on a 2002 PBS documentary, America Rebuilds, that he and the NYFD "made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse." That could only be done with pre-positioned explosive charges.

ZAN OVERALL

sent via e-mail

Robertson did indeed say the words Mr. Overall attributed to him. But Robertson has also stated that the fire from the burning jet fuel is what doomed the Worm Trade Center buildings. He has stated this belief in several forums, and even explained how and why the buildings would have failed, but a quote from his company's website gets the point across: "We designed the towers to resist the accidental impact of a Boeing 707, perhaps lost in the fog while seeking to land. The impact of the Boeing 767s, commandeered by the terrorists, even though larger and flying much faster, was still unable to bring down the towers. The fire-resistive systems, however, did not and could not have contemplated the subsequent fire fueled by thousands of gallons of jet fuel."

Mr. Jasper's article does not support the official account that there is no 9/11 conspiracy; his article instead warns (in the words of the subtitle): "An abundance of sensational and irrational conjecture about the September 11 terrorist attacks is being used to discredit any consideration of conspiracy in general."--Ed.