Thom Hartmann: David Ray Griffin is with us. David Ray Griffin the author of an upcoming book, out next month, “The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report About 9/11 Is Unscientific and False”. David Ray Griffin, welcome back to our program.
David Ray Griffin: Good to be back with you Thom.
Thom Hartmann: Thank you for joining us. We just had David Aaronovitch on, who is part of the National Geographic special that’s coming up on August 31st, that you’re in. And he suggested that they have demonstrated, presumably beyond a reasonable doubt, he didn’t use that phrase, but I’m, you know. That the amount of heat that was generated in the World Trade Center by the impact of the two planes, just the jet fuel burning was sufficient to weaken the steel infrastructure or super structure or whatever it’s called, the steel beams that ran up through the center of the building, that the floors above would fall down and it would create a downward force and boom, you’ve got what happened. Your take on that?
David Ray Griffin: Well, it’s absolutely ridiculous. I saw the experiment. I have not of course seen the final show but they showed us the sort of next to final version of it. And the experiment that he’s talking about is just absurd. They take a thin piece of steel, put it right over a very hot fire and let it burn for a while and sure enough as anybody could have predicted, the steel gets soft and bends. And they use that as evidence that the fires in the building could have caused the steel to come down. First of all, just the experiment itself, we’re talking about huge steel columns and beams, very, very enormous compared with this little piece of steel. Furthermore, there were fires on only a few of the floors and yet with the towers, we’re talking about 110 stories that collapsed.
Thom Hartmann: Let me flip this upside down.
David Ray Griffin: Just a minute, let me finish the account there. And furthermore even if the steel could have been melted so that it would have weakened, you would have had, you know, it’s impossible, but let’s say you thought it was possible. The building would start coming down and things would sag and bend and so on. But with the towers and building seven, what you have are perfectly motionless buildings which then suddenly start coming down and then they come down at virtually freefall speed. And with building 7, even NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, has now admitted that the building came down for over 2 seconds in absolute freefall. That means there was zero resistance. NIST itself had explained why freefall would have been impossible.
Thom Hartmann: No I get it, I’m not disputing what you’re saying. But here’s a question, though, that I haven’t been able to resolve. Um, if I wanted to terrify America, whether I was Osama Bin Laden or whether I was Dick Cheney. If I wanted to terrify America, it seems to me that it would be much easier and much more successful to plant a bunch of explosives in three buildings and then have somebody in Arab garb go on TV and say “in one hour,” you know like in a bad Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, “in one hour I’m going to blow up three buildings in a major U.S. city. If you do not pull out of Israel within 30 days or pull out of Saudi Arabia, I will blow up another three buildings in another US major city.” And then pull the plug and blow up the World Trade Center with no airplanes at all. And then everybody who is in every sky scraper in all of America would be absolutely scared witless and the terror effect would be 100 times greater than what we had. And would last much longer. You know, if they were gonna do that, if they were going to go to all the trouble of planting explosives, why didn’t they make maximum terror impact of it?
David Ray Griffin: Well, a couple answers to that. In the first place, you can ask questions about every aspect of 9/11 and I wrote a whole book on internal contradictions. It’s called ““9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press”
Thom Hartmann: I’m familiar with it and we have just a minute left.
David Ray Griffin: Yeah and I raise all sorts of what if questions. Why did they do this, why did they do this, why were they, why didn’t they do something smarter? So sure, that’s a scenario. But as you know, as a reporter, you have to ask the people involved, why did you do such a thing? You can’t ask someone else.
Thom Hartmann: Right.
David Ray Griffin: And secondly, there were other motives for bringing down the World Trade Center. There were problems with asbestos, there were all sorts of motives internal to New York City for bringing down the building. So there wasn’t just one motive, there were a confluence of motives to explain why they did what they did, probably.
Thom Hartmann: Yeah. Okay. And the title of that last book of yours, which I have, say it again.
David Ray Griffin: It’s called, the previous one I just mentioned, “9/11: Contradictions.”
Thom Hartmann: "9/11:Contradictions". Thank you. David Ray Griffin, and his new book coming out, “The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report About 9/11 Is Unscientific and False”. I’m assuming it will be available through all the usual suspects.
David Ray Griffin: That’s right, within a couple weeks it will be available.
Thom Hartmann: Great. David Ray Griffin. Thanks for coming back on the show, David.
David Ray Griffin: Thanks to you, Thom.
Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.
