Two Comments re: NIST's draft of NCSTAR 1A

presented as they were submitted.

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Name: skeptosis

Affiliation: none

Contact: skeptosis@hotmail.com

Report Number: NCSTAR 1A

Page Number: 21

Paragraph/Sentence: paragraph 1/sentence 6

Comment: In describing its 'gathering of evidence', NIST makes no mention of any of the actual steel from WTC 7, but rather refers to pre-existing NCSTAR documents (1-3D, 1-3E, et al.) which themselves assert that no steel was recovered from WTC 7. NIST seems to have made no effort to obtain or examine existing steel samples (such as the heavily corroded beam featured in FEMA 403, Appendix C) known to have come from WTC 7, choosing instead to estimate the properties of the steel "completely from the literature." (NCSTAR 1-3D, page 273, paragraph 1/sentence 2)

Reason for Comment: Surely the theoretical steel described in the literature would not show any signs of sulfidation and erosion (as were found on the actual steel recovered from WTC 7), ensuring that NIST would not be required to investigate or identify the cause of this bizarre phenomenon.

Suggestion for Revision: "While steel from WTC 7 was, in fact, recovered, NIST made no efforts to obtain or examine this steel. Despite the failures of previous examinations to determine the cause of the sulfidation and erosion of steel samples from WTC 7, NIST felt that an investigation into the potential causes of this deterioration could threaten the Institute's ability to arrive at a conclusion that would not implicate domestic saboteurs."


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Name: skeptosis

Affiliation: none

Contact: skeptosis@hotmail.com

Report Number: NCSTAR 1A

Page Number: 22

Paragraph/Sentence: paragraph 6/sentences 1-2

Comment: Section 3.3, HYPOTHETICAL BLAST SCENARIOS, is the epitome of a straw man argument. The fact that NIST chose to focus solely on the likelihood of WTC 7 having been brought down by explosives, rather than by a wider range of destructive and/or corrosive elements, shows that NIST was determined to avoid examining all but the most implausible of theoretical scenarios, so as to easily disprove the plausibility of such a scenario.

Reason for Comment: FEMA 403, Appendix C, found that steel from WTC 7 had melted, due to a corrosive attack by a liquid slag containing high levels of sulfur. Several chemical compounds (FeS/FeO/SiO2/C) could potentially have caused this phenomenon, and none of them are explosives. By ignoring potential non-explosive scenarios which could have caused the collapse of WTC 7, NIST neglected its duties as outlined in the 'Guiding Principles' of its November 12th, 2002 publication, failing to conduct an investigation that was comprehensive, thorough, or objective.

Suggestion for Revision: "In its evaluation of alternate hypotheses re: the collapse of WTC 7, NIST chose to ignore the likelihood of chemical compounds having been used to amplify the effects of fire on the steel structure, and instead focused exclusively on the least plausible of these alternate theories, the use of high explosives. While the physical evidence from the scene (steel recovered from the WTC 7 debris field) showed high levels of sulfidation and erosion, NIST saw no reason to investigate this unprecedented phenomenon."