Debunked: 9/11 Truth New York Times Billboard Quote

The group Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911) is devoted to popularizing the theory that the World Trade Center buildings were secretly demolished by explosive devices that were placed in the building ahead of time, somehow survived the plane impacts and an hour of raging fire, and then triggered to make the buildings collapse in a way that fooled most experts into thinking that there were no explosives.

To promote this theory, AE911 likes to rent billboard space in New York’s Times Square (AE911 has a yearly income of around $500,000). In particular they like to rent a billboard opposite the offices of the New York Times, admonishing the NYT for ignoring them. Here’s the billboard in place:

This latest billboard (which will be there for the month of September) is promoting favorite claim of evidence of AE911, that there were multiple reports of explosions on 9/11. The text reads:

COLLAPSE OR EXPLOSION?
Ask the 118 FDNY members who spoke of explosions in the oral histories The NY Times sued the City of New York to obtain

“Everybody I think…thought these things were blown up.”
— FDNY Fire Marshal

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Sounds persuasive, if it were actually true. In fact by the very account of the Fire Marshal they quote, the idea that the building exploded was something he very quickly figured out did not happen, and he explains why he initially though it happened. Basically he went into the situation knowing it was a terrorist attack, so was very concerned about secondary explosive devices. Then when the building collapsed, he did not report hearing any explosions, but instead said that the building looked like it had exploded, he continued to think this for several hours, but he later realized (probably after seeing the collapse on TV) that this was just the angle from which he was looking at it.

So did everyone think the buildings were blown up? Who is “everyone”, and how long did they think this for? The key thing here is in what was removed from the quote, and the surrounding context:

Then I heard on the radio all marshals are to report to — and I have no idea where it was. Oh, near the Jewish memorial thing.
I made my way over there, found [the other firefighters]. All the guys who were with us were okay. We stood there for a few minutes, and eventually I said, “We shouldn’t even be here. This is the Jewish thing. This is a terrorist thing. This is a dumb place to be standing. This thing might blow up. No. Everybody I think at that point still thought these things were blown up.So I fully expected anything else to blow up.
I think we mentioned that or somebody mentioned it to one of the supervisors, and then they said “Oh, yeah, okay.” Then they took us down to the very end of Battery Park.

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Notice what AE911 removed, “… at that point still …”. They removed that because the reality of the marshal’s statement is that the belief he (and others) had in explosions was a brief one (and as he later explains, a mistake). He brought it up to explain why they moved from the “Jewish memorial” (likely the Museum of Jewish Heritage, just west of the Battery Park Underpass), because there was concern it would be a target of a secondary attack using explosives.

.. So the very person that AE911 quoted on their poster basically debunks their theory in the statement from which they cherry picked a quote (and then had to remove part of, because it didn’t fit their story). He didn’t report hearing explosions. He initially got the impression that there had been a single large explosion, but then later realized there had not, and it was just, as he said, perspective.

I encourage people to read the oral histories of 9/11. They provide a visceral view into what really happened that day: the horror, the fear, the chaos, and the bravery. But don’t read them like AE911 did – simply combing through them to find sections that might seem to support their odd theory when taken out of context and edited a bit. Read them in depth. These brave men and women gave their all that day, and they each suffered deeply for it. Don’t use them. Honor them. You want 9/11 truth? It’s in these histories.