Saudi Arabia’s Role in 9/11 and Why the U.S. Government has Kept it Hidden
Given by James Kreindler ’77, Partner, Kreindler & Kreindler LLP.Currently, Mr. Kreindler is the co-chair of the Plaintiff’s Committee in the 9/11 Litigation on behalf of the 9/11 families to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its role in the 9/11 attacks. The lawsuit alleges that members of the government of Saudi Arabia provided critical financial and logistical support to the 9/11 hijackers prior to September 11, 2001. This is the first case to proceed under the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, passed by Congress in 2016.
Sponsored by the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding
Recorded Monday, October 28, 2019
9/11 third tower mystery ‘solved’
The 47-storey third tower, known as Tower Seven, collapsed seven hours after the twin towers.
Investigators are expected to say ordinary fires on several different floors caused the collapse.
.. That would make it the first and only steel skyscraper in the world to collapse because of fire.
.. Building Seven is the smoking gun of 9/11. A sixth grader can look at this building falling at virtually freefall speed, symmetrically and smoothly, and see that it is not a natural process.
“Buildings that fall in natural processes fall to the path of least resistance”, says Gage, “they don’t go straight down through themselves.”
.. There are a number of facts that have encouraged conspiracy theories about Tower Seven.
- Although its collapse potentially made architectural history, all of the thousands of tonnes of steel from the skyscraper were taken away to be melted down.
- The third tower was occupied by the Secret Service, the CIA, the Department of Defense and the Office of Emergency Management, which would co-ordinate any response to a disaster or a terrorist attack.
- The destruction of the third tower was never mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report. The first official inquiry into Tower Seven by the Federal Emergency Management Agency was unable to be definitive about what caused its collapse.
- In May 2002 FEMA concluded that the building collapsed because intense fires had burned for hours, fed by thousands of gallons of diesel stored in the building. But it said this had “only a low probability of occurrence” and more work was needed.
.. With no steel from Tower 7 to study, investigators have instead made four extremely complex computer models worked out to the finest detail.
.. It says Tower Seven had an unusual design, built over an electricity substation and a subway; there were many fires that burnt for hours; and crucially, fire fighters could not fight the fires in Tower 7, because they didn’t have enough water and focused on saving lives.
.. They think fires burnt long enough to weaken and break many of the connections that held the steel structure together.
Most susceptible were the thinner floor beams which required less fireproofing, and the connections between the beams and the columns. As they heated up the connections failed and the beams sagged and failed, investigators say.
.. The collapse of the first of the Twin Towers does not seem to have caused any serious damage to Tower Seven, but the second collapse of the 1,368ft (417m) North Tower threw debris at Tower Seven, just 350ft (106m) away.
The people who think 9/11 may have been an ‘inside job’
“Conspiracy theories often emerge as a result of this need for an explanation that’s proportional to the event itself.”
.. In 2006, a California architect called Richard Gage founded Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911 Truth) – a group of engineering and architecture professionals who questioned the official version of events.
.. Two planes plus three towers has equalled plenty of questions
.. a 2008 report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) which found that WTC7 collapsed after fires on multiple floors “caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a fire-induced progressive collapse that brought the building down”.
.. Matt Campbell’s also still looking for answers. In 2016, he flew to Guantanamo to attend a pre-trial hearing of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man described by the 9/11 Commission Report as the “principal architect of the 9/11 terror attacks”.