The Mysteries of September 11, 2001 | Teen Ink

The Mysteries of September 11, 2001

May 24, 2018
By Anonymous

In a regular year, there are three hundred and sixty-five days and most seem to be relatively neutral, however there may be days when it seems like the world is crashing down. The tragic day of September 11, 2001 will mark history for many years since that day nineteen terrorists haikajed a flight and carried out suicide attacks in the United States. Two of the planes were flown into the Twin Towers in New York City, and the third hit the Pentagon (History). Approximately three thousand people died during the attacks and more than six-thousand others were injured. Al-Qaeda, who planned and financed the attack, claimed they were seeking revenge on the United States. This is because the US gave money to Israel, a Jewish region where Muslims live (History). After the attack, people began to forge conspiracy theories. Of course, this created agitation amongst all, and so the American people started to doubt the government.

    

Every event across history is known to have two sides to it. 9/11 is an event that holds a lot of controversy because of the conspiracy theories that surround it. The first plane crashed through the ninety-fourth floor up to the ninety-eighth floor in the one hundred and ten story building of the North Tower. The second jet slammed into the seventy-eighth floor and traveled up till the eighty-fourth floor of the South Tower. The impact caused fires that blocked the elevators. However, the lobbies of the buildings were clearly damaged before the towers collapsed. This suggests that there is no way that the impact of the jet caused such a damage to eighty stories below. San Diego Independent Media Center Website claims, “It is obvious and irrefutable that other explosives (... such as concussion bombs) had already been detonated in the lower levels of tower one at the same time as the plane crash” (Person).  However, a study was shared in 2005 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), about the initial findings. It concluded that the plane debris sliced through the utility rods in the middle of the North Tower, which created a channel for burning jet fuel. "It's very hard to document where the fuel went," said Forman Williams, a NIST adviser and a combustion expert, "but if it's atomized and combustible and gets to an ignition source, it'll go off" (Person). The flaming fuel traveling through the elevator shaft, caused the elevator system to be disrupted and did enormous damage to the lobbies.  A person who was in the lobby during the 9/11 attacks claimed that some elevators slammed right down to the ground floor (Person).
    

Missing from all of the information sealed in files, is information about a little-known event, the collapse of Building Seven. From the point of view of the government, there were only three crashes that day, the North and South Towers, and the Pentagon. In reality, Building Seven also came crashing down that same day. Seven hours after the attack, the forty-seven story building collapsed. If the government is hiding information about Building Seven, the main reasons are because there is information they don’t want the general public to know. Regardless of what the US government claims, never in history has a steel framed building collapsed without reason. Allyn Kilsheimer, a KCE Structural Engineer for Building Seven, stated that “It is weird because it would be the first time that a steel building fell because of fire.” It is argued that only explosives can make a building collapse that quickly. A well respected Berkeley professor, Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl claims that the government planted thermite in Building Seven, just as in the other towers. Although people truly believe 9/11 was a planned attack, there are various pieces of evidence that suggest otherwise. The building was damaged by the debris that had fallen off the Twin Towers and had massive fires that lasted for hours. Also, there was previously undocumented damage to the upper stories and the southwest corner. According to the NIST, the fundamental reason for the collapse was the abnormal design of the building. They realized that if only one pillar was taken from the lower floors, it would cause that section to collapse. Another factor was the seven-hour fire on the fifth floor. Investigators believe the fire was able to continue burning because there were tanks of diesel fuel on each floor that were used to run emergency generators. Most of the tanks were small; however, the one on the fifth floor was connected to a bigger tank in the basement via a pressurized line.
    

After the incident, one of the most resonated claims that people talked about was that jet fuel does not burn at high enough temperatures to melt the steel beams. People believed that explosives or some other form of fuel must have been used to bring the buildings down. Jet fuel burns from 427°C to 815.5°C, not hot enough to melt steel (1510°C). But, experts concur that the steel frames shouldn't have turned into liquid steel; however, they just needed to bend, losing their strength. This means that the bars needed to be exposed to much less heat. Vincent Dunn, a retired New York deputy fire chief said, “I have never seen melted steel in a building fire.” He has only seen “twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel” in a fire. Dunn explains that the steel expands to the sides; however, when it can no longer expand, it drips and the concrete surrounding it cracks. Nevertheless, Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, insisted that jet fuel wasn’t the only thing that was burning. This suggests that the fire was enhanced by the combustible material such as rugs, curtains, wooden furniture, and paper. The NIST reached the conclusion that some of the fire reached 1000°C. William said, "the jet fuel was the ignition source," and "It burned for maybe 10 minutes, and [the towers] were still standing in 10 minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down."
    

The Pentagon is, in essence, the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense. On September 11, 2001, a plane crashed into the Pentagon’s exterior, leaving a very small hole. Evidently, a plane could not fit through the remaining walls. The theory is that five hijackers arrived in Washington, D.C. They checked in for flight American Airlines 77 arriving in California. Not far from Washington, they hijacked the plane and forced the flight crew goes back to Washington, killing 64 people who were on the aircraft and 125 military and surveillance people on the ground. It is illogical that a plane that is 125 feet wide and 155 feet long, fit through a hole that is only 16 feet long. In addition, the only video that the FBI leaked is extremely blurry. Therefore, people can’t actually see clearly where and how the plane crashed. Finally, a theory claims that the event that happened at the Pentagon was an inside job and that the openings were made with bombs and not with a plane. On the other hand, the truth is that the plane crashed into the exterior walls of the Pentagon, and created a 75 feet hole. Expert Mete Sozen, the ASCE team and professor of structural engineering, claims, “A crashing jet doesn’t punch a cartoon-like outline of itself into a reinforced concrete building.” Clearly. the entire wing did not crash into the Pentagon. One wing was destroyed on the ground and the other wing was demolished because of the impact. Sozen also claims that what was left of the plane was in a liquid state, instead of a solid one. Indeed, the ASCE states that the opening was not 16 ft, it was 12ft. The hole did not have the measurements of the plane because the plane didn’t crash directly into the Pentagon; actually, it was the side of the plane that reached the Pentagon.
    

The government can either be seen as a secret, mysterious group of people trying to steal money and completely corrupt, or as a group of people trying to help the country. Many believe most “governments can’t be trusted” because people in the outside world do not comprehend what is going on behind those white walls (Constantini). Most of September 11’s conspiracy theories are blaming the government, but especially President Bush because he was the head of state, the image of the country. It is easy for the people to blame him (Constantini). For example, the people of the United States blamed the government for not stopping the hijacked planes. Given that the US has one of the world's most powerful air forces, they should easily have been able to stop the planes. It is stated that Vice President, Dick Cheney actually gave an order for all the planes to stop the intervention towards the hijacked ones (BBC). On the other hand, the official reports claim that the hijacked planes turned off their transponder (a machine that gives the exact location of the plane) (BBC). Therefore, the US Air Force could have never found the hijacked planes due to the planes having an unknown location. Also, all the events that took place on September 11, 2001, were sealed in a document that was later exposed to the public eye (Costantini). The collapse of Building Seven was not mentioned anywhere in this document. It appears the government is trying to hide something but there are a lot of uncertainties. People will never be able to grasp the truth due to the uncertainties of life.
    

The attack on the World Trade Center is remembered as the worst terrorist attack on American soil. Many conspiracy theories have been put forth. People will never know the truth, but believing in what the government is stating is much more comforting than actually believing in a different theory. Many of these theories might or might not be true. At the end of the day, people will never really know what happened on September 11, 2001, a memorable day that will leave every New Yorker, American and the whole world impacted. If what the government is stating is true, it is shocking the evil that can be born inside a person's soul. This terrorist attack killed 2,996 people, innocent people who were only trying to travel from point A to point B. The importance of this event is not really if it is a conspiracy theory or not, it is the lack of values and morals of people nowadays. It is not relevant (at this point) if it was an inside job or if it was really the terrorists; it is wrong to harm the soul of innocent people just to prove or show a message.



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