The Freedom Tower

Government Computer News reports that the National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded that it was fire and not explosives or impact from debris that caused the 47-story World Trade Center building 7 to fail.

NIST announced the findings of the three year study Thursday [http://wtc.nist.gov /], and recommended changes in national building codes to take into account the affects of thermal expansion on structural members.

“Our study found that the fires in WTC 7, which were uncontrolled but otherwise similar to fires experienced in other tall buildings, caused an extraordinary event,” said Shyam Sunder, lead investigator in the NIST World Trade Center study. “Heating of floor beams and girders caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a fire-induced progressive collapse that brought the building down.”

Building 7 was the third building to collapse in the World Trade Center attacks. The two iconic towers collapsed shortly after being hit by hijacked airliners that morning. Building 7 was set ablaze by debris from the attacks and collapsed several hours later. NIST began investigating the attacks in August 2002 and released its findings on the collapse of towers 1 and 2 three years later. Investigators spent the last three years investigating Building 7.

“The investigation was an extensive, state-of-the-art reconstruction of the events that affected WTC 7 and eventually led to its collapse,” NIST said. “Numerous facts and data were obtained, then combined with validated computer modeling that is believed to be close to what actually occurred. A single computer simulation of the structural response to fires took about eight months to complete on powerful computing workstations and clusters.”

The investigation was somewhat hampered by the fact that steel samples from the building were not available for examination and testing. Debris from the attacks was removed as quickly as possible from the sites so that emergency responders could work in the area. Once removed from the scene, steel from Building 7 could not be clearly identified. Unlike pieces from the two primary towers, which were painted red and contained distinguishing marks, remains of Building 7 contained nothing to distinguish them.

This meant that there was much less physical evidence to examine from Building 7. “Nonetheless, the NIST investigation of WTC 7 is based on a huge amount of data,” investigators wrote. “These data come from extensive research, interviews, and studies of the building, including audio and video recordings of the collapse. Rigorous, state-of-the-art computer methods were designed to study and model the building’s collapse. These validated computer models produced a collapse sequence that was confirmed by observations of what actually occurred.”

NY1 News says “Prosecutors are reportedly considering filing charges against the city in last summer’s fatal fire at the former Deutsche bank building.

Quoting The New York Times, NY1 says the newspaper is reporting “that investigators in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office believe neglect on the part of several city agencies may have contributed to the deaths of firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino.

According to the paper, investigators are focusing on the Buildings Department’s failure to check a disconnected standpipe and conduct routine safety inspections.

The fire was apparently started by a cigarette. Stairwells in the building had been sealed, blocking off escape routes.

City corporation counsel Michael Cardozo said that all departments have cooperated with the investigation and any charges would be unwarranted.

The district attorney’s office would not comment to NY1 about the investigation.

Meanwhile, one of the major fire unions is pushing for better communication to prevent further tragedies.

The Uniformed Firefighters Association wants commanders to be notified every five minutes about water supply problems and to relay that information to firefighters in the building.

A fire spokesman said the department is reviewing the proposal.”

Seven years after the terror attacks on the World Trade Center, hundreds who served as first responders are still suffering health problems, seven years after the terror attacks on the World Trade Center, according to Newsday, the Long Island newspaper “and despite a new $9 million federal grant for treatment and monitoring, doctors say more money is needed.

The Long Island World Trade Center Monitoring and Treatment Program at Stony Brook University Medical Center received the funding in a newly announced grant from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, an arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The money will pay for treatment and patient monitoring through next July.

Dr. Benjamin Luft, the program’s director, said yesterday the difference between the medical conditions seen shortly after the attacks and those being treated now has been the transformation from acute illnesses to chronic ones.

Respiratory problems, gastrointestinal conditions and post-traumatic stress disorder are common and often chronic for those who worked at Ground Zero, Luft said.

“We have about 4,500 people in the program,” he said, “many of whom suffer from a wide variety of problems and we continue to do our surveillance for new things that might evolve, whether it’s cancers or autoimmune diseases.”

But if, as Luft and his colleagues predict, World Trade Center disorders could afflict some for life, funding through next July will do little to aid the center’s long-term work.”

EfluxMedia reports the New York Police Department “wants to keep track of every automobile that enters Manhattan over the 16 bridges and 4 tunnels.

The elaborate scheme is part of the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative and represents an improved technique to secure the area around the World Trade Center.

The New York Police Department plans to install permanent license plate scanners at the 20 crossings into Manhattan, one of the five boroughs of New York City. The scanners will be designed to transmit information to an NYPD command center, where data would be scrutinized to determine if a certain vehicle has ever been related to any suspicious activity or current inquiry.

“We can’t deny the reality that we’ve had two attacks at that location - two successful terrorist attacks,” stated Raymond Kelly, the current Commissioner of the largest police force in North America.

The plan, which is still being revised, has already raised discontent. Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, categorized the project as “an assault on this country’s historical respect for the right to privacy and the freedom to be left alone.”

But according to Paul J. Browne, New York City Police Department’s Deputy Commissioner of Public Information, the plan has a preventive role in forestalling another terrorist attack, and would not be an inconvenient to vehicles or pedestrians.”

For those who thought Osama Bin Laden’s coven comprised only homicidal males, the New York Daily News brings you Aafia Siddiqui, captured last month in Afghanistan.
“In her possession were “documents describing the creation of explosives, chemical weapons and other weapons involving biological material and radiological agents.” And, the scariest thing, a list of New York landmarks - Statue of Liberty, Times Square - the subway system and Plum Island, the government research laboratory off Long Island.
Siddiqui, a 36-year-old Pakistani and a graduate of MIT, was nabbed lurking around a government compound in Afghanistan. While awaiting questioning, she allegedly grabbed a U.S. Army officer’s rifle and fired. Bad move.
The officer fired back with a pistol, wounding her, and Siddiqui was brought to New York to face federal charges. Her lawyer calls her a ’sacrificial lamb.’ “

In Cuba the press, including the Washington Post, report that a former driver for Osama bin Laden was sentenced by a military jury Thursday to 5 1/2 years in prison for supporting terrorism, a far shorter term than demanded by government prosecutors. The judge gave Salim Ahmed Hamdan credit for five years and one month of his pretrial incarceration at Guantanamo Bay, making him eligible for release from custody in five months, the Post reports.

“The sentence was a stunning rebuke to prosecutors who had insisted on a prison term of at least 30 years and portrayed Hamdan throughout the trial as a hardened al-Qaeda warrior. The jury of six military officers convicted him Wednesday of supporting al-Qaeda by driving and guarding bin Laden and ferrying weapons for the terror group, but he was acquitted of terror conspiracy.”

The world first became fully aware of Osama bin Laden 10 years ago today, The National Reports. On August 7, 1998 simultaneous car bombs exploded at the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya killing hundreds, a report in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) newspaper says. “Responsibility for the atrocities was claimed by bin Laden and his al Qa’eda organization. The attacks were supposedly a protest against the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia following the first Gulf War, and Israel’s suppression of Palestinians with American collusion. It was precisely the type of notoriety bin Laden was looking for, having declared war on the US two years prior.
Al Qa’eda had been responsible for several other attacks meant to punish or terrorise the US, including the 1993 lorry bombing of the World Trade Center, and two attacks on American targets in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996. But the death toll and the spectacular nature of the embassy bombings put bin Laden on the front page of every newspaper in the world.

The group’s efforts continued with several more spectacles of carnage. In 2000 the USS Cole, a US destroyer, was targeted off the coast of Yemen. Seventeen soldiers and sailors were killed. And on September 11, 2001 the world was again rocked when three passenger airliners were flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing thousands. The next day George Bush appeared before the US Congress and declared war on terror — the war that bin Laden had been looking for.
Much has happened in the first 10 years of this war, so much so that it can be hard now to recall the sense of security that prevailed in the mid-1990s, the Cold War having ended at the beginning of the decade. Real wars have taken place in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Taliban and Saddam Hussein have both been overthrown. Terrorist bombs have killed hundreds in Bali, Madrid and London – and even more in Iraq.”
Read the entire story by going to www.thenational.ae

During the seven years since 9/11 there hasn’t been a successful terrorist attack within the United States, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
And Al Qaeda, the terrorist organization responsible for the downing of the World Trade Center, has been pushed back in Iraq where it continues to lose support,” The newspaper reports
“But the core of Al Qaeda continues to thrive, according to security analysts, who note it has increased the number of attacks worldwide since 9/11 as well as its geographic reach.
Those facts have led to two starkly different assessments of where the United States stands in its fight against terror – as well as sharp disagreement on the strategy needed as the country goes forward.
Last week the RAND Corp. sparked renewed debate about the nation’s strategy when it released a report done for the Defense Department that concluded that the so-called “war on terror” has so far failed to significantly undermine Al Qaeda’s capabilities. It suggested it was time for “fundamentally rethinking post-Sept. 11 US counterterrorism strategy.”
A top recommendation is to replace the phrase “war on terror” with the more low-key term counterterrorism.
“Terrorists should be p erceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism,” says Seth Jones, the study’s lead author. “With the growing number of attacks and an expansive reach, one could argue [Al Qaeda] is even growing stronger.”
That assessment prompted derision among some conservative security analysts who contend the “war on terror” is being waged successfully and should continue as is.”

While there has been much ballyhooing over delays in the reconstruction of the World Trade Center, The Downtown Express says there has been progress.
“Far below street level, towering white arches form a tunnel that will one day shepherd commuters beneath the World Trade Center site,” the website says.

The arches mark a passage that will connect Santiago Calatrava’s W.T.C. PATH station to the World Financial Center. They are the first piece of his design to take shape inside the World Trade Center site, and they recall the white wings he designed to rise above the PATH station.

The steady progression of arches crossing the site from West St. toward Church St. is just one project of many on the 16-acres of construction. Nearly a month after the Port Authority announced that the new World Trade Center is millions over budget and years behind schedule, work pushes forward on many, but not all of the layered and interconnected projects that will eventually deliver five skyscrapers, a train station,a memorial, a museum and a performing arts center.

On Monday, the bathtub for Towers 3 and 4 was filled with Silverstein’s construction equipment, but while some work was going on at Tower 4, very little was happening at Tower 3. An official said he had seen almost no progress at Tower 3 over the past several months. Silverstein received a six-month extension on Tower 3 to redesign it for Merrill Lynch, but those talks reportedly fell through earlier this month. A Silverstein spokesperson declined to comment.

The biggest rush is in the northeast corner of the site, where Tower 2 will rise. The Port Authority is excavating that site and was supposed to turn it over to Silverstein Properties by July 1, but the Port missed the deadline. For 16 to 20 hours a day, giant jackhammers called “hoe rams” pound into the bedrock, breaking it into smaller chunks that bulldozers cart away, clearing space for the foundation of the tower.

The Port is paying Silverstein $300,000 for each day the site is late. By the end of July, the Port will owe Silverstein Properties $9.3 million. If the delay stretches to the end of August, that number will double to $18.6 million.”

America was changed forever by September 11. John McEnroe, who wrote about the attacks for this newspaper a year ago, now hopes that his countrymen will learn that sometimes winning isn’t everything, the tennis player writes at www.telegraph.co.uk/education, a British website.

September 11 is close at hand, but for most New Yorkers it has never been far away. Every time you see a fireman or a policeman you cannot help but reflect upon the enormity of what happened to our city. And I, personally, am still mystified by the thought that somehow someone justified all of that.
The Civil War apart, we Americans have never felt the full horror of war so close to home; Pearl Harbour was too far away to have much impact upon the population. 9/11 was our reality check.
For many countries in the world and for thousands of people, war is something they have to live daily; we thought we didn’t have to. In a weird way while at first it may have distanced us from the rest of the world I think - or at least I hope - in time it will bring us closer.
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As a boy I grew up believing everything was black and white. It came as a shock to discover that most things in life were grey and the most horrific example of that was the attacks on New York and Washington. You think to yourself, “How could someone justify that?” But they did.
To read more, go to www.telegraph.co.uk/education/