Perhaps the most commonly cited source of the supporters of the official 9/11 story is the March 2005 Popular Mechanics article. In this blog I will demonstrate how this source uses deception and lies to hide the truth.  In fact, in the several years that I have been researching 9/11, I have NEVER come across an argument that supported the official story that did NOT omit key facts to make their position seem more plausible.

FIRST, lets take a look at the Popular Mechanics article. 

This cover story article claimed to debunk the "16 most prevalent claims" made by 9/11 conspiracy theorists, but instead it dealt with some of the most frivolous and least accepted theories within the 9/11 truth movement while ignoring many of the core arguments.  This is done of course to make the few legitimate issues they raise seem more unlikely.  For example, they start the entire article (which is supposedly going to debunk the 16 most prevalent claims) by discussing the theory that there were large pods attached to the bottom of the planes that crashed into the twin towers on 9/11.  In fact, this theory was originally debunked by the 9/11 truth movement itself, including websites like 911research.com. 

Here is a list of some of the most prevalent and popular 9/11 truth videos:

Loose Change: Second Edition

9/11: The Road to Tyranny

9/11: Martial Law

Painful Deceptions

The Truth and Lies of 9/11

Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime

Confronting the Evidence

And there are dozens more.  Not a single one of the above videos claim that there were pods attached to the planes that crashed into the twin towers.  In fact, the only video that I personally have seen that makes that claim is the outdated "In Plane Sight", which was released in 2003 and is fraught with questionable material.

But of course, Popular Mechanics starts off with this point deliberately to misrepresent the ideas behind the 9/11 Truth movement.  They then proceed to debunk this theory in full with photos showing that there was no pod.  And the article progresses on in the same way, largely ignoring the key issues and instead setting up weak arguments which they can easily tear down.  For a full and complete debunking of the Popular Mechanics article (including the original full text) go here: 

http://911review.com/pm/markup/index.html

But what about the collapse of Building 7?  Surely the article could not ignore that claim as it lies at the heart of the entire Controlled Demolition debate?  Well, the PM article does indeed try to explain away the collapse of building 7.  Here is what they had to say about it:

WTC 7 Collapse
CL.. Seven hours after the two towers fell, the 47-story WTC 7 collapsed. According to 911review.org: "The video clearly shows that it was not a collapse subsequent to a fire, but rather a controlled demolition: amongst the Internet investigators, the jury is in on this one."

FACT: Many conspiracy theorists point to FEMA's preliminary report, which said there was relatively light damage to WTC 7 prior to its collapse. With the benefit of more time and resources, NIST researchers now support the working hypothesis that WTC 7 was far more compromised by falling debris than the FEMA report indicated. "The most important thing we found was that there was, in fact, physical damage to the south face of building 7," NIST's Sunder tells PM. "On about a third of the face to the center and to the bottom--approximately 10 stories--about 25 percent of the depth of the building was scooped out." NIST also discovered previously undocumented damage to WTC 7's upper stories and its southwest corner.

NIST investigators believe a combination of intense fire and severe structural damage contributed to the collapse, though assigning the exact proportion requires more research. But NIST's analysis suggests the fall of WTC 7 was an example of "progressive collapse," a process in which the failure of parts of a structure ultimately creates strains that cause the entire building to come down. Videos of the fall of WTC 7 show cracks, or "kinks," in the building's facade just before the two penthouses disappeared into the structure, one after the other. The entire building fell in on itself, with the slumping east side of the structure pulling down the west side in a diagonal collapse.

According to NIST, there was one primary reason for the building's failure: In an unusual design, the columns near the visible kinks were carrying exceptionally large loads, roughly 2000 sq. ft. of floor area for each floor. "What our preliminary analysis has shown is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors," Sunder notes, "it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so that the entire section comes down."

There are two other possible contributing factors still under investigation: First, trusses on the fifth and seventh floors were designed to transfer loads from one set of columns to another. With columns on the south face apparently damaged, high stresses would likely have been communicated to columns on the building's other faces, thereby exceeding their load-bearing capacities.

Second, a fifth-floor fire burned for up to 7 hours. "There was no firefighting in WTC 7," Sunder says. Investigators believe the fire was fed by tanks of diesel fuel that many tenants used to run emergency generators. Most tanks throughout the building were fairly small, but a generator on the fifth floor was connected to a large tank in the basement via a pressurized line. Says Sunder: "Our current working hypothesis is that this pressurized line was supplying fuel [to the fire] for a long period of time."

WTC 7 might have withstood the physical damage it received, or the fire that burned for hours, but those combined factors--along with the building's unusual construction--were enough to set off the chain-reaction collapse.

Now lets take a look at what the PM article forgot to mention.

First, they start off by claiming that the NIST organization's new investigation uncovered details that the FEMA organization had missed.  They fail to mention that FEMA was the only agency that got a very brief glimpse at the wreckage of WTC Building 7 before it was illegally melted down and shipped overseas.  Here is the link (also on my profile) to the Fire Engineering article in which the editor Bill Manning calls the FEMA investigation into the WTC collapse a "half-baked farce" and decries the illegal destruction of evidence.

http://fe.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=OnlineArticles&SubSe ction=Display&PUBLICATION_ID=25&ARTICLE_ID=131225

So here's my question: How exactly did NIST come up with this new theory about the collapse of building 7?  What evidence did they examine from the crime scene?  There is no evidence left, its all been shipped to China as scrap metal in violation of federal law.

But regardless of that, the PM article goes through the whole list of "probable causes" for the collapse, first saying that the building was damaged by the collapse of the twin towers, then it caught fire, and then they throw in the "fact" that the building was poorly designed for good measure.   They omit the fact that, unlike the twin towers (which were built in the early 70's and have also been accused of having flawed architectural design) WTC 7 was built in 1985 and housed the Office of Emergency Management which had been given $15 million in special renovations, including its own air and water supply and bomb resistant windows that could withstand 200 MPH winds.  These renovations were given ONLY to the 23rd floor.  They don't mention that the collapse of WTC building 7 took less than 10 seconds from start to finish.  In fact, unlike the previous claims (about pods) that they so easily debunked with full color photos, they do not print ONE SINGLE photo of building 7 collapsing, nor do they tell their readers where they can go to see the collapse footage.  They ignore the fact that there is not even ONE SINGLE mention of the collapse in the 9/11 commission report.

But more importantly, if you look at the explaination that is being given here, the PM article is selling the idea that fire can cause a "progressive structural collapse" of a steel skyscraper.  They never mention that there has never been a steel building that has collapsed from fire EVER, anywhere in the world before or after 9/11.  They say that there was a fifth floor fire that burned for 7 hours.  They do not produce any photos of this fire, nor do they mention its intensity.  They also do not mention that other skyscrapers, including the Windsor building in madrid which was NOT made out of solid steel, burned in a raging inferno over many floors for 24 hours and did not collapse. 

They say that the building was structually damaged by the collapse of the twin towers, but of course they omit the fact that the collapse was nearly symmetrical while the damage was clearly not, as proven by their own photos (which you can see on my profile).

They also try to sell the idea that the building had been too "top heavy".  This new revelation, which comes 4 years after the collapse, is supported by ZERO evidence in the article and seems specifically designed to explain away the fact that the collapse of Building 7 started at the roof. 

They also ignore the visible presence of squibs running up the walls as the building collapses.  They try to explain away the kink in the roofline (which is consistant with a controlled demolition) by saying that the collapse videos show "cracks" in the facade.  Cracks and kinks are not synonymous.  Earthquakes and structural damage can cause a building to crack, they do not cause rooflines to kink in as central support columns are simulaneously blown like a controlled demolition does.

The article also omits the infamous statement by leaseholder Larry Silverstein that the building was "pulled".  No surprise there.

And of course, this same treatment is given to demolition of the twin towers.  The PM article claims that conspiracy theorists believe that the twin towers were brought down by explosives simply because "small puffs of dust" can be seen as the buildings collapsed.  Of course, the photo that they print that is supposed to show the readers this phenomenon is really lacking.  Here is the one picture that got printed:

Do you see those small puffs of dust?  What are those conspiracy nuts talking about???

Maybe they are more concerned with what can be seen in the photos that DIDN'T make it into the PM article:

Why didn't they print that photo?

And they also omit an absolute MOUNTAIN of evidence regarding the controlled demolition of the twin towers, most of which is available on my profile.  The details that PM left out include:

The numerous eyewitness reports of multiple explosions. The fireman tapes with their many references to secondary explosions.  The fall time of the two towers compared with the rate of gravity.  The video evidence of thermite.  The analysis of experts like Professor Steven E Jones, Judith Miller, Jeff King, etc. that find that the official story is impossible.  And the list just goes ON AND ON AND ON.

And finally, there is one other key fact that the Popular Mechanics article omits.  The senior researcher at PM and the author of the "Debunking 9/11 Lies" article is one Mr. Benjamin Chertoff, who is the cousin of Michael Chertoff, the head of George W. Bush's Department of Homeland Security.  I guess it should come as little surprise.