The Mammoth Book of New Csi (37 page)

In the days after the attacks, hundreds of forensic pathologists, anthropologists, dentists and doctors, many of them volunteers, flocked to three huge tents outside the East Side Manhattan headquarters of the medical examiner’s office. There they pored over body parts both large and small, taking fingerprints and tooth prints and X-rays, seeking a match with a list of those missing. They made hundreds of relatively quick identifications in the first weeks and months.

Then began a more laborious process. The medical examiner’s office collected hair and saliva samples from thousands of families, and set about trying to extract DNA from almost 20,000 body parts collected from more than two million tons of debris. Initially, they used standard DNA analysis, but soon the scientists were forced to develop new forensic techniques where they attempted to establish a profile from degraded DNA extracted from tiny fragments of bone and tissue.

By 2005, they had stretched the technology to its limits. By then, 1,588 of the victims had been identified, leaving 1,161 unaccounted for. The city was left with 9,720 unidentified body parts, which biologists freeze-dried and stored, in the hope that someday new technology will allow them to be identified. Nevertheless, work continued. In November 2006, after the families provided fresh DNA samples, body parts were identified belonging to Karen Martin, a flight attendant on Flight 11 who had been stabbed by the hijackers; passenger Douglas Stone, who was a New York businessman; and another male passenger whose name was withheld at his family’s request. More human remains were also found in a utility manhole near Ground Zero. And in April 2007, examiners using newer DNA technology identified another Flight 11 victim. The remains of two hijackers, probably from Flight 11, were also identified and removed from Memorial Park in Manhattan. The remains of the other hijackers have not been identified.

A three-month search of two dumptrucks’ worth of debris recovered by demolition workers from the top of the Deutsche Bank building near Ground Zero yielded seventy-two new fragments of human tissue in 2010. This resulted in the identification of twenty-five new victims using a DNA profiling technique called single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs – the first time this was used in forensic analysis.

Conspiracy theorists believe that the Twin Towers – and the smaller World Trade Center building nearby, which collapsed later – were not brought down by the impact of the planes but were wired with explosives as the lobbies of both of the towers were visibly damaged before the towers collapsed. According to one website: “There is NO WAY the impact of the jet caused such widespread damage 80 stories below. 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.”

However, a study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) showed that plane debris sliced through the utility shafts at the North Tower’s core, which became a conduit for burning jet fuel. This travelled down the elevator shafts, disrupting the elevator systems and causing extensive damage to the lobbies. According to first-person testimony, some of the elevators plummeted down the lift shafts and crashed into the ground floor.

“The doors cracked open on the lobby floor and flames came out and people died,” says James Quintiere, an engineering professor at the University of Maryland and a NIST adviser.

Another website pointed out that kerosene does not burn hot enough to melt steel, so the burning fuel could not have caused the collapse of the building. It is true that, while jet fuel burns at 800°F to 1,500°F (427°C to 816°C), steel melts at 2,750°F (1,510°C). However, the steel frames did not need to melt for the buildings to collapse. They just need to lose some of their structural strength, which happens at a much lower temperature.

“I have never seen melted steel in a building fire,” said retired New York Deputy Fire Chief Vincent Dunn. “But I’ve seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks.”

And jet fuel was not the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He said that the inferno caused by the burning fuel was intensified when the carpets, curtains, paper and other combustible material inside the buildings caught fire.

“The jet fuel was the ignition source,” said Williams. “It burned for maybe ten minutes, and the towers were still standing in ten minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down.”

NIST also said that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing insulation was knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal exposed to the heat, while pockets of fire hit 1,832°F (1,000°C).

“Steel loses about 50 per cent of its strength at 1,100°F,” said senior engineer Farid Alfawakhiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. “And at 1,800°F it is probably at less than 10 per cent.”

Puffs of dust were seen coming out of the sides of the building as it collapsed – a sure sign that explosives had been detonated, some conspiracy theorists say. But this can be explained in another way.

Once each tower began to collapse, the weight of all the floors above the collapsed zone crashed down on the floor below. Unable to carry the weight, that floor would then collapse on to the floor below. This progressive collapse would cause a chain reaction that engineers call “pancaking”. No explosives are required for the collapse to continue.

As each floor pancaked, the air inside would be expelled with enormous force, carrying pulverized concrete and other debris with it.

“When you have a significant portion of a floor collapsing, it’s going to shoot air and concrete dust out the window,” NIST lead investigator Shyam Sunder told the magazine
Popular Mechanics
. “Those clouds of dust may create the impression of a controlled demolition, but it is the floor pancaking that leads to that perception.”

Seismographs at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory 21 miles (40 km) north of Ground Zero recorded the shock waves of the buildings collapsing.

“The strongest jolts were all registered at the beginning of the collapses, well before falling debris struck the earth,” reports the website
WhatReallyHappened.com
.

Prisonplanet.com said that this was “indisputable proof that massive explosions brought down” the towers as the sharp spikes of short duration were consistent with a “demolition-style implosion”.

However, the seismologists at Lamont-Doherty pointed out that the earlier jolts were caused by the planes hitting the towers and that the spikes associated with the collapse, rather than being of a short duration, were spread over forty seconds. Examined in detail, they start small and then grow larger as the buildings fall to the ground.

“There is no scientific basis for the conclusion that explosions brought down the towers,” said seismologist Arthur Lerner-Lam.

Seven hours after the two towers fell, the forty-seven-storey World Trade Center 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.”

Indeed, a preliminary report by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said there was relatively light damage to World Trade Center 7 before it collapsed. However, further research by NIST revealed that the building was far more damaged 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,” said NIST’s lead investigator Shyam Sunder. “On about a third of the face to the centre and to the bottom – approximately ten stories – about 25 per cent of the depth of the building was scooped out.”

NIST also discovered previously undocumented damage to the building’s upper storeys and its south-west corner. Investigators believe a combination of intense fire and severe structural damage triggered a progressive collapse, where failure of part of the building put a strain on other parts, bringing the whole structure down. Videos of the collapse 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.

Other factors include the exceptionally large loads the columns were carrying. The removal of just one of them would cause the building to collapse. There were also trusses transferring the load from one set of columns to another. These communicated the stress caused by damage to the columns on the south side to the rest of the building.

There had been no firefighting at World Trade Center 7 as the New York Fire Department were concentrating on the Twin Towers where 343 of their firefighters and paramedics were killed. It burnt for seven hours before it collapsed. Investigators believe the fire was fed by tanks of diesel that were used to fuel 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. Together these factors combined to bring the building down.

It seems that crime scene evidence once again refutes the conspiracy theories.

A
T ABOUT
8.50
A.M
. on 7 July 2005 – often known as 7/7 in the style of 9/11 in the United States – there were three almost simultaneous explosions on the London Underground. The first occurred on a train in a tunnel on the Circle Line between Liverpool Street and Aldgate stations. The second was on the Circle Line just outside Edgware Road and the third was in a tunnel on the Piccadilly Line between King’s Cross and Russell Square. Then at 9.47 a.m., there was a fourth explosion on the upper deck of a number 30 bus in Tavistock Square, less than 500 yards (460 m) from Russell Square tube station. Fifty-six people, including the four bombers, were killed by the attacks, and about 700 were injured. The attack also left four crime scenes for the police to investigate.

Much of the evidence of the crime and its perpetrators came from CCTV footage. At 3.58 a.m., a light-blue Nissan Micra was caught on CCTV on Hyde Park Road in Leeds, on its way to the M1. This car had been hired by Shehzad Tanweer and was thought to have been carrying Tanweer, Mohammad Sidique Khan and Hasib Hussain. Hyde Park Road was close to 18 Alexandra Grove, where a bomb factory was later discovered.

At 4.54 a.m., the Micra stopped at Woodall Services on the M1 to fill up with petrol. Tanweer went into the station to pay. He was wearing a white T-shirt, dark jacket, white tracksuit bottoms and a baseball cap. He bought snacks, quibbling with the cashier over his change. Then he looked directly at the CCTV camera and left.

Thirteen minutes later, at 5.07 a.m., a red Ford Brava was seen entering the car park at Luton station. Jermaine Lindsay was alone in the car. He got out and walked around, then entered the station and looked at the departure timetable. Afterwards, he moved the car a couple of times. Initially, there were just a few other cars in the car park, but more arrived.

The CCTV showed the Micra arriving at Luton at 6.49 a.m. It parked next to the Brava. All four men got out. They opened the boots of the cars and were seen to move items between them. Each put on a large rucksack that appeared to be full. It looked like they were going camping.

At 7.15 a.m., Lindsay, Hussain, Tanweer and Khan entered Luton station and went through the ticket barriers together. Six minutes later, CCTV caught them on the platform waiting for the Thameslink service to King’s Cross. They were casually dressed and apparently relaxed. Tanweer’s posture and the way he pulled the rucksack on to his shoulder as he walked suggest that he found it heavy. It was later estimated that in each rucksack there was between two and five kilograms of high explosive. For some reason, Tanweer was now wearing dark tracksuit bottoms.

The King’s Cross train left Luton station at 7.40 a.m. with the four men on board. There were conflicting accounts of their behaviour on the train. Some witnesses report noisy conversations; another says he saw two of them standing silently by the doors of the train. The four stood out a bit from the usual commuters due to their rucksacks and casual clothes, but not enough to cause suspicion as it was the beginning of the summer tourist season and Luton station serves the nearby airport.

A delay on the line meant that the train arrived slightly late at 8.23 a.m. At 8.26 a.m., CCTV spotted them on the concourse between the overground Thameslink platform and the Underground system. Four minutes later, four men fitting their descriptions were seen hugging. They appeared happy, even euphoric. Then they split up. Khan took the westbound Circle Line train. Tanweer went eastbound on the Circle Line train, while Lindsay took a southbound Piccadilly Line train. Hussain also appeared to walk towards the entrance to the Piccadilly Line.

CCTV at Liverpool Street station at 8.50 a.m. showed commuters bustling to get on the train. It pulled out of the station. Seconds later smoke billowed from the tunnel. This was greeted with shock and confusion on the platform as people made for the exits.

Forensic evidence suggests that Tanweer was sitting towards the back of the second carriage with the rucksack next to him on the floor. The blast killed eight people, including Tanweer, and injured 171 others.

At Edgware Road, Mohammad Sidique Khan was also in the second carriage from the front, near the standing area by the first set of double doors. It was thought that he was also seated with the bomb next to him on the floor. Shortly before the explosion, he was seen fiddling with the top of the rucksack. The explosion killed seven, including Khan, and injured 163 people.

On the Piccadilly Line, Jermaine Lindsay was in the first carriage as it travelled between King’s Cross and Russell Square. It is unlikely that he was seated as the train was crowded. There were 127 people in the first carriage alone, making it difficult to work out the position of those involved. Forensic evidence suggests the explosion occurred on or close to the floor of the standing area between the second and third set of seats. The explosion killed twenty-seven people, including Lindsay, and injured over 340. The force of the explosion in the confined space of the deep tunnel of the Piccadilly Line shattered windows and left charred and twisted metal. Soon after the blast, one young policeman staggered from the scene at Russell Square station and said: “I don’t know what heaven looks like but I have just seen hell.”