I would really, really appreciate a non-ominous explanation for this ...

[Pepperbelly]

We all know the routine --a crime is committed, the scene is sealed, the evidence is collected piece by piece, photographed in situ, diagrammed, labeled, and analyzed. It is ubiquitous in popular culture. As someone who has worked on cases, I can personally assure you that is how it is handled.

Yet, the biggest crime of the 21st Century, the 9/11 attacks, were not treated that way. Steel was hauled away, recycled, rubble taken to the garbage scows and even er... organic residue treated in a hurried and unsuitable fashion.

If crack dealer A kills crack 'ho B, the scene is more carefully safeguarded and documented than the Twin Towers.

Why was that?

:shrug:

edited because :shurg: didn't feed the bulldog.

[petgoat]

1. Why No Crime Scene Investigation?

Because "the world can never be the same" after 9/11 and we already
knew all we needed to know about the 19 young muslims who did the deed
and because treating terrorism as a crime had obviously failed under
Clinton and we were at war now, dammit, and going to kick some Arab
butt and torture the truth out of them, and we didn't need any
namby-pamby "evidence" and "investigation" consumimg energies and
resources and valuable media time because we needed to devote
ourselves to killing terrorists and bringing liberal democracy and
hope to millions of backward Arabs.

That's pretty much how the official line goes, isn't it?

The book "True Lies" in its discussion of its investigation of flight
93 points out that the media were very highly de-motivated to
investigate because they loved the "lets roll" story so much they
didn't want to corrupt it. Besides, it would have been downright
unpatriotic to question authority in time of war, right?

[Christophera]

2. Hey ...... Ominous Can be Entertaining And Pass As Un Ominous.

I love sarcasm.

Posted by petgoat

because we needed to devote
ourselves to killing terrorists and bringing liberal democracy and
hope to millions of backward Arabs.

[reprehensor]

3. All that asbestos laying around was unhealthy.

Hadda git it outta dere.

[rman]

6. to bad it took a few weeks, and many people got very ill,

which the government denies has anything to do with 9-11.

[earth mom]

4. What happened on 9/11 is a mystery....

far too much of it doesn't add up and that's why I question what REALLY happened...

:tinfoilhat:

[dbeach]

5. why?

CUZ the criminals did the investigation..
anybody know when ghoulianni is going traveling again??

he has a habit of showing up..kinda like an unwelcome guest at the strangest places..

[leftofthedial]

8. he's da bomb

[leftofthedial]

7. because the powers that be know what happened

and don't want it investigated

[MercutioATC]

9. The NIST took samples of the material to be analyzed.

The rest of it was hauled away because it was

1) a health hazard, and

2) sitting in the middle of New York City.

I don't think leaving it where it was and sifting through everything slowly was an option.

[Pepperbelly]

10. in so doing ...

it left the biggest crime of the century less than investigated. That renders every discussion of what happened as bullshit because without that evidence, no one actually knows. All is speculation.

And even if those reasons are valid, why would it entail sending the steel to scrap, or shitcanning the rubble without going over it carefully somewhere else, or indeed why a video record wasn't maintained and analyzed in conjunction with the rubble.

Just like the Kennedy assassination, their incompetence has ensured that we will never be able to definitively answer the questions about this tragedy. Was it innocent or was it less than innocent? I think that the public health could have been safeguarded while investigative value was maintained.

[MercutioATC]

11. I think the primary concern was to get the stuff off the street

and get NYC functioning again. I don't see how they could have documented everything and still done that in a timely manner. As far as the rubble, what use would it be after being pushed around by bulldozers, loaded onto trucks, and hauled away? I think representative pieces would have been enough for investigation.

Yes, it would have been nice if they could have taken their time, but I really don't think that was an option.

[StrafingMoose]

12. So the 'terrarists' have found the perfect crime...

since they know it will never be physicaly investigated from day 1! Fear the terrarists!

[MercutioATC]

16. Well, it WAS "physically investigated"...

Just not as thoroughly as it could have been had it not happened in downtown Manhattan.

[petgoat]

25. it WAS "physically investigated"..."

Apparently it wasn't because they don't have the steel that failed.

If it's true as people are saying that NIST's mandate is not to find
out what happened, but to suggest improvements to highrise safety,
they are then free to spend all their efforts on suggesting
improvements to fire resistance without investigating whether the
building actually came down by fire. Their report thus serves to
bolster the official story without being burdened by the necessity of
proving it.

I guess they're not going to have a "Project 9" for suggesting ways to
increase building resistance to explosives.

That being the case, it appears that a true investigation of the
causes of collapse was never conducted, just as a 9/11 Commission
Report that refuses to assign blame can not be considered a true
investigation of what happened. History will laugh at these clowns!

[Pepperbelly]

13. It could have easily been done and not added that much more time.

It would have cost money but that should not have been a barrier.

A two or three person team with each bulldozer and shovel group to photograph and then vidotape as each area is picked up. The rubble from each section could have been kept track of and the steel not immediately salvaged.

"Representative pieces" sounds good but only if you grant everyone involved the best intentions. That is something that the law never does. It is all about chain of custody and the ability to place under oath each link in it.

Now, no matter what, huge questions will linger forever. I would think that after the Kennedy Assasination, we would have learned a lesson on the importance of evidence preservation for the national psyche.

[MercutioATC]

17. I disagree.

Have you ever seen demolition rubble removed? It's not something that can be notated, videotaped and filed by the shovelful. To do what you're suggesting would have taken MUCH more time.

Again, were time not an issue, I think a more thorough forensic investigation would have been great. I just don't see how that was possible if NYC was to get moving again.

[Pepperbelly]

18. at the same time ...

there was no call to salvage the steel immediately. Do you know who was in charge of the investigation into the murder of 3,000 citizens?

Neither do I because I saw no evidence of a criminal investigation into mass murder. Some source claim that only FEMA was in charge but that can't be right, can it?

[LARED]

22. There is no evidence of a criminal investigation because the

FEMA or NIST investigation was not a forensic one.

The investigations are simply to determine why the buildings collapsed in order to determine how to make buildings safer.

[philb]

30. Is it possible to do that without a foresenic investigation?

I don't see how. Given the state of the evidence.

[petgoat]

24. "rubble....can [not] be notated, videotaped and filed by the shovelful"

You're ridiculing by exaggeration. The impossibility of filing every
shovelful of dust is no excuse for failing to recover the code-labelled
pieces of steel from the burn area that are alleged to be the cause of
the collapse.

" don't see how that was possible if NYC was to get moving again."

Again you're exaggerating. NYC didn't need to wait until Ground Zero
was a park before it could get moving.

[MercutioATC]

27. I didn't mean hand shovel.

I was talking about the loaders that put it on trucks. Representative pieces of steel WERE retained.

As far as cleanup, a large area of lower Manhattan was either shut down or slowed down as the result of the work being done. I'm betting that the millions of dollars being lost every day had something to do with the perceived need for a speedy resolution.

[petgoat]

28. lower Manhattan was either shut down or slowed down

There was good reason to keep people out while they cleaned up the
dust, which was full of asbestos and mercury and stuff.

That does not justify a rushed removal of the steel, which impinged
only on the WTC site itself. The steel was loaded on barges right
there. By the time the cleanup was done, Manhattan had been back in
business for some time.

"Representative pieces of steel WERE retained."

Not the pieces from the crash zone. Not the pieces that failed. And
note that the NIST report says that the perimeter column pieces they
studied were NOT representative of the whole because only two of them
out of 170 showed signs of heating above 250 degrees C, and none of
their core steel showed heating above 250.

They rushed the cleanup and in the course of it, failed to get the
steel that would have showed what happened. This was done by a former
prosecutor who thought he had a presidential destiny.

[petgoat]

14. The Evidence

< their incompetence has ensured that we will never be able to
definitively answer the questions about this tragedy.>

Incompetence is a big assumption or judgement--in any case it's opinion,
not fact.

The fact is that the experts had a shot at finding the steel that showed
how the building collapsed, and for some reason they didn't get any that
proved the official case. None of the core steel samples show any
heating above 250 degrees C and less than 1% of the perimeter steel
samples do.

Fact: either the experts were not given proper access to the steel or
somebody took the steel that would proved the official story or there
never was any steel that would prove the official story.

Opinion: No matter how you slice it it looks like shite.

[LARED]

15. Regarding public health

I've a friend that worked at ground zero for about a week operating heavy equipment. He started a few days after the collapse.

There was a massive health hazard. Dust, the stench of death everywhere, rats, piles of dangerous debris everywhere. It was a giant mess. There was definitely a need to clean it up ASAP.

Also there is the fact that 3000 people were buried and relatives would have gotten pretty cranky pretty fast if an investigation like the type you envision was started.

[JackRiddler]

19. regarding strawman arguments

I've met a half-dozen people who worked Ground Zero. So what? What I say falls or stands on reason. I've also met the real relatives (as opposed to your theoretical ones) who actually deal with the skyscraper issue, and guess what, they are angry because the investigation wasn't done. Duh.

No one is saying the rubble should have been kept downtown. Your leading with a "public health" irrelevancy and pretending you're not aware of the actual issue isn't very convincing after three years of debates on this board, do you know that?

Clearly, they could have kept a photographic record of everything as it was first dug up for transport to the dump. Then, there was room enough at the city dumps to keep the rubble long enough to allow investigators to find the (labeled!) columns and other pieces from the impact zones. (So what we're reading here from our committed Denialists is bunkum as usual.)

They did not take these easy steps. The steel was all shipped & scrapped post-haste.

Now, for the NIST investigation, one beam fragment remains from the WTC 1 core columns in the impact area. One. This is "representative"?

[janedoe]

20. In the case of a crime

In the case of a crime, and no one is denying that this was a crime, evidence is preserved. Otherwise, no one can be charged or prosecuted. Most family members of a murdered loved one want to see the murderer prosecuted, found guilty, and sentenced accordingly. This provides some type of closure.

How can get this closure without the evidence and without an inestigation?

So, who has been charged with this crime? Where is the evidence?

Note, fake confessions don't count, even by the correct person. Look what happened to Lindy Englund. Her guilty plea was thrown out.

[LARED]

21. Regarding the actual issue

The actual issue you are concerned about is bullshit. It's not that not enough steel was examined, it's that the CT'er is convinced because the investigation was not per some preconceived protocols (that don't exist) criminality of our government is being covered up.

Understand this The only reason for an investigation is to determine how to improve construction standards to make buildings safer. Simple. It's not for a criminal investigation. There was no crime committed that requires each piece of the building to be photographed and examined.

I do believe they should have done a better job of collecting samples to help determine the failure modes, but not for a criminal investigation.

Regarding moving the materials to city dumps. That's exactly what they did. Staten Island is part of the city. I drove by that dump everyday for years. While in the Staten Island dump much of the debris was gone over. Pieces were selected by engineers for examination. Was every scrap reviewed? No, but so what.

But only committed CT'er believe there was some massive cover up to hide criminally.

[petgoat]

23. "Regarding the actual issue"

"It's not that not enough steel was examined, it's that the CT'er is
convinced because the investigation was not per some preconceived
protocols (that don't exist) criminality of our government is being
covered up."

To link the issues of the collapse mechanism with government
criminality is premature and illogical. Al Qaeda could have planted
bombs in the WTC towers. The government could be covering this fact
up because it embarasses Marvin Bush's security company. The gov't
could have brought the buildings down because they were going to
collapse anyway and they wanted to keep it under control to mininmize
loss of life. The assumption that explosives=gov't complicity
prevents objective perception of the facts.

As to the protocols, combing the wreckage and finding the parts that
failed seems a pretty simple and valid protocol.

"There was no crime committed that requires each piece of the building
to be photographed and examined."

It would be nice if they had one piece of steel that confirmed the
official story. That they couldn't or wouldn't find one casts doubt
on it. If your wife had jumped from the hundredth floor, wouldn't you
want an official account you could believe?

"Was every scrap reviewed? No, but so what."

So what? The evidence was destroyed! Now we'll never know. If there
were explosives, then somebody besides Osama got away with murder!

Treating Ground Zero as a battlefield instead of a crime field helped
justify the response of an invasion while we let the defendant go
free.

[StrafingMoose]

26. You're saying..

"it's that the CT'er is convinced because the investigation was not per some preconceived protocols (that don't exist)"

That after almost all the WTC complex was leveled by two ramming airplanes and collapses, which is itself quite a crime, there is no protocol already in place to study what happened in the collapse? Maybe, I don't know.

Sounds like you have a murderer that killed 50 people in a row, but since the investigators would say they aren't used to deal with 50 casualities at the same time, they would just dump all the bodies and never prosecute anybody. So people would "get back on with their lives".

[Pepperbelly]

29. wtf kind of argumentation is that?

You get to make up people's positions so you can then refute what you like? That is truly odd.

To claim that "There was no crime committed that requires each piece of the building to be photographed and examined," is the height of either knowing zero about criminology, the law, and procedures or the height of dis-ingeniousness. To seriously argue, and make no mistake, this is the position you've taken, there was less reason to work the scene of the largest mass murder in American history than there is for crackhead A killing crackhead B in a business dispute, has to be the single most over-the-line-comment I have read on this site and I've read some doozies.

Let us review, shall we?

We have no one who was involved in this mass murder charged or in jail. The people behind it are similarly uncharged. This is unsatisfactory. BTW, protocols DO exist and are followed day in and day out in every state of the union.

What a rational person does is not reach determinations as yet unproven and in this clusterfuck, there is diddly shit absolutely proven about any of it.

[pox americana]

31. There's plenty of evidence to establish the causes of failure

and it all points clearly and conclusively to the same thing.

The FEMA and NIST reports are exercises in obfuscation, not science.