Super-Duper Thermite: A Year in Review

On November 07, 2008 James B. of the Screw Loose Change blog wrote:

Super-duper-uber-magico-nano-therm*te

Since the truthers cannot explain most of their theories, they have to create speculative technologies as some sort of deus ex machina for their stupidity, be it real time large scale voice morphing, Klingon cloaking technologies or Star War Death Beams. Like most science fiction they have at least some basis in reality, but are taken to ridiculous extremes far beyond proven science. The biggest example of this is the variations of thermite, a real substance, that they create and attach any properties that they want to for use in demolishing buildings, even though thermite has never been used to demolish a building. Here is a perfect example, from David Ray Griffin's aforementioned speech, 58 minutes in:

"With regard to planting explosives, a new technology has developed, known as nano-technology and it has completely changed the nature of discussion about explosives. So thermate, thermite is a very common incendiary, than you had sulfur to it, and it is called thermate because the sulfur added to it greatly lowers the temperature at which steel melts.

But if they used ultra-fine-grained particles then it increases the strength of this many many times, super-thermate is, uhh I don't know 10 times more powerful, something like that. Compared to ordinary thermate. (grumbling in crowd)."

It is an incendiary, it is an explosive, it removes tough stains! It can do anything! Call now 1-800-SCAM-SCIENCE to place your order now.

At least two months prior to this 911research.wtc7.net published a page thoroughly documenting the existence of high-tech metal-based explosives. I guess James missed it, plus that's a twoofer site, so why would he believe it. Well I know that James reads this blog, so I wanted to make him aware of a non-twoofer article I found while untangling my way through the internets recently. Granted, it is on Wikipedia, but remember these are the same people that renamed their 9/11 controlled demolition page to a "conspiracy theory" after the publication of the nano-thermite paper. This being said, it could have been written by Steven Jones for all I know, but if the people that so hate our "theories" had an issue with it, they would surely edit it, or remove it all together. Furthermore, it is not in need of any citations, so if you think it's factually wrong James, then by all means try to edit it. Until then, we will accept that it is accurate. The article begins with a super citation:

"Nano-thermite, also called 'super-thermite',[1] is the common name for a subset of metastable intermolecular composites (MICs) characterized by a highly exothermic reaction after ignition."

The article also informs us that:

"Super-thermites are generally developed for military use, propellants, explosives, and pyrotechnics. Nanosized thermitic materials are being researched by the U.S. military with the aim of developing new types of bombs that are several times more powerful than conventional explosives."[3]

So it IS an incendiary and an explosive. Well that is just super duper if you ask me.

Now the question is are these "new types of bombs" only "being researched," or were they actually used on 9/11? Well to begin to answer that question let's compare a few excerpts of the article with excerpts from the peer-reviewed nano-thermite paper entitled Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe.

The Wikipedia excerpts will appear in blue, excerpts from the paper will appear in red.

The products of a thermite reaction, resulting from ignition of the thermitic mixture, are usually metal oxides and elemental metals...

Nano-thermites contain an oxidizer and a reducing agent, which are intimately mixed on the nanometer scale.

What separates MICs from traditional thermites is that the oxidizer and a reducing agent, normally iron oxide and aluminium are not a fine powder, but rather nanoparticles.

We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in significant numbers in dust associated with the World Trade Center destruction. The red material is most interesting...

It is composed of intimately mixed aluminum, iron, oxygen, silicon and carbon. Lesser amounts of other potentially reactive elements are sometimes present, such as potassium, sulfur, barium, lead and copper.

Iron oxide appears in faceted grains roughly 100 nanometers across whereas the aluminum appears in plate-like structures approximately 40 nanometers thick.

As Jim Hoffman has pointed out:

These are all features of a nano-engineered material. It is not possible that such a material was formed as a by-product of the destruction of the Twin Towers...

Although these elements -- aluminum, iron, oxygen, and silicon -- were all abundant in building materials used in the Twin Towers, it is not possible that such materials milled themselves into fine powder and assembled themselves into a chemically optimized aluminothermic composite as a by-product of the destruction of the Twin Towers.

Nope, these materials certainly didn't mill themselves, so who did mill them? The Wikipedia article states that:

A method for producing nanoscale, or ultra fine grain (UFG) aluminum powders, a key component of most nano-thermitic materials, is the dynamic gas-phase condensation method, pioneered by Wayne Danen and Steve Son at Los Alamos National Laboratory. A variant of the method is being used at the Indian Head Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center."

Funny thing about the Naval Surface Warfare Center:

The Indian Head Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, (a branch of the Naval Sea Systems Command or NAVSEA), described in 1999 as the "national center for energetics"[1], "the only reliable source of aluminum nanopowders in the United States"[2] and in 2008 as "probably the most prominent US center for nano-thermite technology"[3], alleges via Freedom of Information Act replies that records "regarding research and development of nano-sized or Ultra Fine Grained (UFG) aluminum powders, nano-sized or Ultra Fine Grained (UFG) iron oxide powders or other metal oxide powders and Metastable Intermolecular Composites prior to 2002" do not exist. According to Indian Head, "research may have been conducted by Indian Head Division personnel but not submitted."- Source: http://911blogger.com/node/2052

Nothing suspicious there, I'm sure bin Laden made the materials. And actually, so what if the materials found in the WTC dust have the same physical structure and chemical composition as nano-thermite. BB guns have the same physical structure and chemical composition as real guns, but that doesn't mean that they shoot real bullets!

At the temperatures prevailing during the reaction, the products can be solid, liquid or gaseous, depending on the components of the mixture.[12] Super-thermite electric matches developed by LANL can create simple sparks, hot slag, droplet, or flames as thermal-initiating outputs to ignite other incendiaries or explosives.[1]

After igniting several red/gray chips in a differential scanning calorimeter run to 700ºC, we found numerous iron-rich spheres and spheroids in the residue, indicating that a very high-temperature reaction had occurred, since the iron-rich product clearly must have been molten to form these shapes. In several spheres, elemental iron was verified since the iron content significantly exceeded the oxygen content. We conclude that a high-temperature reduction-oxidation reaction has occurred in the heated chips, namely, the thermite reaction.

"Super-thermite electric matches" have been developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory for which “applications include triggering explosives for ... demolition”

It is indeed possible that such matches, which are designed to be ignited by a simple electric pulse, could contain material similar to the red material we have found in the WTC dust.

As the Rock Creek Free Press pointed out in their bombshell article "Scientists Find Explosives in World Trade Center Dust":

The authors avoided describing the material as "explosive" because the flakes studied are too small to assess the bulk properties of the material.

To test the power of this thermitic material, small samples were heated in a Differential Scanning Calorimeter, a very sensitive device for detecting the heat generated by a chemical reaction. The samples ignited at about 430ºC and generated as much or more heat than an equal mass of high explosive such as TNT.

So the material could have been the explosive itself, or it could have ignited other explosives. The scientists not being 100% sure about this has been used by the Screw Loose Change blog as a talking point against their findings. Which is beyond ridiculous, because they presented no argument that the material was anything but nano-thermite, but rather a debate about how energetic the material was.

So now the question is not if an explosive method was used, but which one? Well, there is evidence for both. Let's start with nano-thermite igniting other explosives, the Wikipedia article states that:

"Thermobaric weapons are considered to be a promising application of nanoenergetic materials."

This is interesting, because as 911research.wtc7.net has pointed out before:

Advantages of thermobarics include:

Avoiding the need to install explosives near the Towers' perimeter columns. The thermobaric devices could have been installed entirely in discretely accessed portions of the Towers' cores. The number of devices could also be much smaller -- perhaps just one per floor.

Thermobarics include an absence of conventional explosive residues, and much higher energy densities than conventional explosives. For example, whereas TNT yields 4.2 MJ/kg, hydrogren produces 120 MJ/kg (not counting the weight of the oxygen it uses to burn). 4 Of the possible fuels that could be used in thermobarics, hydrogen has several unique attributes which could have been used to advantage by the planners.

The flash produced by hydrogen combustion is not visible to the naked eye in daylight conditions. The use of hydrogen-based thermobarics is thus consistent with the absence of colorful fireworks in the destruction of the Twin Towers.

On a weight basis, hydrogen has one of the highest energy densities of any fuel -- several times that of any hydrocarbon. The use of hydrogen would have allowed operatives to install far less material than would be required with other explosives.

The combustion of hydrogen in air produces only water vapor, a residue that is consistent with the vast light-colored clouds produced by the Towers' destruction.

Hydrogen has a very wide explosive range -- from 4 to 75 percent in air. That compares to 2.1 to 10.1 percent for propane and 0.7 to 5 percent for kerosene. 5 Thus it would be relatively easy to design hydrogen-based thermobarics that would function reliably in a variety of conditions.

Hydrogen has a very high vapor pressure compared to other fuels. This would have enabled its rapid dispersal into ambient air by shattering pressure vessels containing it.

The Thermitic Material authors mention that in April 2001 the American Chemical Society held a symposium on the defense applications of nanomaterials in which they stated:

At this point in time, all of the military services and some DOE and academic laboratories have active R&D programs aimed at exploiting the unique properties of nanomaterials that have potential to be used in energetic formulations for advanced explosives…. nanoenergetics hold promise as useful ingredients for the thermobaric (TBX) and TBX-like weapons, particularly due to their high degree of tailorability with regards to energy release and impulse management.

The authors then go on to point out that:

"The feature of 'impulse management' may be significant. It is possible that formulations may be chosen to have just sufficient percussive effect to achieve the desired fragmentation while minimizing the noise level."

In other words, these materials, in any form that they are used, are perfect for a covert demolition in which one would want to reduce the loud pops and flashes of conventional demolitions. Lacking these attributes makes for a good defense against the obvious!

The Wikipedia article also informs us that:

Nanoparticles can be prepared by spray drying from a solution, or in case of insoluble oxides, spray pyrolysis of solutions of suitable precursors. The composite materials can be prepared by sol-gel techniques or by conventional wet mixing and pressing.

Similar but not identical systems are nano-laminated pyrotechnic compositions, or energetic nanocomposites. In these systems, the fuel and oxidizer is not mixed as small particles, but deposited as alternating thin layers.

The Thermitic Material paper quotes an April 2000 report by Gash et. al. which states the following about the sol-gel process:

"Once dry the (hybrid inorganic/organic energetic composite) material burns very vigorously and rapidly with the evolution of significant amounts of gaseous species."

The authors note the following of the red chips in their conclusion:

"The carbon content of the red material indicates that an organic substance is present. This would be expected for super-thermite formulations in order to produce high gas pressures upon ignition and thus make them explosive."

And again, this is all perfect for a covert demolition:


The bottom line is that nano-thermite is real, it is super-duper, and it was found in the WTC dust.

The one year anniversary of the nano-thermite paper quickly approaches and no peer-reviewed refutation has been offered. But that's OK, just attack the journal the findings were published in, and when that is demonstrated to be nonsense just continue the super-duper meme implying that it doesn't exist, and when that doesn't work, just claim (again) without any basis, that what was found was just paint. As Debunking the Debunkers blog contributor Scootle Royale said: "I don't know what debunkers paint their houses with but let's just say I don't want any of it near my house."


And when that doesn't work just question the chain of custody. Which Scootle pointed out is "effectively accusing the scientists and the citizens of conspiring to fake evidence by manufacturing high-tech energetic nanocomposites." Conspiracy theory anyone?

When all else fails act ignorant of the facts. When Scootle points out that:

This stuff ignites when heated to 400-450°C and after ignition we find molten iron. Since iron doesn't melt until 1500°C, this ignition temperature of 400-450°C couldn't possibly melt iron. So the fact that we find molten iron is proof that some kind of chemical reaction has occurred.

...Just act like he is claiming that thermite burns at 400-450°C when he was actually pointing out that 400-450°C is the temperature that TRIGGERS the reaction.

Some suggestions: either fix the Wikipedia article or remove your former blog James, and then pass the word along that your side needs to put up or shut up!

Oh, and on the topic of magic:

Are there more seeming opposites than technology and magic? Technology works objectively and is usually efficacious, whereas magic, based on superstition, seems to be ineffective. The former is perceived to be rational and is associated with a scientific outlook; the latter is seen to be irrational and is associated with a religious sensibility. But our expectations for technology have become magical and our use of it is increasingly irrational. Magic in turn has acquired a rational façade and is used like technology for purposes of efficiency. In short, technology and magic, while separate and distinct categories in some abstract sense, are now related to one another in such a way that each has acquired important characteristics of the other. - Source: http://www.apu.edu/cris/pdfs/technology_magic.pdf

Related Info:

Thermite Denial - A Year in Review

Put up or Shut up: A Year in Review

9/11 Truth Movement: Year in Review

The Sounds of Loud and Clear

Reply: Jesse The BSer Ventura: I Called It!

What is the motive in the theory that 9-11 was an inside job?

The best answer chosen by the voters to this question on Yahoo Answers states:

People say 9/11 was planned to get us into a war so military suppliers could make money. This idea is incorrect because we don't need an attack to get us into a war. For example, the direct result of 9-11 was the attack on Afghanistan, a relatively small operation.

On the other hand, look at the big operation, the attack on Iraq. We didn't need 9/11 for that. Iraq was simply justified by Bush saying Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He explicitly stated it was not due to 9/11 or terrorism.

Wrong; the George Washington blog explains:

Why are we in Iraq? WMDs, you say!

Actually, President Bush's March 18, 2003 letter to Congress authorizing the use of force against Iraq, includes the following paragraph.

(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

White House's false linkage of Iraq and 9/11 which allowed the Bush administration to claim that Congress had voted for the Iraq war. So looking at who was actually behind 9/11 (not Saddam Hussein) is important in connection with the Iraq war.

The answer then goes on to state that:

People say that insiders bought securities that would generate profit after the 9/11 attacks.
Unusual stock and option transactions have already been investigated and were found to be ordinary transactions resulting from well-known business expectations. This was done by the 9-11 Commission & others.

Furthermore, financial transactions are completely transparent: We know exactly who did them. Only a fool would simply buy 10s of millions of put options (anything less would not be worth it) and then go blow up the WTC--we would know immediately who did it.

Moreover, insider-trading is a crime and the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) routinely monitors all trades for excess profits. There’s no way to cover it up.

Also, many of the people who died in WTC 1 & 2 are in the financial industry and many of their close friends would be in finance also. Surely, these friends & colleagues of the deceased would all have complete access to trading data. They would go crazy with anger if they could find anything fishy in the deaths of their friends. But, the thousands of people who work on wall street are quiet indicating no unusual activity.

If these transactions are real, then (1) who is the biggest profit-maker, (2) how much did they make & when, and (4) how does this activity compare to historical transaction volume that ordinarily occurs? It's specifics that make a claim plausible and verifiable. It's vagueness that suggests it's all made-up.

Until there is an intelligent answer for the above, we can safely be assured that all these "millions of transactions" are a myth.

I'm actually going to accept this part of the answer, and get this, agree with the Screw Loose Change blog.

This was what the person who answered the question considered the "two main motives that are given to 'prove' 9-11 was an inside job." Motives by themselves don't prove anything. The forensic evidence, NORAD stand-down, and whistleblowers, prove the case. They also forgot a few other main motives that flesh themselves out when looking at how the world would be different without 9/11.

From Steve Watson of the website PrisonPlanet.com :

Without 9/11 there would be no "war on terror".

Without 9/11 there would be no "clash of civilizations"

Without 9/11 there would be no war in Afghanistan.

Without 9/11 there would be no war in Iraq.

Without 9/11 there would be no war in… (insert any country classified as part of the "axis of evil" or defined as being 'with the terrorists')

Without 9/11 thousands of U.S. troops would not have been sent to their deaths.

Without 9/11 hundreds of thousands of citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan would not have been sentenced to their deaths.

Without 9/11 there would be no inaction on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Without 9/11 there would be no civilian contractors in Iraq and the scandal that has followed them would have been averted.

Without 9/11 there would be no false military reporting (Pat Tillman, Jessica Lynch), and no crack down on the freedom of the press (banning photographing the returning coffins).

Without 9/11 there would be no Patriot Act.

Without 9/11 there would be no NSA warrantless wiretapping program.

Without 9/11 there would be no Camp Delta and no Camp X-ray at Guantanamo Bay.

Without 9/11 there would be no Military Commissions Act and no coordinated program of extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention and torture of those defined as “enemy combatants”.

Without 9/11 there would be no vast increase in secrecy and complete militarization of intelligence under the newly created office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Without 9/11 there would not be thousands of dead and dying emergency workers who are suffering crippling and fatal respiratory illnesses.

Without 9/11 there would be no vast increase in military and security spending that goes arm in arm with huge cutbacks in other key social programs (such as levees in New Orleans).

Without 9/11 there would have been no total abandonment of fiscal restraint, which has contributed to plunging the nation into an abyss of debt and looks likely to tip the world into a deep recession if not a complete depression.

And on and on and on.

Perhaps most importantly, without 9/11 there would be no "post 9/11 society/mentality".

Related Info:

SEC Found No Sign 9/11 Conspirators Traded on Plot

Who Needs Debunking When Insults Are So Easy

Scootle's post thanking the Screw Loose Change blog for their lack of debunking and promotion of 9/11 truth has inspired me to expand on his thoughts, and answer a question for my rebunking ally.

First off Scootle, one of their commenters recently stated:

"We're at the mocking stage now, well past any debunking."

I have seen comments from Pat Curley before that basically state the same thing, so yes, as you thought might be the case, they are getting lazy. Their beloved Dr. Frank Greening is just as lazy, as was recently demonstrated when he did some calculations regarding the recent paper on the nano-thermite discovery, Pat reprinted the following "key points.":

I've already done a calculation of how much heat energy a layer of nano-thermite (such as the one allegedly found by Jones et al) could generate. My conclusion was that Jones' chips would do no more than slightly warm a WTC column!

So when I bounced my calculations and conclusions off Jones et al, all he could come up with was the suggestion that there were probably other explosives used in the WTC and the nanothermite chips were maybe just fuses! Thus, after all the fuss about high-tech nano-thermites, we are back to good-old 'bombs in the buildings' as the answer to how the buildings were destroyed."

First off, that wasn't all Jones could come up with. In a recent post regarding this debate on 911blogger.com Jones highlighted how he informed Greening that during the ignition of the material iron-rich spheres were formed, such as would be expected during a thermite reaction. He pointed out that this implies extremely high temperatures because the chips were only heated to 700 C, but the melting point of iron is above 1200 C. Of course this was already addressed in the paper.

Greening replied by stating that:

"The microspheres reported in the Harrit paper could at best be described as 'iron-rich', with Al, Si and O always present. But let me remind you, this is also true for the magnetically separated microspheres found in incinerator ashes – they contain mostly Fe, Al, Si, and O."

Jones replied with more information from the paper:

"Dr. Farrer and Danny and I have looked at many of these post-DSC spheres, many do NOT contain Al. See for example Fig 21 in our paper."

Greening then admitted to some error on that point. He also seemed to agree that the materials could not be primer paint used on the WTC.

Jones next pointed out that he never stated thermate alone could bring down the Towers, he states:

During the discussion, I briefly expressed my hypothesis that nanothermite served as an igniting agent, as in the "super-thermite matches" described in our paper, to ignite more conventional explosives such as C4 or HMX, in the destruction of the WTC buildings. Thermate (sulfur plus thermite and possibly the form thermate-TH-3) was ALSO in evidence and probably intended to weaken critical steel members (e.g., residue/ material flowing with orange glow from the So. Tower just minutes before its collapse and the sulfidation of WTC steel reported in the FEMA report but ignored by NIST). Thermite incendiary without sulfur is not in evidence at the WTC to date.

But sulfur is NOT needed for the function of explosive nanothermite and would not be expected to appear in the red/gray chips. Reliable and robust super- or nano-thermite ignitors would each be ignited by an electrical pulse generated by a radio-receiver, in turn igniting shaped charges to cut steel, the sequence beginning near where the planes went in for the Towers and computer-controlled, so that the destruction wave would proceed via explosives in top-down sequence. Thus, this was no conventional (bottom first) controlled demolition, agreeing on this with B. Blanchard, but I never claimed it was! (For the Towers; the demolition of WTC7 appears to be bottom-first and more conventional.) The top-down destruction of the Towers in this model would doubtless require more explosives than would a conventional controlled demolition. Thermate (an incendiary, not an explosive) is not the 'be all and end all' explanation (FG’s terminology), nor did I ever claim it was – I have consistently pointed to evidence that explosives were used in bringing down the Towers.

The "working hypothesis" above is a scientific hypothesis, that is, subject to change as further research data emerge. It is also possible (for example) that explosive nanothermite (not an incendiary) could have been used in SHAPED CHARGES, to cut through steel explosively (a use suggested in Fig. 1 of Miziolek AW, "Nanoenergetics: an emerging technology area of national importance." Amptiac Spring 2002; 6(1): 43-48. Available from: http://www.p2pays.org/ref/34/33115.pdf ."

As the Rock Creek Free Press pointed out in their bombshell article Scientists Find Explosives in World Trade Center Dust:

The authors avoided describing the material as 'explosive' because the flakes studied are too small to assess the bulk properties of the material.

To test the power of this thermitic material, small samples were heated in a Differential Scanning Calorimeter, a very sensitive device for detecting the heat generated by a chemical reaction. The samples ignited at about 430ºC and generated as much or more heat than an equal mass of high explosive such as TNT.

When Kevin Ryan was asked if the materials were explosive, he stated:

"They can be made quite explosive, in fact they have been referred to as high explosives."

This is a fact...

Aluminothermic Technology - Existence of High-Tech Metal-Based Explosives

Dr. Greening also tried to argue that the materials didn't have the correct physical structure for nano-thermite, but Steven Jones corrected him:

"The iron-oxide grains are approximately 100 nm across, which fits the requirement for nano-thermite as defined in the literature, despite Greening's obfuscation of this point."

The literature that Jones refers to is once again something that can be found in the paper itself, at footnote 19 the authors quote a report by Gash et al. dated April 2000 which states:

“Nanostructured composites are multicomponent materials in which at least one of the component phases has one or more dimensions (length, width, or thickness) in the nanometer size range, defined as 1 to 100 nm."

The chips also have the correct chemical composition. As Jim Hoffman recently pointed out regarding the structure and composition of the chips:

The particles are very small: the plates being only about 40 nanometers thick, and the grains are only about 100 nanometers in diameter. The particles are highly uniform in size and shape. The particles are intimately mixed in a highly consistent composition throughout the material.

These are all features of a nano-engineered material. It is not possible that such a material was formed as a by-product of the destruction of the Twin Towers.

Although these elements -- aluminum, iron, oxygen, and silicon -- were all abundant in building materials used in the Twin Towers, it is not possible that such materials milled themselves into fine powder and assembled themselves into a chemically optimized aluminothermic composite as a by-product of the destruction of the Twin Towers.

Dr. Greening has in fact used ridiculous explanations akin to this in the past when he claimed that there could have been natural thermite reactions within the tower fires!

Dr. Jones brings us the bottom line:

So how do you, as a non-scientist, discern whether the arguments are valid or not? You should first ask, 'is the objection PUBLISHED in an ESTABLISHED PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL?' If not, you can and should say -- "I will wait to see this formally published in a refereed scientific journal. Until then, the published peer-reviewed work by Harrit et al. stands."

Might I add, IF this happens, then wait for the response!

So yes Scootle, the debunking is quite lax these days, but our foes claim it's because there's "not much out there," except Dr. Greening kicking so much butt in his exchange with Jones, that "Jones shouldn't be sitting down anytime soon." Did I mention this guy hypothesized that there could have been natural thermite reactions within the tower fires?!

Related info and some of the stuff that is going on out there:

Frank Greening versus Isaac Newton

NYC CAN Update: Now 40,000 signatures

9/11 Survivor Janette MacKinlay Makes an Appeal for a New Investigation Into 9/11

41 U.S. Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence Agency Veterans Challenge the Official Account of 9/11

General Richard Myers Asked About Nanothermite Explosives Found in WTC Dust

Debunking the Rebunking

"If we start debunking rebunking 9-11 debunking, where will it all end?" - Pat Curley

Pat Curley over at the Screw Loose Change blog had a listen to our recent interview with Michael Woolsey of 9-11 Visibility and has attempted rebunking our debunking.

Pat states, "They say that they are not interested in hearing debunking of Steven Jones' latest paper (Active Thermitic Material...). Nope, if we are going to debunk that laughable attempt to claim that bits of red paint and rust amount to Thermite we have to do it with a peer-reviewed paper."

Yes, if you are claiming that highly credentialed scientists have been fooled by paint, after two years of research, when paint was one of the very first considerations, then you should back that claim up in the way they have backed up theirs. When the lead author of the paper, associate professor of chemistry at Copenhagen University in Denmark, Dr. Niels H. Harrit, was asked during an interview on Denmark television if he was in any doubt that the material was present, he replied unambiguously, "You cannot fudge this kind of science. We have found it: unreacted thermite."

If you think this author/or co-author of nearly 60 peer reviewed scientific papers is fudging, or was fooled by paint, someone on your side should demonstrate this beyond the blogosphere. I think physics professor Dr. Steven E. Jones put it best when he noted that:

Debunkers may raise all sorts of objections on forums, such as "Oh, it's just paint" or "the aluminum is bound up in kaolin." We have answered those questions in the paper, and shown them to be nonsense, but you have to read to find the answers. Here's what you need to know (especially if you are not a scientist): UNLESS AN OBJECTOR ACTUALLY PUBLISHES HIS OR HER OBJECTION IN A PEER-REVIEWED ESTABLISHED JOURNAL (yes that would include Bentham Scientific journals), THEN THE OBJECTION IS NOT CONSIDERED SERIOUS IN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY. YOU SHOULD NOT WORRY ABOUT NON-PUBLISHED OBJECTIONS EITHER.

Getting back to paint being one of the very first considerations, it's worthy to note that one of the first things indicating the materials were not paint chips was their explosiveness! At the Boston 9/11 Conference on 12/15/07 Steven Jones first reported his findings, stating:

Many red chips I found in the WTC dust, last June I started noticing these. Their attracted by a magnet, a thought came, well maybe it's just paint. It's hard to get thermite to ignite, and I finally thought, how can we tell if this is thermite or not?... It has the right chemical signature.

A friend of mine has an oxyacetylene torch with a very fine tip, he uses it for repairing eyeglasses, and so I had him pass it over one of these red chips... And it flamed, it flashed, as he passed over it.

He went on to state that this, in conjunction with the chemical signature and the red color, was a strong indication that this was indeed a form of thermite.

During a debate with architect Richard Gage 9/11 "debunker" Mark Roberts also suggested the red chips were paint, after Gage replied, "That's why they're extremely explosive I suppose," Roberts conveniently ignored him, stating, "These chips... One thing that should ring a bell, is that they look exactly like all the primer paint that's on the structural steel."

Of course Robert's assumption has nothing on empirical evidence. In a recent interview with Dr. Harriet conducted by national Emmy nominee and regional Emmy award-winning investigative journalist Linda Moulton Howe, he notes that, "In the primer paint, which was used on the steel beams at the original World Trade Center – we looked up the original recipes for those paints. The paints contained as an anti-corrosive: chromium and zinc, which we do not find. And magnesium, which we do not see either. These are negative indications why the red-gray chips are not paint."

More detailed analysis can be found in Harrit's article "WHY THE RED/GRAY CHIPS ARE NOT PRIMER PAINT."

Also of note is the fact that, as Jim Hoffman of the website 9/11 Research points out, "Soaking the chips in methyl ethyl ketone, a solvent that dissolves paint, with periodic agitation for 55 hours, the red layers swelled up but remained intact and attached to their respective gray layers, and the thin plates tended to migrate and aggregate."

The next part of Pat's supposed rebunking involved my mentioning of the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) of August 6, 2001, which he pointed out I did misspeak of and call a PDF. Here's a PDF of the PDB! Speaking of nitpicking masquerading as debunking, I also spoke of "outward" bowing columns instead of "inward," and I called a reviewer of the nano-thermite paper an author. Just like with the PDB, I knew it was inward, and I knew he wasn't an author.

Pat states, "Note in particular that the two paragraphs which do not appear historical in nature are also not very accurate in predicting 9-11; federal buildings in New York were not attacked and the attacks were not done with explosives."

One commenter by the name of Brian Good on Pat's blog thanked him for his candor, "Thanks, Pat, for confirming that the 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US' memo actually did warn of new attacks, though Condi claimed under oath in the presence of the 9/11 widows that it did not."

Condi's bio on Wikipedia also contains this tidbit:

Rice characterized the August 6, 2001 President's Daily Brief Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US as historical information. Rice indicated "It was information based on old reporting."[45] Sean Wilentz of Salon magazine suggested that the PDB contained current information based on continuing investigations, including that Bin Laden wanted to "bring the fighting to America."[46]

I have blogged about the PDB before, where I pointed out that when we look at it in a larger context we start to get a clearer picture of the situation.

9/11 Family Member Patty Casazza: Government Knew Exact Date and Exact Targets

Rockefeller Predicted "Event" To Trigger War Eleven Months Before 9/11 - Hollywood director Russo recalls remarkable "forecast" of coming attack

Not to mention the massive amount of mainstream news reports concerning ignored warnings.

Yes, there was a section that mentions "bin Laden supporters in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives," which as Pat pointed out, "the attacks were not done with explosives," meaning of course that it wasn't a bombing attack akin to the 1993 WTC bombing, but the memo also mentioned "suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks..." It then mentions that this included "recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York," to which Pat points out that the towers were not federal buildings, but the "recent surveillance" would be in addition to the "most attractive terrorist target" at the WTC as detailed by several reports dating back to the 1980s.

FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, in an open letter to the 9/11 Commission, reported that there was "specific information regarding a terrorist attack being planned by Osama bin Laden," that mentioned major cities, airplanes, approximate timeframe, and operatives already in place in the US. This was reported by FBI agents to "Special Agent in Charge of Counterterrorism Thomas Frields at the FBI Washington Field Office," but was subsequently ignored.

The FAA also received 52 pre-9/11 warnings, including five that "specifically mentioned Al Qaeda's training or capability to conduct hijackings," and two that "mentioned suicide operations." In regard to the FAA warnings a "debunker" would likely focus on the fact that the suicide operations mentioned were "not connected to aviation," while ignoring that the FAA warned airports that "the intent of the hijacker is not to exchange hostages for prisoners, but to commit suicide in a spectacular explosion, a domestic hijacking would probably be preferable."

NORAD had drills of jets as weapons

By Steven Komarow and Tom Squitieri, USA TODAY
4/19/2004

In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.

One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center...

A White House spokesman said Sunday that the Bush administration was not aware of the NORAD exercises...

On April 8, the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks heard testimony from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that the White House didn't anticipate hijacked planes being used as weapons.

The article notes that, "The exercises differed from the Sept. 11 attacks in one important respect: The planes in the simulation were coming from a foreign country." But it then mentions that there were other drills involving domestically hijacked planes as weapons and as noted above, the FAA stated this was a consideration.

From OilEmpire.us:

In 1995, the US stopped plans for "Project Bojinka," a planned terror attack on commercial airliners (12 planes were to be hijacked simultaneously, and the plotters also envisioned driving a jet into CIA headquarters in Virginia). Bojinka was thwarted when a group of Islamic terrorists were apprehended in the Philippines. This proves that the Cheney administration lied after 9/11 when they claimed they didn't forsee the possibility of hijacked planes being used as weapons.

Of course this brought up the issue of how this all corresponds with the idea of 9/11 being an inside job. As I have pointed out before, many people make the mistake of only seeing the issues concerning 9/11 in black and white, as opposed to shades of grey.

In a post from today entitled "Was Popular Mechanics Fair?" Pat tries to make the case that Popular Mechanics did not set up straw men in the way I suggested, he states, "Overall, I'd say that Popular Mechanics did a pretty good job. Most of the theories they discussed are quite common in the movement, and the less common ones were mostly at the end."

I suggest Jim Hoffman's essay "Popular Mechanics Attacks Its "9/11 LIES" Straw Man" written in 2005.

Related Info:

Debunking Popular Mechanics' 9/11 Lies

Viewers See History Channel 9/11 Special As Straw Man Hit Piece

Nano-thermite Demolishes 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

Sibel Edmonds: In Congress We Trust...NOT