Morgan Reynolds on WTC Demolition

by Christopher Bollyn 

June 16, 2005 

Ridiculed and abused by the controlled press, independent 9-11 researchers have found a powerful ally in Morgan O. Reynolds, a former official in the Bush administration. Since Reynolds, professor emeritus at Texas A&M University and former chief economist for the U.S. Department of Labor (2001-2002), published his article entitled "Why Did the Trade Center Skyscrapers Collapse?" on June 9, the evidence that the twin towers and WTC 7 were demolished by explosives can no longer be ignored by the mainstream media. 

John Daly of United Press International (UPI) broached the controversial subject on June 13 when he reported that Reynolds said the official story about the collapse of the WTC is "bogus" and that it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the twin towers and WTC 7. Daly's article, published on the Washington Times website, did not appear in the newspaper. 

"It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7," Reynolds said. "If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely to be correct either." As former director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis, Reynolds' comments carry substantial weight. "Credentials matter," he told me. 

While the public expects that academics and engineers will examine the evidence from 9-11 and speak out, very few are willing to criticize the government's version.  "One of the most appalling things about the fascist state," Reynolds said, "is that the physical scientists and engineers have less freedom to pursue the truth than the social scientists and those in the humanities.  They are less free," he said, because physical scientists, engineers, and academics are usually in some way dependent on the government or military. "They practice self censorship," he said. 

Reynolds, whose articles are published on LewRockwell.com, has written several articles critical of the official version since early 2004, but it is his latest article in which he supports the theory that the WTC towers were demolished by explosives which has had the greatest effect.  "One fact is irrefutable," Reynolds said. "Those buildings were blown up. 

"The pancake theory is ridiculous," he said. "I'm like the kid in The Emperor's New Clothes," he added. "Somebody's got to step up and say something." Reynolds said that he wrote his June 9 article after reading an article in the American Professional Constructor, the journal of the Alexandria, Va.-based American Institute of Constructors, which supported the official version that a fire-induced gravity collapse brought down the three WTC towers. 

The article, which supports the official version that the fires in the towers caused a "pancake collapse" to occur, was originally written in the spring of 2003 by April Pruett, an undergraduate student of construction management at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. Pruett's paper was subsequently edited and submitted for publication in the fall of 2004 by Mag Malek, an Egyptian-born assistant professor she studied under. Pruett was unaware that her paper had been published. 

Dismissing the "pancake collapse" theory, Reynolds wrote: "I find this theory just about as satisfying as the fantastic conspiracy theory that 19 young Arabs acting at the behest of Islamist extremists headquartered in distant Afghanistan caused 9-11. 

"The government's collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms, but its blinkered narrowness and lack of breadth is the paramount defect unshared by its principal scientific rival - controlled demolition," Reynolds wrote. "Only professional demolition appears to account for the full range of facts associated with the collapses of WTC 1 (North Tower), WTC 2 (South Tower), and the much-overlooked collapse of the 47-story WTC building 7 at 5:21 pm on that fateful day. 

"This whole profession is off track," Reynolds said about the construction industry's acceptance of the official version, "How can they maintain this giant lie?" 

In response to the controversial article from a professor emeritus, Dr. Robert M. Gates, president of Texas A&M University, issued a statement on June 15: "The American people know what they saw with their own eyes on September 11, 2001. To suggest any kind of government conspiracy in the events of that day goes beyond the pale." 

Gates is a 27-year veteran at the CIA who served as Director of Central Intelligence from November 6, 1991 until January 20, 1993, having been appointed by President George H.W. Bush. Gates had previously served as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence from 1986 until 1989, and as Assistant to the President [Bush] and Deputy National Security Adviser at the White House from January 20, 1989 to November 6, 1991. 

Since shortly after 9-11, I have reported on the evidence of explosions at the WTC. Having reported on the flaws in the official version and the evidence that contradicts that version, I was criticized most notably by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL) and others tied to Israel. 

The ADL said in a report from November 29, 2001: 

This Washington, D.C.-based conspiratorial and anti-Semitic weekly newspaper, the successor to the notorious Spotlight, has repeatedly turned to the subject of the 9-11 attacks as grist for its mill. Its October 29 issue includes an article by Christopher Bollyn titled, "Some Survivors Say 'Bombs Exploded Inside WTC,'" in which Bollyn suggests that the "mainstream media" is ignoring "eyewitness accounts of bombs that exploded inside the world Trade Center before the collapse of the Twin Towers." 

Today, nearly 4 years after 9-11, there can be no doubt that the mainstream media and the official versions have censored eyewitness accounts of explosions before the collapses at the WTC. Numerous journalists, firefighters, and eyewitnesses at the scene reported hearing and feeling a series of explosions before the towers collapsed, but their reports were suppressed and never repeated in the controlled press. 

William Rodriguez, a janitor at the WTC, even testified to the 9-11 commission that he had felt an explosion in the lower basement levels of the North Tower seconds before the plane struck the building, but none of his testimony appeared in the final report. 

"They violated all the norms of how you should proceed on a criminal investigation," Reynolds said about Michael Chertoff and the FBI investigations of 9-11. "We've had zero convictions."  About the destruction of the steel from the WTC, he wrote, "The criminal code requires that crime scene evidence be saved for forensic analysis but FEMA had it destroyed before anyone could seriously investigate it." 

"Number one, I am a citizen," he said, "and a thinker." But above all, Reynolds is a highly-credentialed former official from the Bush administration who is willing to challenge the seriously flawed official version. 

"Progressive pancaking cannot happen at free-fall speed," Reynolds wrote. "Free-fall would require 'pulling' or removing obstacles below before they could impede (slow) the acceleration of falling objects from above. Sequenced explosions, on the other hand, explain why the lower floors did not interfere with the progress of the falling objects above. The pancake theory fails this test. 

"If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9-11, then the case for an 'inside job' and a government attack on America would be compelling," Reynolds says. 

"Meanwhile, the job of scientists, engineers and impartial researchers everywhere is to get the scientific and engineering analysis of 9-11 right, 'though heaven should fall,'" Reynolds concluded. "Unfortunately, getting it right in today's 'security state' demands daring because explosives and structural experts have been intimidated in their analyses of the collapses of 9-11."