A federal grand jury should investigate the collapses of the World Trade Center Twin Towers during the 9/11 attacks, as well as WTC 7, according to a petition that an expert lawyers group plans to file on April 10 in New York City’s federal court.

The 54-page petition and its 57 exhibits detail the evidence that explosives were used to destroy the WTC buildings during the attack on Sept. 11, 2001. The non-profit Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry demands that the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York convene and submit the evidence in the petition to a grand jury.

The petition’s executive summary and full text are posted on the Lawyers’ Committee website, as of April 9.

“The failure of our government to diligently investigate this disturbing evidence that has emerged over the past sixteen years regarding what occurred at the World Trade Center on 9/11,” commented Executive Director Mick Harrison, “has contributed to the erosion of trust in our institutions.”

The WTC at the top of this column illustrates “ejections” or “squibs marked by arrows that, according to the petition-filers, provide evidence of explosion. So does molten steel, they say, which most logically could come from thermite or thermate, not from airplane fuel. The photo below shows examples of molten steel.

Molten Substance, World Trade Center 2, just prior to collapse on September 11, 2001

(Image by YouTube, Ben Reisman) Permission Details DMCA

The lawyers, whose petition is supported by numerous 9/11 family members of victims and first responders, detailed evidence (see below) that they say requires a criminal investigation by prosecutors in the office led by Interim U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman.

President Trump and Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions in January named Berman to be the interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Berman’s experience includes extensive work as a federal attorney, as well as two years as a law partner of former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Giuliani became nationally famous, including selection as Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year,” for his visible role after 9/11. But he is known also for having authorized the removal and disposal of WTC steel debris in heavily guarded shipments to China.

Petitioners have scheduled a press conference for 1 p.m. Tuesday on the steps of New York’s City Hall in Manhattan. Those who want to add their names to the petition can sign up online here. New names will be displayed on the next filing, which will supplement the one filed this week.

Thermie and Thermate samples

(Image by Niels H. Harrit) Permission Details DMCA

First Major Criminal Probe

The petition seeks the first major criminal inquiry on the destruction of the Towers and WTC 7, which collapsed in near free-fall that afternoon even though it was not hit by any airplane. Official U.S. reports and the major media have blamed the attacks in New York and elsewhere on 19 airplane hijackers as well as overseas terrorists primarily linked to Al Qaeda.

The petition seeks a formal probe of the evidence, which it argues shows that pre-installed explosive devices caused the tower collapses, not two hijacked airplanes and related fires.

A grand jury can require document production and sworn statements by other suspects and witnesses.

Previous inquiries have generated considerable criticism. Former U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham (D-FL), for example, has protested that The Senate-House Intelligence Committee Joint 9/11 Inquiry that he had co-chaired had been given an unrealistic deadline in 2002 that prevented completion of its work. Later, a 10-member national commission, known as The 9/11 Commission, issued a report in July 2004 that left many serious researchers and 9/11 victims’ family members complaining about many unanswered questions, especially after significant new evidence arose.

Civil litigation by victim’s families and others has been repeatedly stalled or otherwise sidetracked. Hurdles include sovereign immunity claims, lack of subpoena power, and settlements, which can prevent litigants from continuing to seek evidence.

Personal Perspective

The continuing importance of 9/11 issues and the strength of the accumulated evidence have prompted this editor to probe this topic in depth, most notably in a 2016 column “Experts Reject Planes, Fire As Cause For 9/11 WTC Collapses.” The column, timed for the 15th anniversary of the attacks, began:

“Technical experts are mounting major challenges to official U.S. government accounts of how three World Trade Center skyscrapers collapsed in near-freefall after the 9/11 attacks 15 years ago.”

That article included links to the major U.S. government reports on the 9/11 attacks, as well as to an article by Europhysics News “15 Years Later: On the physics of high-rise building collapses.” The Europhysics report challenged U.S. government findings that the skyscrapers collapsed because of fire. The four co-authors noted that no other skyscrapers in world history have ever collapsed from fire.

Instead, the authors cited evidence that the falls resembled the physics involved in controlled demolition. Architects and Engineers For 9-11 Truth (AE911Truth) said the article has been downloaded nearly 700,000 times since August 2016 and “continues to rack up over 2,000 reads per week, keeping it at the top of Europhysics News’ ‘Most read articles.'”

Many researchers are focusing especially on the little-known collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC7). That collapse is portrayed at the one-minute mark in the 40-minute C-SPAN video above featuring Richard Gage, AIA, the founder of AE911Truth. This spring his group announced that the 2014 interview on C-SPAN had reached one million views.

Regarding Building 7: The 47-story building, which was not hit by an airplane and was located north of WTC 1, collapsed in about 6.5 seconds in symmetrical fashion more than seven hours after the other buildings fell. The pattern so resembled controlled demolition that experts who have studied it are increasingly questioning the official causation, which U.S. authorities and the mainstream media ascribed only to the effects of jet fuel and office fires.

Strength of Evidence

More generally, these researchers have summarized studies by technical experts who have argued that the three steel-framed WTC towers could not have fallen in place because of airplane crashes and related fires. Professional critics of the official explanations of the buildings’ collapses include the now nearly three thousand licensed architects and engineers who are members of AE911Truth. Also, Ph.D. graduate students at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks for years have conducted technical studies under the leadership of the chairman of its Department of Engineering and Mines, Dr. J. Leroy Hulsey, PE, SE, who reported on interim findings in a 2016 video.

The strength of the evidence for controlled demolition, the lack of official answers to questions from experts, and the strong, continuing public interest in all matters relating to 9/11 keeps these issues alive even as time passes. So do the direct results of the 9/11 attack, which include the freedom-robbing civil rights restrictions of the 2001 Patriot Act and the Global War on Terror. The latter has prompted the U.S.-NATO wars against forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, plus vast loss of life and spending elsewhere.

Last month, 9/11 victims’ family members won a key courtroom victory in their civil suit against the Saudi Arabian government. A New York federal judge allowed the families’ suit to move forward despite defendants’ claim of sovereign immunity.

Tuesday’s Grand Jury Petition

Regarding the April 10 submission to the U.S. attorney, the petitioners note the legal obligation of citizens and authorities alike to report and investigate evidence of crimes. They cite major lines of evidence supporting causation by controlled demolition:

Independent scientific laboratory analysis of WTC dust samples showing the presence of high-tech explosives and/or incendiaries in the form of thermite or thermate.

Expert analysis of seismic evidence that explosions occurred at the WTC towers on 9/11 prior to the airplane impacts on the WTC Towers, and prior to the building collapses.

Technical analysis of video evidence of the WTC building collapses.

Firefighter reports of explosions, and of seeing “molten iron like in a foundry.” The petition states that the presence of molten iron would require temperatures higher than jet fuel and building contents could create when burned, but consistent with use of the high tech explosive and incendiary thermite or thermate.

The presence of previously molten iron microspheres, which have been established by electron microscope analysis of WTC dust samples, by both government and independent scientists, is another phenomenon that would be scientifically impossible based on the burning of jet fuel and office contents alone.

Video and eyewitness testimony of the ejection during the collapse of WTC 1 and 2 of heavy steel elements laterally from the buildings which would not be possible from a gravity collapse.

Scientific analysis, eyewitness testimony, and government reports confirming sulfidation and high temperature corrosion of the steel found in the rubble after the collapse of the WTC towers and WTC 7, a phenomenon not expected in a jet fuel fire and gravity collapse but consistent with the use of thermate and high explosives.

After the Petition

Harrison, the executive director of the lawyers group, said that after the filing petitioners “intend to step back now for a reasonable time and be respectful of the confidential nature of Grand Jury proceedings, although we have offered to assist in the presentation of this evidence to a special grand jury.”

“We will report back to the public in due course,” Harrison continued, “as information becomes available, and in the meantime pursue, by other appropriate means, our mission of promoting transparency and accountability regarding 9/11 and addressing the many questions left unanswered by the 9/11 Commission report.”

These issues are likely to become heavily political if the past is any guide.

The website for the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York lists the fight against international and domestic terrorism at the very top of the duties for its some 220 assistant U.S. attorneys responsible for all major criminal and civil litigation. The Southern District encompasses Manhattan, the Bronx and the Westchester region.

That office was led in the late 1980s by Giuliani, who went on to win election as New York’s mayor for two terms, ending at the end of December 2001. Giuliani has kept a high profile opposing terrorists since then, including a 2004 presidential candidacy and strong support for Trump’s 2016 campaign. Since 2016, Giuliani has led the counter-terrorism practice of the law firm Greenberg Traurig.

Berman (image on the right), the interim U.S. Attorney who will receive the attorneys’ petition signed by 9/11 family members, was a law partner of Giuliani’s from 2016 until his Trump appointment in January. Berman must win U.S. Senate confirmation to receive the prestigious appointment beyond interim status.

Prodded especially by family members of 9/11 victims, Congress has shown strong support in recent years for two major investigative initiatives strongly resisted by powerful forces that prefer to keep the 9/11 probes closed. One such victory was release of the so-called “28-pages” that had been suppressed from the 2002 Joint House-Senate Intelligence Commission Inquiry report. The released material documented suspicious pre-9/11 relationships by Saudi Arabian entities with some of the 19 accused airplane hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals. The other victory was congressional passage in 2016 of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), which narrowed the definition of sovereign immunity for civil court claims resulting from international terrorism.

Given the high U.S. political and geopolitical stakes, Tuesday’s petition tees up a remarkable, historic civic dialog on one of the most important events within the lifetime of most Americans.

In that spirit, the public as well as the media are invited to the press conference Tuesday on the steps of City Hall in lower Manhattan. Lawyers’ Committee Executive Director Harrison and other attorneys on the Committee’s board are also scheduled for discussion of the petition on several major radio programs, including “The Gary Null Show” at noon Eastern time on April 11 and Richard Hoagland’s “The Other Side of Midnight” at midnight Eastern time on April 14.

A grassroots organizing effort is underway also via the non-profit and non-partisan 9/11 Truth Action Project.

For anyone who worries that progress seems too slow on such issues as 9/11 accountability, the good news is that compelling 9/11 evidence is now in the right hands — the U.S. attorney’s office and yours, as members of the public.

Relevant documents can be easily accessed on the website of the Lawyers’ Committee.

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Andrew Kreig is an investigative reporter, attorney, author, business strategist, radio host, and longtime non-profit executive based in Washington, DC. His most recent book is “Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney and Their Masters,” the first book about the Obama administration’s second term. The book grew out of his work leading the Justice Integrity Project, a non-partisan legal reform group that investigates official misconduct.