In march, I talked to one of the engineers that were cited in the online versions of the major german newspapers Spiegel and Süddeutsche Zeitung right on the day of 9/11. Those engineers explained that the towers were doomed to fail – as you all know it. I wanted to learn what kind of people would feel competent enough to tell such things. And I wanted to judge if they indeed are competent.

I talked to Hans-Georg Oltmanns for quite some time on a saturday when he was in his office. Prior to this, his secretary had told me two or three times to call a different day. I had already told her what it was about, so he was prepared. I asked some critical questions but not the hard ones. I said nothing about what might have brought down the towers if not the fire. Here are some of the strangest things I wrote down during the interview:

He compared the burning jet fuel that went down the elevator shafts to a rocket engine.

He told me that he had awaited the towers fall when he saw them burning on TV.

When I told him I would not have expected that the columns can become very hot because iron is a good heat conductor, he said they were only plugged together.

He said that even steel burns if it's hot enough. But then he added that at that point, the destruction was already in progress.

He said that he was called by a local reporter who thaught it might make sense to write something about the terrible event. (But the newspaper reports were made from the news agency stuff, as I found out later.)

Conclusion: He didn't sound trustworthy althaugh he spoke rather fluently. He definitely didn't sound like a scientist. I could not imagine that somebody like him could be an expert in any court.

Today, I called the next engineer, Marko Ludwig. He changed his working place in the mean time but that was no problem. Because he does not have his own company like Oltmanns, the secretary immediately connected me to him on the phone.

I explained that I had a question about the interview he gave to the Frankfurter Rundschau on 9/11 or the day after. He said this interview was unimportant. He did not say that it was not an interview with this newspaper. Perhaps he was too nervous.

I cited him from the interview where he said that the steel had become as soft as plasticine. He acknowledged that.

I asked why the heat had not spread in the large mass of steel. He said he was currently in a meeting and asked me to call back in an hour. He called the 9/11 interview „popular science“ and told me he could not say anything about the steel interconnections.

I asked for a final yes-no-question. He agreed. I asked if he had ever seen or heard about a highrise where a relatively small top part entirely crushed a larger bottom part – no matter what fires were burning. He answered no.

I concluded with a retorical question that he would not have been able to predict the collapse. His answer was hard work for him. With lots of stuttering, he told me a not too convincing variation of the usual story.

I repeated the question about a small part crashing a large one. He answered „No, no, no.“.

Conclusion: This guy stuttered a lot. He was the opposite of convincing.

I even called a third engineer, Dr.-Ing. Stephen Reusch. I didn't ask him the technical stuff because I now think it will always be the same (you cannot proof a lie). So I asked who called him for the 9/11 interview. At that time, he worked in the Stuttgart university. He said it was a woman but he couldn't remember that she said whom she worked for. I asked if she worked for a new agency. He couldn't recall. I asked if he simply had to tell what came to his mind or if he was proposed certain answers. He couldn't recall.

Final conclusion After each of the first two interviews, I thaught for some short time those guys might have been told to say what they said. But now I no longer see a sense in this question. I can't find out anyway, because if they just wanted to be cited in a newspaper, they might have to tell crazy stories afterwards, too.

I currently can't see a real use of this stuff. But next time I blog, I will write about some phone interviews with physics professors, regarding free fall.