Three years ago, an international team of scientists published a scientific paper that established the presence of thermitic residues in the dust from the World Trade Center (WTC) catastrophe.[1] Although the paper was only the last in a mutually-supportive evidentiary chain, it gave more hard evidence that energetic materials were used to destroy the WTC buildings. This conclusion was in agreement with the other scientific articles that had been previously published, and was also in agreement with eyewitness accounts and photographic evidence.

The paper was peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in February 2009. Since that time, it has been personally delivered to many members of the U.S. Congress and to scientists at universities around the world. In response, the silence has been deafening. The simple fact that professional scientists could publish such evidence, and over a period of three years be met with no answer from government and academic leaders, is an astounding fact that speaks volumes about the mindlessness that pervades society today.

The few unofficial responses that have been made are interesting, however.

About a year after publication, one of the primary creators of the ever-changing, but always transparently false official WTC explanations began to make deceptive attempts to manipulate the authors of the paper.[2] This was Gene Corley, who apparently gave up after repeated failures to surreptitiously obtain pre-processed samples.

We can only imagine why Corley, who was the first leader of the WTC investigation and had far more access to WTC dust at a far earlier date than any independent researchers, would make such attempts to deceive. But other similar attempts have recently been made by Chris Mohr, a strong supporter of the official conspiracy theory. Mohr has tried to secure samples that he could say were obtained from me personally, and in doing so has also engaged in deception and has made false statements about our communications.

Mr. Mohr calls himself a proponent of a “natural collapse” explanation for the WTC, and he has promoted that vague hypothesis in debates against those questioning the official accounts. On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Mohr joined the ranks of the dubious “Skeptic Society,” the leader of which I debated in 2007.[3] Mohr’s article in the September 2011 issue of Skeptic Magazine demonstrated just how far some people are willing to go in order to avoid the problems with the official account of 9/11.[4] While providing utterly unconvincing and vacuous answers to a dozen straw man questions, Mohr’s article ignores essentially all the evidence presented in ten years by real 9/11 skeptics.

Having failed to make any new converts to the myth behind the “War on Terror,” Mohr has resorted to attempts to refute the science in the 2009 “Active Thermitic Materials” paper. The problem is, despite being the new scientific spokesman for the “Skeptic Society,” Mohr has no science background at all and struggles with the basic concepts behind the paper. Because of this, he set out to find an “independent” expert to champion his cause.

Mohr stated in one of his many unsolicited emails that — “It took me months, and contacting over two dozen labs, to find Millette and his lab, who has both the means and the openmindedness to do this right.”[5] This message refers to Jim Millette, a long-time government scientist who worked for the EPA and now runs his own business called MVA Scientific Consultants. Unfortunately, although Mohr took months to find this new champion, it took him only seconds to decide that he would say nothing about Millette’s leadership of the government studies on WTC dust. When Mohr wrote to me in a mass email asking for pre-processed samples to use in his new project, he failed to mention anything about Millette’s past work on WTC dust.

Millette and his colleagues published several government-funded reports on the WTC dust, which represent the official analyses. For some reason, these don’t mention the strong evidence of molten metal that was found by the USGS, the RJ Lee Corporation, and the international team which published the 2009 paper. It appears that Millette and company did find such evidence, in the form of the iron spheres which are abundant in the WTC dust, but a decision was made to de-emphasize that evidence.[6] Of course, Mohr doesn’t tell people that. He knows that Millette and his colleagues did not report iron spheres in the official WTC dust signature study, despite iron spheres being a prominent and unusual component in the dust.

That is a striking fact in itself, but there have also been accusations of fraud against Millette and his colleagues. EPA whistleblower Dr. Cate Jenkins used the phrase “deliberate misrepresentation” with regard to their studies in which samples were manipulated through pre-conditioning to lower the pH before testing. Millette’s name shows up in Jenkins’ report four times because he participated in several EPA-funded studies that Jenkins has charged with fraud. Millette did a lot of the analytical work on the WTC dust for these government teams, and was the leader in the laboratory for the government-sponsored studies.[7]

Of course, Mohr won’t tell you about the accusations of fraud either.

In any case it is very interesting that it took Mohr several months of contacting dozens of labs to find the one person who did all the government laboratory work on the WTC dust. We might wonder about the other dozens of labs. Wouldn’t they take Mohr’s money? In the end, why did Mohr insist on using this one lab that had been implicated in charges of fraud related to WTC dust analysis? What made those dozens of other labs unsuitable, or less “open minded,” than the guy who didn’t see the evidence before?

We might never know. But it appears that Millette will begin to report his new findings for the “skeptic” Mohr next week, at a conference in Atlanta. It will be interesting to see if Millette will now report the abundant iron spheres, which all other scientists have seen in almost every sample. The fact that he has worked for years on federal contracts for NIST and the Bush Department of Justice, since 9/11, makes that seem unlikely. As for the possibility of Millette confirming the presence of thermitic materials in the WTC dust, which would indict his own previous work, we probably shouldn’t hold our breath.

In the meantime, we can rest assured that the U.S. government and government-sponsored universities will not respond to the finding of energetic materials at the WTC, or to any of the peer-reviewed scientific articles on the subject. Three years without a response is response enough.

[1] Niels H. Harrit, et al, Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe, The Open Chemical Physics Journal, Vol 2, 2009, http://www.benthamscience.com/open/tocpj/articles/V002/7TOCPJ.htm?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM [2] Kevin R. Ryan, Dusting-off Corley: Is this the official response to the discovery of energetic materials in the WTC dust?, 911Blogger.com, 05/31/2010, http://911blogger.com/news/2010-05-31/dusting-corley-official-response-discovery-energetic-materials-wtc-dust [3] Kevin R. Ryan, Skepticism and “the believing brain,” DigWIthin.net, September 25, 2011, https://digwithin.net/2011/09/25/skepticism-and-the-believing-brain/ [4] Chris Mohr, 9/11 and the Science of Controlled Demolitions, Skeptic Magazine, September 2011, http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/11-09-07/#feature [5] Email from Chris Mohr [6] Paul J. Lioy, Dust: the inside story of its role in the September 11th aftermath, Rowman & Littlefield, 2010, p 223 [7] Cate Jenkins, Complaint and Additional Evidence of pH Fraud by: USGS, OSHA, ATSDR, NYC, EPA, and EPA-funded scientists, May 6, 2007, found at The Journal of 9/11 Studies, http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/DrJenkinsRequestsSenateInvestigationOnWTCdust.pdf