Explosive Testimony – The 9/11 Oral Histories

Bonnie Faulkner: This is Guns & Butter. [music plays]

There’s something happening here – yeah, yeah

What it is ain’t exactly clear

There’s a man with a gun over there …

David Ray Griffin: We even have Wall Street reporters who gave amazing testimony. John Bussey said he was on the ninth floor of the Wall Street Journal office building. He said “I looked out of the window to see what seemed like perfectly synchronized explosions coming from each floor, one after another from top to bottom, with a fraction of a second between. The floors blew to pieces, individual floors, one after the other, exploding outward.” He said, “Oh my God, they’re going to bring the building down, and they, whoever they are, had set charges. I saw the explosions.”

Bonnie: I’m Bonnie Faulkner. Today on Guns & Butter, Dr. David Ray Griffin. Today’s show, Explosive Testimony – The 9/11 Oral Histories. David Ray Griffin is author of The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11, and The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, in addition to over 25 other books.

On August 12th, 2005, as the result of a lawsuit brought by the New York Times and several families of 9/11 victims, the New York Court of Appeals ordered the city to release hundreds of oral histories of 9/11 witnesses. These witness testimonies were originally gathered shortly after September 11th on the order of Thomas Von Essen, the City Fire Commissioner, who said he wanted to preserve these accounts before they became reshaped by a collective memory.

In these oral histories, firefighters and emergency medical workers recounted their experiences of that day. The New York Fire Department recorded over 500 oral histories, which Mayor Bloomberg’s administration then refused to release.

Bonnie: David Ray Griffin, welcome.

David: Good to be with you, Bonnie.

Bonnie: David, you’ve written several lengthy articles recently regarding the events of September 11th. In your research, is the physical evidence from the collapses of the World Trade Center consistent with the official explanation that they occurred solely because of damage to the buildings caused by the plane impacts combined with the fires that occurred when the jet fuel exploded?

David: I just read an article this morning that somebody was sending around the internet, saying that, how the Bush Administration has been repealing all sorts laws since 9/11, and that they’ve also repealed the Laws of Physics. So, with the new Laws of Physics promulgated by the Bush Administration, it may be that the collapses were consistent with the Laws of Physics. But, if you accept the old-fashioned Laws of Physics that have been worked out from Newton through the Twentieth Century, well no, the collapses completely contradict everything we know.

Bonnie: You have written that shortly after 9/11 the New York Fire Department recorded over 500 oral histories, in which firefighters and emergency medical workers recounted their experiences of that day. You also go on to say that Mayor Bloomberg’s administration, however, refused to release them. But that, then, the New York Times, joined by several families of 9/11 victims, filed suit. And after a long process, the New York Court of Appeals ordered the city to release them, which it did in August of 2005. And then the Times, of course, made these oral histories public. I hadn’t heard much of anything about these oral histories.

David: Surprise, surprise. You mean Fox News has not reported them? What a shock. You mean NBC News and CBS and ABC have not reported them?

Bonnie: Exactly. And been I’ve involved in this for years and I only had the vaguest recollections of their existence. Could you talk about those oral histories?

David: Yeah. And also I think you have read the 9/11 Commission Report. And again, even though they had 571 pages, they didn’t have a single sentence to spare to mention these oral histories. And in this case we know that they had access to them, because the City of New York had initially turned down the Commission when it requested copies. And then the Commission threatened to use its subpoena power – one of the few times it did – and they turned them over. So at least some members of the 9/11 Commission had access to these, and yet nobody saw fit to mention them. And it’s no surprise that they didn’t because, of course you and I and many of our listeners know that the 9/11 Commission was devoted solely to protecting and reinforcing the official story under the guidance of Philip Zelikow who was essentially a member of the 9/11 Commission. And we could go on and on about that for some time. So this is no surprise. But when you look at these oral histories, you see that they did not want the public to know that these oral histories not only were published now but were available on a New York Times website so any citizen can go on and find these and read them for themselves. And in my paper, which anybody can Google by just going on Google Explosive Testimony and you’ll find my paper on this and you can just read all the ones that I had listed out. I could read a few of them now if you’d like.

Bonnie: Yes. And just before you do that, who was it that ordered these oral histories? Weren’t these ordered on the day of September 11th? They were requested.

David: You mean who had the oral histories recorded?

Bonnie: Yes.

David: Yeah. That was the outgoing head, I believe, of the New York Fire Commission. Yes. It was Thomas Von Essen the City Fire Commissioner at that time and these were recorded during December of 2001 and then January. So they were at a time when the memories were still pretty fresh and that’s what he wanted. He said he wanted to preserve those accounts before they became reshaped by a collective memory. So we’re very indebted to Thomas Von Essen.

Bonnie: That’s right. That’s what I had thought. He wanted those recorded specifically so that the memories were fresh in peoples mind and they were not going to be rewritten by a later collective memory. Now there were some dramatic, I was amazed, some very dramatic testimony from at least 500 people who were present on September 11th. Their experiences, what they saw, what they heard, what they felt, and a lot of it was extremely dramatic. Could you talk about a few of those testimonies?

David: Sure. So the fire department is made up actually of firefighters and emergency medical workers so I’ve got a combination of these. One medical technician, Michael Ober http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110093.PDF said, “We heard a rumble. We looked up. It looked to me just like an explosion. It didn’t look like the building was coming down. It looked like just one floor had blown completely outside of it.” Now that’s important because the official story says that when you get these horizontal ejections from the building with dust and other things being blown out. That’s because the floor collapsed and blew it out. But he says no. He saw this explosion before there was any sign the building was coming down. And this was backed up by Fire Chief Frank Cruthers http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110179.PDF who said, “There was what appeared to be first an explosion. It appeared at the very top, simultaneously from all four sides. Material shot out horizontally. And then there seemed to be a momentary delay before you could see the beginning of the collapse.” Then there are other things particularly important because Mark Loizeaux who is the head of Control Demolition, one of the top demolition companies in the world. He said, “If I were going to bring down the towers I would begin with explosions in the basements to take out some of those columns and that would mean there would be shaking of the ground prior to the collapse.” And medical technician Lonnie Penn http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110203.PDF says that, “Just before the collapse of the South Tower, I felt the ground shake. I turned round and ran for my life. I made it as far as the Financial Center when the collapse happened.” So the shake obviously occurred several seconds before the building started coming down. And several other people gave supporting testimony to that. Likewise you get several people who report multiple explosions. So firefighter Thomas Turilli http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110501.PDF said about the South Tower, “It almost sounded like bombs going off. Like ‘Boom, boom, boom.’ Like seven or eight.” Another firefighter Craig Carlsen http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110505.PDF said “It seemed like it took forever, but there were about 10 explosions.” Joseph Meola http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110287.PDF , another firefighter, said it looked like the building was blowing out on all four sides. We actually heard the pops. Didn’t realize it was falling, you know? You heard the pops of the building. You just thought it was blowing out.” And then, paramedic Daniel Rivera http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110035.PDF , he was asked “How did you know the South Tower was coming down?” He said “It was that noise.” “What noise?” He said “It was a frigging noise. At first I thought it was… Did you ever see professional demolition, where they set the charges on certain floors, and then you hear ‘pop, pop, pop, pop, pop?’ That’s exactly what I heard.”

Bonnie: David, here is another one in your article from Captain Karin Deshore http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110192.PDF . She said “Somewhere around the middle, there was this orange and red flash coming out. Initially, it was just one flash. Then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building, and that building had started to explode. With each popping sound, it was initially an orange, and then a red flash came out of the building, and then it would just go all around the building on both sides, as far as I could see. These popping sounds and the explosions were getting bigger, going both up and down, and then all around the building.”

David: That’s right. And her testimony is very important, because when you read through the various oral histories, people are telling what happened for hours that day. And you find out that she was a highly respected member of the force, and so her testimony is particularly important. And that supports one of these other features of controlled demolition, which is “demolition rings.” That is where you see explosions running around the building very quickly. So you gave that, then firefighter Richard Banaciski http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110253.PDF said “There was an explosion. It seemed like on television when they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions.” Deputy Commissioner Thomas Fitzpatrick http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110001.PDF said about the South Tower, “All we saw was a puff of smoke coming from about two-thirds of the way up. It looked like sparkling around one specific layer of the building. My reaction was that it was exactly the way it looks when they show you those implosions on TV.”

Bonnie: You have listed in your articles, when you talk about the multiple evidence of controlled demolition, and that the oral histories, the oral testimonies of those present, included 10 elements or aspects of a controlled demolition. And I wanted to sort of list them, and I thought we could talk about them, to make it clearer to listeners as to just exactly what we’re talking about. Now, these are characteristics of a controlled demolition that were reported on September 11th: sudden onset, straight down, almost free fall speed…

David: Let me go ahead and comment. The sudden onset is so important, because the official theory being that fire heated up the steel and made it buckle. Well, if fire were heating up steel, the steel would gradually begin to sag. And yet, when you look at the videos, which are on multiple sites on the Internet, you can see these collapses of Twin Towers and Building 7, and you see they’re perfectly still, motionless, and then all of a sudden, pow, they start. There’s no bending of the steel, no sagging. It’s a very sudden onset. [music]

Bonnie: I’m speaking with Author and Theologian, Doctor David Ray Griffin. Today’s show, “Explosive Testimony: The 9/11 Oral Histories.” I’m Bonnie Faulkner. This is Guns and Butter. [music fades] And then the next characteristic you mentioned is “straight down.”

David: Yeah, completely vertical. Now, that doesn’t mean they completely fall into their own footprint. Now, that was true of Building 7. It was a really classic example of implosion, which starts at the bottom. But with the Twin Towers, the collapse had to start near the top, where the airplanes hit, because that was going to be the story, that the hole created by the airplanes, then weakened, and weakened that floor, and some floors above it collapsed and came down. So, it couldn’t quite be a classical implosion, but it still was an implosion in that the building came down, rather than falling over. Now, one thing to know about this is that, as Mark Loizeaux says, “These things don’t just happen. They have to be precisely planned.” He’s talking about when he’s bringing down a building. And, he would study it for weeks and decide exactly where the explosives had to be planted, and so on. And the whole purpose of implosion, the kind of controlled demolition known as implosion, is to bring the building straight down. The easier kind of controlled demolition is just to knock the building over. Now, you can do that if it’s out in the desert [laugh] with no other buildings around it. But, in downtown Manhattan, if these 110 story towers had toppled over, you would’ve had I don’t know how many hundreds of buildings destroyed, how many billions of dollars, how many tens of thousands of people killed. So, it was very important that the buildings come straight down. There was no way that hijackers, even if they had been able to sneak in there and put a few bombs in the building, would’ve had that kind of expertise. A Website called “ImplosionWorld.com”, you can go on there and see. They say only a few companies in the world have the expertise to do traditional implosion. And, certainly very few people would have the expertise to do an implosion with something as huge as the Twin Towers. So, that’s very important that they came straight down. Not entirely I say with the towers into their own foot print, because another feature here was that, as I said, things were ejected out of the floors and aluminum and even steel beams from the building were ejected out several hundred feet. So, this had to be a massive explosive used, with great power, with horizontal power, whereas the gravitational power that the official theory talks about, would be vertical. And, so you did get debris spewed over an area of several blocks. But, for the most part, the towers, like Building 7, came straight down.

Bonnie: You also mention another characteristic that people witnessed, that is a characteristic of a controlled demolition, and that is the almost free fall speed of the collapse.

David: That’s right. Let’s say that we accepted the official theory, which is that the collapse began with the floor right above where the airplanes created a hole in the building. Well, then, those floors would have fallen down on the floor below them. Well, you still would’ve had eighty or ninety floors below that with all their steel, all their concrete, they’re going to give resistance. I mean, even if it were conceivable that they could’ve collapsed, had a total collapse, which is not conceivable, but we’ll pretend it is, then there would have been delays. And yet these buildings came down at virtually free fall speed. If you had thrown a brick off the top of the World Trade Center, it would’ve been roughly ten seconds (until it struck the ground) and that’s roughly the speed at which these came down. People say anywhere from eight, to twelve or thirteen seconds. Anywhere in there is virtually free fall speed. And, you can see it on the videos because you can see that the things that were ejected out sideways, so they’re not being resisted by anything except the air, they’re falling at virtually the same speed as the material within the foot print which should be at least slowed down by all those floors of steel and concrete below them, but they’re not. So, that is just, it is just absolute proof, this is controlled demolition. There is simply no other way the buildings could’ve been brought down in that fashion.

Bonnie: That’s right. The building itself, falling into itself is falling at the same speed as the debris that’s spewing out. So, that’s a very good point.

David: That’s right, and so this is one of the Laws of Physics that would have to be overturned and fortunately, evidently, the Bush administration has it in with the Almighty and could change the Laws of Physics, at least on 9/11. And, so steel could fall down through steel and concrete at free fall speed just as if it were falling through the air.

Bonnie: Another characteristic that you point out in the oral testimonies that coincides with a controlled demolition is total collapse.

David: Yeah, each one of these is, by itself, a proof. And when you have eleven characteristics, as I think I gave in that paper, then you realize that if no one of them could have occurred according to the official theory, all the more could not all eleven of them occurred. And this by total collapse, it means that these 110 story towers and the 47 story World Trade Center Building 7, collapsed into a pile of rubble only a few stories high. Now, why that’s so important, because as I indicated, each tower had 47 massive steel columns constituting the core of the tower. So even if the “Pancake Theory” could be accepted, which was that the floors broke loose from the perimeter and the core columns. And then you could imagine that the concrete would have pulverized into tiny dust particles [laughs] when it fell down, you would still have these massive columns sticking up into the air. And of course not all singly but they were tied together by steel beams and trusses. So you would have had this center fixture sticking up at least 1000 feet into the air. And yet it collapses into a pile of rubble a few stories high. The only way that is possible, the only way, is through the way it is always done. You take a particular kind of explosive, or maybe several kinds. Steven Jones, in his now well known paper, a physicist from BYU, suggests thermite and maybe thermate, a variation of it, and maybe some other kinds of explosives used. And that’s what these things do, they slice the steel. I have a quote in my paper by a guy who knows about, a spokesperson for RDX, a certain kind of explosive, and he says this stuff slices through steel the way a razor blade slices through a tomato. And once you realize that that’s the way it normally happens, you look at these buildings, you see the tiny little pile of rubble, and you say there is no other way it could have happened. Because even if the steel columns had somehow failed, they wouldn’t have broken into rather small pieces. Jim Hoffman has said, looking at the evidence, it seems like that most of the steel columns were broken into pieces no more than 50 feet long. A lot of them about 30 feet long. In other words, about the size ready to be loaded onto trucks. And of course, that’s what happened to the steel. It was immediately loaded onto trucks, sold to scrap dealers, and put on ships to Asia to be melted down. Rather than given to some scientific committee to study the steel. And which they could have looked at it and say, “Well let’s see if explosives were used, there would be telltale marks on the steel.” So, you can see a motive for why Federal Officials oversaw the removal of the steel when usually the removal of anything, even a matchbook, from a crime scene is considered a Federal Offense.

Bonnie: You’ve just mentioned the sliced steel which is another one of the characteristics of a controlled demolition. You also mention in your paper as an aside that FEMA had noted that the few pieces of steel, that they did see, had evidence of sulfidation, which is also characteristic of explosives. Isn’t that right?

David: That’s right. The first investigation that was carried out had some signs of honesty in it. This was overseen by FEMA but the actual investigation was ASCE, the American Society of Civil Engineers. And so, they reported, honestly, some startling facts, and this was one of them. That there was some sulfidation. And that is significant because that’s the trace that explosives would leave. But by the time you get to the 9/11 Commission Report, of course, there is no mention of that. And then when you get to the NIST report, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the final report which is supposed to be the definitive report, they do not mention this sulfidation. And don’t mention some other things that were discovered as well. Even the New York Times came out with a story on this and said, “This seems to be the deepest mystery, that this steel has these characteristics.” They didn’t say characteristics that are usually found on steel that is affected by explosives, but they did admit that it was a great mystery because you have to know a priori that of course explosives were not used, and therefore if it had sulfidation, that would be a huge mystery.

Bonnie: You also mentioned pulverization of concrete and other materials as another characteristic of a demolition.

David: Yeah, and in a lot of demolitions this is not a big factor. You usually get significant dust cloud, and as I mentioned in the paper, there are places on the internet where you can see videos of say the Seattle Kingdome and other buildings that have been brought down, you can see that normally there’s a pretty good sized dust cloud, but still you have a lot of rubble at the end of the implosion. But in this case, and you can see that it would make sense, these buildings were so huge, and there was so much steel in them, and these core columns were so huge most of the way up, that it would have taken massive explosions compared with your ordinary demolition of say a fifteen story building, or something like that. And as a result, there is nothing left at the end of these except steel and dust, for the most part. So you have, in other words, no desks, no computers [laughs], nothing in the rubble to show that this was an office building. You just have dust, so everything was pulverized. Jim Hoffman suggests that it was dust particles of maybe about ten microns, in other words, extremely tiny. There’s just no way that gravitational collapse or fire plus gravity could have done this to all the concrete.

Bonnie: And of course you also cite the massive dust clouds, which you’ve just mentioned, as another characteristic. You also mentioned the horizontal ejections of the materials as the buildings came down.

David: Yeah, and I tell you, that is something you can see on the videos, and you really have to see it on the videos or in some very good photographs, like you can get in Eric Hufschmid’s book Painful Questions Painful Questions http://www.erichufschmid.net/PainfulQuestionsTOC.html . He’s got great photographs, and you can see, as Jim Hoffman says, that these ejections included steel and aluminum going out for several hundred feet, and until you see that, you can’t imagine how impressive that is. And then once you have seen it, you say: “Well, there’s no way that could have been done, except by explosions.” And again, many of the testimonies say that they saw the ejections first, and then the building came down. And in the NIST Report, again, to show how dishonest it is, they say “Well sure there were ejections, but these occurred below the area of impact. When the floors were pancaking down, of course that collapsed the air and pushed the air and other things out the windows.” But, as Hoffman and many others point out, the ejections start at the very top of building, above the level of impact, so even if you accepted that official theory, you would have no explanation for the horizontal ejections in the floors above because, by hypothesis, those floors were collapsing as a solid block. There was no reason they would have disintegrated, or no reason any of the floors above the area of impact would have been falling on the floors below them, so why have horizontal ejections there, and yet there are – very visibly. [Music]

Bonnie: I’m speaking with author and theologian Dr. David Ray Griffin. Today’s show: Explosive Testimony – The 9/11 Oral Histories. I’m Bonnie Faulkner. This is Guns and Butter. You talk about demolition rings. What are demolition rings?

David: Oh, those are those things we were talking about before with Karin Deshore. What you do with controlled demolition, you don’t have to collapse every floor. If you’re slicing these steel columns into pieces about thirty feet long, the biggest explosions have to be where you want that to happen, and so there would be a ring of explosions running clear around the building, because you’ve got those perimeter columns, too, two hundred and some of those. So her testimony is very dramatic in that it’s backed up by several other people who say “we saw…”. They didn’t say “demolition rings,” but they described the phenomena which are consistent with demolition rings.

Bonnie: Yes. You talk about the sights and the sounds produced by these explosions – that the witnesses see flashes or demolition rings. And, in fact, we’ve been talking about the evidence of controlled demolition in the…well, I guess they were published in August of 2005. The 500 eyewitness accounts. But in fact, there were much earlier eyewitness testimony, not as voluminous, but that did make it out into the press a little bit with regard to the sight and sounds produced by these explosions. And you talk about early witness testimony by a janitor in the World Trade Center, William Rodriguez. Also, there’s an engineer, Mike Pecararo. Firefighter Louie Cacchioli.

David: That’s right. We don’t want to ignore these early testimonies because now they have been supported and confirmed by the later testimonies. So like you say, William Rodriguez who was declared a national hero, because he helped several people escape from the North Tower, but now he cannot get a hearing. Even though he was invited to the White House as a national hero, now he cannot get on television. He went to NIST to testify, and he said they just stared at him when he was telling them. And what he was telling them was that he was down in one of the higher sub-basements. I think, I don’t remember if it was exactly the second basement or something like that. And a bunch of them were in the room there. And he heard these explosions, felt them, from the floor below. And then a fellow worker, Felipe David, came in with skin hanging off of his body. And what he said was that he was standing near the elevator and this huge ball of fire came up from below and set him on fire. And then that’s consistent… You mention Mike Pecararo …he said he was down on the C level in the basement, where there was a small machine shop, and when he came there there was nothing but rubble. And he says were talking about a 50 ton hydraulic press gone. Then he went up to the D level and they found a steel and concrete fire door which had weighed 300 pounds wrinkled up like a piece of aluminum foil. So anybody who wants to support the official story either has to call these people liars or explain how the airplane crashing into one of the 80th or 90th floor(s), somewhere up there, could have caused these kinds of effects in the basements. Another testimony is by Dennis Tardio. He was a fire captain. And he says, “I hear an explosion. I look up. It is as if the building is being imploded from the top floor down. One after another. Boom. Boom. Boom.” And then Louie Cacchioli says that when he came in to the North Tower he saw the elevator doors had been completely blown out and people being hit with debris. Well some people try to explain this by saying the fuel came down the elevator shafts and created a big fireball down there. That that’s why the lobby was so destroyed. But then he says he went up to the 24th floor, so this would have been several minutes later by the time he got up there, and he says he and another fireman heard this huge explosion that sounded like a bomb which knocked off the lights and stalled the elevator. And then after they got out of the elevator, a huge, another huge explosion like the first one hits, this one hits about two minutes later. And I’m thinking, “Oh my God, these bastards put bombs in here like they did in 1993.” And then Teresa Veliz, she had been working in a software development company on the 47th floor and after the whole building shook she decided she’d better get out of there and while she was going downstairs she says “There were explosions going off everywhere. I was convinced that there were bombs planted all over the place. And someone was sitting at a control panel pushing detonator buttons. There was another explosion and another. I didn’t know where to run.” And we have testimonies from journalists like Steve Evans from the BBC says “I was at the base of the second tower that was hit. There was an explosion. The base of the building shook. Then there was a series of explosions.” Sue Keane, who used to be a Sergeant in the US Army and then was a member of the New Jersey Fire – Police Department, said that before the North Tower collapsed she says, “There was another explosion that sent me and two firefighters down the stairs. I can’t tell you how many times I got banged around. Each one of those explosions picked me up and threw me. There was another explosion and I got thrown with two firefighters out onto the street.” Anybody can tell that there’s no way any that ordinary fires or the reverberations from the airplanes could have caused those kinds of phenomena. We even have Wall Street reporters who gave amazing testimony, John Bussey said he was on the ninth floor of the Wall Street Journal office building. He said, “I looked out of the window to see what seemed like perfectly synchronized explosions coming from each floor, one after another, from top to bottom, with a fraction of a second between. The floors blew to pieces.” Another Wall Street Journal reporter said that after he had seen what appeared to be individual floors, one after the other exploding outward. He said, “Oh my God! They’re going to bring the building down and they, whoever they are had set charges. I saw the explosions.” Well they just go on and on and on.

Bonnie: It’s amazing. And why haven’t we heard of these accounts by firefighters and medical responders long before now?

David: People in charge did not want you to hear these things [laughs] obviously. Louie Cacchioli tried to go to the… he went to the 9/11 Commission, not to a public session of course. No firefighters were invited to testify in public. Even though everybody praised them to high heaven and said how great they were and of course they were the ones who lost the most people so we’re so sorry for them and grateful. But not grateful enough to invite them to testify [laughs] in open session to the 9/11 Commission with TV cameras running. So Louie Cacchioli was invited to talk to a few staff members of the Commission behind closed doors. And Sibel Edmonds testified. She testified for, I believe, three and a half hours and (said) that she was convinced everything that was said behind closed doors would stay behind closed doors – even better than staying in Las Vegas. That was the same thing with Louie. He said he went in and he tried to tell them what he had experienced. They just started really trashing him and discounting his… and really suggesting he didn’t know what he was talking about and he finally just got mad and left.

Bonnie: So then the 9/11 Commission did have access to these oral histories?

David: Of course! They could have subpoenaed all these firefighters, all these medical workers and yes, they did have at least some members of the staff – we don’t know who saw them but somebody saw them – and they did not make their way into the final report. I mean even the existence of them is not mentioned, just as the existence of the collapse of Building 7 is not mentioned, just as the testimony of Norman Mineta about the time that Cheney went down to the underground bunker, to get to another part of this big story (that) is not mentioned. And of course, that’s the title of my book, “The 9/11 Commission: Omissions and Distortions.” They omit just about everything that is relevant to understanding what really happened that day.

Bonnie: Now these 500 oral histories, testimonies taken on that day, these were only made public because of a lawsuit brought by the New York Times isn’t that correct?

David: That’s right. It went through the lower courts in the State of New York and everybody turned them down, that is sided with the City of New York. But finally, the highest court in New York; The New York State Court of Appeals said, “No. You must release these. This is public information. Obviously this was compiled the time of the fire department. That’s public money. So of course this has to be made public.” So the New York Times got a hold of them and then they did their duty. They made them accessible on their website. But, that was the end of it. They never let anybody write a story or at least never published any story that would tell the readers that these kinds of things were in these oral histories.

Bonnie: So then these weren’t published in the paper itself, just posted on the website.

David: That’s right, the stories in the paper would tell you, oh, that there were communication problems, they’d tell some things that were somewhat embarrassing to officials but nothing that would suggest that there was criminal conspiracy here to cover up crime. So they know very clearly where to draw the line on what can be revealed and what cannot.

Bonnie: Now, in addition to the mainstream press failing to report some of these statements, isn’t it also true that many of the firefighters and the others were afraid to speak out because they were afraid of losing their jobs?

David: We have this testimony from an alternative fireman named Paul Isaac who has said that lots of people in the fire department know that there were bombs in the buildings and that explosions brought the building down, but they are afraid to talk because they’ve been told by their higher-ups not to talk. So, you can understand these people who are just barely getting by, have families to support, if they’re threatened with the loss of their job. It’s understandable they’re not going to speak out, particularly when there is nobody asking them to speak out. The New York Times isn’t going to them and saying “here, we would really like to hear your story”, and there’s no special prosecutor, there is no congressional committee saying we really want to, you know, we’ve heard that there were explosions in the building, we want to get your direct testimony and make sure that what you said in your oral history is supportable – nobody asking them to go under lie detector tests, nobody saying that we’ll take your testimony and give you anonymity so that you won’t lose your job or that we’ll give you immunity or we’ll give you another job. Nobody wants them to testify, nobody in the official world. So one can understand why they, uh, and even if they go try to try to speak out publicly they can’t do it. I mean Willie Rodgriguez has been trying to do it, and Paul Isaac was, and Louie Catchioli, but you can’t just call up your local TV station or your NBC affiliate and say, “Here, put my testimony on the air.” So there’s no way these people can get these stories out in public to more than a few million people who read these kinds of things on the internet or listen to alternative radio or read books about this.

Bonnie: David, we’ve heard a lot in the past about foreknowledge of the attacks, government foreknowledge of the attacks. But in fact, there was foreknowledge of the collapses. In your papers, you have mentioned the fact that Mayor Rudy Giuliani on ABC news said, “We were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse” and it did collapse. You also went on to say that at least four of the recently released oral histories indicate that shortly before the collapse of the South Tower, the Office of Emergency Management had predicted the collapse of at least one tower. The director of this office reported directly to Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

David: That’s right, and here’s another not only under reported but unreported story, ’cause this is just again by itself undermines the official story because put yourself back in that situation, never before in our universe, on our planet, has a steel frame high rise building been brought down by fire or fire combined with some sort of external injury such as from an airplane. So you would have no reason whatsoever to think [laughs] that an hour after the South Tower had been hit it was going to collapse. Nobody except people who had prior knowledge would have thought that, and so you had all these fireman going up there and reaching about the 78th floor and reporting that there were no big fires there they they said oh, well you got, a little, a couple little pockets of fire here just give us a little help here and we can knock these down. Other people have testified the fires were not very big, and that’s right at the area of impact so that’s where the fire should have been the biggest. So there was no reason in the world even if you thought a huge fire could start a collapse, there would have been no reason to think….so Giuliani saying somebody told me that the towers were going to collapse and in this case that would have meant the South Tower first, that’s unbelievable. There would be no reason in the world anybody would have thought that. These buildings were perfectly stable. It had been an hour since the airplanes had hit, the fires were burning down, were just about burnt out. And yet suddenly somebody tells him they’re going to collapse.

Bonnie: [music in background ]I’m speaking with author and Theologian Dr. David Ray Griffin. Todays show, Explosive Testimony, the 9/11 Oral Histories. I’m Bonnie Faulkner. This is Guns and Butter. [music fades out] And also with regard to Building 7, apparently there was also foreknowledge that Building 7 was going to collapse. It collapsed similarly but was it never hit by a plane. How could that happen? Indira Singh, a medical first responder said on my program that they knew World Trade Center 7 was going to fall hours before it did and that they had to move the rescue stations away to a safe distance. How could anyone know ahead of time that the building would collapse? It had just a few small fires in it.

David: That’s right. There are people who have testified that it had lots of fires in it. But isn’t it amazing that with all the photographers and television cameras that would have been on the site that afternoon, not a one of them captured all of these fires. And then we’re told, oh there was a lot of damage to the face of it, to the south side. And nobody captured any of that. I mean these would have been magnificent photos that could have won prizes, and yet nobody bothered. So, you see that it’s not very credible. In any case, even if there had been enormous fires in Building 7, even if there had been great structural damage to the face of it, facing the World Trade Center Towers, you could not explain the collapse, straight down, almost free fall speed, less than 7 seconds. Forty-seven story building going straight down and collapsing into a pile of rubble. The very tiny pile of rubble, folding over perfectly just like a perfect controlled implosion. And yes, the advanced knowledge of this one is truly extraordinary, because it seems like about noon, the firefighters were pulled out of there and just stood around all afternoon waiting for the building to come down. So everybody down there knew, or were told that Building 7 was going to collapse. And then, at, finally at 5:20, it did. It was truly amazing, and again there would have been no reason because even if people thought, well let’s see, the Twin Towers collapsed because they were hit by airplanes and then the fires brought them down. Nobody would have thought, well, building 7’s going to collapse too, because it was hit, oh no it wasn’t hit by a plane, and it’s only got a few fires in it. I quote this one fellow as saying “I think there were fires on just three floors.” He was a medical worker, and then here are the firefighters standing around and he says “Are you guys going to put that fire out?”. And another guy says, this is just amazing, this was a fireman, so here are the fireman standing around and he says “There are fires in that building” and they say “we know”. So he says its just amazing, they’re just standing around waiting for the building to collapse. And the important thing here is that it was the same office, it was Giuliani’s own office, that was supposedly the source of the information that the towers were going to come down. That same office is the source of the information that World Trade Center 7 was going to come down.

Bonnie: The Office of Emergency Management.

David: Right.

Bonnie: That is, yes. That reported directly to Guiliani.

David: That’s right. So people should pay attention to this because it looks like this guy may be running for President. Do you want your next President also to be somebody who is involved in the conspiracy of 9/11?

Bonnie: Could you say a few words about other suspicious facts. Could you talk about the World Trade Center security.

David: Well yeah, this is a big question. How could have anybody gotten in there to set these explosives? It would take many, many hours. As I said, Mark Loizeaux, head of Controlled Demolition said “This has to be done very carefully, planned very carefully and then the explosives have to be put in exactly the right places. They have to be set, wired in such a way that they go off in precisely the right order.” You can’t have the wrong-floor explosives go off first, so it would take quite a while. Al Qaeda terrorists, I say, could not have gotten in there and gotten to the floors, gotten to the secure areas to do this. But just by the strangest coincidence – another coincidence never mentioned in your mainstream press – the company that was in charge of security for the World Trade Center had two very interesting principal figures. One member of the Board was Marvin Bush, the President’s brother, and then Wirt Walker the third, their cousin, was the CEO for that company during the period of 9/11. He remained for several months afterwards. So we do have a hypothesis as to how people representing the Federal Government could have gotten into the buildings to plant the explosives.

Bonnie: You mentioned in your paper you quote Scott Forbes of Fiduciary Trust, which was one of the companies in one of the World Trade Center towers: “On the weekend of September 8th and 9th, 2001, there was a quote ‘power down condition’ in the South Tower. This power down condition meant that there was no electrical supply for approximately 36 hours from Floor 50 up. The reason given by the World Trade Center for the power down was that cabling in the Tower was being upgraded. Of course, without power, there were no security cameras, no security locks on doors, while many, many engineers were coming in and out of the Tower.” You also quote another person – Ben Fountain, a financial analyst with Firemen’s Fund, in the South Tower. You mentioned that he was quoted in People’s Magazine during the weeks before 9/11, that the towers were evacuated “a number of times.”

David: This is one more example that, the deeper you look into this, and look at the various evidence, and test the two hypotheses – because that’s what we’re doing here – people need to approach this with some sort of scientific state of mind and say, “OK, we’ve got two hypotheses: One is the official theory that it was Al Qaeda that brought the buildings down. And they did it solely by crashing airplanes into the buildings, which they knew would cause fires, and that’s what happened. And then you’ve got all this evidence that doesn’t fit that. You’ve got all the evidence of the testimonies of explosions. You’ve got these 11 features of controlled implosion that occur in all three of these buildings, and cannot be explained without the use of explosives. You’ve got the fact that the steel was immediately whisked away. You’ve got the fact we haven’t even gotten to, that there is molten steel under the buildings. And when the beams were pulled up, some witnesses reported that the ends of the steel were dripping molten metal, which is precisely what would happen if they had been sliced by explosives.” So all of the data, all of the phenomena relevant to asking the question of what happened – all of them fit this theory that the buildings were brought down by explosives. None of the phenomena support the Official Theory. The only thing the Official Theory has going for it is that it’s the Official Theory, and that many people desperately want to believe it because they do not want to believe that our own Government would have done such a heinous thing. Or they convince themselves that if such a thing had happened, somebody would have talked, it couldn’t have remained silent. And so they use some a priori reason to say, “Oh, it couldn’t be that. The official story has to be true. And I can’t explain all the data. So you’ve got all these data, but I’m not going to pay attention to them because that would just be too ugly.” But if you’re going to not look at it in an emotional way, and just look at the facts, all these facts support the Alternative Theory. None of the facts support the Official Theory. And what you have cited is just one more example of that – that there is an explanation of how explosives could have been set, because we know that two members of the Bush Family were in charge of the company that was in charge of security, and we know from testimonies that there was a power down situation there, and so called, you remember he put engineers in quote marks – said these so called “engineers” were coming in and out of the building.

Bonnie: You also mentioned that, in your conclusion to that, foreigners could not have orchestrated a cover-up, and you mention – you cite the quick disposal of the steel, the FEMA Report, the 9/11 Commission Report, the NIST Report, that all of the cover up had to be orchestrated within our government.

David: That’s right. It couldn’t have been Controlled Demolition, Inc., or it couldn’t have been just the City of New York who did this, or it couldn’t have been just Larry Silverstein who was going to make billions of dollars off of this. No, it had to be something orchestrated, with the FBI involved, with the Justice Department involved. So it is very frightening to think that our government has been taken over by a criminal class, and I don’t blame people for not wanting to believe it. But we’ve got to face facts and get this gang of criminals stopped before they undermine any more laws. And undermine any more civil rights of our people, and attack any more countries, and on, and on, and on. So that’s why I’m devoted to this story, because it’s not just a matter of getting to the truth, but it’s a matter of getting to the truth and getting it publicly exposed in time to prevent these criminals from continuing to ravage our country and our planet.

Bonnie: David Ray Griffin, thank you very much.

David: You’re very welcome, Bonnie. [Music plays]

There’s something happening here, yeah, yeah

What it is ain’t exactly clear

There’s a man with a gun over there…

[Music fades into the background as Bonnie starts speaking]

Bonnie: I’ve been speaking with author and theologian Dr. David Ray Griffin. Today’s show has been “Explosive Testimony: The 9/11 Oral Histories.” David Ray Griffin has recently written three lengthy articles on the events of September 11, 2001. These articles are posted on the internet at http://www.911truth.org , and other websites. David Ray Griffin retired from the Claremont School of Theology after 31 years as professor of Theology and Philosophy of Religion. He is author of over twenty-five books, including The New Pearl Harbor, and The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions. David Ray Griffin’s books are available online at Amazon.com. Thanks to Todd Fletcher for helping to produce today’s show. Guns and Butter is edited and produced by Yarrow Mahko and me, Bonnie Faulkner.

[Music continues]

Aiyo, these are some serious times that we’re livin in G

And a new world order is about to begin, y’knowhutI’msayin?

Now the question is – are you ready, for the real revolution

which is the evolution of the mind?

If you seek then you shall find that we all come from the divine

You dig what I’m sayin?

Now if you take heed … [Music fades out]

Links:

Guns & Butter: Explosive Testimony – The 9/11 Oral Histories

The 9/11 Oral Histories

Explosive Testimony: Revelations about the Twin Towers in the 9/11 Oral Histories by David Ray Griffin

This interview of Dr. David Ray Griffin conducted by Bonnie Faulkner was originally broadcast on the March 29, 2006 episode of Guns & Butter on KPFA Radio, 94.1 FM.

You can listen to or download this show here.

BONNIE FAULKNER: This is Guns & Butter.

[music plays]

LEAD IN BY DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: We even have Wall Street reporters who gave amazing testimony. John Bussey said he was on the ninth floor of the Wall Street Journal office building. He said “I looked out of the window to see what seemed like perfectly synchronized explosions coming from each floor, one after another from top to bottom, with a fraction of a second between. The floors blew to pieces, individual floors, one after the other, exploding outward.” He said, “Oh my God, they’re going to bring the building down, and they, whoever they are, had set charges. I saw the explosions.”

BONNIE FAULKNER: I’m Bonnie Faulkner. Today on Guns & Butter, Dr. David Ray Griffin. Today’s show, Explosive Testimony – The 9/11 Oral Histories. David Ray Griffin is author of The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11, and The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, in addition to over 25 other books.

On August 12th, 2005, as the result of a lawsuit brought by the New York Times and several families of 9/11 victims, the New York Court of Appeals ordered the city to release hundreds of oral histories of 9/11 witnesses. These witness testimonies were originally gathered shortly after September 11th on the order of Thomas Von Essen, the City Fire Commissioner, who said he wanted to preserve these accounts before they became reshaped by a collective memory.

In these oral histories, firefighters and emergency medical workers recounted their experiences of that day. The New York Fire Department recorded over 500 oral histories, which Mayor Bloomberg’s administration then refused to release.

BONNIE FAULKNER: David Ray Griffin, welcome.

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: Good to be with you, Bonnie.

BONNIE FAULKNER: David, you’ve written several lengthy articles recently regarding the events of September 11th. In your research, is the physical evidence from the collapses of the World Trade Center consistent with the official explanation that they occurred solely because of damage to the buildings caused by the plane impacts combined with the fires that occurred when the jet fuel exploded?

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: I just read an article this morning that somebody was sending around the internet, saying that, how the Bush Administration has been repealing all sorts laws since 9/11, and that they’ve also repealed the Laws of Physics. So, with the new Laws of Physics promulgated by the Bush Administration, it may be that the collapses were consistent with the Laws of Physics. But, if you accept the old-fashioned Laws of Physics that have been worked out from Newton through the Twentieth Century, well no, the collapses completely contradict everything we know.

BONNIE FAULKNER: You have written that shortly after 9/11 the New York Fire Department recorded over 500 oral histories, in which firefighters and emergency medical workers recounted their experiences of that day. You also go on to say that Mayor Bloomberg’s administration, however, refused to release them. But that, then, the New York Times, joined by several families of 9/11 victims, filed suit. And after a long process, the New York Court of Appeals ordered the city to release them, which it did in August of 2005. And then the Times, of course, made these oral histories public. I hadn’t heard much of anything about these oral histories.

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: Surprise, surprise. You mean Fox News has not reported them? What a shock. You mean NBC News and CBS and ABC have not reported them?

BONNIE FAULKNER: Exactly. And I’ve been involved in this for years and I only had the vaguest recollections of their existence. Could you talk about those oral histories?

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: Yeah. And also I think you have read the 9/11 Commission Report. And again, even though they had 571 pages, they didn’t have a single sentence to spare to mention these oral histories. And in this case we know that they had access to them, because the City of New York had initially turned down the Commission when it requested copies. And then the Commission threatened to use its subpoena power – one of the few times it did – and they turned them over. So at least some members of the 9/11 Commission had access to these, and yet nobody saw fit to mention them. And it’s no surprise that they didn’t because, of course you and I and many of our listeners know that the 9/11 Commission was devoted solely to protecting and reinforcing the official story under the guidance of Philip Zelikow who was essentially a member of the 9/11 Commission. And we could go on and on about that for some time. So this is no surprise. But when you look at these oral histories, you see that they did not want the public to know that these oral histories not only were published now but were available on a New York Times website so any citizen can go on and find these and read them for themselves. And in my paper, which anybody can Google by just going on Google Explosive Testimony and you’ll find my paper on this and you can just read all the ones that I had listed out. I could read a few of them now if you’d like.

BONNIE FAULKNER: Yes. And just before you do that, who was it that ordered these oral histories? Weren’t these ordered on the day of September 11th? They were requested.

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: You mean who had the oral histories recorded?

BONNIE FAULKNER: Yes.

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: Yeah. That was the outgoing head, I believe, of the New York Fire Commission. Yes. It was Thomas Von Essen the City Fire Commissioner at that time and these were recorded during December of 2001 and then January. So they were at a time when the memories were still pretty fresh and that’s what he wanted. He said he wanted to preserve those accounts before they became reshaped by a collective memory. So we’re very indebted to Thomas Von Essen.

BONNIE FAULKNER: That’s right. That’s what I had thought. He wanted those recorded specifically so that the memories were fresh in peoples mind and they were not going to be rewritten by a later collective memory. Now there were some dramatic, I was amazed, some very dramatic testimony from at least 500 people who were present on September 11th. Their experiences, what they saw, what they heard, what they felt, and a lot of it was extremely dramatic. Could you talk about a few of those testimonies?

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: Sure. So the fire department is made up actually of firefighters and emergency medical workers so I’ve got a combination of these. One Medical Technician Michael Ober said, “We heard a rumble. We looked up. It looked to me just like an explosion. It didn’t look like the building was coming down. It looked like just one floor had blown completely outside of it.” Now that’s important because the official story says that when you get these horizontal ejections from the building with dust and other things being blown out. That’s because the floor collapsed and blew it out. But he says no. He saw this explosion before there was any sign the building was coming down. And this was backed up by Fire Chief Frank Cruthers who said, “There was what appeared to be first an explosion. It appeared at the very top, simultaneously from all four sides. Material shot out horizontally. And then there seemed to be a momentary delay before you could see the beginning of the collapse.” Then there are other things particularly important because Mark Loizeaux who is the head of Control Demolition, one of the top demolition companies in the world. He said, “If I were going to bring down the towers I would begin with explosions in the basements to take out some of those columns and that would mean there would be shaking of the ground prior to the collapse.” And Medical Technician Lonnie Penn says that, “Just before the collapse of the South Tower, I felt the ground shake. I turned round and ran for my life. I made it as far as the Financial Center when the collapse happened.” So the shake obviously occurred several seconds before the building started coming down. And several other people gave supporting testimony to that. Likewise you get several people who report multiple explosions. So Firefighter Thomas Turilli said about the South Tower, “It almost sounded like bombs going off. Like ‘Boom, boom, boom.’ Like seven or eight.” Another Firefighter Craig Carlsen said “It seemed like it took forever, but there were about 10 explosions.” Joseph Meola , another firefighter, said it looked like the building was blowing out on all four sides. We actually heard the pops. Didn’t realize it was falling, you know? You heard the pops of the building. You just thought it was blowing out.” And then, Paramedic Daniel Rivera , he was asked “How did you know the South Tower was coming down?” He said “It was that noise.” “What noise?” He said “It was a frigging noise. At first I thought it was… Did you ever see professional demolition, where they set the charges on certain floors, and then you hear ‘pop, pop, pop, pop, pop?’ That’s exactly what I heard.”

BONNIE FAULKNER: David, here is another one in your article from Captain Karin Deshore. She said “Somewhere around the middle, there was this orange and red flash coming out. Initially, it was just one flash. Then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building, and that building had started to explode. With each popping sound, it was initially an orange, and then a red flash came out of the building, and then it would just go all around the building on both sides, as far as I could see. These popping sounds and the explosions were getting bigger, going both up and down, and then all around the building.”

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: That’s right. And her testimony is very important, because when you read through the various oral histories, people are telling what happened for hours that day. And you find out that she was a highly respected member of the force, and so her testimony is particularly important. And that supports one of these other features of controlled demolition, which is “demolition rings.” That is where you see explosions running around the building very quickly. So you gave that, then Firefighter Richard Banaciski said “There was an explosion. It seemed like on television when they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions.” Deputy Commissioner Thomas Fitzpatrick said about the South Tower, “All we saw was a puff of smoke coming from about two-thirds of the way up. It looked like sparkling around one specific layer of the building. My reaction was that it was exactly the way it looks when they show you those implosions on TV.”

BONNIE FAULKNER: You have listed in your articles, when you talk about the multiple evidence of controlled demolition, and that the oral histories, the oral testimonies of those present, included 10 elements or aspects of a controlled demolition. And I wanted to sort of list them, and I thought we could talk about them, to make it clearer to listeners as to just exactly what we’re talking about. Now, these are characteristics of a controlled demolition that were reported on September 11th: sudden onset, straight down, almost free fall speed…

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: Let me go ahead and comment. The sudden onset is so important, because the official theory being that fire heated up the steel and made it buckle. Well, if fire were heating up steel, the steel would gradually begin to sag. And yet, when you look at the videos, which are on multiple sites on the Internet, you can see these collapses of Twin Towers and Building 7, and you see they’re perfectly still, motionless, and then all of a sudden, pow, they start. There’s no bending of the steel, no sagging. It’s a very sudden onset. [music]

BONNIE FAULKNER: I’m speaking with Author and Theologian, Doctor David Ray Griffin. Today’s show, “Explosive Testimony: The 9/11 Oral Histories.” I’m Bonnie Faulkner. This is Guns and Butter. [music fades] And then the next characteristic you mentioned is “straight down.”

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: Yeah, completely vertical. Now, that doesn’t mean they completely fall into their own footprint. Now, that was true of Building 7. It was a really classic example of implosion, which starts at the bottom. But with the Twin Towers, the collapse had to start near the top, where the airplanes hit, because that was going to be the story, that the hole created by the airplanes, then weakened, and weakened that floor, and some floors above it collapsed and came down. So, it couldn’t quite be a classical implosion, but it still was an implosion in that the building came down, rather than falling over. Now, one thing to know about this is that, as Mark Loizeaux says, “These things don’t just happen. They have to be precisely planned.” He’s talking about when he’s bringing down a building. And, he would study it for weeks and decide exactly where the explosives had to be planted, and so on. And the whole purpose of implosion, the kind of controlled demolition known as implosion, is to bring the building straight down. The easier kind of controlled demolition is just to knock the building over. Now, you can do that if it’s out in the desert [laugh] with no other buildings around it. But, in downtown Manhattan, if these 110 story towers had toppled over, you would’ve had I don’t know how many hundreds of buildings destroyed, how many billions of dollars, how many tens of thousands of people killed. So, it was very important that the buildings come straight down. There was no way that hijackers, even if they had been able to sneak in there and put a few bombs in the building, would’ve had that kind of expertise. A Website called “ImplosionWorld.com”, you can go on there and see. They say only a few companies in the world have the expertise to do traditional implosion. And, certainly very few people would have the expertise to do an implosion with something as huge as the Twin Towers. So, that’s very important that they came straight down. Not entirely I say with the towers into their own foot print, because another feature here was that, as I said, things were ejected out of the floors and aluminum and even steel beams from the building were ejected out several hundred feet. So, this had to be a massive explosive used, with great power, with horizontal power, whereas the gravitational power that the official theory talks about, would be vertical. And, so you did get debris spewed over an area of several blocks. But, for the most part, the towers, like Building 7, came straight down.

BONNIE FAULKNER: You also mention another characteristic that people witnessed, that is a characteristic of a controlled demolition, and that is the almost free fall speed of the collapse.

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: That’s right. Let’s say that we accepted the official theory, which is that the collapse began with the floor right above where the airplanes created a hole in the building. Well, then, those floors would have fallen down on the floor below them. Well, you still would’ve had eighty or ninety floors below that with all their steel, all their concrete, they’re going to give resistance. I mean, even if it were conceivable that they could’ve collapsed, had a total collapse, which is not conceivable, but we’ll pretend it is, then there would have been delays. And yet these buildings came down at virtually free fall speed. If you had thrown a brick off the top of the World Trade Center, it would’ve been roughly ten seconds (until it struck the ground) and that’s roughly the speed at which these came down. People say anywhere from eight, to twelve or thirteen seconds. Anywhere in there is virtually free fall speed. And, you can see it on the videos because you can see that the things that were ejected out sideways, so they’re not being resisted by anything except the air, they’re falling at virtually the same speed as the material within the foot print which should be at least slowed down by all those floors of steel and concrete below them, but they’re not. So, that is just, it is just absolute proof, this is controlled demolition. There is simply no other way the buildings could’ve been brought down in that fashion.

BONNIE FAULKNER: That’s right. The building itself, falling into itself is falling at the same speed as the debris that’s spewing out. So, that’s a very good point.

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: That’s right, and so this is one of the Laws of Physics that would have to be overturned and fortunately, evidently, the Bush administration has it in with the Almighty and could change the Laws of Physics, at least on 9/11. And, so steel could fall down through steel and concrete at free fall speed just as if it were falling through the air.

BONNIE FAULKNER: Another characteristic that you point out in the oral testimonies that coincides with a controlled demolition is total collapse.

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: Yeah, each one of these is, by itself, a proof. And when you have eleven characteristics, as I think I gave in that paper, then you realize that if no one of them could have occurred according to the official theory, all the more could not all eleven of them occurred. And this by total collapse, it means that these 110 story towers and the 47 story World Trade Center Building 7, collapsed into a pile of rubble only a few stories high. Now, why that’s so important, because as I indicated, each tower had 47 massive steel columns constituting the core of the tower. So even if the “Pancake Theory” could be accepted, which was that the floors broke loose from the perimeter and the core columns. And then you could imagine that the concrete would have pulverized into tiny dust particles [laughs] when it fell down, you would still have these massive columns sticking up into the air. And of course not all singly but they were tied together by steel beams and trusses. So you would have had this center fixture sticking up at least 1000 feet into the air. And yet it collapses into a pile of rubble a few stories high. The only way that is possible, the only way, is through the way it is always done. You take a particular kind of explosive, or maybe several kinds. Steven Jones, in his now well known paper, a physicist from BYU, suggests thermite and maybe thermate, a variation of it, and maybe some other kinds of explosives used. And that’s what these things do, they slice the steel. I have a quote in my paper by a guy who knows about, a spokesperson for RDX, a certain kind of explosive, and he says this stuff slices through steel the way a razor blade slices through a tomato. And once you realize that that’s the way it normally happens, you look at these buildings, you see the tiny little pile of rubble, and you say there is no other way it could have happened. Because even if the steel columns had somehow failed, they wouldn’t have broken into rather small pieces. Jim Hoffman has said, looking at the evidence, it seems like that most of the steel columns were broken into pieces no more than 50 feet long. A lot of them about 30 feet long. In other words, about the size ready to be loaded onto trucks. And of course, that’s what happened to the steel. It was immediately loaded onto trucks, sold to scrap dealers, and put on ships to Asia to be melted down. Rather than given to some scientific committee to study the steel. And which they could have looked at it and say, “Well let’s see if explosives were used, there would be telltale marks on the steel.” So, you can see a motive for why Federal Officials oversaw the removal of the steel when usually the removal of anything, even a matchbook, from a crime scene is considered a Federal Offense.

BONNIE FAULKNER: You’ve just mentioned the sliced steel which is another one of the characteristics of a controlled demolition. You also mention in your paper as an aside that FEMA had noted that the few pieces of steel, that they did see, had evidence of sulfidation, which is also characteristic of explosives. Isn’t that right?

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: That’s right. The first investigation that was carried out had some signs of honesty in it. This was overseen by FEMA but the actual investigation was ASCE, the American Society of Civil Engineers. And so, they reported, honestly, some startling facts, and this was one of them. That there was some sulfidation. And that is significant because that’s the trace that explosives would leave. But by the time you get to the 9/11 Commission Report, of course, there is no mention of that. And then when you get to the NIST report, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the final report which is supposed to be the definitive report, they do not mention this sulfidation. And don’t mention some other things that were discovered as well. Even the New York Times came out with a story on this and said, “This seems to be the deepest mystery, that this steel has these characteristics.” They didn’t say characteristics that are usually found on steel that is affected by explosives, but they did admit that it was a great mystery because you have to know a priori that of course explosives were not used, and therefore if it had sulfidation, that would be a huge mystery.

BONNIE FAULKNER: You also mentioned pulverization of concrete and other materials as another characteristic of a demolition.

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: Yeah, and in a lot of demolitions this is not a big factor. You usually get significant dust cloud, and as I mentioned in the paper, there are places on the internet where you can see videos of say the Seattle Kingdome and other buildings that have been brought down, you can see that normally there’s a pretty good sized dust cloud, but still you have a lot of rubble at the end of the implosion. But in this case, and you can see that it would make sense, these buildings were so huge, and there was so much steel in them, and these core columns were so huge most of the way up, that it would have taken massive explosions compared with your ordinary demolition of say a fifteen story building, or something like that. And as a result, there is nothing left at the end of these except steel and dust, for the most part. So you have, in other words, no desks, no computers [laughs], nothing in the rubble to show that this was an office building. You just have dust, so everything was pulverized. Jim Hoffman suggests that it was dust particles of maybe about ten microns, in other words, extremely tiny. There’s just no way that gravitational collapse or fire plus gravity could have done this to all the concrete.

BONNIE FAULKNER: And of course you also cite the massive dust clouds, which you’ve just mentioned, as another characteristic. You also mentioned the horizontal ejections of the materials as the buildings came down.

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: Yeah, and I tell you, that is something you can see on the videos, and you really have to see it on the videos or in some very good photographs, like you can get in Eric Hufschmid’s book Painful Questions . He’s got great photographs, and you can see, as Jim Hoffman says, that these ejections included steel and aluminum going out for several hundred feet, and until you see that, you can’t imagine how impressive that is. And then once you have seen it, you say: “Well, there’s no way that could have been done, except by explosions.” And again, many of the testimonies say that they saw the ejections first, and then the building came down. And in the NIST Report, again, to show how dishonest it is, they say “Well sure there were ejections, but these occurred below the area of impact. When the floors were pancaking down, of course that collapsed the air and pushed the air and other things out the windows.” But, as Hoffman and many others point out, the ejections start at the very top of building, above the level of impact, so even if you accepted that official theory, you would have no explanation for the horizontal ejections in the floors above because, by hypothesis, those floors were collapsing as a solid block. There was no reason they would have disintegrated, or no reason any of the floors above the area of impact would have been falling on the floors below them, so why have horizontal ejections there, and yet there are – very visibly. [Music]

BONNIE FAULKNER: I’m speaking with author and theologian Dr. David Ray Griffin. Today’s show: Explosive Testimony – The 9/11 Oral Histories. I’m Bonnie Faulkner. This is Guns and Butter. You talk about demolition rings. What are demolition rings?

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: Oh, those are those things we were talking about before with Karin Deshore. What you do with controlled demolition, you don’t have to collapse every floor. If you’re slicing these steel columns into pieces about thirty feet long, the biggest explosions have to be where you want that to happen, and so there would be a ring of explosions running clear around the building, because you’ve got those perimeter columns, too, two hundred and some of those. So her testimony is very dramatic in that it’s backed up by several other people who say “we saw…”. They didn’t say “demolition rings,” but they described the phenomena which are consistent with demolition rings.

BONNIE FAULKNER: Yes. You talk about the sights and the sounds produced by these explosions – that the witnesses see flashes or demolition rings. And, in fact, we’ve been talking about the evidence of controlled demolition in the…well, I guess they were published in August of 2005. The 500 eyewitness accounts. But in fact, there were much earlier eyewitness testimony, not as voluminous, but that did make it out into the press a little bit with regard to the sight and sounds produced by these explosions. And you talk about early witness testimony by a janitor in the World Trade Center, William Rodriguez. Also, there’s an engineer, Mike Pecararo. Firefighter Louie Cacchioli.

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: That’s right. We don’t want to ignore these early testimonies because now they have been supported and confirmed by the later testimonies. So like you say, William Rodriguez who was declared a national hero, because he helped several people escape from the North Tower, but now he cannot get a hearing. Even though he was invited to the White House as a national hero, now he cannot get on television. He went to NIST to testify, and he said they just stared at him when he was telling them. And what he was telling them was that he was down in one of the higher sub-basements. I think, I don’t remember if it was exactly the second basement or something like that. And a bunch of them were in the room there. And he heard these explosions, felt them, from the floor below. And then a fellow worker, Felipe David, came in with skin hanging off of his body. And what he said was that he was standing near the elevator and this huge ball of fire came up from below and set him on fire. And then that’s consistent… You mention Mike Pecararo …he said he was down on the C level in the basement, where there was a small machine shop, and when he came there there was nothing but rubble. And he says were talking about a 50 ton hydraulic press gone. Then he went up to the D level and they found a steel and concrete fire door which had weighed 300 pounds wrinkled up like a piece of aluminum foil. So anybody who wants to support the official story either has to call these people liars or explain how the airplane crashing into one of the 80th or 90th floor(s), somewhere up there, could have caused these kinds of effects in the basements. Another testimony is by Dennis Tardio. He was a fire captain. And he says, “I hear an explosion. I look up. It is as if the building is being imploded from the top floor down. One after another. Boom. Boom. Boom.” And then Louie Cacchioli says that when he came in to the North Tower he saw the elevator doors had been completely blown out and people being hit with debris. Well some people try to explain this by saying the fuel came down the elevator shafts and created a big fireball down there. That that’s why the lobby was so destroyed. But then he says he went up to the 24th floor, so this would have been several minutes later by the time he got up there, and he says he and another fireman heard this huge explosion that sounded like a bomb which knocked off the lights and stalled the elevator. And then after they got out of the elevator, a huge, another huge explosion like the first one hits, this one hits about two minutes later. And I’m thinking, “Oh my God, these bastards put bombs in here like they did in 1993.” And then Teresa Veliz, she had been working in a software development company on the 47th floor and after the whole building shook she decided she’d better get out of there and while she was going downstairs she says “There were explosions going off everywhere. I was convinced that there were bombs planted all over the place. And someone was sitting at a control panel pushing detonator buttons. There was another explosion and another. I didn’t know where to run.” And we have testimonies from journalists like Steve Evans from the BBC says “I was at the base of the second tower that was hit. There was an explosion. The base of the building shook. Then there was a series of explosions.” Sue Keane, who used to be a Sergeant in the US Army and then was a member of the New Jersey Fire – Police Department, said that before the North Tower collapsed she says, “There was another explosion that sent me and two firefighters down the stairs. I can’t tell you how many times I got banged around. Each one of those explosions picked me up and threw me. There was another explosion and I got thrown with two firefighters out onto the street.” Anybody can tell that there’s no way any that ordinary fires or the reverberations from the airplanes could have caused those kinds of phenomena. We even have Wall Street reporters who gave amazing testimony, John Bussey said he was on the ninth floor of the Wall Street Journal office building. He said, “I looked out of the window to see what seemed like perfectly synchronized explosions coming from each floor, one after another, from top to bottom, with a fraction of a second between. The floors blew to pieces.” Another Wall Street Journal reporter said that after he had seen what appeared to be individual floors, one after the other exploding outward. He said, “Oh my God! They’re going to bring the building down and they, whoever they are had set charges. I saw the explosions.” Well they just go on and on and on.

BONNIE FAULKNER: It’s amazing. And why haven’t we heard of these accounts by firefighters and medical responders long before now?

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: People in charge did not want you to hear these things [laughs] obviously. Louie Cacchioli tried to go to the… he went to the 9/11 Commission, not to a public session of course. No firefighters were invited to testify in public. Even though everybody praised them to high heaven and said how great they were and of course they were the ones who lost the most people so we’re so sorry for them and grateful. But not grateful enough to invite them to testify [laughs] in open session to the 9/11 Commission with TV cameras running. So Louie Cacchioli was invited to talk to a few staff members of the Commission behind closed doors. And Sibel Edmonds testified. She testified for, I believe, three and a half hours and (said) that she was convinced everything that was said behind closed doors would stay behind closed doors – even better than staying in Las Vegas. That was the same thing with Louie. He said he went in and he tried to tell them what he had experienced. They just started really trashing him and discounting his… and really suggesting he didn’t know what he was talking about and he finally just got mad and left.

BONNIE FAULKNER: So then the 9/11 Commission did have access to these oral histories?

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: Of course! They could have subpoenaed all these firefighters, all these medical workers and yes, they did have at least some members of the staff – we don’t know who saw them but somebody saw them – and they did not make their way into the final report. I mean even the existence of them is not mentioned, just as the existence of the collapse of Building 7 is not mentioned, just as the testimony of Norman Mineta about the time that Cheney went down to the underground bunker, to get to another part of this big story (that) is not mentioned. And of course, that’s the title of my book, “The 9/11 Commission: Omissions and Distortions.” They omit just about everything that is relevant to understanding what really happened that day.

BONNIE FAULKNER: Now these 500 oral histories, testimonies taken on that day, these were only made public because of a lawsuit brought by the New York Times isn’t that correct?

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: That’s right. It went through the lower courts in the State of New York and everybody turned them down, that is sided with the City of New York. But finally, the highest court in New York; The New York State Court of Appeals said, “No. You must release these. This is public information. Obviously this was compiled the time of the fire department. That’s public money. So of course this has to be made public.” So the New York Times got a hold of them and then they did their duty. They made them accessible on their website. But, that was the end of it. They never let anybody write a story or at least never published any story that would tell the readers that these kinds of things were in these oral histories.

BONNIE FAULKNER: So then these weren’t published in the paper itself, just posted on the website.

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: That’s right, the stories in the paper would tell you, oh, that there were communication problems, they’d tell some things that were somewhat embarrassing to officials but nothing that would suggest that there was criminal conspiracy here to cover up crime. So they know very clearly where to draw the line on what can be revealed and what cannot.

BONNIE FAULKNER: Now, in addition to the mainstream press failing to report some of these statements, isn’t it also true that many of the firefighters and the others were afraid to speak out because they were afraid of losing their jobs?

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: We have this testimony from an alternative fireman named Paul Isaac who has said that lots of people in the fire department know that there were bombs in the buildings and that explosions brought the building down, but they are afraid to talk because they’ve been told by their higher-ups not to talk. So, you can understand these people who are just barely getting by, have families to support, if they’re threatened with the loss of their job. It’s understandable they’re not going to speak out, particularly when there is nobody asking them to speak out. The New York Times isn’t going to them and saying “here, we would really like to hear your story”, and there’s no special prosecutor, there is no congressional committee saying we really want to, you know, we’ve heard that there were explosions in the building, we want to get your direct testimony and make sure that what you said in your oral history is supportable – nobody asking them to go under lie detector tests, nobody saying that we’ll take your testimony and give you anonymity so that you won’t lose your job or that we’ll give you immunity or we’ll give you another job. Nobody wants them to testify, nobody in the official world. So one can understand why they, uh, and even if they go try to try to speak out publicly they can’t do it. I mean Willie Rodgriguez has been trying to do it, and Paul Isaac was, and Louie Catchioli, but you can’t just call up your local TV station or your NBC affiliate and say, “Here, put my testimony on the air.” So there’s no way these people can get these stories out in public to more than a few million people who read these kinds of things on the internet or listen to alternative radio or read books about this.

BONNIE FAULKNER: David, we’ve heard a lot in the past about foreknowledge of the attacks, government foreknowledge of the attacks. But in fact, there was foreknowledge of the collapses. In your papers, you have mentioned the fact that Mayor Rudy Giuliani on ABC news said, “We were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse” and it did collapse. You also went on to say that at least four of the recently released oral histories indicate that shortly before the collapse of the South Tower, the Office of Emergency Management had predicted the collapse of at least one tower. The director of this office reported directly to Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: That’s right, and here’s another not only under reported but unreported story, ’cause this is just again by itself undermines the official story because put yourself back in that situation, never before in our universe, on our planet, has a steel frame high rise building been brought down by fire or fire combined with some sort of external injury such as from an airplane. So you would have no reason whatsoever to think [laughs] that an hour after the South Tower had been hit it was going to collapse. Nobody except people who had prior knowledge would have thought that, and so you had all these fireman going up there and reaching about the 78th floor and reporting that there were no big fires there they they said oh, well you got, a little, a couple little pockets of fire here just give us a little help here and we can knock these down. Other people have testified the fires were not very big, and that’s right at the area of impact so that’s where the fire should have been the biggest. So there was no reason in the world even if you thought a huge fire could start a collapse, there would have been no reason to think….so Giuliani saying somebody told me that the towers were going to collapse and in this case that would have meant the South Tower first, that’s unbelievable. There would be no reason in the world anybody would have thought that. These buildings were perfectly stable. It had been an hour since the airplanes had hit, the fires were burning down, were just about burnt out. And yet suddenly somebody tells him they’re going to collapse.

BONNIE FAULKNER: [music in background] I’m speaking with author and Theologian Dr. David Ray Griffin. Todays show, Explosive Testimony, the 9/11 Oral Histories. I’m Bonnie Faulkner. This is Guns and Butter. [music fades out] And also with regard to Building 7, apparently there was also foreknowledge that Building 7 was going to collapse. It collapsed similarly but was it never hit by a plane. How could that happen? Indira Singh, a medical first responder said on my program that they knew World Trade Center 7 was going to fall hours before it did and that they had to move the rescue stations away to a safe distance. How could anyone know ahead of time that the building would collapse? It had just a few small fires in it.

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: That’s right. There are people who have testified that it had lots of fires in it. But isn’t it amazing that with all the photographers and television cameras that would have been on the site that afternoon, not a one of them captured all of these fires. And then we’re told, oh there was a lot of damage to the face of it, to the south side. And nobody captured any of that. I mean these would have been magnificent photos that could have won prizes, and yet nobody bothered. So, you see that it’s not very credible. In any case, even if there had been enormous fires in Building 7, even if there had been great structural damage to the face of it, facing the World Trade Center Towers, you could not explain the collapse, straight down, almost free fall speed, less than 7 seconds. Forty-seven story building going straight down and collapsing into a pile of rubble. The very tiny pile of rubble, folding over perfectly just like a perfect controlled implosion. And yes, the advanced knowledge of this one is truly extraordinary, because it seems like about noon, the firefighters were pulled out of there and just stood around all afternoon waiting for the building to come down. So everybody down there knew, or were told that Building 7 was going to collapse. And then, at, finally at 5:20, it did. It was truly amazing, and again there would have been no reason because even if people thought, well let’s see, the Twin Towers collapsed because they were hit by airplanes and then the fires brought them down. Nobody would have thought, well, building 7’s going to collapse too, because it was hit, oh no it wasn’t hit by a plane, and it’s only got a few fires in it. I quote this one fellow as saying “I think there were fires on just three floors.” He was a medical worker, and then here are the firefighters standing around and he says “Are you guys going to put that fire out?”. And another guy says, this is just amazing, this was a fireman, so here are the fireman standing around and he says “There are fires in that building” and they say “we know”. So he says its just amazing, they’re just standing around waiting for the building to collapse. And the important thing here is that it was the same office, it was Giuliani’s own office, that was supposedly the source of the information that the towers were going to come down. That same office is the source of the information that World Trade Center 7 was going to come down.

BONNIE FAULKNER: The Office of Emergency Management.

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: Right.

BONNIE FAULKNER: That is, yes. That reported directly to Giuliani.

David: That’s right. So people should pay attention to this because it looks like this guy may be running for President. Do you want your next President also to be somebody who is involved in the conspiracy of 9/11?

BONNIE FAULKNER: Could you say a few words about other suspicious facts. Could you talk about the World Trade Center security.

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: Well yeah, this is a big question. How could have anybody gotten in there to set these explosives? It would take many, many hours. As I said, Mark Loizeaux, head of Controlled Demolition said “This has to be done very carefully, planned very carefully and then the explosives have to be put in exactly the right places. They have to be set, wired in such a way that they go off in precisely the right order.” You can’t have the wrong-floor explosives go off first, so it would take quite a while. Al Qaeda terrorists, I say, could not have gotten in there and gotten to the floors, gotten to the secure areas to do this. But just by the strangest coincidence – another coincidence never mentioned in your mainstream press – the company that was in charge of security for the World Trade Center had two very interesting principal figures. One member of the Board was Marvin Bush, the President’s brother, and then Wirt Walker the third, their cousin, was the CEO for that company during the period of 9/11. He remained for several months afterwards. So we do have a hypothesis as to how people representing the Federal Government could have gotten into the buildings to plant the explosives.

BONNIE FAULKNER: You mentioned in your paper you quote Scott Forbes of Fiduciary Trust, which was one of the companies in one of the World Trade Center towers: “On the weekend of September 8th and 9th, 2001, there was a quote ‘power down condition’ in the South Tower. This power down condition meant that there was no electrical supply for approximately 36 hours from Floor 50 up. The reason given by the World Trade Center for the power down was that cabling in the Tower was being upgraded. Of course, without power, there were no security cameras, no security locks on doors, while many, many engineers were coming in and out of the Tower.” You also quote another person – Ben Fountain, a financial analyst with Firemen’s Fund, in the South Tower. You mentioned that he was quoted in People’s Magazine during the weeks before 9/11, that the towers were evacuated “a number of times.”

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: This is one more example that, the deeper you look into this, and look at the various evidence, and test the two hypotheses – because that’s what we’re doing here – people need to approach this with some sort of scientific state of mind and say, “OK, we’ve got two hypotheses: One is the official theory that it was Al Qaeda that brought the buildings down. And they did it solely by crashing airplanes into the buildings, which they knew would cause fires, and that’s what happened. And then you’ve got all this evidence that doesn’t fit that. You’ve got all the evidence of the testimonies of explosions. You’ve got these 11 features of controlled implosion that occur in all three of these buildings, and cannot be explained without the use of explosives. You’ve got the fact that the steel was immediately whisked away. You’ve got the fact we haven’t even gotten to, that there is molten steel under the buildings. And when the beams were pulled up, some witnesses reported that the ends of the steel were dripping molten metal, which is precisely what would happen if they had been sliced by explosives.” So all of the data, all of the phenomena relevant to asking the question of what happened – all of them fit this theory that the buildings were brought down by explosives. None of the phenomena support the Official Theory. The only thing the Official Theory has going for it is that it’s the Official Theory, and that many people desperately want to believe it because they do not want to believe that our own Government would have done such a heinous thing. Or they convince themselves that if such a thing had happened, somebody would have talked, it couldn’t have remained silent. And so they use some a priori reason to say, “Oh, it couldn’t be that. The official story has to be true. And I can’t explain all the data. So you’ve got all these data, but I’m not going to pay attention to them because that would just be too ugly.” But if you’re going to not look at it in an emotional way, and just look at the facts, all these facts support the Alternative Theory. None of the facts support the Official Theory. And what you have cited is just one more example of that – that there is an explanation of how explosives could have been set, because we know that two members of the Bush Family were in charge of the company that was in charge of security, and we know from testimonies that there was a power down situation there, and so called, you remember he put engineers in quote marks – said these so called “engineers” were coming in and out of the building.

BONNIE FAULKNER: You also mentioned that, in your conclusion to that, foreigners could not have orchestrated a cover-up, and you mention – you cite the quick disposal of the steel, the FEMA Report, the 9/11 Commission Report, the NIST Report, that all of the cover up had to be orchestrated within our government.

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: That’s right. It couldn’t have been Controlled Demolition, Inc., or it couldn’t have been just the City of New York who did this, or it couldn’t have been just Larry Silverstein who was going to make billions of dollars off of this. No, it had to be something orchestrated, with the FBI involved, with the Justice Department involved. So it is very frightening to think that our government has been taken over by a criminal class, and I don’t blame people for not wanting to believe it. But we’ve got to face facts and get this gang of criminals stopped before they undermine any more laws. And undermine any more civil rights of our people, and attack any more countries, and on, and on, and on. So that’s why I’m devoted to this story, because it’s not just a matter of getting to the truth, but it’s a matter of getting to the truth and getting it publicly exposed in time to prevent these criminals from continuing to ravage our country and our planet.

BONNIE FAULKNER: David Ray Griffin, thank you very much.

DR. DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: You’re very welcome, Bonnie.

[Music plays, then fades into the background as Bonnie starts speaking]

BONNIE FAULKNER: I’ve been speaking with author and theologian Dr. David Ray Griffin. Today’s show has been “Explosive Testimony: The 9/11 Oral Histories.” David Ray Griffin has recently written three lengthy articles on the events of September 11, 2001. These articles are posted on the internet at http://www.911truth.org, and other websites. David Ray Griffin retired from the Claremont School of Theology after 31 years as professor of Theology and Philosophy of Religion. He is author of over twenty-five books, including The New Pearl Harbor, and The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions. David Ray Griffin’s books are available online at Amazon.com. Thanks to Todd Fletcher for helping to produce today’s show. Guns and Butter is edited and produced by Yarrow Mahko and me, Bonnie Faulkner. To leave comments, or order copies of this show, call (510) 848-6767 extension 628. Email us at blfaulkner@yahoo.com.

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