World Trade Center, Building 7

Smoke from internal fires pours out of Building 7 after the North Tower collapsed next to it

September 11 is mostly known for the damage to the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. However, there were other damaged buildings, one of which was Building 7 of the WTC complex, directly across the street from the North Tower.

This building was not hit directly. It was instead damaged by debris from collapse of the North Tower. This ignited several fires which burned out of control because the damage to the other buildings had reduced the water pressure, rendering the building sprinklers ineffective.

The main towers collapsed at 9:59 a.m. and 10:28 a.m. After being damaged, the fires in Building 7 continued for another seven hours, until it finally collapsed at 5:20 p.m. No one was killed or injured because the building had been vacated by the time it collapsed.

(Evacuation of Building 7 would have started immediately after the North Tower was hit at 8:46. Building 7 didn’t sustain any damage until almost two hours later when the North Tower collapsed, leaving ample time for evacuation.)

The primary conspiracy theory says that Building 7 did not collapse due to damage, but instead it was a controlled detonation – meaning, it was rigged with explosives and a human intentionally set them off to bring the building down.

This directly leads to a secondary conspiracy, which is much more sinister – this controlled demolition was timed to appear to be from damage to the Twin Towers, which could only mean that the entire 9/11 plot was known in advance, and no one did anything to stop it.

These theories entirely rest on why people think that Building 7 was a controlled demolition. The primary reasons for that appear to be because:

1. It was not directly impacted by a plane
2. It collapsed straight down, very similary to a controlled demolition

However, these two facts are quite explainable.

1. Building 7 was heavily damaged by debris when the North Tower collapsed, starting several fires. This can be clearly scene in the picture above, and in footage from 9/11.
2. The fires burned out of control for at least seven hours. The heat from the fires eventually buckled a main support column, which lead to a cascading failure which brought the building straight down in a matter of seconds.

This basic information was confirmed in a 2002 report from the Federal Emergency Management Administration and a 2008 report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

So, why do people want to believe otherwise?

Aside from the standard reasons for people want to believe conspiracies, Building 7 contained offices belonging to:

• The Department of Defense
• The Central Intelligence Agency
• The United States Secret Service

It’s not surprising that these agencies would have offices in Lower Manhattan. However, notably, the CIA office was not known to the public. It was a secret office, and its existence wasn’t revealed until after several months after the attacks (the CIA had larger, public offices in another building).

So, the main conspiracy goes like this:

The 9/11 attacks were known in advance, and planned from this secret CIA office, so the building had to be destroyed to get rid of the evidence.

Clearly, this stretches credibility quite far.

• Why would they need to plan the attacks from right next door?

• Why depend on the complete destruction of a building to destroy evidence when it would be more effective to do this by other methods? The CIA started combing the debris pile for sensitive intelligence almost immediately, so clearly destroying the building was an inefficient means of eliminating evidence.

• Why risk exposing the office at all by drawing attention to the building? Indeed, the CIA office was successfully kept secret until being revealed precisely because the building collapsed.

• Why rig the building with explosives then wait seven hours after the other two buildings came down to detonate them? It wasn’t to minimize casualties, since if the 9/11 plot was known in advance, the plotter was fine with thousands of people dying in the Twin Towers.

• How could the building be rigged for a controlled demolition without anyone knowing about it? This is a very invasive process. Not only does the entire building have to very cleary packed with explosives, the buildings are stripped, and key support columns are often pre-weakened. Consider that less precise explosions don’t tend to bring buildings down – the Oklahoma City Federal Building, the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, etc. Additionally, a demolition big enough to bring Building 7 down would almost certainly be visible and audible from the outside.

Of course, no one who wants to believe otherwise will consider any of this information credible, but that’s the nature of conspiracy theories.

Why I Looked It Up

I was discussing it with a friend. I decided to look into it to clear up holes in my own knowledge.