People Could Have Planted Bombs In the World Trade Center Without Anyone Noticing

Preface: This essay does not argue that bombs brought down the Twin Towers or World Trade Building 7. It simply addresses the often-made argument that no one could have planted explosives without people noticing.

Tightrope walker Philippe Petit snuck into the World Trade Center with a friend in 1974 with massive amounts of equipment, smuggled the equipment to the top floor and rigged up a highwire for his tightrope walking stunt without being detected.

In 1978, the 59-story story Citicorp building was secretly retrofitted at night over the course of several months without the knowledge of tenants, the general public, or the media:

In 2009, Raw Story noted:

A Government Accountability Office investigator smuggled live bomb components into a federal building in just 27 seconds, then assembled a bomb in a restroom and ventured throughout the building without being detected, a leaked tape revealed Wednesday.

In addition, congressional investigators were able to penetrate every single federal building they probed without any difficulty — 10 in all.

And see this.

In fact, there is additional evidence that bombs could have been planted in the World Trade Center without anyone knowing:

• Bomb-sniffing dogs were inexplicably removed from the Twin Towers five days before 9-11
  

• The Twin Towers had been evacuated a number of times in the weeks preceding 9/11

• There was a power down in the Twin Towers on the weekend before 9/11, security cameras were shut down, and many workers ran around busily doing things unobserved (confirmed here)

• A tenant of the World Trade Center hired a "sprinkler repairman" shortly before 9/11, and gave him access to 6 underground levels at World Trade Center building 1

• And -- as an interesting coincidence -- a Bush-linked company ran security at the trade centers, thus giving it free reign to the buildings

The chief electrical engineer who wired the World Trade Centers (Richard Humenn) says that people working on the elevators could have planted explosives:

Mechanical engineer Gordon Ross, in his talk on the destruction of the Twin Towers, pointed out that:

“Those [core] columns which were situated adjacent to and accessible from inside the elevator shafts failed at an early stage of the collapse.

Those columns which were remote from the elevator shafts, and not accessible from the elevator shafts, survived the early stages of the collapse."*

Indeed, a top demolition expert says that with access to the elevator shaft, a team of loading experts would have access to the columns and beams:


According to USA Today: "On Sept. 11, ACE Elevator of Palisades Park, N.J., had 80 elevator mechanics inside the World Trade Center".

And NIST itself says that, on 9/11, "Elevators 6A and 7A were out of service for modernization". (NIST NCSTAR 1-8, p.97).

In addition, Ace worked in and around structural steel:

A run of approximately 80 vertical feet, employed over 300 running feet of 2-1/2" x 8" and 2"x 2" trough raceway. This run traveled through plaster ceilings, concrete floors and around structural steel.

Indeed, there had been numerous elevator renovation and and asbestos removal projects in the 6 years prior to 9/11 which allowed access to core building structures, including:

• 1995

• 1997

• 1998

• 1998
  

• 2000

These are just a few of the known, public examples of opportunities to plant bombs. There were undoubtedly many additional opportunities available to skilled operatives.

And as experts such as one of the world's top structural engineers - Hugo Bachmann, Professor Emeritus and former Chairman of the Department of Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - notes, there could have been tenants of the World Trade Centers who planted bombs in their own, rented space, before moving out and vacating their office spaces.