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9-11 Archive 2006

Who is behind the Attack on Professor Jones?

September 17, 2006

Like a modern-day Galileo or Socrates, the highly respected physicist, who has challenged with logic and scientific evidence the official explanation for the "collapse" of the World Trade Center, has been banned from teaching classes at his university.

On September 7, the third day of the new fall semester at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, Steven E. Jones, professor of physics and 9-11 researcher, was suddenly banned by university authorities from teaching the physics classes he has taught for the past 21 years. Jones was unexpectedly suspended with pay after participating in a radio show in which he had been cunningly lured to comment on a subject outside of his field and asked about the "motivation" of "the Neo-Conservatives" blamed for the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

Jones, a soft-spoken physicist who specializes in metal-catalyzed fusion, archaeometry, and solar energy, joined the 9-11 research effort after being intrigued by the unexplained collapse of the 47-story WTC 7 at 5:25 p.m. on the afternoon of 9-11. Jones scientific interest was sparked after having read reports that molten iron had been found in the rubble of all three collapsed WTC towers, including WTC 7.

As I discovered in the summer of 2002, "literally molten steel" had been found, more than a month after the collapse, at the bases of the collapsed towers, where their load-bearing central support columns connected to the bedrock. "Such persistent and intense residual heat, 70 feet below the surface, could explain how these crucial structural supports failed," I wrote at the time.

Peter Tully, president of Tully Construction of Flushing, New York, told me he had seen pools of "literally molten steel" at the World Trade Center, where his company had removed debris, weeks after the three towers collapsed. Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI) of Phoenix, Maryland, confirmed the presence of molten metal at the site.

"Yes," Loizeaux said, "hot spots of molten steel in the basements." These incredibly hot areas were found "at the bottoms of the elevator shafts of the main towers, down seven [basement] levels," Loizeaux said.

The molten steel was found "three, four, and five weeks later, when the rubble was being removed," he said. Loizeaux also confirmed that molten iron had been found in the rubble of WTC 7, the tower owned by Larry Silverstein which was neither hit by an airplane nor severely damaged, but which collapsed mysteriously in the late afternoon of 9-11.

In 2005, Jones began investigating the collapse of WTC 7 and the large amounts of molten iron seen falling from the burning South Tower. These two subjects remain completely unexplained in the official literature on 9-11.

"The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time," the FEMA-sponsored WTC Building Performance Study of 2002 concluded. "Although the total diesel fuel on the premises contained massive potential energy, the best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence," it said. The way that the building collapsed within its own footprint suggested that it was an "internal collapse," the report said. The long awaited NIST report on the collapse of WTC 7 is supposed to be released next year.

BYU ANALYSIS OF MOLTEN METAL

The question of what caused the 47 load-bearing central columns of the twin towers to fall has been a fundamental question about the unexplained collapses of the WTC towers. The fire-induced collapse scenario does not explain why these crucial internal box columns would have failed.

Last summer, after obtaining pieces of the hardened molten fragments from the WTC, Jones and other scientists at BYU conducted extensive laboratory tests and found that the molten metal was primarily composed of iron with slight traces of structural steel. From the physical and photographic evidence Jones concluded that Thermite, or a similar aluminothermic process, was used to slice the central core columns and bring down the twin towers.

Jones, along with 2 other physicists and a geologist at BYU, conducted Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) and Electron Microprobe analyses on the samples. The previously molten metal samples were predominately iron, with very little chromium, Jones said, along with uncommon chemical elements in abundance such as fluorine and manganese. Aluminum and sulfur were also present, which he said would be expected from thermate reactions. Thermate is Thermite, granulated or powdered aluminum and ferrous oxide, with 2 percent sulfur added to the mixture to increase the steel-cutting effectiveness of the reaction.

"The results," Jones says in a presentation he recently gave at Idaho State University, "coupled with visual evidence at the scene such as the flowing yellow-hot liquid metal still red after falling about 500 feet, provide compelling evidence that Thermite reaction compounds (aluminothermics) were used, meaning Thermite was deliberately placed in both WTC Towers and WTC 7."

THE RADIO TRAP

On September 5, Doug Fabrizio, executive producer of RadioWest on the University of Utah's public radio station (NPR) invited Jones to come on his one-hour program to discuss his 9-11 research. Before Jones could even discuss his research, however, Fabrizio was aggressively quizzing him on the "Neo-Conservative motivation" for the attacks, and repeatedly pressed him to comment on a subject far outside his field -- to explain who within the government could have been involved in the attacks if not 19 Arab hijackers with box cutters.

Because Jones is a physicist and is not engaged in the political background of "false flag" terrorism attacks, he reluctantly responded to Fabrizio's question by citing the author Webster Tarpley's analysis that individuals such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, who are linked to the "international banking cartel," have been named, by Tarpley, as possible suspects.

Jones was careful to say that these were not his ideas, but Tarpley's, and that these were possible suspects that Tarpley had named. Jones is generally reluctant to discuss the political implications of his findings, and his comments about Wolfowitz and Perle on the radio program created quite a "buzz on campus," the Deseret Morning News reported.

After interviewing Jones for a brief 20 minutes, Fabrizio said goodbye to Jones and turned the remainder of the hour over to a discussion of conspiracy theories with two Jewish professors, a Robert Goldberg from the University of Utah and Gary Fine from Northwestern. The first caller was a William Tumpowsky, chairman of the Jewish Community Relations Council and board member of the local Israeli-fund raising organization, the United Jewish Federation. Tumpowsky charged that Jones' was using code language to make anti-Semitic allegations. Goldberg supported this accusation.

Starting from this outrageous allegation, Fabrizio continued the hostile discussion with Goldberg and Fine, with frequent allegations that the now-absent physics professor was nothing more than an anti-Semite indulging in conspiracy fantasies. The most significant evidence brought forth by Jones' research was not even discussed.

Within two days, the authorities at BYU apparently caved to organized Jewish pressure and put Jones on paid leave. Students who had already begun their fall physics courses with Jones will be taught by other faculty members for the rest of the semester as university administrators review his statements and research. Repeated calls to BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins about the banning of Jones from the classroom were not returned. Jenkins has not responded any of my questions left with BYU's communications office.

"I'm not sure we did it the right way," Fabrizio said after he accepted responsibility for the radio program that sparked the sacking of Jones.

Asked why he had pressed Jones to make a statement about who was behind the attacks, Fabrizio said, "I was interested in what motivated the science." This is, however, a less than honest answer because Jones has always stressed in his presentations that it is the unexplained collapse of WTC 7 and the presence of molten iron in the rubble that motivate his investigation.

The American Association of University Professors criticized BYU's decision to place Jones on paid leave for his comments on the radio program. AAUP general secretary Roger Bowen called BYU's decision "distressing" and said Jones shouldn't be removed from teaching classes for statements made outside the classroom. "Academic freedom also protects extramural utterances, that is, statements made by faculty outside the classroom when they speak as citizens," Bowen told the Deseret Morning News. "It's very clear there never should be official retribution for faculty who exercise their rights as citizens, with the very careful disclaimer they are not speaking on behalf of the university."

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education joined the criticism of the BYU decision against Jones. "BYU is literally the example we use of a university that does not promise strong free speech or academic freedom protections," FIRE president Greg Lukianoff said.

Photo: Christopher Bollyn and Professor Steven E. Jones discussing the molten metal seen cascading from the 81st floor of WTC 2 and found under the rubble of all three "collapsed" towers of the World Trade Center. The bag in front of Bollyn contains samples taken from the molten metal found at the WTC site. These samples are primarily molten iron, the end product of the Thermite reaction along with aluminum oxide and tremendous heat release. "The data doesn't lie," Jones said. "I have to speak the truth the best I know it -- as a scientist I feel the responsibility to speak out."