Mr O Keefe,
Congratulations ! A wonderful summation . I lived in Greenwich Village then. Meer blocks from “Ground Zero”. I was doing business in Atlanta GA that day so I only saw it on television. As a boy , my father had sent me to West Point. I became a Military Intelligence Officer and was in charge of Strategic Intelligence Analysis for Gen Westmorland in Saigon. That, and being a Graduate Engineer gives me a unique perspective on the events of 9-11. I am now a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and try to explain it to others.
(I have sent your site to them all)
By chance, I had also walked the grounds below Mt St Helens after if had blown. I therefore recognized the white ash on the grounds all around Ground Zero as like Volcanic Ash! This could be explained by Dr Judy’s term, “Cold Fusion” that , rather than exploding all of the heavy building materials into heavy chunks that would go into the basement , they were able to turn them all to Ash…like a Volcano.
To further understand the significance of this , you would need to know, as I did living there, that the “Trade Center Towers” provided a curved harbor for the owner’s yacht’s at the base.This curved wall of the Basement held back the Hudson River and Atlantic Ocean. On the other side of the Basement Wall was the underground parking, and the Subway System, the tunnels of which crisscrosse the Island of Manhattan underground.
So , given that Silverstein and Cheney wanted the insurance money to re-build the Towers as a real estate investment, the last thing they wanted was for that wall to be cracked by explosion or simply the weight of the “heavy chunks” of the building mass which would do so. Such a crack would allow the Atlantic Ocean to blast through the Subway System and blow open every Man Hole Cover in Manhattan! (Which would have been just what the Muslim Terrorists WOULD have wanted!!)
So an incredible amount of long-term and multi-faceted planning and engineering required for all this is a given! (Nothing done in a cave by Osama Bin Laden) !