Episode Transcript:

[Donald Trump interview soundbite]

This is Donald Trump, long before he became President Trump, and he’s stating a belief that planes alone couldn’t of possibly taken down the twin towers. Now, this was from an interview on sept 11, 2001 just a few hours after the attack...but my question is, does he still believe that? Today? As President?

Actually, you know what, let me start a little earlier.

So growing up I always set two alarms, one that went off an hour before I actually needed to get up, and one that went off at the exact second that I needed to get out of bed. I’m lazy and for some reason I liked waking up early knowing that I still had time to sleep.

I set those alarms on a clock radio, so when they triggered, there was no buzzing/beeping noise, it’d actually play this alternative rock music station. So in September of 2001 I might wake up to something like ‘Fat Lip’ by Sum 41 or ‘Smooth Criminal’ by Alien Ant Farm. Both songs, of which, have not aged well with time.

But on this day...that first alarm didn’t play any music.

[soundbite of live news coverage]

It sounded like some sort of live news report, my half sleepy brain didn’t really piece together what was happening. For some reason Columbine came to mind, I thought maybe there was another school shooting and people were fleeing a building or something.

I turned the first alarm off and went back to sleep for another hour...Then the second alarm went off. And again, no music.

[soundbite of live news coverage]

They have been talking about this, whatever ‘this’ was, for over an hour, something major must of happened I thought; every radio station was broadcasting this event. I rolled out of bed and exited my Utah State University dorm room and headed to the bathroom shower.

On the way, I noticed that my neighbor had his door open (he was one of the few guys with a tv in his dorm); I saw images of a big city. He said that a plane had crashed into one of the buildings in New York City.

That’s crazy! I said to him.

At this point, I’m thinking that this tragedy was some sort of accident. Like maybe the plane(s) were coming into the NYC airport and somehow got too low.

When I arrived at class, my professor said that the plane crashes in NYC were apart of a terrorist attack, he talked for a few moments about the details that were known at that point, and then said that he had thought about canceling class but didn’t want the terrorists to have any further disruptive victory over the US, so we continued with class as normal.

This seemed like a BIG DEAL, but for some reason, I felt very disconnected and not very affected by it. I don’t know if it’s because it happened a week or two after my 18th birthday, during my freshmen year of college and I was just a dumb naive teenager.

Or if had been because that I had just never been to New York City before. I didn’t know anyone that lived there. So these events seemed to transpire in some distant and far removed land.

But as the days and years followed, I began to more fully understand the magnitude of what had happened that morning. And just because I was one of the lucky ones that did not have family members or friends hurt or killed that day; the consequences of this event would come to affect the majority of the people on earth.

And I don’t just mean in ways like the formation of the TSA, and the body and luggage searching procedures that are now common in airports.

I mean it in some deeper sense.

In Oliver Stone’s docu-series ‘The Untold History of the United States’ he calls the period of time after 9/11 the ‘Age of Terrorism’. And that about sums it up, this event ushered in a very different world than the one previous to it.

It’s kinda caused everything from the demonization of muslims (which is like 23% of worlds population) to perpetual war in the middle east. Warring that is costly, not only in lost American soldiers lives, but also in spending money we don’t have to sustain it. The national debt doubled under President George W Bush and doubled again under President Barack Obama.

[Soundbite - ‘National debt just hit 20 trillion, roughly $60k per american man, woman, child’]

9/11 prompted the passing of the Patriot Act (just 45 days after the attack) which lead to creation and expansion of US mass surveillance programs, that have in turn been pointed towards the privacy of it’s own citizens.

Nowadays there just seems to be a lot of individual liberties sacrificed...all in the name of security. In the name of stopping any event like this from happening in the future.

And maybe these measures have worked, because we really haven’t ever seen such a sophisticated attack on American soil since.

But is it really that we’ve done a good job of stopping attacks like this, or did this attack accomplish the attack designers desired results?

The orchestrators of 9/11 were no doubt, evil, but they probably were of high IQ also, which has always left me a little puzzled.

I mean, any smart person would have to of known that attacking the United States in a way that was on par with the Pearl Harbor attack would result in some very serious consequences.

In the case of Pearl Harbor, we dropped A-Bombs on Japan...Atom Bombs!

So if the 9/11 terrorists goal was to get the US to stay out of the affairs of the middle east, this attack they planned could arguably be the worst possible way to accomplish that, as it had the exact opposite effect.

Which makes me wonder, the attackers had to of foreseen a retaliation. Did they take steps to help ensure that a retaliation would be misdirected to the wrong places and people?

That’s the thing about 9/11, the more I study it, the more questions it seems to generate in my mind.

But let’s review the events of that important day almost 16 years ago.

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, 4 planes took off from the east coast, headed for the west coast.

American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767, leaving Boston for Los Angeles, was hijacked a few minutes after take off, it was re-piloted and re-directed to New York City. It was crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, that’s building 1, at 8:46am eastern time.

There’s a lot I don’t understand about the mentality of suicide terrorism, but back then it must of really come as a surprise to the 90 or so people on board that the hijackers intended to die with everyone else.

Maybe they thought that the hijackers would use the plane and it’s passengers to ransom money from the US government and that the hijackers would then parachute off the plane and that they would be ok afterwards.

The second plane was United Airlines Flight 175, and like American Airlines Flight 11, it was also a Boeing 767, leaving Boston for Los Angeles, and it was hijacked and re-piloted towards New York City, where it crashed into the South Tower (building #2) of the World Trade Center at 9:03am (about 17 minutes after the north tower was hit).

The third plane was American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757, a slightly smaller plane than the 767 used against the twin towers. It was leaving Dulles airport in Virginia, headed to Los Angeles. It was hijacked and re-piloted to the pentagon, where at 9:37am it struck the west side of the pentagon, killing all plane passengers and 125 people in the pentagon.

Normal passenger planes had literally became weaponized birds, preying on those below. So at 9:42am the FAA (the federal aviation administration) ordered the grounding of all US civilian aircraft, and redirected international flights away from the states, banning US landings for 3 days.

At 9:59am the 110  story World Trade Center Building #2, about 56 minutes after plane impact, completely collapsed.

The fourth plane was United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757, leaving Newark New Jersey in route for San Francisico. It was hijacked and re-routed in the direction of Washington DC. News of the suicide attacks in New York and the Pentagon, however, reached those on board of this flight, and there was some sort of passenger uprising to regain control of the plane that lead to it being crashed at 10:03 in Somerset County Pennslavania, kinda in the middle of nowhere. It’s presumed that this plane’s intended target was either the White House or the Capitol Building.

At 10:28am the 110 story World Trade Center Building #1, about 102 minutes after plane impact, completely collapsed.

The amount of destruction, death (almost 3,000 American lives lost), chaos and confusion that was unleashed in just the matter of a couple hours, is unreal.

I literally can’t imagine being in Manhattan when it happened, it had to of been scary as all hell.

A lot of confusion and questions about motivation and involvement that existed that morning have lingered in the minds of many to this day.

In fact, there are so many conspiracy theories that fingers are pointed just about every which way.

For example, there’s a theory that points the finger at key players in the oil industry. Subscribers of this theory believe that the attack was used to ‘fuel’ (no pun intended) a war in the middle east that would allow oil companies to build military bases in key pipeline areas to better secure and control the flow of oil from this region.

There’s a theory that points the finger at the Department of Defense, who was involved in the second biggest news story of the 9/11 week. This recording is Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia questioning Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Monday September 10th 2001 (one day before the attack) about money that had gone missing and unaccounted for within the DOD. Not a trivial amount either, 2.3 Trillion, that’s a ton of money today and back in 2001 when the national debt floated at about 5T, it was an even bigger deal.

There’s another theory that points the finger at a man named Larry Silverstein. Never heard of him? I hadn’t either. His company is called Silverstein Properties, which bought the twin towers in July 2001. And when the towers went down, their insurance policy which covered acts of terrorism like this, paid out A LOT of money. They literally profited billions in process.

Larry, who actually worked inside the Trade Center, was not there on the morning of the attack, he was at a doctor’s appointment, neither were his son and daughter that worked in building, both were caught in two separate traffic jams.

Some of these strange coincidences just seem to create endless amounts of rabbit holes.

But here’s the thing, I don’t believe in any of these theories. I am undecided on who the main culprits were. Part of me really wants to believe that it was just Bin Laden and his cronies. But part of me has been thinking more and more that Laden kinda feels like a front man, a fall guy, an oswald, someone that could become a boogeyman that we chase for 10 years, only to have a secretive military operation kill him and dump his body in the ocean.

[soundbite of Obama announcing the Bin Laden mission success]

There is something interesting though, there’s basically one thing that all these separate conspiracy theories agree on. I’m not kidding, almost every finger pointing conspiracy theory out there seems to agree on one thing.

And it’s that the buildings could not of been brought down by the planes alone. This is interesting, because, even if it’s true, that there was some other means that helped bring down the towers, be it explosives or whatever, it doesn’t really help prove that they are pointing the fingers at the right people.

If Bin Laden was responsible for the planes, then he could've also been responsible for any explosives in the building, and the same applies for any person or group one might think is the responsible party of the attack.

It doesn’t seem to help build anyones case in getting to the bottom of anything, it only seems to create more questions. So why do so many conspiracy theories seem to make mention and agree on this point.

There are a handful of reasons why people believe that planes alone couldn’t of brought down these towers.

One reason is that since the attack, a number of architects have come out and said that the buildings interlocking steel mesh design should of been able to withstand a few plane hits like this without falling.

Another reason is that there were some physicists that pointed out the fact that the buildings drop at near freefall speed, almost as if none of the below floors are providing any resistance whatsoever, something that you only really see in controlled demolitions.

Steel was also found in the wreckage smeltering, which basically means it was melting, and it has to be really flipping hot for that to happen, about 2,700 degree fahrenheit. For context, jet fuel, like the fuel that would of been in the crashed planes can burn at around 1,500 degrees fahrenheit. Now, 1,500 degrees is really hot, in fact, in my research, I came across youtube videos where guys heat steel to the 1,500-1,800 range and they can fairly easily bend the steel. But to full on melt it, you need that additional 1,000 degrees of heat.

And probably the biggest reason for people not believing that planes alone brought down the towers is because at 5:21pm on September 11th 2001, the almost 50 story tall World Trade Center Building #7, located about a block away from the twin towers, completely collapsed, in same fashion as the twin towers.

Here’s Rosie O’Donnell back in 2007 actually talking about this point on The View.

[soundbite from The View]

Interestingly enough, the government commissioned 9/11 report doesn’t mention this building. I’m guessing because it wasn’t actually physically struck by one of the hijacked planes. But still, seems strange, considering it was a pretty big building that contained offices for a wide range of entities, from the CIA to the IRS.

The general consensus among non-conspiracy theorists is that because of it’s close proximity to the twin towers, burning debris from the taller buildings rained down and caught building 7 on fire, and that fire structurally weakened it to the point of collapse. Which, if true, like Rosie O’Donnell said, makes it the first and only steel framed building to ever collapse due to a burning office fire.

I know I’m breezing through A LOT of information here, most of this is covered in greater detail in future episodes, don’t worry.

This idea, this notion, that in addition to the plane crashes, these buildings had to of been wired for demolition, is the only part of the many conspiracy theories out there that I think even comes close to holding water.

And maybe if I can think through the logistics of how someone would of pulled this off, what explosive material they might of used and how they acquired it, [thermite traces soundbyte], where they would of needed to place those materials within the building, how they might of tricked building security in order to gain access to the towers.

[soundbite of Marvin Bush being an executive Securacom (Stratesec)]

If I can start to answer these questions, maybe I can reveal more guilty party finger prints on this terrorist attack.

But it’s also possible, that by so doing this exercise I may just learn how impossible and unrealistic this ‘couldn’t happen by planes alone’ theory is and it can just be put to rest.

[Ghoti Hook - ‘Where is my mind?’ starts playing]

You’re listening to the podcast Pillars of Smoke.

I’m you’re host Neal Schmidt.

And I’m going to figure out how to blow up the trade towers.

Thanks for listening everyone, episodes for this podcast come out every few weeks.

So if you enjoyed this particular episode, be sure to click subscribe to stay up-to-date.

And I got a question, Is it too early to ask you to leave a review on iTunes? It’s too soon isn’t it? That’s like telling a girl on your first date that you love her or something. Ok, I won’t solicit the review yet, but for the record, I don’t care that it’s our first episode together, I love you guys.

Oh and every off week in between official episodes I’ll be releasing some bonus content, next week's is a compilation of ‘Where were you on 9/11?’ stories. At the beginning of this episode I shared mine, and now I want to hear YOURS. If you were born before 1995, more than likely, you very much remember that day, so if you’re interested in having your story shared here, just email me at [email protected]

I got to be honest, when I decided to do this podcast, it felt like a daunting amount of work to undertake. But luckily, the task of picking up the domain name for the website was one thing that was super fast and easy! So a special shout out and thanks to 1and1.com. Who helped me register the URL PillarsOfSmoke.com. If you have a website name you want to reserve, be sure to check out 1and1.com where you can get your first domain name for just $1. So the next time you’re thinking about whether to buy that Dollar Menu McDouble from McDonald's, just save the calories and buy a domain name.