Video Evidence of Unexplained Explosion in WTC 6  

by Christopher Bollyn 

July 2, 2002

Images of unidentified aircraft and missiles photographed during the attack on the World Trade Center suggest that 9-11 was the "highly planned, covert, special-operation," which some astute observers have claimed from the beginning.

The awful moment when United Airlines Flight 175 smashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center is an event captured on film and videotape from many angles. Among the archive of photographic and video evidence are distinct images of unidentified aircraft and missiles that appear to have played significant roles in the attack. The fact that the leading federal agencies involved in the criminal investigation of 9-11 deny any knowledge of these photographs lends credence to those who maintain the attack was "a domestic, covert, special operation."

Although millions of people have watched on video the horrible spectacle of the second hijacked plane plunging into the smooth facade of the south tower, very few have seen the mysterious white aircraft that accompanied it on a nearby parallel path slightly to the north. While viewers' attention was focused on the crash and subsequent fireball, few noticed the missile streaking toward 6 and WTC 7 at the edge of the screen. The blurred streak that appeared from behind the smoking north tower disappeared in the wink of an eye into the lower right hand corner of the screen.

Frame-by-frame analysis of that video shows what appears to be an incredibly fast streaking missile, headed toward 6 or WTC 7, at the precise moment the plane exploded in the south tower. Six WTC was an 8-story building, which was left with a huge unexplained crater at its center while WTC 7 burned and collapsed late in the afternoon on 9-11, for no apparent reason. Fire engineers are baffled as to what caused the 47-story building, built by Larry Silverstein in 1987, to collapse.

"Even though Building 7 didn't get much attention in the media immediately, within the structural engineering community, it's considered to be much more important to understand," said William F. Baker, a partner in charge of structural engineering at the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. "They say, 'We know what happened at 1 and 2, but why did 7 come down?'"

"EVAPORATED" STEEL BEAMS

Sections of the steel beams in WTC 7 seem to have "evaporated", according to a New York Times article of November 29, 2001. "A combination of an uncontrolled fire and the structural damage might have been able to bring the building down, some engineers said. But that would not explain steel members in the debris pile that appear to have been partly evaporated in extraordinarily high temperatures, Dr. Jonathan Barnett said."

Engineers are investigating whether intensely hot fires resulted from thousands of gallons of diesel fuel stored in the building. While one tank held 6,000 gallons of fuel to power the mayor's command bunker on the 23rd floor, another set of four tanks held as much as 36,000 gallons just below ground level on the building's southwest side for emergency generators.  "The fuel absolutely could be a factor," said Silvian Marcus, executive vice president for the Cantor Seinuk Group and a structural engineer involved in the original design of the building, which was completed in 1987. But he added, "The tanks may have accelerated the collapse, but did not cause the collapse."

Two firefighters, Deputy Chief James Jackson and Battalion Chief Blaich, said that the southwest corner of WTC 7 near the fuel tank was severely damaged and that the tanks might have been breached. Jackson said that about an hour before the building's collapse, heavy black smoke, consistent with a fuel fire of some sort, was coming from that part of the building.

DID A "BUNKER BUSTER" MISSILE HIT WTC 7?

The streaking missile seen in the video could have pierced the heavy masonry that protected the diesel storage tanks. The missile is obviously traveling extremely fast, at an estimated 5,000 feet per second (3,400 mph). The U.S. military has a LOSAT (line-of-sight anti-tank) missile that travels that fast with a range of 4 miles that can be guided by laser or Global Positioning technology. The LOSAT Kinetic Energy Missile uses its velocity rather than explosives to destroy tanks, buildings, and bunkers. No other military is known to have such a missile.

In the WTC video the black streaking object travels an estimated 1,000 feet in the space of 4 frames, each frame taking 1/30 of a second. Although a video might not capture an image of the missile, experts say the rapidly dissipating exhaust of a LOSAT can be captured on film if the lighting, angle and background conditions are suitable.

I asked Matthew Heyman of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the agency investigating the structural collapses at the World Trade Center, if the investigation would examine the photographic evidence of a missile and the crater in 6-WTC. "Yes", Heyman said, but only if evidence of a missile is presented, adding that the 2-year investigation will only study the collapses of the twin towers and WTC 7.

Although numerous images of unidentified aircraft and missiles are accessible in the public archive of WTC video footage and have been scrutinized frame-by-frame by Internet sleuths, federal investigators and the mainstream media pretend to be completely ignorant of their existence. Spokesmen for the federal agencies engaged in the 9-11 investigation all feigned ignorance of the aforementioned video images when contacted by this reporter on July 1, 2002.

When I asked James Margolin, spokesman for the New York City office of the FBI, about the video images of unidentified planes and missiles on Sept. 11, Margolin said, "It's the first I've heard." William Shumann, spokesman for the FAA said, "I'm not aware of any such videos." When asked about the radar tapes that could have recorded such objects, Shumann said, "We're not saying anything." The 9-11 radar tapes from New York City had been turned over to the FBI, Shumann said.

Denial of the existence of these photographs by the federal agencies at the forefront of the 9-11 criminal investigation is troubling because it indicates an inability to respond to evidence that has been in the public domain since September 11. It is incredulous that the FBI and FAA are denying knowledge of photographic evidence, which has been openly published and discussed in the Japanese mass media.

"A DOMESTIC COVERT OPERATION"

The agencies' denial of this evidence supports the unconventional thesis of political observers such as Lyndon LaRouche, who was interviewed by Jack Stockwell of KTKK-AM ("K-Talk") in Salt Lake City as the horror of September 11 unfolded. Before either tower had collapsed, LaRouche said: "Well, largely, this is a domestic covert operation, which we had word of beforehand." Shortly after the south tower collapsed, LaRouche said, "This is obviously a highly planned attack by a very capable agency."  LaRouche rejected that the attacks were "an Islamic national operation" saying they lacked the capability. Instead he blamed "people who want the U.S. to go to war against the Arab world."

"It's a geopolitical provocation!" LaRouche said. "It's run by people whose intentions coincide with those of some of the wildest people in the Israeli Defense Forces. People who have the ability to play that kind of game inside the United States."

"Somebody obviously intended to enrage the U.S. into going in full-force in support of a launching of the Israeli Defense Forces against neighboring Arab nations," he said.

The next day, LaRouche told listeners of Woody Woodland on New Hampshire's WGIR: "This is not a terrorist operation. This is a covert, strategic, special-operations operation, which has characteristic similarities to the militia operation against the Oklahoma City center some years ago."

Woodland asked, "Are you saying that this might have been some people within our own country?"

LaRouche said: "In part, it had to be people within our own country … it was primarily a domestic, covert, special operation, by people with very high-grade military special-operations backgrounds. It could not have happened otherwise."