Who is behind the Attack on Professor Jones?
17 September 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."