We were told that WTC-7 housed the NYC "command center" and fuel storage for back up generators providing uninterruptible power to that failsafe facility and that 47 stories tall, WTC-7 likely collapsed spontaneously around 5:00 PM on 9/11, although it had not been struck by an airliner, due to the intense heat generated by the petroleum storage tanks, and blah, blah, blah.
NIST, the investigating federal agency, early on made the decision not to increase investigative staff despite the fact the collapse of WTC-7 was unprecedented and building code revisions for future steel framed towers depended on pinpointing the cause of the WTC-7 collapse.
I followed the investigation's progress
and information releases for, more than 7 years. In the meantime, towers continued to be designed and built without the input of NIST's WTC-7 investigative results!
NIST Releases Final WTC 7 Investigation Report
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2008/11/nist-releases-final-wtc-7-investigation-reportNov 25, 2008 — The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) last week released its final report on the Sept. 11, 2001, collapse of the ...
Ordinary Heroes: A Memoir Of 9/11 - Page 220 - t
Link: https://books.google.com › booksJoseph Pfeifer · 2021 · Biography & Autobiography
In 2008 , NIST finished its investigation of WTC - 7 , the forty ...
Fueled by ordinary office furnishings , the fire quickly spread to numerous floors .
Former director Mueller and every presidential administration since GW Bush has protected the Saudis instead of opting to make a full disclosure to the American people. Mueller inaccurately stated there was no paper trail and no use of electronic devices like computers by the hijackers.:
https://chicagotribune.com/cachedFBI says hijackers `left no paper trail'
Eric Lichtblau and Josh Meyer. Special to the Tribune. Eric Lichtblau and Josh Meyer are staff writers for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune newspaper
CHICAGO TRIBUNE - May 1, 2002
For more than seven months, U.S. authorities probing the Sept. 11 attacks have scoured everything from caves to credit cards hoping to discover how the 19 hijackers plotted their brazen scheme.
The global search has produced virtually nothing, and authorities concede they may never know many key details of the terrorists' plans.
That sobering conclusion underscores the sophistication of Al Qaeda in concealing its activities. It also shows the daunting difficulties that authorities face in thwarting another attack, officials said.
The hijackers "left no paper trail," FBI Director Robert Mueller said in the text of an April 19 speech the FBI released Monday."In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper--either here in the United States or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere--that mentioned any aspect of the Sept. 11 plot," he said.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials told The Associated Press that investigators no longer believe suicide hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague last spring,
erasing the only reported link between Saddam Hussein's regime and the attacks.
Mueller's remarks offer the FBI's most detailed assessment to date of its investigation. He said that investigators believe the Sept. 11 plan may have been in the works for as long as five years, and that the hijackers used "meticulous planning, extraordinary secrecy and extensive knowledge of how America works" to conceal their scheme after entering the U.S. legally from the Middle East.
Investigators have found no computers, laptops, hard drives or other storage media that may have been used by the hijackers, who hid their communications by using hundreds of different pay phones and cell phones, coupled with hard-to-trace prepaid calling cards.
In executing wire transfers to fund the attacks, they were careful to send money in small amounts, avoiding large transactions that would have triggered a government report, Mueller said.
"The hijackers did all they could to stay below our radar," he observed.
The FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies have come under scrutiny since Sept. 11, and some analysts suggested Mueller's comments, made in a speech in San Francisco , may be an attempt to rationalize the intelligence community's failure to detect signs of an imminent attack.
Law-enforcement officials say they have been able to reconstruct the movements of the hijackers in the months before the attacks--all legal except for a few speeding tickets.
"We have been able to glean quite a bit in tracking their movements, but as far as being able to identify . . . some type of master plan that was shared with a number of people outlining just how they were going to pull this off, that's something we've not been able to uncover," an FBI official said.
The paucity of information "confirms what we have thought for a long time: If there was any doubt about the professionalism of the hijackers, the FBI director's quotes should dispel that," a White House official said.
"If it took . . . years to develop the 9/11 plot, then it is very possible that we are in a similar period right now, where individuals are practicing the same type of operational security in preparation for another attack."
Mueller's assessment of the plot "deepens the sense that these guys [in Al Qaeda] have really taken a quantum leap in their ability to carry out an operation without all the traditional accouterments," said terrorism expert Daniel Benjamin, a former National Security Council aide."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/magazine/9-11-saudi-arabia-fbi.htmlThe Saudi Connection: Inside the 9/11 Case That Divided the F.B.I.
A small team of agents spent years investigating whether one of Washington’s closest allies was involved in the worst terror attack in U.S. history. This is their story.
January 23, 2020
:The full story of the F.B.I.’s investigation into Saudi links to the 9/11 attacks has remained largely untold. Even the code name of the case —
Operation Encore — has never been published before. This account is based on interviews with more than 50 current and former investigators, intelligence officials and witnesses in the case. It also draws on some previously secret documents as well as on the voluminous public files of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission.
The Encore investigation exposed a bitter rift within the bureau over the Saudi connection. It illuminated a series of missed opportunities to resolve questions about links between one of Washington’s closest allies and the deadliest attack in the nation’s history. Richard Lambert, who led the F.B.I.’s initial 9/11 investigation in San Diego, as the assistant special agent in charge there, says he believes that even if the F.B.I.’s evidence of possible Saudi involvement in the case is not conclusive, it is significant enough that it should be fully disclosed. “The circumstantial evidence has mounted,” he says. “Given the lapse of time, I don’t know any reason why the truth should be kept from the American people.”..."
