““
Laura Pressley, a candidate for the Austin City Council with a doctorate in chemistry, said she thinks a
scientific study proves demolition materials were waiting in the Twin Towers when two jets struck on
9/11.
She hasn’t said Uncle Sam put the materials there.
In a Nov. 10, 2014,
interview with us, Pressley said she recognized the techniques used in a 2009 study from her own laboratory experience and believed researchers found a high-tech substance used to melt steel in the dust of the
collapsed towers.
"My sandbox is chemistry--analyzing the paper--and this (paper) strongly suggests there was explosive material in the debris," Pressley said. "I don't know what happened, I don't know how the explosive material got there; I just know it's there."
The paper Pressley cited was co-authored by a prominent
advocateof the widely-disputed idea that a controlled demolition took downthe two 110-story towers after the planes struck. Physicist
Steven Jones, a retired Brigham Young University professor, has discussed controlled demolition on
MSNBC and was quoted in September 2006 news reports about 9/11 conspiracy theories in
The Washington Post and the
New York Times.
The controlled demolition idea is a mainstay for a bloc of people in America
and abroad who question federal reports on the cause of the towers’ collapse, including the group
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth and TV/radio commentator
Alex Jones.
According to a September 2001
Times news story, experts shortly acknowledged the collapse resembled a controlled demolition. Yet that story also said engineers believed the crash of the jets and intense heat generated from thousands of gallons of burning jet fuel weakened the buildings' steel framework, causing upper floors to collapse and beginning an unstoppable chain reaction borne along by gravity.
Was it all an inside job?
According to an October 2006
news story in
The Denver Post, Jones acknowledged that only people inside or well connected to the federal government could have rigged the Twin Towers with thermite. That year, meantime, the
New York Times reported over a third of Americans believed their government had a hand in 9/11, "and 16 percent said the destruction of the trade center was aided by explosives hidden in the buildings."
We asked Pressley how she thought explosives got into the World Trade Center.
She said: "I think we ought to ask that question. I’m going to ask a lot of questions."
By email, Krawisz, the panelist at the 2012 event, told us he never heard Pressley allege governmental collusion in the disaster. "She believed that there was nanothermite found in the wreckage of the twin towers and that this may be related to the real reason the towers collapsed," he said. "In a later discussion I had with her, she did not commit to any reason that the thermite would have been there."
By phone, Jones told us he called for the 2009 thermite study after getting World Trade Center dust from
Janette MacKinlay, whose Manhattan flat was inundated with debris when the towers collapsed. Jones said the dust was studied in a BYU lab. He said the research team submitted the paper to the Bentham journal because they wanted it to be accessible for free and Bentham would publish 25 pages with color photos.
Reports by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in
2002and NIST in
2005 said burning jet fuel melted the towers’ steel structure after the crashing jets dislodged fire-proofing, a few floors collapsed and the buildings’ tops crushed the floors beneath them as they fell.
Jones told us the institute has not responded to his declared discovery of thermite in the towers’ debris, though he said he’s been asking them to engage for five years.
The NIST says on its website it did not test for thermite in World Trade Center debris.
A 2012 independent
analysis conducted by a Georgia private science consulting group contested the 2009 study. It found particles similar to those described as nanothermite and determined they were paint.
Jones told us by phone he believes the 2012 analysis studied different material than his team had, citing differences in the chemical composition of each study’s samples. He also has published a
rebuttal of the 2012 report.
Pressley told us more scientists should review the study by Jones and others
"When the data comes out that there was an explosive found in the debris (of the World Trade Center), we ought to ask more questions," she said.””
Laura Pressley, a candidate for the Austin City Council with a doctorate in chemistry, said she thinks a scientific stud
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