Friday, February 13, 2009

The Day The Real Truth Movement Died?

I hadn't talked about the plane crash in Buffalo here because it's not terribly relevant. Yes, Beverly Eckert, the wife of one of the men who died in the WTC was killed. A sad coincidence, but it's the Troof brigade that highlight coincidences in an effort to play the "what are the odds" game.

But then I read this post over at 9-11 Truth.org by Nick Levis and I realized that Beverly Eckert was what the Truth Movement should have been and claims to be. She asked questions and demanded answers. And she listened to them and learned.

Because the collapse of the Twin Towers was what killed her husband, she studied up on building materials and methods.

Q. There are still questions about how the buildings fell. One thing that went unnoticed is that the firefighters, Fire Engineering magazine was protesting that there wasn't an adequate reconstruction of the affected areas of the building to actually figure what the cause of the collapse was.

Well, of course the evidence was disseminated, I mean they sent the steel away, and by the time people realized what was being done - that (Ground Zero) was being treated like a recycling of garbage - (then) they tried to salvage some pieces and look at them and look at the steel, look at the construction, the fireproofing, evidence of lack of fireproofing and all of those things. You know the structure itself, the open truss is something that's never been endorsed by the city of New York, there's no other building that's made of that construction because it's inherently less resistant to fire...

The floors were supported by something that's called open truss, long pieces in N-shapes and they're thin. They're very hard to cover with fireproofing, you have to spray it on but there's all these angles, so many angles you can't get it on and one tiny weak spot - if you have a sixty-foot support beam, any spot that's weak makes the whole thing vulnerable. Very hard to apply fireproofing to it and once the fireproofing isn't there, it goes, like that. Very short period of time. I mean wood is stronger than steel truss. In a fire it will last longer, it is more fire resistant. And never before had they used 60-foot spans. When I was at the public hearing, a representative from the organization that makes these steel trusses was there protesting, and she said a couple of things that I thought were interesting. For one thing, it's not supposed to be used in 60- foot spans, it's used in shorter spans. And second, they made their own composites (for the WTC buildings) so who knows what was actually constructed of it. The Port Authority determined what the consistency of these trusses was going to be.

It fell like a house of cards. When did you see a building do that, unless it was being intentionally demolished? I heard the floor fall beneath my husband. I'm not going to rest until the people responsible acknowledge what they built and how deficient it was and that it caused death, it caused misery. And that they will never do it again, that somehow they're stopped. So Skyscraper Safety was started by two remarkable women, Sally Regenhard and Monica Gabrielle. They've got to the point now where there was a building code task force by Mayor Bloomberg and they've got recommendations, and there's also an incredible lawsuit with Sally and Monica to try to get the Port Authority to be subject to building codes. And that's all they can do. Another lawsuit.


Now that comes awfully close to sounding Trutherish, but it doesn't quite go over the line. And as a result, it has real power; it's not kooky. It's not nano-thermite, it's not "where are the 110 floors?" it's not "freefall speed".

She did not take the offered settlement, because as she wrote at the time, her silence could not be bought.

I've chosen to go to court rather than accept a payoff from the 9/11 victims compensation fund. Instead, I want to know what went so wrong with our intelligence and security systems that a band of religious fanatics was able to turn four U.S passenger jets into an enemy force, attack our cities and kill 3,000 civilians with terrifying ease. I want to know why two 110-story skyscrapers collapsed in less than two hours and why escape and rescue options were so limited.

I am suing because unlike other investigative avenues, including congressional hearings and the 9/11 commission, my lawsuit requires all testimony be given under oath and fully uses powers to compel evidence.

The victims fund was not created in a spirit of compassion. Rather, it was a tacit acknowledgement by Congress that it tampered with our civil justice system in an unprecedented way. Lawmakers capped the liability of the airlines at the behest of lobbyists who descended on Washington while the Sept. 11 fires still smoldered.

And this liability cap protects not just the airlines, but also World Trade Center builders, safety engineers and other defendants.

The caps on liability have consequences for those who want to sue to shed light on the mistakes of 9/11. It means the playing field is tilted steeply in favor of those who need to be held accountable. With the financial consequences other than insurance proceeds removed, there is no incentive for those whose negligence contributed to the death toll to acknowledge their failings or implement reforms. They can afford to deny culpability and play a waiting game.


And:

Q. You are involved in a lawsuit against Saudi Arabian elite defendants.

And the terrorists themselves. I certainly have not lost sight of who plotted to do this and why.

Q. Can you tell us about the lawsuit? Who are the defendants, who are the plaintiffs?

It's not the Saudi government per se. It's individuals, and from other governments as well. We call it the Saudi lawsuit, it's an overall umbrella, but there are many defendants and the idea behind it is that you can stop terrorism in different ways, and one of them is that if you take away the money, then they can't operate. They need money to come here and to live and do all kinds of things. They (the Sept. 11 hijackers) had hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions at their disposal. This lawsuit, "lawsuit to bankrupt terrorism" is how it's known among the family members. That's our goal, to stop terrorism in a very practical way. Instead of dealing with ideologies, which is very difficult to change, you can certainly stop somebody from doing something defensively, aggressively, militarily. But you can also stop it economically, by depriving them of their funds. So it's following the money trail. We do know, it's accepted now, that there were Islamic charities that contributed to terrorist organizations. And it's the responsibility of people who contribute to those charities and it's the responsibility of people who disseminate the money certainly, that it's being used for proper purposes. I hope that this lawsuit brings to light all of those avenues.


Yes, I can see things in the article that I disagree with (although much of her words come from 4-5 years ago). But if Beverly Eckert was running the Truth Movement I'd be on her side on quite a few issues.