Murphy's Law and 9/11

Murphy's Law & 911

Exclusive to Rense.com
By Douglas Herman
douglasherman7@yahoo.com
11-13-5

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

As a testimony to a couple of legendary but fictional detectives, I once wrote a pair of Internet essays called "Detective Columbo Asks: Was 911 An Inside Job?" and another entitled, "Sherlock Holmes & 911...The ULTIMATE Unsolved Mystery." Just imagine the conversation detective Columbo might have had with Watson and Holmes, as that trio stared at the pile of wreckage in the weeks after 911.

As one of the more iconoclastic writers on the Internet, I get a lot of intelligent emails contesting my viewpoints. Recently a man named Jay emailed me in reference to 911 and said I didn't know the laws of physics. He said I didn't know what I was talking about, didn't know metallurgy, didn't know mathematics.

I have to admit Jay was more than a little correct. I scarcely know the difference between Newton's Three Laws of Motion and Murphy's Law. So I decided to do a little snooping around and see if I couldn't learn a lot more about laws. Helps to know what you,re talking about.

In a recent Rense essay, the one that bothered Jay, I took MIT to task for implying that the Twin Towers collapsed due to sudden weakening of the steel caused by fire. I suggested MIT engineers should just build a scale model and prove their unscientific theory. Because 911 heretics like myself just don't buy it.

Jay, a machinist, claimed you couldn't build a forty or fifty foot scale model of the Twin Towers (1/25 scale) and replicate the collapse using a scale model of a Boeing 757. Mentioned something about the differences between the mass of the real structures and the mass of the models, plus a whole bunch of other technical data.

He quoted the rule of Occam's Razor "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate""or Given two equally predictive theories, choose the simpler. Detectives often use Occam's razor to shave in the morning before locating the culprits in most crimes.

Curiously, the name Occam, or Ockham, wasn't applied to the razor until several hundred years later. Sometimes, when you cut away the simplest explanation, you realize it isn't always correct.

Jay adhered to the official, government explanation for the collapse of the two taller towers, that they pancaked down due to truss failure, rather than imploded. He did admit that WTC-7 was "deliberately demolished with the permission of the owner."

According to Murphy's Law (one of many), "Any object when dropped will roll into the least accessible corner." Curiously, the three collapsed building, instead of falling all over the place, ALL fell exactly into their own footprints. Convenient. Perhaps the best Murphy's Law that applies to 911 is: "If you can't understand it, it is intuitively obvious."

Thus, if you can't understand it was controlled, than perhaps you are controlled, we 911 skeptics suggest.

I remarked that a stout 47 story skyscraper with a few fires raging in the lower floors (and just HOW did they start?) had collapsed suspiciously. Never happened before or since.

WTC-7 dropped"fell doesn't describe the rapidity--almost as fast as one of Newton's free-falling objects obeying his gravitational Law. Eye-witnesses to the collapse--firemen, policemen, news reporters"concurred, stating repeatedly the collapse resembled a "controlled demolition."

Recently, a BYU physics professor arrived at the exact same conclusion. A controlled demolition, he said, but for ALL three buildings. Now professor Steven Jones may, or may not, have applied Occam's Razor to the puzzle, or he may have reverted to Doyle's Dictum: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Sir Isaac Newton, not to mention detectives Columbo & Holmes, (sounds like a TV show) may also wish to know why a man who just purchased a 47 story building which contained acres of US government records, Secret Service offices and Mayor Giuliani's emergency command post, would choose to destroy it? And most importantly, How?

Now if we apply Occam's Razor (that the simplest explanation is usually the most likely), recent owner Larry Silverstein is simply guilty of massive insurance fraud. And destruction of government property. And conspiracy. And perjury. And reckless endangerment.

Because any man who buys a piece of property, purchases massive amounts of insurance, and purposely destroys it weeks later, only to claim many times the amount of what that property is worth, is almost always a criminal suspect.

And Silverstein admitted doing it. His words to that effect were taped.

But how could Silverstein have arranged to "pull it" (his remarks) in the few hectic hours before the collapse? Normally, a controlled demolition requires days or weeks, not hours, of careful preparation. Jay claimed it could be done, but by whom?

Recall the streets around the collapsed Trade Towers were inaccessible, clogged with dust, piles of debris, wrecked fire trucks and police cars that morning. And thousands of fleeing New Yorkers.

Unless, of course, Silverstein had arranged the demolition days or weeks earlier. Because the laws of probability, weigh heavily against a professional demolition team arriving on the scene, unpacking their gear unnoticed, and rigging high explosives while several fires rage around and above them.

Since scientific people love Occam's Razor, I devised an even simpler rule. I call mine, "Doug's Denouement." According to the definition, a denouement (day-new-ma) is, "1:The outcome of a complex sequence of events. 2: the final resolution of the main complication of a literary or dramatic work. The unraveling or discovery of a plot, especially of a drama. 4: The solution of a mystery; issue; outcome."

Doug's Denouement: "If something looks like a conspiracy, sounds like a conspiracy, acts like a conspiracy, feels like a conspiracy, and smells rotten like a conspiracy, it probably is a conspiracy." My denouement follows the classic description of a duck that we know so well.

But wait, let me clarify things. It's not a conspiracy if it's a fact. And any fact found in the street weighs exponentially many times more than any official government version. At least in the last fifty years or so.

Wisely, BYU physics professor James avoided the question of Why the buildings were imploded (He didn't even mention that miraculous passport). Physics cannot be confused with philosophy or ethics, or even Forensics 101.

After September 11th, the forensic crime scene invetigators at the WTC site, and later at the ironically named Fresh Kills, sorted through dust looking for human remains while the bigger pieces of the puzzle (steel beams and girders) were hastily shipped to China. Why they did so may require a greater law than Murphy's or Newton's or Occam's Razor to discover.

Perhaps one day we'll call it Fitzgerald's Law.

Douglas Herman contributes to Rense and is the author of the provocative detective novel: The Guns of Dallas