When I first read the explanation of the destruction of the Twin Towers given by the National Institute of Standards and Technology I discovered that (1) this explanation claimed that the portion of the buildings above the airplane impact area fell with such devastating impact on the remaining portion of the Towers that it initiated their complete destruction, yet (2) NIST did not do the required work to show that this is what actually happened. Instead, the NIST researchers looked only at the early phase of destruction—what they called “collapse initiation”—and, to my surprise, left the total pulverization of these massive buildings to their readers’ imagination. Engineering professor Zdeněk Bažant rushed in to fill the gaps in the NIST explanation.

But in the course of my work on the Towers, I made relevant measurements and discovered that there was no sign of such sudden and massive impact between the two portions of the buildings as is required by this hypothesis. Being unable to handle the mathematics of the argument myself, I was delighted to accept the offer of help by Tony Szamboti, an engineer who was equally intrigued by NIST’s strange hypothesis. We worked together diligently and comradely to complete this piece.