The “controlled demolition” of the World Trade Center building is a conspiracy theory

Anthony Fomin, Unsplash

Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 14/09/2023; Author: Marija Manojlović

In the terrorist attacks which took place on September 11, 2001, two towers and another building in the World Trade Center complex were demolished. Conspiracy theorists baselessly claim that the building that the planes did not crash into was destroyed in a “controlled demolition”.

On September 11, 2023, a video was published on Facebook showing the demolition of Building 7 of the World Trade Center in New York after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. The video is accompanied by a description claiming that it was a “controlled demolition” in which evidence for “financial crimes” under investigation was destroyed. It is also claimed that the video was removed from the Internet after people began to “analyze” it.

They did everything they could to erase this video from existence 🚨

September 11, 2001, 2 planes hit 2 buildings and 3 buildings collapsed

Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapsed, destroying all the evidence for some of the most high-profile Wall Street and financial crime cases ever to be investigated. #Enron

Building 7 was a controlled demolition. It housed the offices of the CIA. 9/11 was done by the CIA/MOSSAD/ISI. There were no kidnappers. Operation Northwoods. The CIA/MOSSAD/ISI is owned and operated by the Rothschild-Rockefeller cartel.

They hate you and want to impoverish/control/starve you through the Great Reset/NWO New World Order

This footage was released right after the collapse but disappeared soon after people started analyzing it.

On Facebook, this post gathered a significant number of interactions, including about 50 shares.

What are the facts?

On September 11, 2001, suicide bombers hijacked four American passenger planes. Three planes crashed into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the west wing of the Pentagon building in Washington, and a fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after passengers rioted against the hijackers.

The North and South Towers of the World Trade Center were ignited by the impact of two planes and collapsed in less than two hours. Apart from these two towers, another building collapsed even though it was not directly hit by the plane – Building 7 of the World Trade Center. It is a 47-story office building, which was located north of the main complex.

A video posted on Facebook shows the demolition of this building. A video of the demolition can be found on the YouTube account of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The conspiracy theory that the demolition of this building was planned has persisted to this day even though it has been established that the building collapsed due to a fire. This was confirmed by the US government’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which has been investigating the causes of the crash for years. Numerous foreign fact-checking platforms wrote about this (1, 2, 3). 

Citing the NIST report, Full Fact states in a September 2021 analysis that the building collapsed due to a fire caused by the rubble of the north tower.

NIST states that debris from the North Tower started fires on at least 10 floors of World Trade Center Building 7, some of which got out of control because the automatic sprinkler system failed on some floors (partially due to damaged city water mains from the collapse of the two towers).
The heat from the fire caused steel support beams to expand, causing several floors to collapse. This then caused a series of other structural failures, which eventually resulted in the collapse of the entire building.
The theory that an explosion caused the building to collapse was investigated, but no evidence was found.

A detailed description of how the fires contributed to the collapse of the building can be found on the NIST website.

According to USA Today, Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapsed after burning for seven hours.

Full fact states that there are rare situations when a fire causes the collapse of high-rise buildings and recalls that the chief investigator of NIST Shyam Sunder told reporters that this was the first case where a building higher than 15 floors collapsed primarily due to fire. According to the BBC, the Plasko tower in Tehran also collapsed in 2017 for the same reason.

Conspiracy theories about the deliberate demolition of the building

The origin and spread of the conspiracy theory about the deliberate demolition of the building is connected to the fact that some media mistakenly reported on its demolition before it happened (1, 2). The fact that the CIA offices were also located in the building provided conspiracy theorists with additional material for unfounded claims about its deliberate demolition.

The Facebook post that is the subject of this analysis also mentions this fact and claims that “September 11 was made by the CIA/MOSSAD/ISI” (intelligence agencies of the USA, Israel and Pakistan). In the context of these claims, the “Northwoods” operation is also mentioned. It is a plan proposed by the American army in 1962, which involved carrying out an attack on the territory of the United States of America, for which Cuba would be blamed and which would be a pretext for the invasion and overthrow of the then communist leader Fidel Castro. This proposal was never implemented as it was rejected by the administration of then-President Kennedy (1, 2, 3). 

Motives for the alleged demolition of the building in the analyzed publication are connected with the destruction of evidence for “some of the most prominent financial crimes”, with the hashtag pointing to the company Enron. This company is associated with a well-known scandal of incorrect presentation of profits and losses in financial statements, which eventually ended in bankruptcy. The company filed for bankruptcy at the end of 2001, and in October of that year, it was announced that the Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating Enron. The management of the company was later convicted of fraud.

The conspiracy theory that the September 11 attacks were planned in public is also connected to other current conspiracy theories. Thus it is claimed that the CIA, MOSSAD and ISIL are “owned and controlled by the Rothschild-Rockefeller cartel” and that they want to impoverish and control people “through the Great Reset/NWO New World Order”. Raskrinkavanje has previously written about the “Great Reset” and “New World Order” conspiracy theories.

As we explained in earlier analyses, the basic idea of the “New World Order” conspiracy theory is that a group of powerful people wants to take control of the entire world and establish one authoritarian government/state with all the elements of a modern nation-state (one currency, one army, etc.). During the Covid-19 pandemic, this conspiracy theory was upgraded with a new conspiracy narrative about the “Great Reset”, according to which a secret group of world leaders staged the Covid-19 pandemic in order to take control of the world economy and introduce a system of “global communism”.

So, Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapsed due to fire and it was not a “controlled demolition”, as claimed in the Facebook post. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attacks, and as the BBC reports, extensive reports by a commission of US government agencies and expert groups refuted the existence of any hidden conspiracy.

Therefore, we consider the claims suggesting that in the case of Building 7 of the World Trade Center it is a “controlled demolition” to destroy evidence of “financial crimes” as fake news and a conspiracy theory.