Albuquerque Journal

September 11, 2001 Explosives Planted In Towers, N.M. Tech Expert Says By Olivier Uyttebrouck Journal Staff Writer Televised images of the attacks on the World Trade Center suggest that explosives devices caused the collapse of both towers, a New Mexico Tech explosion expert said Tuesday. The collapse of the buildings appears "too methodical" to be a chance result of airplanes colliding with the structures, said Van Romero, vice president for research at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. "My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse," Romero said. Romero is a former director of the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center at Tech, which studies explosive materials and the effects of explosions on buildings, aircraft and other structures. Romero said he based his opinion on video aired on national television broadcasts. Romero said the collapse of the structures resembled those of controlled implosions used to demolish old structures. "It would be difficult for something from the plane to trigger an event like that," Romero said in a phone interview from Washington, D.C. Romero said he and another Tech administrator were on a Washington-area subway when an airplane struck the Pentagon. He said he and Denny Peterson, vice president for administration and finance, were en route to an office building near the Pentagon to discuss defense-funded research programs at Tech. If explosions did cause the towers to collapse, the detonations could have been caused by a small amount of explosive, he said. "It could have been a relatively small amount of explosives placed in strategic points," Romero said. The explosives likely would have been put in more than two points in each of the towers, he said. The detonation of bombs within the towers is consistent with a common terrorist strategy, Romero said. "One of the things terrorist events are noted for is a diversionary attack and secondary device," Romero said. Attackers detonate an initial, diversionary explosion that attracts emergency personnel to the scene, then detonate a second explosion, he said. Romero said that if his scenario is correct, the diversionary attack would have been the collision of the planes into the towers. Tech President Dan Lopez said Tuesday that Tech had not been asked to take part in the investigation into the attacks. Tech often assists in forensic investigations into terrorist attacks, often by setting off similar explosions and studying the effects.

-- Anonymous, September 21, 2001

Answers

"the collapse of the structures resembled those of controlled implosions used to demolish old structures"

Yes, it did look a lot like that, but look at the mess it made down below. I'm not suggesting this as a theory, but under the subject of who benefitted, I'm hard pressed to imagine that the property owners (should they want to do something else with this site) could have obtained permission to implode these buildings. Simply too tall. Any other demolition method might have been prohibitively expensive. And now an extremely pricey piece of real estate has just opened up again.

-- Anonymous, September 21, 2001

There was a lot of discussion about this at Lucianne. The consensus was that there were no explosives, that buildings demolished by explosions go from the ground up. These buildings went from the top down.

-- Anonymous, September 21, 2001