My teaching schedule for Fall 2001 began late in the day and included a long evening class on Tuesdays.  Being somewhat of a night owl, I set my alarm for sometime after 9:00 AM.  On 9/11, I happened to wake up before my clock-radio alarm came on and was working in the next room on my computer when the clock radio finally did come on.  I vaguely heard the radio in the background and kept on working, though I wasn't paying much attention to what was being said.  Then I began to notice that whatever story they were telling seemed to go on an on.  It sounded as though they were telling some sort of sick joke about a drunk driver who made a wrong turn on the way home from a party and ran his plane into a building.  But then the same thing seemed to have happened a second time.  It sounded like a joke, except that they never got to the punch line.  Eventually, I began to wonder if what they were saying might have something to do with reality.  So I went downstairs and turned on the TV.

    The same story was being played on every station I could pick up.  There had indeed been a horrible event.  But why were we getting the same story on every station?  Then I realized also that there were no commercial breaks.  That meant that this must be serious.  But whatever happened to the idea of getting another perspective?  When there's a plane crash, one network might be replaying the video of it while another is playing an "up close and personal story," or a "background story" about someone's loved one who left home that morning to go on a trip, or about some parts manufacturer of the aircraft, or what detailed experience some innocent bystander went through.  But here we had every station playing nearly the same video and in nearly the same way, saying essentially the same thing, over and over again with out a commercial break.  To me, it did not feel right. (this is when I called my mother in the Washington, D.C., area to ask if she saw fighter jets overhead.)  The mere fact that there were no commercial breaks commanded my attention as if to say, "This is more important than anything you've ever known."  That is, like War of the Worlds, it was a sustaining show.

    I gathered my things together and headed into campus.  It must have been around 10 AM.  When I got to campus and was walking up to our building, one of my graduate students met me in the street.  That conversation is one I will never forget.  He asked, "Dr. Wood, who is Bin Laden and what's Al-Qaeda?"

    I entered our building and went up the corner stairs.  My colleagues were talking about what they thought had taken place.  One said, "After the USS Cole, we should have just taken them all out.  These guys need to be taken out."  I asked, "For what?"  My colleague responded, "The towers, they're down, they're both down."  Then we all went to the faculty conference room to watch the replays on TV.

    What I saw was surreal.  These buildings did not just "collapse," they unraveled--as I've said before, like sweaters.  Something did not smell right, but here were my colleagues (full professors who should have recognized the apparent contradiction of physical principles already being put out as "the story"), with pitchforks in hand, rallying the troops to "go get the bad guys."  It was like a done deal, open-and-shut. Meanwhile, there I was, looking at the TV monitor and thinking there was a kind of War of the Worlds sick joke being played on us. 

    On September 11, 2001, we were told that an airplane hit a building and caused the building to self-destruct an hour later, taking just 8 to 10 seconds is physically impossible, no matter what might have initiated the gravity collapse (bombs, natural causes, and so on).  In addition, we were told that two airplanes, each hitting one of the Twin Towers, had caused the total destruction of the entire complex of seven buildings---while not significantly, fatally, or totally damaging any other buildings!  The explanation we were given was that jet fuel had ignited office material and that this fire, fed by burning office material, significantly weakened the steel-frame buildings.  But steel fireplace grills don't collapse from fire.

Nearly everyone has heard of kerosene heaters.  Do they melt?

    The people "jumping" from the towers was a phenomenon contrary to anything firefighters had ever before observed.  Even to these New York City firefighters, it was unbelievable.  So, when did this phenomenon become Believable?

    Consider confusing and dangerous events where someone doesn't have time to evaluate the situation and yet must react.  For example, if a team of police officers with rifles were to yell, "get down on the ground!" most people would immediately follow those orders.  When someone yells, "Fire!" in a movie theater, one can expect a stampede to the exit even without evidence of a fire.  Shouting and confusion will get most people to  do what is asked of them.  Most of us will acquiesce so as not to add to the confusion.  People watched the jumpers.  They saw it, so it must be real.

And wood stoves made of steel do no self-destruct from fire.

C. What Did We Really See?

    So what did we really see on 9/11/01?  It may or may not be what we were told we saw.  What if the first reported observation was wrong, and then everyone followed it?  The human mind does not operate like a tape recorder.  The human mind puts together the best story it can based on what it has been presented with, and it adapts.  In a confusing and unbelievable situation, people tend to look for something that makes sense.

    We look for what we're accustomed to seeing or expect to see, and we use this to make what sense we can of the confusion.  My heart goes out to the doctors who, amongst the confusion, tried to make sense of what they saw and what they were told (along with the rest of us).  In an interview, two doctors recall that patients quit coming in to the emergency rooms by noon on 9/11.  Dr. Tony Dajer was asked, "Where are all the people?"  He groped for and explanation.  Another doctor latched on to the hope that most everyone made it out alive.  These two doctors are a a wonderful example of how much people care for their fellow man.  And, like the rest of us, they desperately wanted---and needed---it all to make sense.

But what happens when it doesn't make sense?

D. Approach

    We must observe the actual evidence, carefully.  But how do we do that through a preconceived, conditioned, and biased perspective?  One way might be to wipe the slate clean and begin with a new vocabulary, a new language, including a visual language.  This may require that we ignore images that we have long been conditioned to react to in very predictable ways.

    In the chapters that follow, I have purposely given each of the observed phenomena a new and unique name, using a new vocabulary that does not come preloaded with familiar connotations and therefore biased interpretations.  Referring to particulate-filled air as "smoke" causes the biased or pre-conditioned observer to think of "fire" as the cause of what is seen.  Instead, then, let us use a very generic term(perhaps even an elementary-level term) that we would not normally use in this situation, but one that describes solely and only what we do see, with no other weighted or pre-supposed meaning.  Let's use not the word "smoke" but the word "fume."  A glossary of terms is provided at the end of this book for convenience.

July 22, 1980 2nd major Eruption Mt. St. Helens
Below pictures are not in Judy Woods Book.
My wife took these pictures.  From a Cessna 150 on July 22, 1980.
Please compare what you see in the picture below of 9/11.


Compare the Towers with the Eruption of Mt. St. Helens

For more information: http://wheredidthetowersgo.com/