9/11 archive: Kevin Ryan emails NIST metallurgist Frank Gayle (2004)
Kevin Ryan, 2011
Kevin Ryan is one of the most prominent members of the 9/11 Truth movement. He has written extensively on many of the apparent anomalies surrounding the events of that day, and currently runs his own blog at digwithin.net.
In 2004 Ryan, a trained chemist, was an executive with Underwriters Laboratories, the company that had certified the steel used in the construction of the WTC. He became perturbed when he read that Dr. Hyman Brown “from the WTC construction crew” was claiming “that the buildings collapsed due to fires at 2000F melting the steel”. Since he knew the WTC steel his company had certified could not possibly melt at that temperature (and indeed Brown’s claims were later disavowed by NIST), Ryan emailed Dr Frank Gayle, who was heading NIST’s “WTC Project”, asking for clarifications and expressing his concerns.
Ryan forwarded his email to veteran truth campaigner David Ray Griffin, who obtained permission to publish it on septembereleventh.org. A few days after the email appeared on the site Ryan was fired from Underwriters. The reason given by the company for letting him go was that he “expressed his own opinions as though they were institutional opinions and beliefs of UL.”
This claim is hard to square with the fact Ryan quite explicitly told the 911Truth.org site who contacted him for an interview a few days before he was fired, that “he is speaking for himself only, not on behalf of his laboratory or the company.”
Here is the text of Ryan’s email to Gayle (taken from 911Truth.org):
From: Kevin R Ryan/SBN/ULI
To: [email protected]
Date: 11/11/2004
Dr. Gayle,
Having recently reviewed your team’s report of 10/19/04, I felt the need to contact you directly.
As I’m sure you know, the company I work for certified the steel components used in the construction of the WTC buildings. In requesting information from both our CEO and Fire Protection business manager last year, I learned that they did not agree on the essential aspects of the story, except for one thing – that the samples we certified met all requirements. They suggested we all be patient and understand that UL was working with your team, and that tests would continue through this year. I’m aware of UL’s attempts to help, including performing tests on models of the floor assemblies. But the results of these tests appear to indicate that the buildings should have easily withstood the thermal stress caused by pools of burning jet fuel.
There continues to be a number of “experts” making public claims about how the WTC buildings fell. One such person, Dr. Hyman Brown from the WTC construction crew, claims that the buildings collapsed due to fires at 2000F melting the steel (1). He states “What caused the building to collapse is the airplane fuel . . . burning at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The steel in that five-floor area melts.” Additionally, the newspaper that quotes him says “Just-released preliminary findings from a National Institute of Standards and Technology study of the World Trade Center collapse support Brown’s theory.”
We know that the steel components were certified to ASTM E119. The time temperature curves for this standard require the samples to be exposed to temperatures around 2000F for several hours. And as we all agree, the steel applied met those specifications. Additionally, I think we can all agree that even un-fireproofed steel will not melt until reaching red-hot temperatures of nearly 3000F [CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 61st edition, pg D-187]. Why Dr. Brown would imply that 2000F would melt the high-grade steel used in those buildings makes no sense at all.
The results of your recently published metallurgical tests seem to clear things up (3), and support your team’s August 2003 update as detailed by the Associated Press (4), in which you were ready to “rule out weak steel as a contributing factor in the collapse”. The evaluation of paint deformation and spheroidization seem very straightforward, and you noted that the samples available were adequate for the investigation. Your comments suggest that the steel was probably exposed to temperatures of only about 500F (250C), which is what one might expect from a thermodynamic analysis of the situation.
However the summary of the new NIST report seems to ignore your findings, as it suggests that these low temperatures caused exposed bits of the building’s steel core to “soften and buckle”(5). Additionally this summary states that the perimeter columns softened, yet your findings make clear that “most perimeter panels (157 of 160) saw no temperature above 250C”. To soften steel for the purposes of forging, normally temperatures need to be above 1100C (6). However, this new summary report suggests that much lower temperatures were be able to not only soften the steel in a matter of minutes, but lead to rapid structural collapse.
This story just does not add up. If steel from those buildings did soften or melt, I’m sure we can all agree that this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers. That fact should be of great concern to all Americans. Alternatively, the contention that this steel did fail at temperatures around 250C suggests that the majority of deaths on 9/11 were due to a safety-related failure. That suggestion should be of great concern to my company.
There is no question that the events of 9/11 are the emotional driving force behind the War on Terror. And the issue of the WTC collapse is at the crux of the story of 9/11. My feeling is that your metallurgical tests are at the crux of the crux of the crux. Either you can make sense of what really happened to those buildings, and communicate this quickly, or we all face the same destruction and despair that come from global decisions based on disinformation and “chatter”.
Thanks for your efforts to determine what happened on that day. You may know that there are a number of other current and former government employees that have risked a great deal to help us to know the truth. I’ve copied one of these people on this message as a sign of respect and support. I believe your work could also be a nucleus of fact around which the truth, and thereby global peace and justice, can grow again. Please do what you can to quickly eliminate the confusion regarding the ability of jet fuel fires to soften or melt structural steel.
Kevin Ryan
Site Manager
Environmental Health Laboratories
A Division of Underwriters Laboratories
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I also admire Kevin Ryan, but the issue of whether or not jet fuel could melt steel has become totally irrelevant – simply because we now know that, despite the images that were shown ad nauseam on TV, no planes hit the towers; and thus the explosions and fires must have been caused by something else: it certainly wasn’t jet fuel!
I don’t ‘know’ any such thing. I believe planes did hit the tower- I have seen the plane wreckage that was found throughout the WTC site. I have seen hundreds of eyewitness accounts made on the day from people who witnessed the plane impacts. The mere suggestion hat some kind of holograms were used flies in the face of reason and is fanciful. There is no proof than any such technology even exists. The same for particle beams. I have also seen the grainy videos with supposed anomalies that people use to promote the ‘no plane’ theory. They are not convincing at all. The same goes for the ‘participle beam theory’ and the ‘mini-nuke theory’ and the ‘hollow building theory’. Without knowing it for a fact- it is my assumption that these theories have been deliberately promoted by those who were actually behind 9/11- in order to muddy the waters,… Read more »
I’ll just add- whilst I believe two planes impacted in NYC- I have seen no evidence that confirms they were flights 11 or 175. There is much evidence that suggest they may have been different planes- not least of which was the extreme high speed at low altitudes in their final moments. the planes were moving at around 500mph at 1000 feet- speeds way beyond what the aircraft were designed for at low altitude. These high speeds and minute corrections the planes made in their final approaches strongly suggests they were remotely controlled. The idea that they were flown by men who had never flown jet aircraft in the lives before that day is really quite absurd.
Reblogged this on TheFlippinTruth.
Kevin Ryan is a hero if you ask me. Having lost his job for raising simple, rational questions about 9/11 he has since gone on to do some of the very best research into the truth of what actually happened on 9/11. One interesting thing to note about Kevin Ryan and how he lost his job- is to recall the shameful comments of Noam Chomsky concerning 9/11 truth. Chomsky supports the official story: and clearly stated that those who question 9/11 are ‘lazy’ and that it ‘costs nothing’ to question 9/11- as opposed to ‘real activism’ supposedly like what Chomsky did decades ago in opposition to the Vietnam war. Chomsky went on to say that even if 9/11 was an iside job ‘who cares’. This is just an outrageous statement- and I imagine the families of the 3000 people who were killed might ‘care’ and that the families of the… Read more »
First of all, lets get one thing out of the way quick. There were no muslims or Arabs on any of the four planes. Next, 9 of the so called terroists who supposedly died are still alive and kicking. Which all can be verified. Next, in order to have anyone pay anything, it would have to go to court. In court it wold have to be proved that it was acutally a terroist attack in the first place before you could blame any particlular person or persons for doing it. Since there were no terroists on the planes, and since planes did not cause the towers to fall, and since flight 93 was never found (including the passengers), and since eye witnesses who were at the pentagon and ground zero “ALL” say the government story is a lie, I really don’t think it will go to court. So, if I… Read more »
Reblogged this on Worldtruth.