Time profile asserted that 9-11 gave Giuliani "automatic standing" on terrorism
A profile of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) in the April 2 issue of Time magazine (posted March 21 on the Time website) referred to Giuliani as "America's mayor" and the "rock of 9/11," and further asserted that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were "Giuliani's finest hour" and gave him "automatic standing" on the issue of terrorism. But the article, written by David Von Drehle, made no mention of allegations that Giuliani was responsible for terrorism-related failures before, during, and after the 9-11 attacks. In an earlier profile accompanying the magazine's naming Giuliani as its 2001 "Person of the Year," Time similarly lauded Giuliani as a "great leader" and a "gutsy decision maker" who, on 9-11, took "on half a dozen critical roles and perform[ed] each masterfully."
Von Drehle wrote that "few things in politics are more unusual" than Giuliani and went on to call him "the rock of 9/11" and repeat the common description of him as "America's mayor":
[T]he political rule book has been stuffed into a shredder this year. Come summer of 2008, one or both parties will likely fire it from a confetti gun. A million fluttery pieces of conventional wisdom will swirl around a nominee or nominees once thought to be impossible: a woman, a black man, a guy in his 70s, a Mormon, a Hispanic, a Baptist preacher who used to be 100 lbs. overweight. Who knows? This is the year to bet on something unusual happening, and few things in politics are more unusual than Rudolph Giuliani -- "America's mayor," the rock of 9/11, crime fighter and tax cutter.
As Media Matters for America has noted, media figures have repeatedly touted Giuliani's reputation as "America's Mayor" and the "hero of 9-11," despite the numerous controversies that have marked his political career, including his handling of the 2001 terrorist attacks. Indeed, the article asserted as fact that Giuliani's performance as mayor during "New York City's worst catastrophe" gave him "automatic standing" on the "powerful topic" of terrorism:
Then al-Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center. New York City's worst catastrophe was Giuliani's finest hour, and the worldwide acclaim he received gave his start-up company [the consulting firm Giuliani Partners] instant momentum.
[...]
Giuliani takes a similar approach to his signature issue, the fight against terrorism. Those memorable images of September 2001, Giuliani dusted with the soot of fallen buildings and atomized aircraft, give him automatic standing on this powerful topic in every corner of the country. Traveling by private jet (Gulfstream IV or better, his contract stipulates) and charging $100,000 for each speech, Giuliani reassures audiences that all America requires to prevail is confidence.
However, as Media Matters has repeatedly documented, Village Voice senior editor Wayne Barrett and CBSNews.com senior producer Dan Collins, in their book, Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11 (HarperCollins, August 2006), expressed a very different view of Giuliani's conduct.
For instance, Barrett and Collins wrote that in the late 1990s, Giuliani selected the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade Center (7 WTC) as the location of the Office of Emergency Management's (OEM) new command center, having "insisted" that the facility reside "within walking distance of City Hall." In settling on the downtown location, Giuliani "overruled" warnings from a previous police commissioner, Howard Safir, and NYPD chief operating officer Lou Anemone not to put the command center at 7 WTC and rejected "an already secure, technologically advanced city facility across the Brooklyn Bridge" (Page 41). According to Barrett and Collins, when Giuliani heard about the disaster on 9-11, his "original destination" wasn't "the street corner" but his "much-ballyhooed command center" (Page 6). However, when Giuliani arrived near 7 WTC, then-New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik "decided it was too dangerous to bring the mayor up to the command center he had so carefully and expensively built" (Page 340). The building ultimately collapsed that day. Thus, Barrett and Collins concluded that if the command center had not posed such a safety risk to Giuliani, "all the dramatic visuals ... would instead have been tense but tame footage from its barren press conference room" (Page 41). Indeed, according to Barrett and Collins, the "memorable images" of "Giuliani dusted with soot" -- cited by Time -- would likely not exist if Giuliani had listened to Safir and Anemone and placed his command center for emergencies elsewhere.
Barrett and Collins further argued that Giuliani mishandled the cleanup at Ground Zero, putting workers' lives and health at excessive risk; that he failed to set up a unified command post for the New York Fire and Police departments, contributing to a lack of communication between police officers and firefighters on 9-11; and that his history with Kerik was part of a pattern of security-related cronyism in Giuliani's administration. With regard to Kerik, a leaked memo detailing Giuliani's 2008 campaign plans appeared to include the former police commissioner on a list of several potential "prob[lems]" that may be "insurm[ountable]." Moreover, a March 30 New York Times article -- published after the Time profile -- reported that in 2006 Giuliani "told a grand jury that his former chief investigator remembered having briefed him on some aspects of Bernard B. Kerik's relationship with a company suspected of ties to organized crime before Mr. Kerik's appointment as New York City police commissioner."
Additionally, the Time profile reported that Giuliani "was endorsed by ... the executive director of the state firefighters association" at a South Carolina rally in February, but did not note recent criticism of Giuliani by the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) and a New York City IAFF union affiliate that had supported President Bush's re-election in 2004. As Media Matters noted, some of those criticisms were expressed in a February 28 draft letter from the IAFF to its union members. Additionally, a March 15 Cox News Service article reported: "As revered as he is by many for his efforts after the attacks, Giuliani is reviled by some firefighters who believe he mishandled the development of a radio system that could have saved lives on 9/11 and turned his back on first responders' remains in the rubble." A March 30 Associated Press article further noted September 11 criticisms by the IAFF and by Sally Regenhard, chairwoman of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign and mother of a firefighter killed on 9/11. The AP noted that the Giuliani "administration's failure to provide the World Trade Center's first responders with adequate radios [is] a long-standing complaint from relatives of the firefighters killed when the twin towers collapsed. The Sept. 11 Commission noted the firefighters at the World Trade Center were using the same ineffective radios employed by the first responders to the 1993 terrorist attack on the trade center."
How is it that time and time and time again the MSM trots out this union and the Wayne Barrett (of the Village Voice??????????) book as criticism...yet no one else, anywhere, ever backs up the claims of these two, or sides with them, against Giuliani? If these counter claims had any merit, don't we all think that after 5 years time the MSM would be all over them? Please. Let's move on.
Have you somehow confused MMFA (media watchdog) with the MSM? I am at a loss otherwise to comprehend, much less answer, your question?
Actually, let's not move on. The only problem with these criticisms of Giuliani, which are valid, is that they don't go to the root of the problem, which is Giuliani's scooping and dumping of the WTC site, which was heavily criticized by firefighters and others at the time, and which effectively destroyed almost all evidence from one of the most infamous crimes in human history. Giuliani is an accomplice and a traitor, not a hero. The media lies about everything else, why wouldn't they lie about this?
On the front page of MMFA, under the featured heading up on top, and above the link for this item, appears a picture of the former mayor, that I had not seen before...
It's perfect!
Kudos to whoever found it, and to whoever then chose to place it there.
I'm not kidding, it's perfect!
It's a perfect portrait, that captures the guy's character and style, in a way that portrait artists aspire to, when they have the luxury to depict their subject truly, and not as that subject (or whatever other patron pays for the commision) would wish.
There he is, depicted truthfully and true, character and style and whatever else you see...
America's Mayor, and your next president!
What a joke!
And his brave actions cleaning up the city's subways and few remaining phone booths have given him automatic standing on pee smell.
I still remember those pictures of him in the newspapers, standing there in that apron, smiling with that kerchief around his head, leaning on a mop next to the bucket. So handsome, and so in charge. I remember thinking "Thank God Rudy Giuliani is our cleaning woman".
'the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were "Giuliani's finest hour" '
Uhhh... 3,000 people were killed in his city .WTF was his not quite so fine hour?
What is "standing on pee smell"? like shoe leather and urine mixed? How is the automatic type different from other (manual?) types?I have questions.
Guys, this may be off topic, but it recently occuured to me to actually use the little "Digg" button. I mean, if we all were to Digg some of those MMFA reports we might make an impact, right? So anyway, I dugg the "Ann Coulter Action Center". Immediately got a "Hate = disagreeing with a liberal comment". Anyway, if anyone thinks it's worth fighting the good fight over there, I'm "Shiphunter". Any thoughts on this?
(And, yes, I have posted thiss before, but I'm hoping more people will read it here)
It is true that 9/11 gave Giuliani and Bush automatic credentials in the "war on terror." But, a hamster could have done a good job on September 11, 2001.
When all you had to do was say "this is terrible, let's go get the bastards," anyone, or any rodent, could have done the job. But, what have they done since? Bush: Destroyed America's standing in the world and created thousands of next-generation terrorists. Giuliani: Nothing.
The conventional wisdom seemed to be after 9/11 that Giuliani did a "good job" in responding to the attack. That may or may not be the case (and if it isn't the case, he's got nothing). But even if so, that's a question of disaster management. Even if he was prepared (again, may or may not be the case), then that's emergency preparedness. While forethought and a level head in a time of crisis are admirable qualities, I fail to see how they would say anything about his ability to fight terrorism. Fighting the cause of 9/11 involves gathering intelligence, diplomacy and some military strategy, while cleaning up the result does not. Bush may have prepared for and reacted to such an attack himself, but he would surely still have the same ineffective, self-destructive policy on terrorism itself.
What is scary (to me, as a liberal, at least) is that the S.C.U.M.* campaign to malign the Dems and the Dem candidates, seems to be working: both McCain and Julie beat both Clinton and Obama in the latest Time poll for 2008!
*S.C.U.M. So-Called Unbiased Media: acronym courtesy of Easy To Refute Wingnuts
I've never put much credence in Time's reporting or anaylsis. They're the People magazine of politics and have supported fascist dictators in the past.
9/11 Was an Inside Job...
There are many important unanswered questions from 9/11, I will propose 5. I hope you investigate these for yourself.
1) Never in the history of steel structures has a building collapsed from fire yet 3 did on 9/11; WTC tower 1,2 & 7. All three buildings came down at free fall speed with no resistance; tower 7 was never hit by an airplane yet came down symmetrically in seven seconds?
See video of the implosion of world trade center 7 here (you will be shocked) [link to www.wtc7.net]
Additionally odd, tower 2 fell before tower 1 although tower 1 was hit first and tower 2 was hit with a glancing blow. The explosion/ collapse in tower 2 started above where the plane hit the tower?
2) There is no large plane wreckage in front of the Pentagon from the 757 that hit it. Taking from the official story, the 757 that hit the pentagon flew over a highway, parallel and 15 to 20 feet above the ground and impacted the pentagon between the 1st and 2nd floor. (Official story) The airplane did not leave any markings or large debris (ex wings) on the front of the pentagon. The 757 supposedly was sucked into a 16ft by 24ft hole, before the ceiling collapsed a 1/2 hour later, and incinerated. How did this plane hit only 15 ft above the ground after descending so rapidly without ever hitting the ground and flown by an amateur pilot? The 3 slides the pentagon released to the public shows a small shaped device flying horizontally, very low to the ground and leaving a small smoke trail. How come the Pentagon has not released video from the cameras mounted on the roof? Lastly, after traveling through three rings of the Pentagon, the plane or whatever it was left a small circular exit hole in the third ring.
3. All four hijacked planes flew for an average of 40 minutes, 1 hour 50 minutes total, without any fighter jet intercept over NY and Washington. As you are aware, NY and Washington are some of the most protected airspace in the world.
4. Where is the plane wreckage from the plane crash in Shanksville, PA? In pictures and video all you see is a small ditch with no fires, plane debris, seats, bodies, etc.?
5. How were the Patriot Act and the War on Terror so quickly developed after 9/11? Was this new program a reaction to 9/11 or something that was worked on before September 11th and just conveniently ready for a terrorist attack?
9/11 was an inside job, a false flag operation. Sadly, the sophistication of this operation points more towards state sponsored terrorism than Osama and a small group of amateur pilots. How often have our leaders evoked the memory of 9/11 to rally our people for certain causes (i.e. Iraq)?
Fight on in peace. I hope you decide to investigate the truth of 9/11 for yourself.
Namaste
Shawn Cooper
PS For a summary and the best documentary of 9/11 I recommend watching Loose Change 2. You can watch it for free here-
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7866929448192753501&q=loose+change+2&hl=en
Or visit www.wtc7.net or www.st911.org and start your own research...
I have looked at the "evidence" - both "official" and "conspiracy".
I have many questions, some serious uncertainties, and a reputation as a flake for expressing those on this site, even though I have no answers to sell, not even any conclusions other than that, that was the worst official investigation since the fall of the Tower of Babel. (At least that tower's investigatory effort had an excuse for such abject failure.)
So, lotsa luck, but if you get any (other) response, it will likely be kinda negative, perhaps even derisive.
Yeah, I've looked at that stuff too. It's all pretty damn suspicious ...Building 7 imploding with a controlled demolition, meaning it had been pre-wired and explosives already in place. The WTC buildings falling straight down into their signatures, even though the buildings had been designed to be hit by jetliners and stay standing. You can get all kinds of information about the design. The skeleton should not have collapsed on itself like that. I saw the footage from the Pentagon, no big white jetliner hitting the side of the building when it exploded. The attack happening right in the middle of an Air Force exercise about people hijacking planes. Far too much evidence that points to a big lie.
I think it was an inside job too, or at least they knew it was gonna happen and went out of their way to let it, even help it, along. All in the name of zionism and war profiteering. We're dealing with very evil men and women, who think nothing of sacrificing innocents to their sick ambitions. I wouldn't put it past them at all.
hate to spoil the party, but to say that buildings 1, 2, and 7 came down because of fire is misleading at best. you had damage to the infrastructure of the towers from being hit by the planes, and building seven sustained damage and fire from the fall of the towers. and can mr. cooper be serious when he claims that the second tower was dealt a "glancing blow" from the plane? not according to the hundreds of thousands who were watching it in person and saw the second plane penetrate the tower directly. as to why that tower collapsed first, it was hit on a much lower floor and at a higher speed, which would seem a logical reason why it would collapse first. as for the pentagon, that is a poured concrete building. i think there is more to 9-11, but what i think we're missing is the support of some saudis for osama and the plot. the nonsense about the towers being brought down because of explosives is, well, nonsense. there is not one iota of proof for that.
or perhaps mr. cooper means that tower two was hit with a "glancing blow" from the first tower when it was hit. as far as i know, there was little if any damage to the second tower when the first was hit.
I think that what he meant was that the path of the plane striking the second tower did not appear to intersect the central columns, thus seeming unlikely to have inflicted collision damage on them; the argument for the tower to fall, then rests almost entirely upon fire damage.
the full width of both planes was outlined in the buildings themselves. there's no way to describe it as a "glancing blow". as for the column strength, i have read several times that it was not would it should have been for a building of that size. the hijackers picked planes headed to california so they would have the most fuel. between the damage by the planes and the intense heat of the fire, i don't see it as that hard to think they could collapse. that to me is more conceivable than an explosion because there is zero evidence for that.
Ah - the hottest flame calculable from all the jet fuel in the universe could not produce temps sufficient to melt that steel - if it were as spec'd. Even the addition of a source of pure oxygen does not sufficiently increase the burn temp of jet fuel, to bring down the towers as spec'd.
Again, it might not have been to spec. If there were less steel than designed, or steel inferior to design, or fewer columns than design, or in different placements than design, then things get interesting - although even radical under-spec leaves somewhat questionable the vertical drop we saw.
And, of course, I am still puzzled by the molten steel at the bottom of the rubble - absent thermite explosives, that is a stretch of considerable proportion, given that a year of steady jet-fuel fire should not have melted that steel. (Some say that the molten steel was more a product of pressure, than of applied heat - but those folks then seem unable to explain the initial collapse, since that appeared to rely on sufficient melting to allow bending; and the bending itself, seems to dictate other than vertical collapse.)
So, let's just say that without even a hint of investigatory effort by our Gov't., and that includes the "bi-partisan Commission" and it's numerous failures to address any of the above questions, some of us are likely to remain doubtful of the convenient assertions regarding the day.
it did not have to melt. isn't it true that steel loses strength at high temperatures? and the jet fuel was not the only fuel, because everything, furniture paper etc., began burning. and if you are unaware of the actual columns in the building then why do you feel you can make assertions. i have read that there were less columns and more open space because they felt that is what tenants would want. as for the explosives, can you provide a single piece of evidence. just saying it must have been so does not cut it.
I thought you would never ask:
The burning of the most combustible materials in that building, for eternity, would have generated less heat than the jet fuel alone Even if the building were filled to the brink with paper - no glowing pools of molten metal in the rubble. Even O2 could not raise the temperature of the burning fuel enough; and certainly not the "cool-burning" paper, which can safely be disregarded as causative of anything more than smoke and ash.
Surely, the temps of the jet fuel would have been sufficient to reduce the strength of the (protected) steel columns somewhat - on the order, perhaps, of 10% shear, 8% twist; design had 40% margin, even without consideration of the fire-proof coverings of the columns themselves. That is, if the construction was to design spec.
Indeed, the design was specific to provide the open space for the tenants - that was the underlying concept of the "strong central columnar" layout. That design also made much more unlikely the sort of vertical collapse that is routine in "corner column" buildings, when something (usually explosives) cuts the corners.
That would also make it easier to implode it relatively unseen from the outside. The explosions that cut the girders would have been well inside the structure and there wouldn't have been the tell-tale smokepuffs you see when the skeleton is at the outside walls.
I am not clear on the "unaware of the actual columns"? I agree, I did not conduct tests and inspections as the towers went up. I have read the design specs. It is upon those specs that I rely, and hedge "if the steel was to spec".
I was unaware that anything I said could have been construed as "it must have been so". And I have no intention to "cut it", either way. I will mention that there appears to have been substantially excessive aluminum residue on the few pieces of columnar steel preserved (by private entities) and made available for testing. Argument rages whether that is plane residue, deposited by forces and chemistry not well understood, or residue of explosives. Lacking any personal access, I guess I just don't know.
What does seem clear enough to warrant iteration: the 9/11 Commission was a PR ploy, purely. Lacking any attempt by any Governmental agency, to provide even minimal investigative effort, or just preservation of evidence, I will probably never know the truth. I will, however, greet each who inquire, with a few of the doubts and unanswered question that keep me company.
when you said it might not be to spec and wondered if there were fewer columns than design, that made me wonder if you knew the exact layout of the columns. these quotes are from tim wilkinson, a civil engineer at the university of sydney: "even though the steel didn't melt, the type of temperatures in the fire would have roughly halved it's strength.....the columns, finished with a silver colored aluminum alloy....implosion firstly requires a lot of explosives placed in strategic areas around the building. demolition experts spend weeks inside a derelict building, planning an event. many of the beams are cut through by about 90% so that the explosion only has to break a small amount of steel." so the aluminum came from the columns themselves, many of the columns were destroyed by the impact and the fire coating removed on others, and no one noticed the extensive preparations that would have been needed to plant explosives all over those two buildings.
Yet the owner of the WTC is on video saying that he ordered Building 7 "pulled", the demolition term for imploded, on that day. Footage shows the building imploding in a controlled demolition, even though it was a smaller building and the fires were containable. The conclusion....Building 7 was PRE-WIRED with explosives on Sept 11th, 2001.
So if Building 7 was pre-wired.....
he says he was talking with the fire dept, they said they were not sure they could save the building and they both agreed to "pull" any firefighters that might be in the building.
He didn't say that in the footage I saw....he was clearly referring to the building itself. The building itself is show in video footage creasing along the roof in exactly the same way as a controlled demolition and then collapsing. A steel structure. It would not have done so by the fire inside, only with outside encouragement. The building was obviously pre-wired with explosives and that means the two big buildings probably were as well.
And where was the jetliner that hit the Pentagon? I saw the footage from the Pentagon's own security cameras...no big white streak of a huge jetliner, but a small black blur. The debris field was very small and the debris itself NOT consistent with a large jetliner, but a smaller object. Whatever hit the Pentagon hit with enough force to blow through at least two sections of the building, leaving a hole similar to that of a shaped charge projectile. Jetliner wouldn't do that, it's mainly a hollow tube. It wouldn't blow through several layers of building, it would just crumple. It looks more like a cruise missile strike than an airline crash.
The Pennsylvania "crash"....no debris, no bodies, nothing. Just a big smear of black. Planes don't crash like that. They don't vaporize on impact. I used to watch the plane crash documentaries on tv. They ALWAYS find debris and bodies. It's how they reconstruct the crashes for safety purposes.
You don't think Mossad and the neo-cons would kill 3000 people in NYC to get the US into Iraq? Like they care about human life.
so the owner went on public television and admitted that he wired and ordered his building blown up, which is admitting a criminal act? ok, you believe that.
Criminals do dumb things. Otherwise they wouldn't be criminals. Who's gonna prosecute? The war criminals own the Department of Justice and the court system.
Wilkinson
Tim Wilkinson's "little paper" (his words, not my snide side) is not your best source for any attempt to debunk. First, it was written, with little revision to accomodate facts evidently not initially available to Mr. Wilkinson, on 9/11.
"(This is an initial suggestion, originally written on Sept 11 2001 (with some minor subsequent changes) on one possible reason for failure, and should not be regarded as official advice.)"
Thus, it is lacking in evidence as any of the theories you might propose to debunk.
Next, it proclaims consistently that either this or that or the other could have occurred ("It is possible" . . . "may" . . . ) but offers absolutely neither calculation nor even argument to support any of those proposals as anything other than speculation.
Finally, it fails (as do all the other "debunkers") even to address the multiply verified pools of molten metal at the level of the sub-basement. Again, his words " The fire wasn't hot enough to melt the steel There has never been a claim that the steel melted in the fire before the buildings collapsed, however the fire would have been very hot. Even though the steel didnt melt, the type of temperatures in the fire would have roughly halved its strength."
So, where DID the melted steel come from?
For a more comprehensive effort at debunking, look at NIST . There remains that same critical flaw, however. Despite (7b) "In no instance did NIST report that steel in the WTC towers melted due to the fires.", there is no alternative explanation offered for undisputed claims of "molten steel".
How about FEMA? Although there is much ado on some "debunking" web sites about FEMA "analyzing" the structural steel, I can find no evidence other than that they (FEMA) prompted the hasty disposal of that steel, without benefit of investigation. If you can, please let us know. I am not even questioning here, the fact that FEMA was coincidentally on-site en force at the moment of impact. You judge that circumstance for yourself. But you might want to read the FEMA report on Tower 7 (the only publication I have found with the FEMA imprint). The reports on Towers 1 & 2 I cannot find, but those may be deliberately difficult, due to some insane desire to hide the b/p dimensions (much larger than otherwise - including NIST - calculated) of those core columns.
(I threw in a link to a critique of the FEMA reporting, in lieu of the FEMA report on 1 & 2.)
Summary: you believe the official version, and that is your right. I don't, although I have not reached an alternative conclusion; I simply have questions as yet unanswered - even evaded - by those who promulgate the official version. Perhaps the definition of heaven, is finding out what is true?
you're wrong about wilkinson. he did do updates, including one on jan 14, 2006 which is right on the page i'm sure you read, and he said he did make minor changes after 9-11. he said in 2006 nothing he has seen changed his mind. as for the molten steel that seems to be kind of one of those exactly what was found things, as in who is describing it. and what exactly is in the fema reports i'm supposed to get i don't know. you can have all the questions you want, but that doesn't provide one bit of evidence.
Questions are precisely the correct response of intelligent beings when confronted with missing evidence. The lack of evidence is solely and exclusively the doing of the "official" agencies, FEMA and NIST specifically. Moreover, as I am sure you have heard somewhere, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".
So even though you have troubled yourself to avoid reading my post (note that *I* quoted the Wilkinson statement " (with some minor subsequent changes)" in the very posting to which you respond by pointing out that Wilkinson did undeed update his paper: "you're wrong about wilkinson. he did do updates, including one on jan 14, 2006".
I was no more wrong about that, than about the presence, verified even by "official version" documents, of molten STEEL in the sub-basements. Nor do many of the "debunkers" address that issue. Instead, as you appear to be doing, they devote pages to either the argument that it was all molten aluminum, or that we shouldn't believe our lyin' eyes. It is ludicrous, and beyond the pale of physics, to argue that aluminum would remain molten for up to 4 weeks after the collapse: there simply is not sufficient molecular density to retain the necessary heat.
There are arguments, and I cannot rebut them, that the molten steel derived from concentrations of the kinetic energy of the collapse: conservation of energy often requires transmuting kinetic energy (many tons falling many feet) into thermal energy. That remains conceivable, although no better evidenced than the theory that props-testing for the movie, "Independence Day", got out of hand, to result in this catastrophe. In other words, absent the evidence that went to Asia to be reworked, evidence is difficult to obtain.
I did find an annotated critique of the FEMA 1 & 2 report (by finally reading the footnotes of one of the other reports)! Just ignore the red annotations, and read on - the FEMA version is contained within (I'm still doing that, myself, although I choose to read the annotations in the flow.) Maybe I finally am disabused of all my doubts (although I doubt that)!
By the way, the columnar steel in towers 1 & 2 still seems unlikely to have been sufficiently weakened by either collision damage, or ensuing fire, to have precipitated the collapses we witnessed (if it was in fact as spec'd); which might have been the reason it got scooped and dumped so quickly? My engineering skills are inadequate to state conclusively that the collapses could not have happened as we are led to believe - but certainly sufficient to harbor questions about those collapses.