DWAIN DEETS, MS Physics, MS Eng – Former Director, Aerospace Projects, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center. Before this appointment, he served as Director, Research Engineering Division at Dryden. Dwain serves as a Panel Member of Consensus911.org.
Recipient of the NASA Exceptional Service Award and the Presidential Meritorious Rank Award in the Senior Executive Service (1988). Selected presenter of the Wright Brothers Lectureship in Aeronautics, a distinguished speaking engagement sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) (1986). Included in "Who's Who in Science and Engineering" 1993 - 2000.
Former Chairman of the Aerospace Control and Guidance Systems Committee of the Society of Automotive Engineers. Former Member, AIAA Committee on Society and Aerospace Technology. 37 year NASA career.
Faith in science: Retired NASA engineer explains why he doesn’t believe the official 9/11 report By Shane Cohn (originally published in VCReporter 09/09/2010)
It has been said that it requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious. But is it unusual to want peace? Truth? Dwain Deets doesn’t think so, and the retired NASA director is determined to demonstrate that the official version of the events of 9/11 defies science. His lectures have been gaining popularity, and Deets will be speaking in Ventura to address some troubling questions about 9/11, from the perspective of science.
Deets, a physicist and engineer, was the former director of NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center’s Aerospace project and is currently a member of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Having retired from a 37-year career, Deets has set out to show that the American public has been duped into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His goal is simple. Faith alone cannot end the wars abroad. But perhaps science can.
VCReporter: Of all the indications that the official 9/11 explanation is insufficient, what is the most glaring?
Deets: Building 7 is the most glaring. I think people can realize, after what happened at Building 7, that the public was not told anything close to what went on. I think you actually get kind of the same thing in all three buildings at the World Trade Center. So when I talk about them and the major problems presented, it will be with all buildings in mind.
There are four main points: One, there is no historical precedent with steel-frame, high-rise buildings to have been totally destroyed due to fire. So you got a situation with no precedent, but it happened three times in the same day. These buildings supposedly came down due to fire, officially. Second, there is indisputable evidence that there were extraordinarily high temperatures, in the ground and it persisted for weeks. When I say indisputable evidence, I mean things like satellite imaging photos from NASA. They can measure the temperatures showing how it’s persisting weeks after the event. And there are eyewitnesses of molten metal and things that would require extremely high temperatures. There are a number of different elements that have been analyzed chemically afterwards, and it can only be explained due to extremely high temperature. There are a lot of tiny spheres. We refer to them as microspheres, and they are iron-rich. To be a sphere, they had to have been liquid, even to the point of maybe vaporizing because that is the way it would form into a sphere. The surface tension, as it cooled down, it would do so in a spherical shape. So that’s hard evidence that there had to be extremely high temperatures.
VCReporter: When you refer to high temperature, are you suggesting there were explosives involved?
Deets: What I’m saying is, the temperatures are so high that the ordinary office fires and aviation fuel fires can’t come close to explaining those high temperatures. The third point is, there has been evidence of high-tech, and I can’t say they’re explosives, but they are nano-thermite. Nano meaning they’re extremely small and had to be manufactured with very sophisticated equipment and knowledge, which we only know about in government laboratories. But it was highly sophisticated, and how exactly it is designed, it could be very explosive, or something used in a different way. We use the term pyrotechnic to describe that category. So it was used as an explosive or pyrotechnic. But either way, the key thing is it provides an explanation why the temperatures were so high and persisted for so long afterwards. So it fits together with that set of findings in a very consistent way. The fourth major thing is, all three buildings came down at freefall, gravitational freefall, or very close to it.
The only way that can happen is if the lower structure was abruptly removed to allow the top part to fall into freefall. This fits into the other things I talk about. There were several varieties of explosives. And the ones that we found are just one of those, and not necessarily the one that did most of the damage. We just don’t know that kind of thing. When I say we, there was an international team of scientists and chemists that studied the dust from the WTC and reported in the open literature, so it’s there and there has not been any counterpublication to say this is not true.
VCReporter: In regard to Building 7, is it not possible that the debris from the previously collapsed main towers had initiated the fires that damaged the bottom eight floors to the point of collapse causing the free-fall?
Deets: There is no evidence that there were fires for the initial time period. There could be that there were. But there have not been any photographs released to the public. About 100 minutes is the first indication that there were any fires, and even then it was not on the floors where supposedly the fire damage caused the buildings to come down. That would be several hours later. Let’s say you were taking this to [a] court of law; you wouldn’t have a chain of evidence that led from the debris to the fires.
The other piece of evidence is whether the fires, especially that kind of office fire, can lead to compromising the steel structure and causing the whole thing to come crashing down. So you go back to saying there is no precedent in the history of high-rise steel structures that fires lead to the building coming down. Some of those fires have historically lasted up to 18 hours and still didn’t compromise the structure. So it’s unreasonable to think that if the fires did start from the debris it would lead to the buildings coming down. The other part is that it came down in pure free fall for what is equivalent to eight stories’ worth of free fall
VCReporter: Why do you think the government has never officially addressed the collapse of Building 7?
Deets: I think it causes a severe problem for them in explaining what happened. At first you have to talk about the great length of time that the government agency that was supposed to investigate Building 7, which was NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology.) They stalled up until November 2008 before they issued their final report. That is seven years to come up with a final report. Clearly, it was a problem to them. Either they couldn’t explain it or they could, but didn’t want to. They didn’t want to give the explanation that the evidence pointed to, which I think is the case.
VCReporter: Didn’t they also deny a request from engineers into the report about how Building 7 came down, citing a “concern for public safety”?
Deets: They did. In this case, this is a freedom-of-information request asking for details of their computer model. They said they had a very sophisticated computer model that modeled the structure, the fires, and based on that, they said this is the explanation, that fires caused the whole thing. For professional engineers to request that information through the law of the Freedom of Information Act, to provide that information, they have resisted it to this day. So anyway they are using this argument that revealing this sophisticated model could or might endanger public safety is very hard to justify, particularly when it’s professional engineers wanting to understand what caused the building to come down.
That in itself should be an effort in the interest of safety. In each of these four cases I brought up, if you look at what NIST has done, they have basically denied that these issues exist. Regarding hot temperatures, they come out and say we have no evidence of either high temperatures or that anybody saw it, even though there are testimonies from responders. They are just stonewalling all the way.
VCReporter: But they did admit, however, that the building collapsed at free fall. Shouldn’t that be evidence in itself?
Deets: Yes, they did admit that. But the thing is, they didn’t change any of their conclusions.
VCReporter: Why? Do you believe this is some sort of plan to engage our country into wars with Iraq and Afghanistan?
Deets: Well, I certainly think that we, as prudent members of the public, should consider it was highly likely, and it’s based on a record that our government has done that in a number of cases. Most recently, it did it to escalate the war in Vietnam. The Gulf of Tonkin incident turned out to not be an incident, and that has become publicly known because documents concerning that have been declassified but not publicized by the media. There is certainly a pattern. If you just put together the fact that all this happened on 9/11 and then we go to war. It fits a pattern and you have to wonder about that.
VCReporter: Let’s assume you are right. What is your political agenda? What do you want the public to do?
Deets: I want the public to demand of their representatives to investigate this, to stop stonewalling and investigate this to wherever it leads. I think that will be healthy for the country. It will be difficult to go through that, but it will force politicians to be more careful about doing things, because they will realize they won’t be able to get away with it. I think it will be good for the country. I think it will end the war. A large segment of the population believes we should be in Iraq and Afghanistan because of 9/11, but I think that would change.
VCReporter: Why do you think the vast majority of the public has accepted the findings?
Deets: The big media plays such a big role. The mainstream media, and I don’t know how this works, but they haven’t allowed any questioning of 9/11. A lot of the questions about what went on get marginalized and called conspiracies.
