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My name is Tom Sullivan.
I worked for Controlled Demolition Incorporated, CDI,
the top-rated explosives demolition firm in the world,
owned by the Loizeaux family, during the years surrounding 911.
And I worked for them as an explosives loader for two and a half years.
As an explosives loader,
my job was to place explosives in the buildings to prepare them for demolition.
I was licensed while in New York by the New York Fire Department
to handle explosives.
And I worked on major projects, such as Seattle Kingdome,
the Three Rivers Stadium, Philadelphia Naval Hospital,
and Keyspan Gasholders in New York, among others.
I currently live on the East Coast.
Isn’t it true that anybody can implode a building straight down,
just by placing a bunch of explosives around?
There are many steps that you need to take.
First off is you have to weaken the building,
and that’s after a lot of study’s gone into
how the building was built in the first place.
To weaken to building that means that
all the staircases have to be cut at intervals.
the firewalls have to be removed,
the elevator shafts have to be cut and the rails cut,
as well as the cars themselves removed.
Then you have to move to the support columns on the particular load floors,
and those are cut by torch, for two reasons.
First to weaken them and also to allow for charges to be placed
onto the structure or onto the columns themselves.
And that essentially, reduces their strength by about 20 percent.
And even with all of that work being done to weaken this building,
it still remains safely standing, so we can continue to work in it.
The story that just a few columns,
can cause a synchronized global collapse,
an implosion, is just nonsense.
After the prepping work has been done,
then it’s time to load the building.
And in the case of a steel frame building,
that means we load them with RDX cutting charges,
which are loaded with individual delays,
sometimes as many as two to three different delays on a given floor.
So you have to understand,
the work is complex and precise and requires years of experience.
We were told by the NIST report that fire,
caused one column to fail, and from that point,
we had a global collapse of the building
in a classic implosion.
I don’t see how this could actually happen in real life.
When we load a building, we have to have all of the support columns
on a given load floor, fail at the same time.
Within milliseconds of one another.
And therefore, the entire building comes down in a synchronized implosion.
So I think this notion
of a one-column failure causing an entire building to implode
in a synchronized fashion is just nonsense.
Looking at the building, it wouldn’t be a problem,
once you gained access to the elevator shafts.
Then a team of loading experts would have access
to all the core columns and beams.
The rest could be accomplished at that point
by just the right kind of explosives for the job at hand.
The choices are many out there.
I’ve worked on buildings, steel frame buildings,
where essentially you load only the bottom third of the building
and that causes the building to implode.
Yes, we have loaded buildings in that fashion,
that just the core support columns are loaded
and we don’t necessarily have to load the outside perimeter columns
to have this building come down successfully.
With steel frame buildings,
you don’t have to load all the floors to have a successful implosion.
Only the bottom third of the building needs to be loaded
to have a successful implosion.
For instance, I worked on a building in Hartford, Connecticut,
the CNG Building, where we did just that.
You wouldn’t need miles and miles of det cord.
You could have used wireless remote detonators.
And they’ve been available for years.
you need only look at an action movie to see them in use,
and of course, the military has them as well.
Contractors don’t use them, on the other hand, because they’re just too expensive.
You wouldn’t have found steel casings to be left in the rubble.
They haven’t been used for years.
What we use now is RDX copper-jacketed shape charges.
And when they’re initiated there is nothing left of those charges.
And in the case of thermite, thermite self-consuming cutting charges
have been around since they've been first patented in 1984.
So there would be nothing left in the debris pile,
except some residue of molten iron.
The key word here is “controlled” demolition,
and I emphasize the word “controlled.”
We use careful placement of the charges,
they’re always focused and precise.
And we’re just not talking about setting off a bomb here.
Plus, the amount and type of explosives
can pretty well take care of any collateral damage.
With any implosion you don’t hear one massive boom sound.
What you do hear is smaller explosions going off,
which leads up to the implosion of the building.
Mr. Sunder of NIST has said that if this had been a controlled demolition,
you would’ve heard a large massive bomb going off, a big boom.
What in reality happens with a controlled demolition is,
you hear successive, progressive,
smaller waves of smaller explosions going off.
And that leads to the successful implosion of the building.
In the case of thermite cutting charges,
you would have heard far less noise, since they are worked by
thermal heating, melting of the steel,
rather than an explosive cutting, as in RDX charges.
Now regarding the criticism that this couldn’t have been
a controlled demolition because
the building apparently exhibited a bit of lean as it came down.
In my experience, this isn’t exactly precise.
The buildings can lean a bit as they come down, with any implosion.
I knew from Day One that this was a controlled event.
And why I did that is because simply looking at Building 7
You have a sudden collapse of the building.
It’s fairly symmetrical as it comes down.
There’s the classic kink, which means that the center core fails first
and you can see that on the video.
And the building falls near freefall.
So I really, honestly didn’t believe this from Day One.
Because this is the way buildings classically come down
with a controlled demolition.
I want to emphasize that I in no way represent CDI.
And what I have to say is based solely
on my own working experience and training while working for them.
This NIST report is very suspect.
Because I would’ve expected in a classic implosion,
as I’ve seen numerous times, is the core to fail.
Essentially, what I’m saying is, the core,
I would expect the center of the building to start moving first.
And then, as the implosion progresses,
then the rest of the building is involved.
So this idea that it started on one side, and all of a sudden,
the core starts moving as this thing progresses,
just doesn’t make sense.
What I saw was a classic implosion, the center of the core,
the penthouse area, starts to move first,
and then the building follows along with it.
So this idea that it started on one corner,
from one column off on the side,
therefore the core was involved, starting from that corner,
just doesn’t make sense. It’s not how it works!
Well, again, if you listen to the testimony of people on the ground,
they’re reporting exactly what I would have expected.
I’ve been to all the implosions when I was working at CDI,
as you point out, I photographed them.
and what you hear, is waves of explosions going off.
Not one massive big boom, but you hear, boom boom boom boom!
go back and listen to the tapes of the police officers
and people on the ground and the firemen as well.
They’re reporting exactly what I would expect.
You’re hearing, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,
as these different floors start to fail.
So what I’m hearing from what people were there
is exactly what I would expected.
You don’t break glass. So collateral damage, windows breaking,
for blocks around, that kind of thing,
it just doesn’t happen if it’s a controlled demolition.