SOUTH BEND -- The laboratory director from a South Bend firm has been fired for attempting to cast doubt on the federal investigation into what caused the World Trade Center's twin towers to collapse on Sept. 11, 2001.

Kevin R. Ryan was terminated Tuesday from his job at Environmental Health Laboratories Inc., a subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories Inc., the consumer-product safety testing giant.

On Nov. 11, Ryan wrote a letter to the National Institute of Standards and Technology -- the agency probing the collapse -- challenging the common theory that burning jet fuel weakened the steel supports holding up the 110-story skyscrapers.

Underwriters Laboratories Inc., according to Ryan, "was the company that certified the steel components used in the construction of the WTC buildings."...

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According to Nic Levis, east coast director of 911truth.org, "David Ray Griffin has received confirmation that Kevin Ryan, site manager of the Environmental Health Laboratories (Underwriters Laboratories), was fired today by the parent company, Underwriters Laboratories, apparently for writing a letter questioning certain common theories of the Twin Towers collapses to the leader of the U.S. government NIST team researching the World Trade Center events..."

911truth.org, who followed up on a story by Emanuel Sfernos/Bill Douglas (911Visibility.org), is "working to get statements from the parties involved and in developing this story and a possible response..."

The federal agency [National Institute of Standards and Technology] investigating the collapse of the World Trade Center said this week that some of its deliberations would take place in secret...

The announcement has been sharply protested by advocates for families of the 9/11 victims, who said they were considering a lawsuit to force the agency to open the meetings to the public.

... In an e-mail notice sent earlier this week, the institute said that its construction advisory committee, a group of experts overseeing the investigation, would meet for 10 hours on Nov. 22 at its headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md., but that only the first 2 hours would be public.

... Monica Gabrielle, whose husband Richard was killed when the south tower collapsed 57 minutes after it was hit by one of the hijacked jets, vehemently objected to the decision.

"You have one job, and one job only - to find out the truth of what happened to those buildings and to report to the public about it," she said yesterday in an interview. "You don't owe industry, the Port Authority or federal agencies anything. You owe it to the public - the truth, no matter where it goes." [more...]

From Kevin R. Ryan
Site Manager of the Environmental Health Laboratories
South Bend, Indiana
A division of Underwriters Laboratories, Inc.

To Frank Gayle
Deputy Chief of the Metallurgy Division
Material Science and Engineering Laboratory
National Institute of Standards and Technology

From: Kevin R Ryan/SBN/ULI
To: frank.gayle@nist.gov
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.

... 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..."

... 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 (2). 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". ... 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)...

... 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. [more]