Studies of a Falsified Photo, Part 1
An Introduction
The author claims that the very first photograph in the paper by Steven Jones entitled "Why Indeed Did the World Trade Center Buildings Completely Collapse? " is a forgery.
The photograph in question was supposedly taken by Frank Silecchia on 9-27-2001.
I have been in communication with Steven Jones, expressing my views to him through the forum of the Scholars for 9-11 Truth and Justice. I was told in no uncertain terms that I am mistaken, and that the photographer himself has recently reaffirmed that the photograph is real and untampered with.
I have repeatedly asked for a copy of the original digital image with it's meta-data intact. My repeated requests were ignored.
He later told me that he "doesn't have the original".
In fact, nobody seems to have the original. I was unable to find the photo with it's meta-data intact through the many archived photo collections available on the internet. A simple Google search of the name of the photographer will show that many people have tried to find the original photo with no success.
A good collection of available photo archives is listed here.
The photo is shown below. It was obtained by separating it from the pdf version of the paper by Steven Jones.
We make the following claims:
1) This photo is not real. It is a digitally manipulated composite of at least 3 different images.
2) Section 1 shows an image of a recognizable landmark in the WTC Building 1 (North Tower) debris. This beam shows clear and provable signs of being digitally manipulated.
3) Section 2 shows a beam protruding from the North Tower debris. This beam simply did not exist in the location shown. It does not exist in the location shown in any other known photo of the North Tower rubble. It was added using a computer program like Photoshop.
This article will show that it is physically impossible that the beam in section 2, called "beam #2", existed in the WTC debris in the location shown.
This article will also show that the beam shown in section 1, called "beam #1" contains digitally added and altered elements.
My proof is divided into 3 parts.
Part 1, the present part, will locate the position and orientation of the supposed photographer and beam #2 within the WTC wreckage.
Part 2 will examine many known photographs of the WTC debris in search of beam #2 in the locations we would expect it to be. We will show that it simply is not there.
Part 3 will examine the digitally manipulated features of beam #1.
Here you can see the digitally manipulated image of the beam followed by 8 pictures of the same beam from different angles taken at different times in the clean-up process.
The first 6 pictures were taken from the west side of the remains of the North Tower. The last 2 pictures were taken from the east side, or the WTC plaza area.
Please note that of all the pictures, picture #3 seems to have been taken at about the same angle as the altered image.
Lets take a closer look.
This is a very interesting set of photos that allow us locate the orientation and position of the supposed photographer with satisfactory precision.
Please observe that there is an object seen behind the beam in question. The movement of this object behind the beam relative to the beam allows us to judge angles rather precisely.
What is this object behind the beam?
We will call it "object A".
Note how the individual markings on object A line up with the beam in almost the same way in the first and third pictures. These 2 pictures were taken at almost the same angle.
The following 2 pictures show the beam from the opposite direction. This allows us to see what object A actually is.
It is just another box beam with a pole right next to it. Below is a second view of these objects.
Having identified a picture of the beam from just about the same angle, lets look at the uncropped, panoramic picture of the beam from this angle.
Fascinating. We almost have enough information to locate the position where the supposed photographer was standing.
Well, we know where the photographer who took the above picture was standing. Note how the photographer, beam #1 and that tall building with 2 domes far in the background line up.
Also note how this photographer is standing on ground level.
In fact, the entire immediate area around which this photographer is standing is at ground level. This was also true just after the demolitions occured on 9-11-01. Remarkably, this immediate area did not have a "mountain" of debris on it just after the demolitions occured. The reader can verify this for themselves in the many photos to follow, particularly in part 2 of this article.
As was mentioned before, we expect the supposed photographer who "took" the digitally manipulated picture to be in the same general location of this photographer, just a little bit forward (not lower, because he is already standing on the ground. You can't go lower than ground level).
To better understand what we mean by "ground level", lets look at the following picture.
You can see that the hill of rubble doesn't start to slope upwards until you reach the base of what I call the "west slope". This is actually just inside the perimeter of where the North Tower actually stood, inside the "footprint".
You'll be able to see this in all the pictures to follow.
Finally, using the above picture, we are able to place the alleged photographer.
This picture is also taken at an angle in which beam #1 is in alignment with the building with 2 domes.
It just lines up with the other side of the same dome. Therefore, we place the photographer a bit to the left.
We also place him pretty close to the beginning of the "west slope" since he is clearly close to a slope in the picture he is supposed to have taken.
And notice that this also places him just inside a line extending along the south wall of the North Tower.
Whether this position is off 20 or 30 feet in any direction, I, personally, do not really care. Since the beam we are trying to locate, called "beam #2", doesn't actually exist, if anyone manages to locate something that looks like it even close to where we predict it should be, we would consider that acceptable.
We will grant a very lenient margin of error to anyone who locates the beam.
Lets look at the original picture again to get a general idea just where on the west slope we would expect to find beam #2.
Again, make the green circles as big or as small as you wish. I don't really care.
Whatever helps you find beam #2 is OK by me.
Studies of a Falsified Photo, Part 2
Hunting for Beam #2
Pictured above is a very good photo with which to start our search for beam #2. We've already used this picture in the placement of the photographer.
The above photo is dated 9-17-01. Please note that there is an excavating machine very close to the area where, according to the photo of the molten metal, we would expect to find this very molten metal 10 days later.
Lets review what we've learned in part 1 of this essay.
We use 2 reference lines to place the photographer and put him close enough to the base of the west slope of the debris hill to create the effect we see in his photo.
This is shown below.
We then set up the basic relations between beam #1, the supposed location of the molten metal near the base of the slope and where we would expect to see beam #2.
This is shown below.
The excavator in the above picture is incredibly close to the location of the supposed location of the molten metal, no?
So it took 10 days for this machine to move a few feet and dig up this molten metal. And then it took only 6 days for the crews to clean about 30 feet of the top of the entire mound, as mentioned in part 1. But I will discuss the absurd dating of the forged photo a bit later.
Now we will set up major reference objects in the general area where we expect to find beam #2.
We choose 5 major core column box beams as our reference objects because they are clearly visible in all photos we will be studying.
We choose core box columns because:
1) They are the largest identifiable objects in the rubble.
2) They are very difficult to move.
3) They allow us to see if the rubble pile is moving or shifting over time.
4) They were moved using cranes and large steel cable. They were moved from their original locations directly onto trucks or clearly outside of the rubble and placed in an organized fashion.
In other words, if someone were to claim that beam #2 was moved from it's original location and placed again in the rubble where we see it in the original photo in question, we would know that this person has no idea what he is talking about.
It would be a silly claim not worth considering.
We show the 5 reference objects below. We will refer to the same 5 objects many times during our search for beam #2.
So lets zoom in and look for the beam.
I show the beam we are looking for in the lower left corner of the picture.
The large circle allows for a very large margin of error.
But even if you can find the beam outside of this circle, that's good enough for me.
Can you find the beam?
And zooming in even further, can you find the beam?
I can't.
But, hey, that's only one picture.
Lets look at a second picture, shown below.
This photo was obviously taken before the clean-up began.
This is an excellent picture to understand what I mean by "ground level".
Please notice that there are no large mounds of rubble in the foreground.
The base of the large, central mound of rubble is actually near or within where the original west wall of the North Tower used to be.
Those men seen on the right side of the picture are standing on ground level. Therefore, any photographer in that area must have been standing on ground level also (or on top of some object).
Any claim that the photographer was lower than ground level would be absurd. They can be closer or farther away, but not lower than ground level.
We now use the south wall projection line to place the photographer, shown below.
He was standing to the left of the photographer of this picture, as can be seen in a comparison of the 2 beam #1 pictures, shown below.
Next, we mark the areas where we would expect to see beam #2 and where the excavation machine was supposedly seen picking up the molten metal.
Lets zoom in and search for beam #2.
Hmmmm.....
Something is wrong, here.
Lets keep searching.
We will analyze the next 2 pictures using the same methods.
Projecting and placing the photographer...
Locating our reference objects to find our way around....
We now zoom in and seach for beam #2.
Any luck?
Folks, it looks like beam #2 doesn't actually exist in the location the original picture would have us believe.
And yet another picture.
We know to look for beam #2 between the reference objects shown below.
Can you see it there? I can't.
Below we use yet another picture of where we would expect to find beam #2.
Do you see any beam that looks like beam #2 protruding from the mound?
Beam #2 was intentionally placed in the original picture using digital manipulation.
Someone is trying very hard to lie to us.
They want us to believe that there was an excavation machine that picked up an object dripping with molten metal on 9-27-01.
You would think that some people who view this photo would question it's authenticity by simply considering how absolutely stupid the machine operator would have to be to attempt to pick up molten metal in his bucket.
You would also think that a viewer with a scientific background would question it's authenticity simply by considering the environmental conditions required to keep this small amount of material molten FOR 16 DAYS!
(Some scientists have argued that the thermite reaction contains it's own oxygen, so can continue underground and even under water. While that is true, a simple calculation as to the QUANTITY of oxygen, and other active chemical ingredients of a thermite reaction, that would be required to keep this metal in molten form for 16 days, or at least 384 hours, would show the absurdity of such a statement.)
But no. Not many people seem to think about how silly the claim is.
Hopefully this essay can help the many wonderful people in the 9-11 truth movement understand that false and misleading information is being force-fed to us through some media which you perhaps never previously suspected.
Studies of a Falsified Photo, Part 3
A Case of Bad Photoshopping.
The enlarged image shown above is of beam #1 in the picture presented by Steven Jones, the very first picture that he shows in his paper mentioned before.
Steven Jones has personally assured me that this photograph is authentic.
We can immediately spot 4 photoshop mistakes in this picture.
We will first focus on what we have labelled "inexplicable hanging material" in the above photo.
This inexplicable material had appeared only for this picture, which the photographer claims to have taken on 9-27-01. It didn't exist before this time and it apparently disappeared just after this picture was taken.
Please recall that there is an object just behind beam #1 which we call "object A".
In the series of 3 pictures shown above, please note that you can see this hanging material in the first picture only.
The 2 pictures on the right are known to have been taken on 10-3-01.
In the pictures below we can see object A from the opposite side.
These pictures were all taken before 9-27-01.
Can you see the mystery material hanging from object A?
But the reader may wonder if this mystery material is not from some object in the debris further in the background, behind object A.
This cannot be because there was only empty space behind object A and the distant damaged building in the far background, WTC 5.
You will be able to see this in the following pair of photos.
The first of these pictures was taken at just about the exact same position and orientation as the falsified photo in question. The camera was facing east. You can see WTC Building 5 in the distant background.
The photo on the right was taken before 9-27-01 from almost exactly 180 degrees in the opposite direction as the first picture. The camera is facing west. You can know that it was taken from almost exactly the opposite direction by noticing how object A is aligned with beam #1.
That giant golden ball in the foreground is the sculpture which was in the center of the plaza. This tells you that the photographer was actually closer to WTC Building 5 than they were to where the North Tower used to be.
You can see that there were no highly protruding objects between the photographer and object A. Therefore the mystery material couldn't be located behind object A in the picture Steven Jones uses in his paper.
So if this mystery material (shown circled in pink in the above photo) is not hanging from object A, and if it is not something in the rubble located behind object A, what is it?
It is a part of the background which the photoshop artist didn't realize he had to erase when they were digitally extracting these object from the background.
It is a photoshop mistake.
The artist didn't do a clean job while altering the image and accidentally left in part of the background.
It was an honest(?) mistake. They couldn't have known where object A ended and where WTC Building 5 began in the image.
Oops!
No Visible Background
Please notice that in the previous image comparing Beam A from 3 photos, only the original photo Steven Jones presents in his paper has no background whatsoever.
Where the hell did the New York skyline go?
Most gentle and reasonable reader, don't you see a little problem here?
In fact, the only background remaining is the small part of the remains of WTC 5 the photoshop artist manipulators forgot to edit out.
Conclusions
The discovery that the very first photo in Steven's paper is indeed a forgery generates more questions than it answers.
Why would well organized people plant false photographic evidence of incandescent material among the WTC rubble within the 9-11 Truth Movement?
Consider the second photo that appears in Steven's paper, claimed to have been taken by the same photographer as the first, shown below.
Considering that the photo under examination (the fake one) is of a much better quality than the one above and was "taken" by the same photographer, why should we believe anything in this second photo?
And yet this is the best photographic proof of incandescent metal Steven offers us in his paper.
Or, even worse, consider a third photo Steven presents as evidence, shown below.
As this author mentions elsewhere, this photo could win first prize for the single most blurry, poorest quality evidenciary photo within the entire 9-11 Truth Movement. And yet this is what Steven presents as his best evidence.
This isn't a church, folks.
It is our duty to present better evidence than this.
So Who is Trying to Lead Us in the Wrong Direction?
The 9-11 Truth Community must realize that there are some very tricky people (lacking conscience) with a mountain of money that wish to steer our research in the wrong direction.
Space beams and no planes are just some of the more obvious examples.
But what about angle-cut columns and exaggerated claims of molten metal within the WTC rubble?
What about twisting the sighting of a small amount of incandescent substance falling from the 82nd floor of the northeast corner of WTC 2 into some global "thermite" collapse theory?
This twisting of facts is infinitely more devious than some space beam claims by Judy Wood can ever be.
Friends, think about it.
Note: In response to this photo study, only 2 people have claimed to find the mystery beam #2 within photos of the rubble.
You can see their claims and my proof that their claims are physically impossible next.
Hunting for the Phantom Column
2 Phantom Beam Sightings Reported
In response to my essay, only 2 people have claimed to be able to locate beam #2 in the many photos of the rubble provided to them. These two people were Gordon Ross, ME, and Greg Jenkens, PhD Physics, via the STJ911 Forum.
I'll first show the reader where these 2 people claimed to locate beam #2.
After that, I'll quickly show how these proposed beam #2 placements are physically impossible.
Shown below is the first of 3 graphics the first claimant made to show where they think beam #2 is located.
Note that this person uses red to outline both beam #1 and beam #2.
They also place a few other guide marks.
Most notably is a beam near the bottom of the picture with an arrow.
We will call this "beam Z"
This person uses the relation between the 3 beams to try to locate beam #2.
They use the following graphic to claim they located beam #2
They claim to find beam #2 yet again in a different picture, shown below.
The second person who claimed to find the beam basically agreed with the analysis of the first person and further claimed that the phantom beam, beam #2, can be seen in the picture labelled 10-3 shown below.
Now, in a simple comparison between the 10-3 photo and the digitally manipulated image shown below it, it looks like the scaling doesn't match between the 2 pictures. The distance between beam #1 and beam #2 in the lower picture seems much further than beam #1 and what this person claims is beam #2 in the 10-3 picture.
But this second claimant told me that this apparent scaling difference is because of the possible use of a zoom lense.
?????
The placement of objects by these claimants is physically impossible
Using photos of the same area from other angles easily proves that they did not locate the phantom beam.
In the above set of images I simply locate the same beam, which we will call "beam Z" in 2 of the claimants graphics.
And below I locate beam Z and beam #1 in a different photo.
In the digitally manipulated photo, the bucket of the excavator and the "glowing metal" are located just over the top corner of beam Z.
That would place the "molten, dripping metal" somewhere inside the yellow circle.
That looks to be within 50 feet of the base of beam #1.
We will measure the distance between the "dripping metal" location and beam #1 in the satellite photo, shown below.
To measure distances in the above photo, we compare everything to the partially intact north perimeter wall of the North Tower, which we know to be 208 feet.
This tells us that the distance between beam #1 and the location of the "molten, dripping" metal is less than 50 feet.
I hope everyone can see that it is not possible for the "dripping" metal and beam #1 to be as close as 50 feet.
After all, the visible part of beam #1, seen in the background, is 28 feet tall.
Beam #2 Does Not Exist
So far not one person has been able to locate the phantom beam, beam #2.
So far nobody has been able to explain the mystery object, that was seen for this photo only, hanging from object A.
And nobody will.
That is because these objects do not actually exist in the locations shown in the photo. There is no other photo of the WTC rubble that shows beam #2 exists in the location shown. The photo is fake.
So far nobody has been able to find the original photo. And a quick look on Google shows that many other people have questioned this photo before me and nobody knows where the original is.
Steven Jones used it as the lead-off photo in his research paper, even though neither he nor anyone else has access to the original photo.
Steven Jones, why do you lead off you paper with it, and with other photos by the same photographer?