"Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A leaked top-secret order has revealed the Obama administration is conducting a massive domestic surveillance program by collecting telephone records of millions of Verizon Business customers. Last night The Guardian newspaper published a classified order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court directing Verizon’s Business Network Services to give the National Security Agency electronic data, including all calling records on a, quote, "ongoing, daily basis." The order covers each phone number dialed by all customers along with location and routing data, and with the duration and frequency of the calls, but not the content of the communications. The order expressly compels Verizon to turn over records for both international and domestic records. It also forbids Verizon from disclosing the existence of the court order. It is unclear if other phone companies were ordered to hand over similar information.

AMY GOODMAN: According to legal analysts, the Obama administration relied on a controversial provision in the USA PATRIOT Act, Section 215, that authorizes the government to seek secret court orders for the production of, quote, "any tangible thing relevant to a foreign intelligence or terrorism investigation." The disclosure comes just weeks after news broke that the Obama administration had been spying on journalists from the Associated Press and James Rosen, a reporter from Fox News.

We’re now joined by two former employees of the National Security Agency, Thomas Drake and William Binney. In 2010, the Obama administration charged Drake with violating the Espionage Act after he was accused of leaking classified information to the press about waste and mismanagement at the agency. The charges were later dropped. William Binney worked for almost 40 years at the NSA. He resigned shortly after the September 11th attacks over his concern over the increasing surveillance of Americans. We’re also joined in studio here by Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

First, for your legal opinion, Shayana, can you talk about the significance of what has just been revealed?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Sure. So I think, you know, we have had stories, including one in USA Today in May 2006, that have said that the government is collecting basically all the phone records from a number of large telephone companies. What’s significant about yesterday’s disclosure is that it’s the first time that we’ve seen the order, to really appreciate the sort of staggeringly broad scope of what one of the judges on this Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved of, and the first time that we can now confirm that this was under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which, you know, has been dubbed the libraries provision, because people were mostly worried about the idea that the government would use it to get library records. Now we know that they’re using it to get phone records. And just to see the immense scope of this warrant order, you know, when most warrants are very narrow, is really shocking as a lawyer.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, some might argue that the Obama administration at least went to the FISA court to get approval for this, unlike the Bush administration in the past.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. Well, we don’t know if the Bush administration was, you know, getting these same orders and if this is just a continuation, a renewal order. It lasted for only—it’s supposed to last for only three months, but they may have been getting one every three months since 2006 or even earlier. You know, when Congress reapproved this authority in 2011, you know, one of the things Congress thought was, well, at least they’ll have to present these things to a judge and get some judicial review, and Congress will get some reporting of the total number of orders. But when one order covers every single phone record for a massive phone company like Verizon, the reporting that gets to Congress is going to be very hollow. And then, similarly, you know, when the judges on the FISA court are handpicked by the chief justice, and the government can go to a judge, as they did here, in North Florida, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, who’s 73 years old and is known as a draconian kind of hanging judge in his sentencing, and get some order that’s this broad, I think both the judicial review and the congressional oversight checks are very weak.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, this is just Verizon, because that’s what Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian got a hold of. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t other orders for the other telephone companies, right?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: Like BellSouth, like AT&T, etc.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: As there have been in the past.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Yeah, those were—those were companies mentioned in that USA Today story in 2006. Nothing about the breadth of this order indicates that it’s tied to any particular national security investigation, as the statute says it has to be. So, some commentators yesterday said, "Well, this order came out on—you know, it’s dated 10 days after the Boston attacks." But it’s forward-looking. It goes forward for three months. Why would anyone need to get every record from Verizon Business in order to investigate the Boston bombings after they happened?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, William Binney, a decades-long veteran of the NSA, your reaction when you heard about this news?

WILLIAM BINNEY: Well, this was just the FBI going after data. That was their request. And they’re doing that because they—if they want to try to get it—they have to have it approved by a court in order to get it as evidence into a courtroom. But NSA has been doing all this stuff all along, and it’s been all the companies, not just one. And I basically looked at that and said, well, if Verizon got one, so did everybody else, which means that, you know, they’re just continuing the collection of this kind of information on all U.S. citizens. That’s one of the main reasons they couldn’t tell Senator Wyden, with his request of how many U.S. citizens are in the NSA databases. There’s just—in my estimate, it was—if you collapse it down to all uniques, it’s a little over 280 million U.S. citizens are in there, each in there several hundred to several thousand times.

AMY GOODMAN: In fact, let’s go to Senator Wyden. A secret court order to obtain the Verizon phone records was sought by the FBI under a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that was expanded by the PATRIOT Act. In 2011, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden warned about how the government was interpreting its surveillance powers under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.

SEN. RON WYDEN: When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the PATRIOT Act, they are going to be stunned, and they are going to be angry. And they’re going asked senators, "Did you know what this law actually permits? Why didn’t you know before you voted on it?" The fact is, anyone can read the plain text of the PATRIOT Act, and yet many members of Congress have no idea how the law is being secretly interpreted by the executive branch, because that interpretation is classified. It’s almost as if there were two PATRIOT Acts, and many members of Congress have not read the one that matters. Our constituents, of course, are totally in the dark. Members of the public have no access to the secret legal interpretations, so they have no idea what their government believes the law actually means.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Senator Ron Wyden. He and Senator Udall have been raising concerns because they sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee but cannot speak out openly exactly about what they know. William Binney, you left the agency after September 2001, deeply concerned—this is after you’d been there for 40 years—about the amount of surveillance of U.S. citizens. In the end, your house was raided. You were in the shower. You’re a diabetic amputee. The authorities had a gun at your head. Which agency had the gun at your head, by the way?

WILLIAM BINNEY: That was the FBI.

AMY GOODMAN: You were not charged, though you were terrorized. Can you link that to what we’re seeing today?

WILLIAM BINNEY: Well, it’s directly linked, because it has to do with all of the surveillance of the U.S. citizens that’s been going on since 9/11. I mean, that’s—they were getting—from just one company alone, that I knew of, they were getting over 300 million call records a day on U.S. citizens. So, I mean, and when you add the rest of the companies in, my estimate was that there were probably three billion phone records collected every day on U.S. citizens. So, over time, that’s a little over 12 trillion in their databases since 9/11. And that’s just phones; that doesn’t count the emails. And they’re avoiding talking about emails there, because that’s also collecting content of what people are saying. And that’s in the databases that NSA has and that the FBI taps into. It also tells you how closely they’re related. When the FBI asks for data and the court approves it, the data is sent to NSA, because they’ve got all the algorithms to do the diagnostics and community reconstructions and things like that, so that the FBI can—makes it easier for the FBI to interpret what’s in there.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We’re also joined by Thomas Drake, who was prosecuted by the Obama administration after he blew the whistle on mismanagement and waste and constitutional violations at the NSA. Thomas Drake, your reaction to this latest revelation?

THOMAS DRAKE: My reaction? Where has the mainstream media been? This is routine. These are routine orders. This is nothing new. What’s new is we’re actually seeing an actual order. And people are somehow surprised by it. The fact remains that this program has been in place for quite some time. It was actually started shortly after 9/11. The PATRIOT Act was the enabling mechanism that allowed the United States government in secret to acquire subscriber records of—from any company that exists in the United States.

I think what people are now realizing is that this isn’t just a terrorist issue. This is simply the ability of the government in secret, on a vast scale, to collect any and all phone call records, including domestic to domestic, local, as well as location information. We might—there’s no need now to call this the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Let’s just call it the surveillance court. It’s no longer about foreign intelligence. It’s simply about harvesting millions and millions and millions of phone call records and beyond. And this is only just Verizon. As large as Verizon is, with upwards of 100 million subscribers, what about all the other telecoms? What about all the other Internet service providers? It’s become institutionalized in this country, in the greatest of secrecy, for the government to classify, conceal not only the facts of the surveillance, but also the secret laws that are supporting surveillance.

AMY GOODMAN: Thomas Drake, what can they do with this information, what’s called metadata? I mean, they don’t have the content of the conversation, supposedly—or maybe we just don’t see that, that’s under another request, because, remember, we are just seeing this one, for people who are listening and watching right now, this one request that is specifically to—and I also want to ask you: It’s Verizon Business Services; does that have any significance? But what does it mean to have the length of time and not the names of, but where the call originates and where it is going, the phone numbers back and forth?

THOMAS DRAKE: You get incredible amounts of information about subscribers. It’s basically the ability to forward-profile, as well as look backwards, all activities associated with those phone numbers, and not only just the phone numbers and who you called and who called you, but also the community of interests beyond that, who they were calling. I mean, we’re talking about a phenomenal set of records that is continually being added to, aggregated, year after year and year, on what have now become routine orders. Now, you add the location information, that’s a tracking mechanism, monitoring tracking of all phone calls that are being made by individuals. I mean, this is an extraordinary breach. I’ve said this for years. Our representing attorney, Jesselyn Radack from the Government Accountability Project, we’ve been saying this for years and no—from the wilderness. We’ve had—you’ve been on—you know, you’ve had us on your show in the past, but it’s like, hey, everybody kind of went to sleep, you know, while the government is harvesting all these records on a routine basis.

You’ve got to remember, none of this is probable cause. This is simply the ability to collect. And as I was told shortly after 9/11, "You don’t understand, Mr. Drake. We just want the data." And so, the secret surveillance regime really has a hoarding complex, and they can’t get enough of it. And so, here we’re faced with the reality that a government in secret, in abject violation of the Fourth Amendment, under the cover of enabling act legislation for the past 12 years, is routinely analyzing what is supposed to be private information. But, hey, it doesn’t matter anymore, right? Because we can get to it. We have secret agreements with the telecoms and Internet service providers and beyond. And we can do with the data anything we want.

So, you know, I sit here—I sit here as an American, as I did shortly after 9/11, and it’s all déjà vu for me. And then I was targeted—it’s important to note, I—not just for massive fraud, waste and abuse; I was specifically targeted as the source for The New York Times article that came out in December of 2005. They actually thought that I was the secret source regarding the secret surveillance program. Ultimately, I was charged under the Espionage Act. So that should tell you something. Sends an extraordinarily chilling message. It is probably the deepest, darkest secret of both administrations, greatly expanded under the Obama administration. It’s now routine practice.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Shayana, I’d like to ask you, specifically that issue of the FISA court also authorizing domestic surveillance. I mean, is there—even with the little laws that we have left, is there any chance for that to be challenged, that the FISA court is now also authorizing domestic records being surveiled?

AMY GOODMAN: FISA being Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. I mean, you know, two things about that. First, the statute says that there have to be reasonable grounds to think that this information is relevant to an investigation of either foreign terrorist activity or something to do with a foreign power. So, you know, obviously, this perhaps very compliant judge approved this order, but it doesn’t seem like this is what Congress intended these orders would look like. Seems like, on the statute, that Congress intended they would be somewhat narrower than this, right?

But there’s a larger question, which is that, for years, the Supreme Court, since 1979, has said, "We don’t have the same level of protection over, you know, the calling records—the numbers that we dial and how long those calls are and when they happen—as we do over the contents of a phone call, where the government needs a warrant." So everyone assumes the government needs a warrant to get at your phone records and maybe at your emails, but it’s not true. They just basically need a subpoena under existing doctrine. And so, the government uses these kind of subpoenas to get your email records, your web surfing records, you know, cloud—documents in cloud storage, banking records, credit records. For all these things, they can get these extraordinarily broad subpoenas that don’t even need to go through a court.

AMY GOODMAN: Shayana, talk about the significance of President Obama nominating James Comey to be the head of the FBI—

SHAYANA KADIDAL: One of the—

AMY GOODMAN: —and who he was.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. One of the grand ironies is that Obama has nominated a Republican who served in the Bush administration for a long time, a guy with a reputation as being kind of personally incorruptable. I think, in part, he nominated him to be the head of the FBI, the person who would, you know, be responsible for seeking and renewing these kind of orders in the future, for the next 10 years—he named Comey, a Republican, because he wanted to, I think, distract from the phone record scandal, the fact that Holder’s Justice Department has gone after the phone records of the Associated Press and of Fox News reporter James Rosen, right?

And you asked, what can you tell from these numbers? Well, if you see the reporter called, you know, five or six of his favorite sources and then wrote a particular report that divulged some embarrassing government secret, that’s—you know, that’s just as good as hearing what the reporter was saying over the phone line. And so, we had this huge, you know, scandal over the fact that the government went after the phone records of AP, when now we know they’re going after everyone’s phone records, you know. And I think one of the grand ironies is that, you know, he named Comey because he had this reputation as being kind of a stand-up guy, who stood up to Bush in John Ashcroft’s hospital room in 2004 and famously said, "We have to cut back on what the NSA is doing." But what the NSA was doing was probably much broader than what The New York Times finally divulged in that story in December ’05.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, will Glenn Greenwald now be investigated, of The Guardian, who got the copy of this, so that they can find his leak, not to mention possibly prosecute him?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Oh, I think absolutely there will be some sort of effort to go after him punitively. The government rarely tries to prosecute people who are recognized as journalists. And so, Julian Assange maybe is someone they try to portray as not a journalist. Glenn Greenwald, I think, would be harder to do. But there are ways of going after them punitively that don’t involve prosecution, like going after their phone records so their sources dry up.

AMY GOODMAN: I saw an astounding comment by Pete Williams, who used to be the Pentagon spokesperson, who’s now with NBC, this morning, talking—he had talked with Attorney General Eric Holder, who had said, when he goes after the reporters—you know, the AP reporters, the Fox reporter—they’re not so much going after them; not to worry, they’re going after the whistleblowers. They’re trying to get, through them, the people. What about that, that separation of these two?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. I’ll give you an example from the AP. They had a reporter named, I believe, John Solomon. In 2000, he reported a story about the botched investigation into Robert Torricelli. The FBI didn’t like the fact that they had written this—he had written this story about how they dropped the ball on that, so they went after his phone records. And three years later, he talked to some of his sources who had not talked to him since then, and they said, "We’re not going to talk to you, because we know they’re getting your phone records."

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you all for being with us. Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights. William Binney and Thomas Drake both worked for the National Security Agency for years, and both ultimately resigned. Thomas Drake was prosecuted. They were trying to get him under the Espionage Act. All of those charges were dropped. William Binney held at gunpoint by the FBI in his shower, never prosecuted. Both had expressed deep concern about the surveillance of American citizens by the U.S. government. You can go to our website at democracynow.org for our hours of interviews with them, as well." - Democracy Now!

2/3 rds of all food sold in america is GMO.
that would qualify as "almost all".
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/ideas/2012/06/food-modified-food/
which is friendly to the GMO debate.
http://www.disabled-world.com/fitness/gm-foods.php
not so friendly to the debate.

while i will agree this is not a one dimensional discussion i cannot agree with your statement that this video would be considered uneducated slactivism.

corporations are amoral,not immoral,by design.
monsanto has purchased legislators and judges to enact laws which solely benefit them at the cost of society.veiled in secrecy and an army of lawyers that would make scientology blush.

you should really check the documentary channel out.there is a wealth of information concerning this behemoth corporation and how it does far more harm to our future food supply than good.

I actually disagree. My interpretation of the wikileaks approach is that transparency in government is important. They release a whole lot of information that they believe the citizens of respective countries deserve access to should they choose. The fact that most of it is banal or not evidence of corruption is not the point, in my opinion. The fact is, our governments do so much wrong while hiding behind weak claims of 'national interest' in their secrecy - and the trend of secrecy grows. I think what wikileaks does is make those in governments think about what they do behind the veil, because it may one day be out in the open at a time not of their choosing.

Working with government from time to time, I see some merit in this argument.

After years of meticulous planning, George Bush's cronies send out scripts to the world's press rooms to ensure that everyone is passing on the same fictitious account of the day's occurrences. Despite widespread dissemination of these scripts, the defense department's scrupulous attention to secrecy and lucrative payoffs ensured that not a single news reporter came forth with the truth. Unfortunately, years of preparation were thrown down the tube when someone misread the time on their script.

Rrriiiiiiigggghhhttt...

1. The Swedish government handed Mohammed al-Zari and Ahmed Agiza over to the Egyptians after they "obtained promises from the Egyptian authorities that the men would not be tortured or subjected to the death penalty, and would be given fair trials". Even Human Rights Watch conceded that this was done merely to "cover itself", knowing full well that these two would be tortured.

So yes, the Swedes are more than capable of sending Assange to the States.

2. According to Fair Trials International, Swedish law permits a level of secrecy for trials such as this that everyone should be concerned about. No public hearings and extended isolation, to name the key aspects.

3. As previously said, if Swedish authorities assured either Assange or the Ecuadorians that he wouldn't be handed over to the US, he'd be in Sweden already. It is entirely within their power to bring an end to this farce or to reveal Assange to be full of shit, should he still not comply even after acceptable guarantees were provided. But they chose not to make these assurances. And the stakes are too high for Assange to accept anything less, given the consequences he faces should he ever enter the US.

On a personal note: if it was me, I wouldn't believe any assurances by any country that took part in the CIA's extraordinary rendition program -- including my own country in the case of Khalid El-Masri.>> ^Babymech:

There is no way that any Swedish politician or authority would support Assange's extradition to the US. Nothing you ridiculous conspiracy theorists have come up with so far has indicated that they would. Maybe the US would kidnap him (?) but that could happen in London or Ecuador or wherever. Meanwhile, you delightful people think that alleged rapists should not have to collaborate with authorities investigating the charges as long as they're famous enough, and that the women making these claims should not have the basic rights that any other Swedish citizens normally would. Tasteful.

>> ^njjh201:

>> ^criticalthud:
patents and copyrights do a lot to retard the advancement of technology (and the species). think we'd be better off without these impediments

I'm not so sure. Patents only delay further progress in the relatively short run, and the pay-off is that to get a patent you have to share your method with all humanity. In fact I suspect that without patents we'd get a whole lot more secrecy (because you'd have to jealously guard your secrets from day one if you wanted the advantage of exclusivity at all) and innovation would be impeded worse. Who knows.


I'm not arguing that there are no benefits to the patent system. What I'm saying is that the negative effects vastly outweigh the positive. This retards the growth of ideas.

But let's take a closer look...Do you think the patent/copyright system helps or hurts something like cancer research?

I know a story [or two]. While in high school, my sister was in the All City Marching Band. She and a couple of friends slipped away for a pre-parade smoke in an alley only to find JP doing the same thing. He swore them to secrecy. It was one of the highlights of her youth =oD

That's a good point @KnivesOut, cult leaders can believe their own stuff. They get deemed crazy for doing it, but if your stuff is hundreds of years old, it's all fine. As regards secrecy, the Catholic church banned owning a Bible and put to death people for translating into then-modern languages.

The question of protecting their members is also dubious. Keeping girls out of school isn't for their own benefit, but I can believe that some Muslim leaders actually believe that it is. It wouldn't surprise me if David Koresh thought he was doing what's best for his followers either.

If it's not what the leaders believe, how they guard the beliefs or how they treat members, what is it? A mix? Or is there just a cut-off date? Like if your belief has been around longer than the renaissance, you can't be called crazy for believing it.

@Quboid, I'd wager that David Koresh believed what he was teaching, so much so that he died with his flock in Waco, in the name of his beliefs, and everyone pretty much agrees that the Branch Davidians were absolutely a cult.

For that reason, I don't think the leaders vs. followers thing necessarily holds water. Better: does the religion attempt to "protect" it's members from the outside world by way of separation, either intellectual or physical? Does the religion attempt to hide it's beliefs from non-believers until they are "ready"? It's the seclusion and secrecy that makes a religion suspect.

Lexx!
The first sci-fi series I watched continuously! It was showing on Norway's second government-run television channel, which had just been introduced and had really bad reception in our area. My parents didn't really approve of me watching such a freaky show, so I watched it in half secrecy in my attic bedroom on a 14-inch "portable" color TV older than myself. I had to constantly twiddle the antenna and the analog reception control to get a picture at all, and even then it would often revert to black and white because of the bad signal. I was completely fascinated, and the brain-eating slugs scarred me for life.

I feel old now.

This video includes none of the messages whispered to you by the universe and doesn't even attempt to explain the pact of secrecy with God and Satan atop the mountain of sugary mind matter. This is worse than the Dune movie. My suspension of disbelief is shattered.

>> ^Deano:
Not so sure about the ship design - doesn't seem to echo the hard sci-fi visions. I liked the Nostromo which was a floating refinery and obviously bloated, complex and required constant maintenance [edit - I know the landing ship isn't the same thing but it does look a bit too CGI and fantastic]
Added to that the upgrade in computer displays, not evident in Alien of course - maybe it's not directly a prequel, same universe and all that?
I think this has given up a fair bit of the film as trailers are wont to do. I'm sure the direction will be excellent but I'd caution against expecting greatness.


They discuss the "look" as compared to the Nostromo in the Q&A eric linked above. You can watch the replay anytime.

As far as this trailer giving up too much... I kinda thought so too. There's been so much secrecy surrounding this movies' plot since they decided not to make it another "Alien" movie (Scott addresses that in the Q&A as well). I was kinda wishing I hadn't seen the whole trailer. Then I thought, "awww, screw it", and watched it a few more times.


edit: can't spell

re. your point about evidence. I have read the NIST report. I trust you have too. If you can point me towards the section about evidence then I would be much obliged. All I am able to find are assumptions and estimations. Which are about as scientifically valid to the theory as my arse is.>> ^shponglefan:

>> ^Fade:
You continue to miss my point. All I'm saying is that there should be a more thorough investigation. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. If an independent agency conducts a thorough bit of research that isn't ham strung by secrecy as the NIST investigation is (Right there my alarm bells go off since why is there a need to keep evidence secret? It makes things seem conspiratorial <IMG class=smiley src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/tongue.gif">) then I will happily accept that the building collapsed due to fire.
So far I have seen zero evidence that fire damage caused the collapse. Why are you so zealous about defending a hypothesis anyway?
If you're not a conspiracy theorist, you're certainly do a good impression of one.
As far as another investigation, the issue there is funding. Investigations aren't free, especially if you want a "more thorough" one. So who pays for it? It doesn't make sense to have another taxpayer funded one, especially since I'm sure people will still cry conspiracy any time the government is involved. OTOH, if people want to privately fund one, sure, go nuts. But is/was there actually any funding for such an investigation? If not, then the whole point is moot.
As to claiming there is no evidence for fire collapse, the NIST report is there for all to read. If you choose to reject it on conspiratorial grounds (which you are admittedly doing) then that's your perogrative. Not sure what else to say about that really.

>> ^Fade:
You continue to miss my point. All I'm saying is that there should be a more thorough investigation. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. If an independent agency conducts a thorough bit of research that isn't ham strung by secrecy as the NIST investigation is (Right there my alarm bells go off since why is there a need to keep evidence secret? It makes things seem conspiratorial <IMG class=smiley src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/tongue.gif">) then I will happily accept that the building collapsed due to fire.
So far I have seen zero evidence that fire damage caused the collapse. Why are you so zealous about defending a hypothesis anyway?

If you're not a conspiracy theorist, you're certainly do a good impression of one.

As far as another investigation, the issue there is funding. Investigations aren't free, especially if you want a "more thorough" one. So who pays for it? It doesn't make sense to have another taxpayer funded one, especially since I'm sure people will still cry conspiracy any time the government is involved. OTOH, if people want to privately fund one, sure, go nuts. But is/was there actually any funding for such an investigation? If not, then the whole point is moot.

As to claiming there is no evidence for fire collapse, the NIST report is there for all to read. If you choose to reject it on conspiratorial grounds (which you are admittedly doing) then that's your perogrative. Not sure what else to say about that really.

You continue to miss my point. All I'm saying is that there should be a more thorough investigation. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. If an independent agency conducts a thorough bit of research that isn't ham strung by secrecy as the NIST investigation is (Right there my alarm bells go off since why is there a need to keep evidence secret? It makes things seem conspiratorial ) then I will happily accept that the building collapsed due to fire.

So far I have seen zero evidence that fire damage caused the collapse. Why are you so zealous about defending a hypothesis anyway?>> ^shponglefan:

Like I already said, the WTC 7 collapse is a relatively unique event. You can't go with historical prescedent because AFAIK, there is no other case of a similar building being hit by debris then burning for 7 hours. And even if there was, another building not collapsing does not prove that buildings can't collapse from these types of events. No two events are completely identical. Your entire line reasoning here is one giant fallacy.
Second, the controlled demo, as I've also already said, is considerably more complex as you are adding many speculative, unknown factors. That's what makes it more complicated. If you don't understand that, then I suggest looking up "complex" vs "simple" in the dictionary, because I think you have those terms confused.
Third, "governments lie about everything" is just a cop-out to ignore things you don't like (like the NIST report). And this is what conspiracy theoriests do. Whenever the evidence doesn't support you, claim it's a conspiracy. In fact, if there was a 3rd party who did the investigation and concluded the same thing as NIST, you'd just turn around and claim it's still part of the conspiracy. Basically, facts are irrelevant to you.
So yeah, you got nothing.
>> ^Fade:
The controlled demolition claim is the simplest explanation of the event. The claim that it collapsed due to office fires is the extraordinary one. This is something that has NEVER happened before. Therefore, by definition it is extraordinary. There is ZERO evidence that fires caused the collapse. NIST refuses to release the data it used to model the collapse and all the evidence was destroyed. Forget the conspiracy theory. Just look at what is in front of you.I used the analogy to drive home the point that we need to establish that a crime has been committed before we look at HOW the crime was committed.
Governments lie about everything. This is a fact. Why should this be any different? NIST is a government agency, therefore their report is biased. The investigation needs to be independent and transparent. That is all.