The beauty of a coup is when you don't know it's happening to you. For most Americans, what happened on September 11, 2001, was exactly as the mainstream media reported: a terrorist attack masterminded by a turbaned fanatic akin to the fictional Count Dracula. For the rest of us, the attack was as significant as the Reichstag Fire and as painful to watch as the JFK assassination. We had witnessed a coup as obvious as the one that occured in Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. 

"Pieces of steel have also been found that were apparently melted and vaporized not solely because of the heat of fires, but also because a corrosive contaminant that was somehow released in the conflagrations." So reported the New York Times in Febrauary 2002. But by then--five months later--the destruction of evidence at the WTC was complete; the obliteration of the crime scene so successful that most of the high grade steel used in the World Trade Towers was already recycled in mills overseas.

And the average American was convinced some guy named Osama Bin Ladin was to blame, along with a sinister group of suicide bombers so secretive their images were never caught on airport security video.  Nor did their names appear on any lists of pasengers at that time. You and I must show proper Identification when flying, but none of the nineteen alleged hijackers were required to do so, I suppose.

According to one of the best books on the subject, "Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack," the destruction of the entire World Trade Center complex was the ultimate black operation. Author Eric Hufschmid refutes the official government version--a "scam" he calls it--using multiple images rarely seen before, scientific facts, and basic engineering data.

A large, coffee table size book, Painful Questions is the book the government doesn't want you to read (wish I'd written it myself). Full of minutia about metallurgy and concrete and gravity, the book examines the towering structures as well as the people standing in the shadows watching them fall.

"The concrete turned to powder in the air?" Hufschmid ponders in his book; "How could the towers disintegrate in 8 seconds? The beams that fell through the air would fall at 32 feet per second, the rate at which all objects fall in the earth's gravity. The towers were about 1300 feet tall. If a object is dropped from 1300 feet, it will hit the ground about eight seconds later. Notice the North Tower collapsed in 8 seconds."

In an email to me, Hufschmid added some background information: "I develop CAD/CAM software. This type of software allows a person to draw shapes that he wants to cut in metal, wood, or other materials. My software then produces the code to control machines. Because I work in an industry that cuts and welds steel, I am aware of how difficult it is to melt steel or break steel beams. The reports of steel melting in the World Trade Center were nonsense, as well as the remarks about temperaures above 1800F.  Why would dozens of so-called experts provide false information to news reporters?"

Why indeed? We are left with the impression, after reading this book, that FEMA is one of the most corrupt government agencies in America, along with the NTSB. You may well ask whatever happened to those black boxes aboard the hijacked planes, but that is like asking whatever happened to those recycled steel beams. If the Reichstag fire cemented the Nazis in power, the WTC attack certainly strengthened the Neocon agenda.

Hufschmid also mentioned "The Lone Gunmen's" Pilot Episode in his book, wondering why the mainstream American media didn't make more of an issue of the amazing coincidences. Six months before the "surprise" attack, here was the entire scenario from start to finish. Hufschmid also examined the alleged cell phone calls from the various hijacked planes. Perhaps his most sensational claim, however, is that the three tallest structures were wired for explosives long before the planes struck them.

"In the 1980's I created software that allowed a computer to send and receive information to dozens of mobile devices via a radio link, said Hufschmid. "My software only gathered information, but it would be easy to modify it to trigger packages of explosives in a certain sequence, thereby causing a building to collapse in any specified manner. This made me wonder if the odd collapse of the World Trade Center was due to computer software similar to mine that was triggering packages of explosives inside the towers in a certain sequence that would fool us into thinking the towers were collapsing from the fire."

The WTC was long known as an architectural white elephant, full of asbestos, requiring the eventual, painstaking and very costly dismantling in the foreseeable future. With plans to scrap the WTC towers abandoned in 1989 what option was left?The city of New York would never have accepted the sort of implosions that brought most of the complex down. What better way--if an attack was actually planned--to allow it to happen, as many New Yorkers now believe,  and achieve many Machiavellian ends?

"At the end of February, 2002, news about Thierry Meyssan, who wrote the book The Frightening Fraud, (English translation-"9/11: The Big Lie") had reached the USA," wrote Hufschmid. "Thousands of people around the world looked through the photographs and news reports of the crash of Flight 77, and many of us were agreeing with Meyssan. Accusations of a scam began appearing on the internet."

But not in the mainstream American media. Aside from a few early reports of puzzling inconsistencies, little has surfaced. "Millions of Americans insist the 19 terrorists did all this by themselves, and at the same moment they insist the attack was too complicated for Americans. However, if 19 Arabs could do this, 19 CIA agents could do it also," Hufschmid asserts. "Perhaps 100,000 tons of concrete in each tower was pulverized to a powder. This required a lot of energy. The powder was ejected with a velocity so high that clouds of dust expanded two or three times the diameter of the building. Thousands of steel beams broke at their joints, and breaking those joints required energy....The high temperature of the rubble required energy as well. Where did all this energy come from?"

Painful questions, mostly avoided by the mainstream press, university professors (whom Hufschmid ridicules also) and government agencies. Hufschmid notes that, "By the end of the day the area around the World Trade Center was covered with concrete and gypsum powder up to several inches thick, as if a volcano had erupted nearby."

Indeed, the many photographs the author assembled from a wide range of sources show the towers spewing forth ash like the infamous Mt. St. Helens eruption. Compare the two photographs--take a good close look at both--and you can almost see the toppling of the republic.

Douglas Herman is a US Air Force veteran, frequent contributor to Rense and lives in the Banana Republic known as Florida.