News Buried, Like WTC Truth

Yet another story which won't be on the front page (or anywhere except the Internet[s]). 9/11 truthers, take heart because facts will surface, eventually. Of course, if those MILLION$ in grant funds went to unbiased organizations... [my bold, throughout]
Engineer Society Accused of Cover-Ups
By CAIN BURDEAU – 4 days ago
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The professional organization for engineers who build the nation's roads, dams and bridges has been accused by fellow engineers of covering up catastrophic design flaws while investigating national disasters.
After the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the levee failures caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the federal government paid the American Society of Civil Engineers to investigate what went wrong.
Critics now accuse the group of covering up engineering mistakes, downplaying the need to alter building standards, and using the investigations to protect engineers and government agencies from lawsuits.
[...] "They want to make sure that they do things the right way and that they learn lessons from the studies they do," said Sherwood Boelhert, a retired Republican congressman from New York who heads the panel. He led the House Science Committee for six years.
The panel is expected to issue a report by the end of April and may recommend that the society stop taking money from government agencies for disaster investigations.
[...] In the World Trade Center case, critics contend the engineering society wrongly concluded skyscrapers cannot withstand getting hit by airplanes. In the hurricane investigation, it was accused of suggesting that the power of the storm was as big a problem as the poorly designed levees.
[...] The society got a $1.1 million grant from the Army Corps of Engineers to study the levee failures. Similarly, the Federal Emergency Management Agency paid the group about $257,000 to investigate the World Trade Center collapse.
The engineers were not involved in investigating last year's bridge collapse in Minneapolis.
[...] Raymond Seed, a levee expert at the University of California, Berkeley, was among the first to question the society's involvement. He was on a team funded by the National Science Foundation to study the New Orleans flood.
Seed accused the engineering society and the Army Corps of collusion, writing an Oct. 20 letter alleging that the two organizations worked together "to promulgate misleading studies and statements, to subvert appropriate independent investigations ... to literally attempt to change some of the critical apparent answers regarding lessons to be learned."
[...] In 2002, the society's report on the World Trade Center praised the buildings for remaining standing long enough to allow tens thousands of people to flee.
But, the report said, skyscrapers are not typically designed to withstand airplane impacts. Instead of hardening buildings against such impacts, it recommended improving aviation security and fire protection.
Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, a structural engineer and forensics expert, contends his computer simulations disprove the society's findings that skyscrapers could not be designed to withstand the impact of a jetliner.
Astaneh-Asl, who received money from the National Science Foundation to investigate the collapse, insisted most New York skyscrapers built with traditional designs would survive such an impact and prevent the kind of fires that brought down the twin towers.
He also questioned the makeup of the society's investigation team. On the team were the wife of the trade center's structural engineer and a representative of the buildings' original design team.
"I call this moral corruption," said Astaneh-Asl, who is on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley.[…]
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hzg4otojhA781hp18wMHpy2WUPqQD8VKKNMO0
For more intrigue on a sleepy Sunday, check out fellow blogger, Steven Warran’s post which raises the still unanswered question…
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
When Did the Pentagon Get Attacked Exactly? http://stevenwarran.blogspot.com/2007/10/asce-pentagon-report-illustrations.html
You could get a migrane looking this stuff up, but the "professionals" won't do it. (BTW--My definition of a "professional" is someone who will do anything to keep their job. Here's 1/2 hour of my life, down the search drain: CNN: 9:43 a.m. 9/11 Commission: 9:37 am National Transportation Safety Board: 9:37 The must-support site, History Commons has tons of data:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/searchResults.jsp?searchtext=time+pentagon+hit&events=on&entities=on&articles=on&topics=on&timelines=on&projects=on&titles=on&descriptions=on&dosearch=on&search=Go