In the weeks and months after 9/11, numerous individuals report seeing molten metal in the remains of the World Trade Center: 
Ken Holden, who is involved with the organizing of demolition, excavation, and debris removal operations at Ground Zero, will later tell the 9/11 Commission, “Underground, it was still so hot that molten metal dripped down the sides of the wall from [WTC] Building 6.” [9/11 Commission, 4/1/2003] William Langewiesche, the only journalist to have unrestricted access to Ground Zero during the cleanup operation, will describe, “[I]n the early days, the streams of molten metal that leaked from the hot cores and flowed down broken walls inside the foundation hole.” [Langewiesche, 2002, pp. 32] Leslie Robertson, one of the structural engineers responsible for the design of the WTC, describes fires still burning and molten steel still running 21 days after the attacks. [SEAU News, 10/2001 
] Alison Geyh, who heads a team of scientists studying the potential health effects of 9/11, reports: “Fires are still actively burning and the smoke is very intense. In some pockets now being uncovered, they are finding molten steel.” [Johns Hopkins Public Health Magazine, 2001] Ron Burger, a public health advisor who arrives at Ground Zero on September 12, says that “feeling the heat” and “seeing the molten steel” there reminds him of a volcano. [National Environmental Health Association, 9/2003, pp. 40 ] Paramedic Lee Turner arrives at the World Trade Center site on September 12 as a member of a federal urban search and rescue squad. While at Ground Zero, he goes “down crumpled stairwells to the subway, five levels below ground.” There, he reportedly sees, “in the darkness a distant, pinkish glow—molten metal dripping from a beam.” [US News and World Report, 9/12/2002] According to a member of New York Air National Guard’s 109th Air Wing, who is at Ground Zero from September 22 to October 6: “One fireman told us that there was still molten steel at the heart of the towers’ remains. Firemen sprayed water to cool the debris down but the heat remained intense enough at the surface to melt their boots.” [National Guard Magazine, 12/2001] New York firefighters will recall “heat so intense they encountered rivers of molten steel.” [New York Post, 3/3/2004] As late as five months after the attacks, in February 2002, firefighter Joe O’Toole sees a steel beam being lifted from deep underground at Ground Zero, which, he says, “was dripping from the molten steel.” [Knight Ridder, 5/29/2002]
Steven E. Jones, a physics professor from Utah, will claim this molten metal is “direct evidence for the use of high-temperature explosives, such as thermite,” used to deliberately bring down the WTC towers. [MSNBC, 11/16/2005] He will say that without explosives, a falling building would have “insufficient directed energy to result in melting of large quantities of metal.” [Deseret Morning News, 11/10/2005] There will be no mention whatsoever of the molten metal in the official reports by FEMA, NIST, or the 9/11 Commission. [Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/1/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004; National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005] But Dr. Frank Gayle, who leads the steel forensics aspects of NIST’s investigation of the WTC collapses, will be quoted as saying: “Your gut reaction would be the jet fuel is what made the fire so very intense, a lot of people figured that’s what melted the steel. Indeed it didn’t, the steel did not melt.” [ABC News 7 (New York), 2/7/2004] As well as the reports of molten metal, data collected by NASA in the days after 9/11 finds dozens of “hot spots” (some over 1,300 degrees) at Ground Zero (see September 16-23, 2001).
September 11, 2001-May 2002: Little-Known City Agency Takes Charge of Ground Zero Cleanup Operation
The New York City agency that oversees the Ground Zero cleanup operation following the 9/11 attacks is the Department of Design and Construction (DDC). [Glanz and Lipton, 2004, pp. 299] This obscure 1,300-man bureaucracy is normally responsible for overseeing municipal construction contracts, such as street repairs and jails. Its two top officials are Kenneth Holden and his lieutenant, Michael Burton. [Langewiesche, 2002, pp. 9] Burton is in lower Manhattan the morning of 9/11, instead of in his office in Queens, for a meeting at City Hall, just a few blocks away from the World Trade Center. [Engineering News-Record, 4/22/2002] That afternoon, he meets Holden and together they begin organizing the cleanup operation. By 5:30 p.m., the group of workers they have assembled gains permission to explore the WTC ruins. Under Burton’s direction, the team of “unbuilders” subsequently undertakes what journalist William Langewiesche describes as “the most aggressive possible schedule of demolition and debris removal.” Yet this appears to go against established procedures. On previous occasions the standard emergency response to natural or man-made disasters in the US, such as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was to rapidly nationalize efforts on the ground, under the direction of FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers. [Langewiesche, 2002, pp. 66, 90, 94, 146] New York’s official emergency plans, which were written before 9/11, in fact require the Department of Sanitation to remove debris after a building collapse. A mid-level official who was involved in writing the latest plans mentions a week after 9/11 that she doesn’t even know quite what the DDC is. DDC’s only previous experiences of dealing with emergencies are a sinking EMS station in Brooklyn, caused by a water leak, and a structural failure at Yankee Stadium. According to Langewiesche, there is no specific moment when Holden and Burton are placed in charge of the Ground Zero cleanup effort. “Rather, there was a shift of power in their direction that was never quite formalized and, indeed, was unjustified by bureaucratic logic or political considerations.” Reportedly, at some point, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani made a “back-room decision to scrap the organization charts, to finesse the city’s own Office of Emergency Management (OEM), and to allow the DDC to proceed.” [Langewiesche, 2002, pp. 66, 88 and 118; Engineering News-Record, 4/22/2002] The Ground Zero cleanup operation officially ends in May 2002. [CBS News, 5/16/2002; New York Times, 5/29/2002]
