The Missing Windows of the WTC

Peter Klein · September 26, 2013 at 7:59 pm

You may recall seeing a brief clip which depicted the face of one of the towers in relative close up and with 3 or 4 people observable in some of the windows. The unique aspect of the video was a sudden burst of smoke and material being ejected from one of the windows, which did look like a human figure. I think that notion was generally dismissed after time. But, another aspect of the video will seem interesting when trying to figure out what that material was in some of the window frames.

While other events in the video capture the viewers attention, not many noticed a weird effect occurring in one of the windows. In the space of less than a second, something in the space where the window should be created a ripple-like movement up then down the space. When slowed down, it is clearly a kind of shutter.

What is seen is some force (either forced air or mechanical) which causes the wide shutters to quickly flip open and allow the next shutter to do the same. As quickly as they open and the next opens they snap closed again. This happens in a wave from bottom to top and then down again. It’s similar to what you’ve probably done yourself when cleaning the blinds and forced each shutter to flip over. It required you to stroke the shutters the other direction to re-orient them.

So, some posited the theory after noticing this that huge portions of the WTC towers had not windows in the window frames, but huge mechanized shutters. If, for instance many entire floors of the towers were vacant for whatever reason, it would have been easily noticed by observing the lighting. If you look at a nighttime photo of the towers, light from the interior lighting seen through the windows is very inconsistent. Some entire floors show light in each window, while other floors appear to have lights on in very random patterns. Overall, I’d say the light seen through the windows is very staggered.

Shutters, alone couldn’t reproduce the look of occupied offices. So, it was thought that maybe these mechanically operated shutters were designed on one side to look like dark reflecting glass and was shown in the daytime. Then, at night the window shutters would begin to quickly flip in random sections to the other side of the shutters which contained some form of illumination. This would cause the appearance of office lighting being turned on/off.

I’m not trying to form a theory based on any presupposition such as the towers being mostly vacated before 9/11. Instead, I’m trying to figure out if these were shutters and what purpose they would serve.

BTW, I’m aware that some floors were allocated to machinery and had some kind of panel in place of the windows, but designed to maintain a certain esthetic appearance. I’ve also seen both photos and videos where the height of the window frame itself is only half of the claimed height. This isn’t easy to refute since some of these short frames are occupied by people appearing to escape the smoke and/or heat. When these people are seen crouching to fit the short window frame, it’s obvious they’re less than 6 foot tall.

I’m taking the time to share this info, since it’s another example of unexplained building materials and because I was fascinated by it at the time and the issue was dropped without any consensus explanation.