Unit Plans Closed Hearings on Collapse of the Towers

The federal agency investigating the collapse of the World Trade Center said this week that some of its deliberations would take place in secret, including discussions on possible changes to national building codes and standards. The announcement has been sharply protested by advocates for families of the 9/11 victims, who said they were considering a lawsuit to force the agency to open the meetings to the public. For more than two years, the agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, has been studying how the trade center was built and why it fell. A draft of its final report is due in January. In an e-mail notice sent earlier this week, the institute said that its construction advisory committee, a group of experts overseeing the investigation, would meet for 10 hours on Nov. 22 at its headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md., but that only the first 2 hours would be public. The remainder will be closed because of the agency's concerns that discussions about changes in construction codes could prematurely influence the building industry and the people who write the codes, said Mat Heyman, the institute's chief of staff. "We are still literally formulating our possible recommendations regarding improvements in standards, codes and practices," Mr. Heyman said. Monica Gabrielle, whose husband Richard was killed when the south tower collapsed 57 minutes after it was hit by one of the hijacked jets, vehemently objected to the decision. "You have one job, and one job only - to find out the truth of what happened to those buildings and to report to the public about it," she said yesterday in an interview. "You don't owe industry, the Port Authority or federal agencies anything. You owe it to the public - the truth, no matter where it goes." [more]

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