All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing - Edmund Burke. the controlled demolition hypothesis is unambiguously rejected by mainstream investigators and structural engineers.[1] Northwestern University Professor of Civil Engineering Zdeněk Bažant, who was among the first to offer an explanation of the collapses, mentions the controlled demolition hypothesis in passing in a 2007 paper, co-authored with Mathieu Verdure. Affirming the mainstream consensus as presented in the NIST report, Bažant and Verdure note "a few outsiders claiming a conspiracy with planted explosives" as an exception. They trace "strange ideas" about, among other things, controlled demolition, to a "mistaken impression" that safety margins in design would make the collapses impossible. While, strictly speaking, superfluous, one of the effects of a more detailed modeling of the progressive collapse, they say, could be to "dispel the myth of planted explosives". Moreover, Bažant and Verdure have proposed examining data from controlled demolitions in order to better model the progressive-collapse of the towers, suggesting that progressive collapse and controlled demolition are not in fact two separate modes of failure.[1] KENNEBUNKPORT ? Rumors of controlled demolition began to circulate immediately following the collapses of the World Trade Center buildings. Today, the hypothesis is normally proposed as part of an argument for insider complicity in the September 11 attacks, or what is often called a "9/11 conspiracy theory". On this view, the destruction of the World Trade Center was a carefully organized spectacle or false flag intended to justify the prosecution of wars abroad and the curtailment of freedoms at home. Because it would be difficult to explain how terrorists were able to plant the necessary explosives, it is argued, the aircraft impacts were deemed necessary to suggest a more plausible external cause of structural damage. The plausibility of this cause is precisely what the controlled demolition hypothesis questions. It proposes that the aircraft impacts and resulting fires could not have weakened the buildings sufficiently to initiate collapse and that the buildings would in any case not have collapsed as completely, symmetrically, and quickly as they did without an additional source of destructive energy to undermine their structure. Various sources of this energy have been proposed; thermite and explosives is the most common suggestion being made today.[6][7] Controlled demolition proponents cite mainstream news reports on the day of the attacks that suggested explosions and secondary devices. Journalist and experts commenting on the events as they happened speculated that the World Trade Center collapses were caused by intentionally planted explosives.[8] Many of these suggestions would later be retracted or revised. In a notable example, the Albuquerque Journal quoted an engineer who said that the collapses looked "too methodical" and that "some explosive devices inside ... caused the towers to collapse," speculating that the collision of the planes into the towers was a diversionary attack intended to attract emergency personnel to the scene, followed by the detonation of "a relatively small amount of explosives placed in strategic points" of the towers as the primary attack.[9] He soon withdrew this assessment[10] and later said he had been misquoted: "I only said that that's what it looked like."[11] Engineers were in fact initially surprised by the collapses[12][13][14] and some originally believed that explosives had been involved.[15] The broad outlines of an explanation that did not involve such explosives quickly emerged, however, and took it current shape in the 2005 NIST report.[16] [7] It has come to be known as "the official account" among proponents of controlled demolition.[citation needed] As late as September 2007, however, engineers were still looking for a "credible scientific explanation for the totality of collapse once it began", allowing speculations about controlled demolition to develop. Such an explanation is now about to be published.[17][18] An early book-length treatment of the hypothesis[19] inspired both David Ray Griffin's critical inquiry[20] as well as the Popular Mechanics investigation of 9/11 conspiracy theories.[11] In late 2005, Brigham Young University Professor of Physics Steven Jones made his own pursuit of the hypothesis public.[6] Even before publication of the article in 2006,[21] his interest in the hypothesis brought a measure of scientific credibility and media exposure to the theory. BYU responded to Jones' "increasingly speculative and accusatory" statements by placing him on paid leave in September, 2006.[22][23] Shortly thereafter, Jones accepted BYU's offer of early retirement.