Manuel Garcia, a national weapons lab scientist, has attempted to debunk 9/11 skeptics with a defense of the NIST appearing in Alexander Cockburn's leftist magazine, Counterpunch.
Garcia's analyses of the fall times and heat issues in the trade center collapses is quite skimpy and mostly irrelevant. I have talked with more than one physicist who is extremely skeptical of the government claims and hence wary of Garcia's analyses.
Cockburn also writes a column for the progressive magazine The Nation, which recently ran a lead article by English professor Christopher Hayes accusing 9/11 skeptics of fomenting paranoia. Physicist Josh Mitteldorf has publicly questioned Hayes' reasoning.
Garcia, who has championed the cause of Wen Ho Lee and fought polygraph testing at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has a PhD in aeronautical and mechanical engineering from Princeton University and has done plasma physics research for the weapons lab, where he has worked since 1978.
Previously, the noted scientist and socialist Noam Chomsky has pooh-poohed 9/11 conspiracy theories.
Further details are posted on my blog at znewz1.blogspot.com.
A relevant post is found at