9/11: Interview with Richard Gage, founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth

Interview with Richard Gage, founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth.

To listen to this in video format, which is 24:57 minutes in duration, click on
http://www.presstv.com/detail/190668.html

The implosion and fall of building 7 on September 11, 2001, the third building, not hit by an airplane and the presence of molten metal and thermite particles only made in military labs backs NIST into corner.

Press TV talks with Richard Gage, founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth who, backed by 1,500 architects and engineers, claims that NIST the official investigating committee has hidden much of the evidence and ignored first hand testimonials concerning building 7 in a deliberate action to support the official story by the US government. Following is a summarized transcript of the interview.

Press TV: Can you tell me the main premise of the work that you're doing?

Richard Gage: We have 1,500 architects and engineers who are demanding a new investigation; one that accounts for all of the evidence that we haven't seen in the official reports from NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). We want a new investigation that accounts for the molten metal seen at the base of the three skyscrapers not just two that collapsed on that day; the evidence of extreme temperatures throughout all the dust that settled and the evidence for the free-falling of World Trade Center seven that cannot be explained according to office fires as NIST has attempted to do so. So we do want a new investigation.

Press TV: There has been two major investigations: the NIST one; there was a Federal Emergence Management Agency one as well. All the investigations that have taken place have concluded the same thing and that is very far away from what you are saying. They are saying the building collapse was a result of the impact of a plane and the fire that resulted from them. And that has been a consistent thing that has been said over and over again for the last decade.

Richard Gage: It sure has been said over and over again and each time it's a representation of fraudulent science on the part of NIST. They have not explained the freefall collapse of this third skyscraper on 9/11 building seven that began at 5:20. Now, this was a 47 story skyscraper that wasn't hit by an airplane. It fell suddenly, smoothly, consistently, straight down, symmetrically, as fast as a bowling ball falling off the top of this building. This can't happen by office fires - especially the small office fires that were seen coming from that building. So what can account for freefall acceleration? The only thing that can account for it is the removal of those columns all at once; 80 columns on up to eight floors because that's the distance over which this freefall period happened.

NIST acknowledges finally after being forced into a corner that this building fell that fast after previously denying that it could have; however, they do not acknowledge the implications of that, which would mean that those columns had to have been removed explosively. That's the only way you can take out all the columns on a given floor within a tenth of a second of each other; otherwise the building begins to tip over, 47 stories.

Press TV: Under the FAQs on the NIST website, there are fourteen questions and answers explaining why your theories are not true and the last one concerns WTC building 7 where they say they are still looking into it and that the investigation is continuing.

Richard Gage: No. Actually, they said they looked into it. They will not look into it anymore and for eight years they were fumbling this football. They do not explain how a building can fall so fast without the use of explosives. They do not even deal with it and they're done with it - they won't debate us on these questions.

Press TV: Do you think that is because as you say there is 1,000 architects and engineers in your organization, or that many many other architects and engineers actually do agree with their assessment?

Richard Gage: There may be about two to three dozen in the world that is actively supporting the official story - the official conspiracy theory that these fundamentalist hijackers brought down these buildings with airplanes. Not with building 7 of course, that's a different kind of a story. When we give our presentations around the world to groups of 100-700 in 21 foreign countries now - almost all of the architects and engineers who end up seeing the evidence that we're presenting, which they did not see - in fact most of them knew nothing about the third worst structural failure in modern history with WTC 7 - When they see it coming down in the exact manner as a class controlled demolition they agree with us and most end up signing our petition.

The problem is that they haven't even seen the evidence; they haven't seen the molten metal in the basement or in the debris pile of WTC 7. Evidence of temperatures that exceed what office fires can produce by a factor of two. There is molten iron flowing like lava - the first responders see it; the engineers see it, the cleanup workers see it. It's well documented and yet NIST denies it. Why? Because they can't account for temperatures exceeding 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the melting point of steal or iron - these office fires can only get to temperatures of 600 to maybe 1,200 degrees. We have a huge problem with the official story here.

Press TV: What are the implications of this? Why is it so important to you? There was a terrorist attack and many people died. Whether there were explosions or a plane - How those buildings fell, why does it make a difference?

Richard Gage: Because we went to war based on the events of 9/11. A million people have been killed in the Middle East; 5,000 US soldiers have been killed; we've lost our civil liberties through legislation. If 9/11 was something different than what we were sold - and I assure you that it is, the forensic evidence is overwhelming for the explosive demolition of these buildings - then the roots of these wars are in deep question. And a new investigation that lets the chips fall where they may; that pursues the truth wherever it leads will unravel the reasons we are at war in Afghanistan and Iraq. That's not our agenda at Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth, we don't have conspiracy theories - We're calling for a new investigation based on this forensic evidence.

It's very technical evidence - in the case of the twin towers for instance we were told that the upper section above the point of jet plane impact, the 12-story section of building, drove the rest of the building down due to structural weakening by fire, but that's not what the videos show. What the videos show is that the upper section is telescoping or collapsing in on itself in four seconds and is then completely gone - a mini controlled demolition if you will. After that what we see is the rest of the building tearing itself apart at nearly freefall acceleration - in 12 seconds. These mammoth buildings, which were over-designed by a factor of five, are completely destroyed down to their individual structural elements. There is 4 ton perimeter all units that are hurled at up to 80 mph laterally landing 600 ft away.

Press TV: If I could read you a few quotes - the first is from George W. Bush who says, “Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists themselves, away from the guilty.” - to President Barak Obama in power today, “Let us be clear, al-Qaeda killed 3,000 people on that day, innocent men, women and children. These are not opinions to be debated. These are facts to be dealt with.”

How do you and have you responded to comments like this over the last ten years?

Richard Gage: The facts to be dealt with must be 50 per cent of the evidence that NIST has not even put forward - that President Obama may not even be aware of. The official conspiracy theory is the outrageous theory because it does not account for an extraordinary range of evidence that we see in the debris of the WTC twin towers such as the fact that the US geological survey finds in all of the dust samples throughout lower Manhattan, in this blanket of about 4-inch thick pulverized concrete, they find what amounts to billions of previously molten iron microspheres in every sample... the fact that they're spherical indicates that they are molten. Molten iron takes 2,800 degrees to begin to form...Where does this iron come from? It is not steel. They have the evidence also inside them of thermite.

Thermite is an incendiary used by the military to cut through steel like a hot knife through butter. This produces molten iron as its byproduct - these molten iron spheres, which are ejected as a result of the explosive nature of what's going on in these towers; this would atomize the molten iron. That's the only rational explanation on how they got there and they have no other explanation.

Press TV: They say they have an explanation for the high temperatures, looking through their report, they explain why the planes coming at that amount of heat would bring down the pillars to 10 per cent of their normal strength... These politicians and their technical reports are giving technical information to explain what has happened.

Richard Gage: What you've just cited is not technical information or fact - it's a myth. The jet fuel is a hydro carbon - it can burn no hotter than desks or chairs; it can only get to 1,200 or 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Molten iron, which the US government has documented, is more than twice that temperature. Where did it come from? They do not have a speculation about that. The only theory that makes sense is that it came from the byproduct of thermite; especially since these spheres have manganese, aluminum, iron, and other elements that are the key signature of thermite.

In fact, an international team of scientists led by Neils Harrat in Copenhagen finds in all four samples that they collected from all of this dust in various places and various times... they find small red-grey chips of nano-thermite (explanation at the nano scale)... These are made only in the most advanced defense contracting laboratories and should not be in all the World trade Center dust.

Press TV: Is then what you're implying that the military or US government was involved in this? Do you understand why for many Americans that had to suffer through that day that would be a very hard bitter pill to swallow and one that they would find actually quote offensive?

Richard Gage: I can imagine. But wouldn't we want to know the truth wherever it leads? We're not implying anything. We note that such high tech nano-thermite composite expolsives or pyrotechnics are made only in the most sophisticated defense contracting laboratories, but does that mean we should put blinders on and not go looking. We find these materials in the dust; they are peer reviewed in a scientific journal; it stands uncontested for the past year and a half - Shouldn't we at least acknowledge the reality that it was found in the dust and let the chips fall where they may?

This is America - we want to get to the truth. The victims lost in that disaster almost 3,000 of them deserve the truth. The healing of their families will only happen as a result of truth; not sweeping the truth under the rug and that's why we have several 9/11 victim's family members supporting us actively...

Press TV: How does it feel to be called a conspiracy theorist?

Richard Gage: It's uncomfortable I suppose, but the only people who call us that are people who want to stop the debate, who want to stop the thinking process, who do not want to look at the evidence and don't want the evidence seen in public - so these are people who have something to hide or something to deny or some fear that they haven't faced. The people who are facing these fears and actually look at the evidence squarely come inevitably to the indisputable conclusion that all three of these high rises were brought down in an explosive demolition.

NIST never looked at it - they only look at the possibility that these buildings were brought down by fire... when the most likely hypotheses given the hundreds of witnesses that heard explosions and saw flashes of light, and I'm talking about over 118 first responders in that amount - These witnesses, their stories and accounts are not a part of the official story - they've been washed clean of these NIST reports. And one of the reasons we call them fraudulent is because they completely ignore much of this evidence that we've been talking about today.

Press TV: Many political activists, many well-known scholars, respected people like Noam Chomsky not necessarily for being pro-American government or pro American policy actually don't agree with these kind of theories that have been brought forward and believe there is no reason that the US government, its military or any aspect there would partake in any involvement in 9/11 - they were not winners in this situation.

Editor's note: To understand why Noam Chomsky doesn't agree with 9/11 advocates of a new investigation, see http://www.truedemocracy.net/td-30/1aa.html and/or http://www.truedemocracy.net/hj35/35.html

Richard Gage: I can't make people look at the evidence squarely. I can present it like we're doing in our tours, which is an extraordinary show of support of the evidence and most people when they see it are in a state of shock and then a discussion follows about - why didn't I know about this? How could it have been kept a secret? Who could have done this to us? We don't have those kinds of conspiracy theories so people have to pick up the ball and move it further down the field to get to the bottom of what really happened on 9/11.

Press TV: It's very interesting that as the years have gone on from 2011 poll after poll show that more of the public have started to doubt what happened on 9/11. A recent poll in 2008 polled 17 countries and in 9 of those a majority of people believed that al-Qaeda was behind the September 11 attack and (statistics quoted) a significant minority thought the US government was behind it. Do you find that these theories are becoming more accepted by the public and if so why are people starting to doubt the official line?

Richard Gage: This evidence first of all is overwhelmingly indisputable. Once people do look at it they tend to be really upset. After they deal with their anger, fear and denial, they start becoming active - they start talking to their friends and start emailing the 9/11 truth website to other architects and engineers etc. The truth about 9/11 is definitely working its way through the population and there is more receptivity than five years ago when I started this.

For four years after 9/11 I didn't have a clue that there was an alternative theory until I heard David Ray Griffin on the radio talking about all this evidence of explosive demolition and the hundreds of witnesses etc... There was really no other architects or engineers talking about this at the time... that's when I knew I had to do something so I took the presentation to my place of work to 15 architects all of whom thought I was nuts...after seeing the evidence all of them agreed with me afterwards and said you're right this is a controlled demolition, and all signed the petition except one who was Middle Eastern and he didn't want to take those risks at that time.

That's how persuasive the evidence is and now we are 1,500 - How many architects and engineers does it take to alert our government and media to take this seriously - to wake up from the denial?

Press TV: Why has it become so important for you now to do this?

Richard Gage: Do I want to live in a false reality and pretend that everything's OK? Do I want to live in a world where the truth is a lie and the lie is the truth? No. I have no choice and I've been speaking about this for five years now and have 40-50 volunteers who are working 20-40 hours a week speaking all over the world supported as a non-profit organization to get the information out - we have a book coming out and we are very active.

Press TV: Do you think if there was another investigation and they found that there was no explosion and they agreed with the previous two investigations that have taken place, would you accept that?

Richard Gage: If we have an investigation that analyzes all of the evidence and that uses scientific method in that analysis; that uses immunity that brings witnesses forward that encourages them to talk and uses testimony taken under oath; an unimpeachable investigation that we can have faith in... Yes, we believe such an investigation will unleash the truth to the American people enmasse.