The controlled demolition model solves many riddles about the World Trade Center collapse.
Sitting in the middle of Lincoln Hall on Saturday, to my right was my partner, Kate, and to my left was a new friend, John. Both of them are East Coast natives, born and raised in New York State, just a short drive away from ground zero where three World Trade Center towers collapsed on September 11th, 2001. I was in my home town of Santa Barbara, California, detached from the gravity of what was happening. John would later go into combat in Iraq as a Marine. I would later be protesting in Los Angeles. After combat, he studied to become an engineer. The three of us came together Saturday to sign the same petition. Only John was the 2,492nd engineer (or architect) to call for a new investigation into the structural failure of all three towers.
The sort of person who would spend their Saturday evening watching a presentation by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, I assumed, would be a raving conspiracist. But there we were among a fairly diverse crowd, with at least 150 people of varying age, wealth, and education.
At the start, several Portlanders who died in the terror attacks were honored with a short biography and bell ringing, by Marvin Sannes. Former firefighter Dale Pierce discussed his personal sense of urgency to honor the victims by pursuing the truth. His son Noah had survived combat in Iraq but could not live with himself or the memories he brought back. PTSD had taken its grip.
As a firefighter, Dale was also there to say that standard protocol from safety to evidence collection was not followed in the aftermath of the terror attacks. This is what we would learn more about in short time.
David Fura, Marine veteran and electrical engineer, is the Portland leader of the 9/11 Truth Action Project. He introduced architect Richard Gage, the founder of AE911Truth. For over ten years, since convincing the firm he worked for to get behind it, Gage has continued pushing the evidence with videos and over five hundred live presentations.
With a show of hands before the video, only a few were confident about the official government report that all three towers fell as a result of fire. Many were unsure, but most were already convinced the government report is bogus. By the end of the presentation, none believed the official story any longer, a few were unsure, and almost everyone was convinced the towers were a planned demolition.
The video that screened was first a 90-minute live presentation. It was hastily cut down to just under an hour, but it packs in the information. You can watch it right here, right now.
The video looks at each common “myth,” discussed by Gage and firefighter Erik Lawyer, representing Firefighters for 9/11 Truth and Unity. Along with AE911Truth, these two fact-finding organizations are using their disciplines to examine the riddles put forth in the 9/11 Commission Report.
Few know how badly funded that investigation was. The Monica Lewinsky investigation cost the American taxpayer twice as much as the 9/11 Commission Report. Between this and two National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) investigations that explain phenomenon with conjecture and uncertainty, the government knowingly leaves riddle embedded into explanation.
The so-called conspiracy theorists thrive within the holes left behind in the government reports. The architects and engineers are not seeking to build a conspiracy to point blame so much as establish a new scientific model that is commensurate with the physical laws used to design buildings.
Few can say they were convinced by the official story — everyone just accepted it. But strong evidence is convincing. Strong evidence for controlled demolition by high energy explosives and thermite incendiaries is what AE911Truth offers. It is bold. But without the distracting claims about who did it, they make it clear that the towers could not collapse from the conditions put forth in the report.
Both firefighters and engineers have established protocol in dealing with structural failure in the event of fire. What they have discovered is that hasty orders trickled down the chain of command, destroying evidence and concealing testimony that directly and consistently contradicts the official story. As it appears, even the criminal investigation did not follow routine protocol. The act of war was established as Osama Bin Laden took credit — or did he? The FBI cannot actually back the so-called confession video nor can the nation’s top investigative office name him as the belligerent mastermind.
Pilots for 9/11 Truth have also assembled evidence into documentaries that deeply challenge the physics of the official story, suggesting that no commercial airliner, let alone hijackers, could have pulled it off. Applied science from pilots, architects, engineers, and firefighters should be enough to inspire another organization of criminal investigators to form, but such an effort involving C.I. professionals does not yet exist to build a case. This is the most dangerous case to build, of course.
The world we live in has been forever shaped by the events of September 11th. I feel badly for children who don’t know a life without the daily reminder of terrorism. I was eighteen years old on that day, I can remember a seemingly alternate universe. It is hard to explain how different it was before. For those living in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Pakistan, and Nigeria, where the war on terror has been nothing but an accelerant for terrorism, the difference is even more clear.
On this coming fifteenth anniversary, there will be innumerable stories celebrating the heroism of first responders and pieces questioning the wars that followed, but very few journalists will offer a narrative that differs from the official government story. But this story is the one that set off so many you hear about today, from Snowden to Islamic State.
Since that conspired day that changed American society, politics, and civil liberties, engrossing the world in two everlasting entanglements with Afghanistan and Iraq, something tells me that this movement will not go away until all questions are thoroughly resolved.
