Peter Duveen Photo
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.--Using a cardboard
model of one of the World Trade Center towers, architect Richard Gage,
AIA, illustrates the contradictory nature of the government's explanation of the World Trade Center building collapses during a presentation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, the famous twin towers of New York City's World Trade Center were each hit by airliners about 20 minutes apart. These collisions caused widespread damage and fires over several floors of each building. But what followed within the next couple of hours was at least as startling: the two buildings suddenly and entirely collapsed into piles of rubble, raining debris on adjacent structures in the process. Then, in the late afternoon of the same day, another World Trade Center high rise office tower known as Building 7 also collapsed inexplicably into its own footprint after suffering only minimal damage.
The official explanation was that the fires ignited by jet fuel from the colliding aircraft weakened steel and caused the twin towers to collapse, while the third building fell prey to flying debris and spreading flames. But closer scrutiny has shown these explanations to fall short, and a number of researchers, Gage among them, have made the obvious connection between the buildings’ collapses and a controlled demolition often used in the construction industry that would have required carefully placed explosives planted at a critical number of locations within the buildings, all timed to go off in a meticulously orchestrated sequence. Muslim terrorists are not likely to have been able to gain entrance to the high-security buildings that would have enabled them to implement such a plan, Gage argues.
In his presentation, Gage assembles a vast array of evidence, from videotaped interviews of firemen, newscasters and other eyewitnesses, to scientific analyses that demonstrate the insufficiency of aircraft impacts as the cause of the buildings' destruction. Explosives brought the towers down, Gage contends, claiming that the evidence is overwhelming. For example, he cites the following:
▪ Formerly straight steel beams found in the rubble were bent like horseshoes, without the presence of cracks, indicating that the deformation could only have been achieved at temperatures approximating that of a steel forge.
▪ The generation of a vast quantity of finely pulverized concrete that would have otherwise landed in intact chunks if the buildings had collapsed only as a result of the fires and "pancaking" of floors upon one another. "If we are going to have a pancake collapse, show me the pancakes," Gage says.
▪ The absence of identifiable remains of office furniture and other contents that would have remained intact in a collapse driven solely by the weight of the buildings.
▪ The presence in debris of the chemical signatures of explosive materials such as thermate that could have been used to demolish the Trade Center towers. Thermate is a mixture of aluminum, iron oxide and sulfur that upon ignition generates temperatures high enough to melt steel.
▪ Numerous recorded testimonies regarding the presence of molten steel in the wreckage of the buildings, with high temperatures persisting long after the buildings' destruction.
▪ The scattering of fragmented human body parts on the roofs of adjacent buildings, implicating explosive force, and not a mere "gravitational collapse.”
▪ Formation of a huge cloud of dust in the immediate aftermath of the collapses, composed of finely pulverized concrete and other building contents, which Gage compared to a volcanic eruption. The conversion of concrete into powder, along with the suspension in air and transport of the fine particles, would have required more energy than was available in a gravitational collapse, says Gage.
▪ Debris that included only relatively short pieces of steel of no more than a few storys in length. “The structural elements don’t dismember from each other” in a gravitational collapse, Gage noted, illustrating what he meant with slides of buildings that had fallen over from earthquakes, where macro-structures such as concrete flooring and walls remain intact.
▪ The presence of an interconnected steel infrastructure that would have acted as a heat sink, drawing away heat from steel directly affected by the fires, and preventing it from reaching temperatures that would have weakened it enough to cause a collapse.
▪ Numerous eyewitness accounts of explosives detonated in the buildings before the collapses.
Gage makes many more points to bolster his case. Meanwhile, the government has invested millions of dollars in a study released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that only attempts to show, with not a little hand-waving, that the floors most affected by the aircraft collisions collapsed solely from the aircraft impacts and resulting fires. It does not say why remaining structures below the impact zones, which suffered little or no damage from the aircraft or fires, had no effect on arresting or appreciably slowing the fall of the upper portions of the towers. The buildings fell in their entirety at speeds close to freefall, demonstrating that the lower portions of the buildings offered no resistance to collapse, a result totally contrary to any notion of engineering mechanics whatsoever.
On this last point, Gage takes the time to make a simple demonstration. He picks up in his hands two square models of the top section of one of the World Trade Center towers. One he allows to fall onto the desk below. The other falls on top of a model of the lower structure of the World Trade Center. According to NIST, says Gage, the two should hit the desk at the same time, but in his model, of course, the lower part of the tower arrests the fall of the upper section, illustrating the impossibility of both hitting the ground at free-fall speed. The point of his demonstration is that the fall of the upper stories should have been arrested by the lower portion of the buildings, and not have collapsed at near-free-fall speeds as if the lower portion did not exist.
NIST, Gage says, only carried its investigation as far as determining whether the floor most damaged by aircraft collisions collapsed, and takes it for granted that the downward movement of the upper sections of each tower would be sufficient to trigger the collapse of the lower portions as well, a result he calls "simply speculation."
"And you're just going to stop there?" he asks, wondering why NIST does not address the second part of the problem.
At the beginning of his presentation, Gage polled the audience, asking how many believed the World Trade Center structures collapsed due to the aircraft impacts and the resulting fires they generated. Seven raised their hands in response. Asked who among them were not certain why the towers collapsed, 49 replied affirmatively.
At the end of Gage’s presentation, the former number was reduced to zero, while the latter count fell to 11.
Gage ended his presentation with a call to support the non-profit organization that he established, Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth, by signing a petition on the organization’s web site (www.ae911truth.org), by becoming a member, or by making a financial contribution. He quipped that he could not support his work of live presentations around the country and frequent radio appearances by financing his efforts on the equity of his home.
"We need to get motivated, get into action," he said, warning his audience that if another 9-11-style event were perpetrated by the same people who implemented the last one, "the remainder of our freedoms would evaporate." For this reason, Gage is pressing for a new 9-11 investigation.
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