Architect Richard Gage asks the audience, "How many people here have heard of building seven?" (Photo: John Packman)

Architect constructs 9/11 theory

Architect Richard Gage presented an unsettling theory at Dal about the World Trade Center building collapses

Richard Gage heard a theory two years ago that changed his life. Gage, who was a full-time architect in San Francisco, now works only part-time. He has lost his house and wife in the two years since he founded Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

Gage knew about the various groups that question the official 9/11 story, but he felt there was a missing voice.

“Where are the architects and engineers? These are actually buildings. I realized I had to put together the architects and engineers,” says Gage.

The group now has more than 500 members.

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Gage presenting his version of 9/11 to a crowd at Dalhousie University on Saturday. (Photo: John Packman)

Since Gage founded the group, he’s toured all over North America giving his presentation, which is how he ended up speaking to about 160 people at Dalhousie University Saturday.

Gage’s presentation focuses on the technical aspects of the collapse of the three buildings at the World Trade Center site. A key focus of Gage’s presentation is the collapse of the third tower, 7 World Trade Center.

At only 47 storeys tall, Building Seven was much smaller than the Twin Towers. The building collapsed in less than 10 seconds, even though it was not hit by a plane; this is freefall speed, meaning the building encountered no resistance on its way down.

The lack of resistance means the building fell straight down, despite all its supporting structure. 

The collapse of Building Seven is not as well known as that of the Twin Towers. Twenty-four people in the audience had never even heard of the building.

Gage explains to the crowd that the collapse of Building Seven had all the hallmarks of a controlled demolition, though the official story is that fire destroyed it.

 “Destroying the interior columns of the building allows the unsupported weight of the building to do most of the destruction,” says Gage. “This produces a vertical symmetrical collapse at virtually freefall speeds.” 

He showed videos of a controlled demolition side by side with the collapse of Building Seven and they do appear similar.

“Neatly down, almost into its own footprint,” says Gage. “Remember fire moves around a building every 20 minutes. So when they go down, they always fall over, an asymmetrical organic event.”

Gage said for a collapse like Building Seven, all the core columns had to be eliminated within a tenth of a second of each other.

Gage was shocked when he first heard about the collapse.

“I was on my way to a construction site meeting . . . all of a sudden David Ray Griffin was talking (on the radio) about the 118 [emergency workers] along with 500 others that were recorded in the month after 9/11,” says Gage.

Griffin is a retired philosophy professor and one of the most vocal challengers of the official 9/11 story.

The emergency workers told their stories to a task force charged with documenting the oral histories of 9/11. The interviews were only released in 2005 after The New York Times sued the city of New York for their release.

The interviews contained new information about the attacks.

“They were talking about 110 floors collapsing, but [the floors] are not found at the bottom. Not one of them. They were talking about the beams flying out of the Twin Towers 600 feet at 55 miles per hour, the ends of them dripping with molten metal,” says Gage.

The beams were a part of the building’s core. Gage says for them to fly out, dripping with molten metal, they would have to be cut with explosives.

Gage listened to Griffin’s presentation on the radio and immediately needed to know more.

“I had to get his book, I had to find more information,” says Gage. “The stuff he was talking about made sense to me. I didn’t doubt it.”

Although most of Gage’s presentation involved physics and chemistry, one of Gage’s demonstrations involved simple cardboard boxes.

He had two boxes of equal size, each representing the 15 storeys of the North Tower above where the plane hit. Gage held both boxes at the same height over a table. One of the boxes had only air underneath; the other was over a long cardboard box, representing the rest of the tower.

“How many people think these boxes will hit the ground at the same time?” he asked the audience. No hands went up.

“The official story is that both these boxes will hit the table at the same time,” he said as he dropped the boxes. Unsurprisingly, the box with nothing underneath hit the ground first.

Some still weren’t convinced by Gage’s presentation.

Raj Raol, a recent computer science graduate, has trouble with the consequences of Gage’s presentation.

“If I believe this, the implications are unbelievable. I can’t see the world the same way anymore. I can’t change my worldview in two hours.”

Greg Debogorski, a third-year management student, feels the data needs more scrutiny.

“He’s talking about 500 (architects and engineers) out of God knows how many hundreds of thousands across North America who’ve jumped on this bandwagon,” says Debgorski. “I’m still a little bit wary because I still haven’t seen much in the way of peer review.”

Debgorski says it is peer review that makes the difference between a hypothesis and a theory.  

Gage will be speaking at the University of Cincinnati on Oct. 25 before going on tour in Europe next month.

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