rather nice front page lead in our local paper today - funnily enough the actual paper makes no reference to conspiracy theories
Controversial 9/11 conspiracy theorist to give speech in Bristol
Monday, June 20, 2011
Bristol Evening Post
A CONTROVERSIAL architect who has called into the question the official reports of what happened on September 11, 2001, is due to give a speech at Bristol's Colston Hall this week.
American Richard Gage claims he is not a conspiracy theorist, but he insists the "evidence" suggests the collapsing of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers has all the hallmarks of a series of controlled explosions.
As the founder of the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth organisation, Mr Gage questions whether the attacks on Manhattan were somehow staged by America ahead of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The 9/11 attacks killed almost 3,000 victims, most of them in New York where emotions are still just as raw as the day the towers collapsed.
Since 2005, Mr Gage has travelled the world presenting his version of the evidence and has so far gathered 13,000 supporters' signatures, including prominent architects and engineers.
Mr Gage will air his views in Bristol just three months ahead of the ten-year anniversary of the disaster in America.
His speech is expected to attract supporters and opponents, but his mere presence in Bristol is likely to cause its own controversy within the city.
SOMETHING DIDN'T SEEM RIGHT TO ME
Monday, June 20, 2011 - Bristol Evening Post
http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/Controve ... story.html
IF you want to get yourself instantly disliked by a sizeable proportion of Americans, heading to New York City and publicly denying the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center is a good way to start.
It is a bit like outing yourself as a holocaust denier while leaning against the Wailing Wall.
But six years ago, Richard Gage, an architect of 23 years, addressed a group of fellow architects and structural engineers, speaking for the first time about his "confusion" over what happened in Manhattan on September 11, 2001.
Since then, Richard's life has become consumed by the debate surrounding 9/11. As the founder of the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth organisation he has also become the focal point of a nation's distaste for anyone who would dare to question the validity of official reports of the World Trade Center attacks.
His mere presence in Bristol this week, to give a public lecture at the Colston Hall, is likely to cause its own controversy.
But if Gage's opponents come out in force as strongly as Gage's supporters on Thursday evening, it will be nothing new for the laid-back San Franciscan.
"People call me all kinds of names all the time, but that's OK, I can cope with that," he says. "Probably the most truly derisive thing I get called is a conspiracy theorist – that's one thing I'm not. I'm an architect, I don't come up with conspiracy theories, I come up with evidence.
"All I do is present the evidence about the World Trade Center collapses, and let people make up their own mind. But to me, what happened that day clearly has all the hallmarks of being a series of controlled explosions.
"It's not for me to suggest who might be responsible for any official cover up that might be going on, but there are serious implications for the entire War on Terror, and the invasions of those two countries (Iraq and Afghanistan) if you consider the attacks on Manhattan were somehow staged."
Gage says he began to question the official line on 9/11 almost immediately as the horrors of that day unfolded.
"Like everyone else, I watched the tragedy unfold on television that day, but I know about buildings. I watched the Twin Towers collapse and straightaway I had a strange feeling about it in my stomach.
"We were being told immediately that it was a gravitational collapse due to the impact, but the towers were obliterated when they fell. We should have seen the 110 floors stacked up on the ground in a 20-storey-high pile, but the whole thing turned to dust. That just didn't seem right to me."
Since 2005 Richard has travelled the world presenting his version of the evidence at public talks, and has so far garnered the signatures of 1,500 prominent architects and engineers, and 11,500 other supporters, calling for an independent investigation into the cause of the collapses.
"I only started becoming truly impassioned about it in 2005, after I heard the evidence of the firefighters – 118 of them reported seeing flashes of light ahead of the collapses.
"So many of the industry professionals I present my evidence towards go away convinced that these were controlled explosions.
"I know questioning anything about 9/11 is a very sensitive issue – but I have families of those killed in the Twin Towers among the signatories on my petition. They want to get to the bottom of why and how their loved ones were murdered. Was there more to it?"
Richard says he begins his presentation by discussing the collapse of World Trade Center 7 (WTC7) – which occurred a few hours after the demise of the Twin Towers. As well as housing offices of leading financial companies, WTC7 also had some unusual tenants: the Secret Service, the CIA, the Department of Defence and the Office of Emergency Management, which would coordinate any response to a disaster or a terrorist attack
"Often people haven't even heard of WTC7," he says. "This was a building that wasn't hit by a plane, that collapsed vertically within a few seconds. There were 80 columns holding up the superstructure of WTC7 – the only way that building could collapse vertically, in my professional opinion, would be a controlled explosion of all 80 columns simultaneously."
â– Richard Gage speaks at the Colston Hall on Thursday at 7pm. Tickets, £6, £4 concessions, available only on the door.
http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/DIDN-T-R ... story.html
