Terrorist attacks or controlled demolitions?

New Zealand Public TV

November 27, 2009

Close Up speaks to a renowned architect as he claims a destroyed building in the 9/11 attacks collapsed due to controlled demolitions.

Everyone can remember the collapse of the World Trade Centres in New York in 2001, but not many can accurately recall that not two, but three buildings went done.

Tower 7, as it was called, collapsed in the afternoon of September 11th, 2001, but failed to gain notoriety because it was never hit by a plane, yet still it came down.

Which is exactly what troubles internationally respected architect Richard Gage, who’s causing a stir in the USA for claiming that the buildings were instead destroyed by controlled demolitions with explosives.

TRANSCRIPT

Provided by Janice Matthews

Close Up’s Mike Hosking:

No one can ever forget those horrific images of 9/11. Remember them? The planes smashing into those buildings on a sunny New York Day.

And then, of course, the collapse of not just two but three World Trade Buildings. You remember Tower 7, as it was called? It collapsed in the afternoon of September 11 but it failed to gain notoriety because it was never hit by a plane, but it still came down, of course. And that’s what troubles internationally respected architect Richard Gage. He’s causing a stir at the moment in the US claiming the buildings were destroyed by controlled demolitions with explosives. The planes were simply a distraction.

Now, I spoke with Richard Gage a short time ago and asked him, “Is it as simple as looking at the collapse and the collapse of the building tells a story?”

Gage: It can be that simple, Mike. The building number 7, the third high-rise to collapse — it collapses in the afternoon of 9/11 — descends immediately, suddenly, straight down, symmetrically into its own footprint almost in about six and a half seconds. Now as you’re seeing, this is almost free fall acceleration.

In fact, NIST, the agency tasked with explaining this collapse to us, says that it did come down at free fall for the first 100 feet or so. That means the structure has to have been removed. They acknowledge this but they do not acknowledge how the structure might have been removed. And in fact, we have evidence of very high tech explosives in all the dust throughout lower Manhattan of this building — nanothermite.

Hosking: They say also normal office fires. You rule out normal office fires. That’s not possible?

Gage: No, it’s not possible. Normal office fires would start a large, gradual deformation. The building would tip over. It wouldn’t go straight down through the path of greatest resistance, the 40,000 tons of structural steel designed to resist any such collapse. This is why we have almost 1,000 architects and engineers now throughout the world, mainly in the US, demanding a real investigation that includes this evidence that was not included in any of the three investigations that we’ve had. Actually, they’re just building performance assessment reports; they’re not investigations at all.

Hosking: All right. Well, let’s have a look at the second clip which involves your comparison So you’ve got — on one side of the screen you’ve got a regular building and this is a demolition of a building and that’s how it falls. And on the other side we have got Building 7. So let’s look at this.

Gage: Yes. As you can see, Building 7 at 5:20 in the afternoon, not hit by an airplane, descends straight down in the exact manner of a classic controlled demolition — straight down, smoothly, suddenly, symmetrically into its own footprint. Every architect, engineer and many others understand immediately and intuitively that this is clearly a classic controlled demolition, not something that — you didn’t even see fires enveloping that building. There’s only eight to ten small office fires, in fact.

Hosking: The question is if you’re right, how do you load enough explosive into a building to do that three times in the three buildings, the Twin Towers plus Building 7?

Gage: Well, one would have to have access to the core areas because in order to bring a building down like this we have to take out the 24 core columns in Building 7, for instance, within a fraction of a second of each other. Any deviation in that pattern, the building begins to tip.

Now in the case of the Twin Towers what we’re seeing is the building — the South Tower is hit about 30 floors down and it does begin to tip but this whole upper story section, which we’re told drove the rest of the building down, begins to disintegrate into an incredible pulverization of concrete, a cloud that’s symmetrical, as the fireman, the first responders describe, ‘like a belt’ all these explosions. They’re hearing sounds of explosions, seeing flashes of light. There’s well over 100 eyewitnesses of explosions. None of these made it into the official report.

And this building descends straight down, almost at free fall acceleration — this turns out to be two-thirds of freefall — straight down through 80,000 tons of structural steel designed to resist any collapse like that and it’s three to five times stronger than it needed to be.

Hosking: Why can’t they see it?

Gage: Why can’t they see it? Why won’t they tell us about any of this evidence that we’ve been discussing so far? We don’t know. This is why we need a new investigation, one that includes all of the evidence found at the crime scene, not just the evidence provided by officials such as evidence of the airplane impacts, evidence of fires, evidence of hijackers.

Hosking: Let me ask you about the planes. If they put the bombs in the building — and the Twin Towers as well, went down that same way — does that mean the planes were superfluous? They were for show? They could have blown up the building anyway and they didn’t need a plane?

Gage: Indeed, the explosions occur as the collapse is starting. That’s when we have the evidence for explosive controlled demolition.

Hosking: If you are right, is it conspiracy or is it incompetence on the officials’ part?

Gage: Well, conspiracy theories are a term that’s used when we have a lack of substantiated information. What we’re providing is evidence. The evidence is based on fact.

Hosking: You must admit that to put bombs into a building, the sort of explosive you would need to bring three towers down, to do that without being detected is almost inconceivable isn’t it?

Gage: Well, not really. For instance, in the nine months prior to 9/11 we had the largest elevator modernization in history going on in the towers. Ace Elevator had this contract. It would have given them the possibility, the plausibility, of setting those explosives without being suspected by any of the tens of thousands of inhabitants. Of course, they would need access through security so we’re looking for an investigation that includes elevator companies, security companies, etc.

Hosking: All right. Architect Richard Gage.