Richard Gage and Ted Walter Recap an Historic 9/11 Anniversary
- AE911Truth
On the first episode of 9/11 Free Fall following this year’s 9/11 anniversary, host Andy Steele was joined by AE911Truth's Richard Gage and Ted Walter for a recap of everything that happened, including the groundbreaking release of the UAF WTC 7 study and AE911Truth’s meetings with 17 congressional offices.
We invite you to listen on SoundCloud or YouTube or to read the interview below.
Andy: So we got a lot to go over with our supporters. It's been a busy several weeks here at AE911Truth, and you almost like to take a breather. But we're going to be kicking off the post-9/11 world for this year —as I call it, meaning post-9/11 anniversary world — with the major outreach off the heels of what we have done so far in the past month. And we had a lot going on,and you and Ted were here to talk about what was coming. We're going to talk about what happened. Richard, please begin though by talking about why, this year, the anniversary was so important in your view.
Richard: Well, we had the release of some major cannonballs, I call them, in our arsenal, to use against the wall of denial out there — 9/11 truth denial. And one of them was the four-year, $300,000 study of Building 7, a finite element analysis. And this was done by the University of Alaska and it was released on September 3rd. And this was an extraordinary deal for us because we were working on it for four years. And all of a sudden, hey, it's out. It's like this cannonball has been loosed on the engineering and architecture world, and the media, and a lot of people are working with this study, which concludes by the way that fire could not have brought this building down. Of course, we're talking about Building 7, a 47-story skyscraper that collapses after the witnesses hear explosions on the afternoon of 9/11, straight down, uniformly, symmetrically into its own footprint in under seven seconds, in the exact manner of a classic controlled demolition.
And of course the official story says that fire brought this building down. And the Hulsey report, which we also call the Alaska report, which we also call the UAF report — we have a lot of names for it — but this report just pulls the rug out from underneath the NIST report. NIST is the National Institute of Standards and Technology who was tasked by Congress to explain these collapses to the American people. Not only did he conclude that fire could not have caused the collapse of this building, but he actually goes on to show us what could have been responsible — that is to say what set of behaviors in the building had to have happened for it to fall in the way we all saw in the videos. And, of course, that amounts to the removal, instantly, virtually, of all the columns in the building. Well, what can do that, Andy?
Andy: My guess would be controlled demolition.
Richard: That's a good guess. I think that's right. I mean, we're talking about instantaneous removal of the core columns followed a second later by the exterior columns. Yeah, fire doesn't do that — especially the few, small, scattered fires that we saw in that building.
Andy: That's right. As I said on the last show, what the University of Alaska study has done is it has taken what has been intuitive for most people listening to this show, watching World Trade Center 7 come down, knowing instantly the fire cannot do this to a steel-frame high-rise, 47-stories, straight down, symmetrical, doesn't happen unless you have pre-placed explosive. The people who don't turn their eyes away from this fact know this intuitively and then they look at the evidence. But now we've got this report that lays it out, that puts a stamp of approval on what we've been saying. And it's going to be hard for the powers that be to ignore. That's why I love it so much. Ted, same question to you, in your own view, why this year, why is it so important to really hit the institution's hard with this information now?
Ted: Well, I think the second cannonball that Richard was referring to when he said we were releasing a number of cannonballs against the wall of denial of 9/11 Truth is the recent emergence of the Franklin Square & Munson Fire District as a voice in New York, calling for a new investigation into the events of 9/11. As many listeners of this show will know, Franklin Square Munson Fire District, on July 24th, the five commissioners who oversee this fire district unanimously passed a resolution calling for a new investigation. They were supporting the ongoing grand jury investigation that's happening in Lower Manhattan that was initiated by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, and they were also calling on any other — all other government entities — to open their own investigations into the events of 9/11.
Since that happened — you know, that was not a one-time shot. They have continued their efforts and they're extremely active. And their goal over the next, say, one to two years, is to rally the entire fire service in the State of New York and beyond, really, to join their call for a new investigation. And so what was so special about this particular September 11th anniversary was that their lead spokesperson, Commissioner Christopher Gioia, joined us in Washington, D.C. As many supporters know, we've been going to Washington, D.C. the last couple years. We've been pushing for Congress to introduce and pass the Bobby McIlvaine World Trade Center Investigation Act, which would establish a select committee in either chamber of Congress to reinvestigate the destruction of the three World Trade Center towers. This time we added a lot of ammo to that campaign, bringing Commissioner Gioia down to D.C. to join us.
There was also the chair of the Commission, Joseph Torregrossa, was supposed to come and join us. But he, as some folks may know, he, along with Gioia, was the first responder the weeks after 9/11. And today he's suffering extreme health effects as a result of breathing the deadly toxins that were down there after 9/11. So he was not able to come, unfortunately. Nevertheless, we had Commissioner Gioia in there with us, Richard Gage, of course, and all of our staff at AE911Truth were there, as well as Bob McIlvaine and Helen McIlvaine, the parents of Bobby McIlvaine, who was killed on 9/11 by an explosion while he was entering the lobby of the North Tower. And then David Meiswinkle, who was president of the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, who we have partnered with in the past year, really in the past three years, to help move this issue forward in the legal realm as well.
And so, all of these folks came together on the anniversary in Washington, D.C. really to capitalize and send out the signal even further, amplify the message of the Franklin Square and Munson Fire District that it's time for a new investigation, and that the fire service is coming, and they will grow in the years ahead to the point where Congress has no choice — especially the delegation from New York State — has no choice but to champion a new investigation in Congress. And so it was very special for that reason, and I'm sure a lot of people tuned in. If you haven't seen the press conference yet, I think it's a very powerful hour of speeches by all the folks I just mentioned. I would encourage you to go to our website AE911Truth.org and watch those speeches. Richard gives a very nice succinct summary of the findings of the UAF World Trade Center 7 study. David Meiswinkle gives a great update on the efforts of the Lawyers’ Committee right now, including the recent filing of a mandamus lawsuit against the U.S. Attorney in order to get the U.S. Attorney to disclose some information about the status of the grand jury investigation that was initiated last year. As well as very beautiful and poignant speeches by Bob McIlvaine and Christopher Gioia.
Andy: Absolutely. And we're going to be talking about that press conference a little more in depth, talking a little behind the scenes talk here on the show. I want to make sure though that we touch upon the presentations that happened at the two universities, because we talked about it in the last episode and I want the supporters there to get an update. This all began on September the 3rd at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. There was a link, a live stream of Leroy Hulsey's presentation. If you did not watch it, many people have grabbed the video and put it up on YouTube. Actually, during my two weeks off from Free Fall to do the anniversary work, I put one of those YouTube videos up on Free Fall's top page. So, it'll probably disappear by the time this show airs, but you can still go into YouTube, type in “Leroy Hulsey WTC 7 study,” and I'm sure it will come up for you. But Richard, tell us about your impression of that first event, the presentation at UAF.
Richard: Yes. Professor Hulsey, whom I just spoke with, told me that he had his students there and required them to actually give feedback. And he's gotten some great feedback from them to actually help him to simplify this presentation even more so that those who just mostly need the overview can get that, and those who want to go into the details — fascinating details, by the way — can get that also by delving deeper. For instance, he talked about the NIST assumptions. NIST made a whole bunch of assumptions that were flat-out wrong. Now, I would call these fraudulent. He doesn't use that kind of language in his report or his presentation on the 3rd. But NIST, for instance, made the exterior wall of Building 7 in the northeast corner infinitely stiff, which forced the concrete slab under thermal loading from the fire to move toward the elevators. Why is that important? Because NIST’s whole theory is that this girder was pushed off of its seat on this Column 79, allowing it to fall. Then they have nine successive floors that have failed allowing Column 79 to buckle, and then the whole thing, the interior of the building cavedin on itself.
Well, Professor Hulsey reveals a five or six key structural omissions, in addition to the input data being contrived, like with regard to the exterior wall. NIST omits stiffeners on the girdle which would have kept it from falling off the bearing seats. He shows that NIST omits the sheer stats that would be tying the girder to the top of the plate. He exposes that they omit other key structural components such as the side plates on Column 79, which would have trapped that girder from moving anywhere. So this is just the beginning. So what's fascinating about what Professor Hulsey revealed that day is that he took all of those inaccurate assumptions of NIST and put them in his model anyway, and he said, "Okay, well could I get the building to fall?" actually modeling NIST’s assumptions. And so he finds that there's no local collapse whatsoever. So he says, "Well, what do I have to do to get this building to collapse?" So he takes out six columns. And, sure enough, you take out six columns and the load is transferred to the exterior columns. But then it begins to tip over. It does tip over, which is what we'd expect: If you’re kicked in the knee, you're going to fall toward that direction. That's plausible, but that's not the way the building fell over, in the video. We have 11 videos of this building's collapse. So he says, "Well, what do I have to do to get it to fall the way it fall in the actual video." So he finds he has to take out all the columns — at least eight floors initially — the interior columns followed a second later by the exterior columns. And then, by God, the building falls exactly like the videos.
So that's what's fascinating about this study and it's the architecture. The input data and so forth is completely open. People can review it. Unlike NIST’s data, which is a black box, they actually said in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. "We can't give you this data. It might jeopardize public safety." Well, God, it certainly jeopardizes public safety to withhold this information from those of us who are architects and engineers responsible for ensuring that public safety. So, I'm real excited about that September 3rd release at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and the work that Professor Hulsey has done, because we're going to get it everywhere throughout the United States and around the world during this open public comment period over the next two months.
Andy: I love how you pointed this out, Richard. Dr. Leroy Hulsey took all of NIST assumptions, tried it out and still cannot get the building to fail. It makes you wonder what NIST did if they even managed to get the building to fall at all. I mean, regarding the input data that they won't disclose, I don't want to speculate, but I would like to know how they came to their conclusions, if Dr. Hulsey couldn't even take all of their wild assumptions, all of their inaccurate assumptions, and get the same result. The revelation at the end that he would have to remove eight stories of columns and then exterior columns a second later to bring the building down exactly as we saw, we can see it in the video, in the animations, right there. UAF has concluded that witness have said is impossible.
So this was presented at UAF, video is out there. We had another event up in Berkeley. And, Ted, I'm going to let you introduce this event, and then I'll give my update from it because I'm the only one here on the show right now that was actually at the event. But, Ted, tell our audience what happened on September 5th up there at UC Berkeley.
Ted: Sure, Andy. Well, first I just want to make a quick comment about when you were talking about the building tipping over, just so all the folks out there, especially the folks who aren't engineers or architects understand what that particular portion of the study was about,and I'll give you sort of the layman's description of it. What was going on there, what Dr. Hulsey was simulating, was the way that NIST says that the building failed was that you started off by losing a few core columns, starting with one and then two others, on the eastern side of the building, inside the building. And that once those core columns failed, that caused the next row of ore columns to fail, and the next row, and the next row. What Dr. Hulsey team found was that if you remove those three core columns, nothing actually happens to the building, just removing those three core columns.
So they had to go — right there, you can't get NIST scenario to work. They had to go the next step and remove the next row of core columns over towards the West. What they found was when you remove those six core columns, what actually starts to happen to the building is — because these columns are on the eastern side of the building — all the columns on the perimeter, on the southeastern side of building, those columns start to become overloaded. Those columns fail, and as those columns fail, you start to get more failures throughout the building. But because you have all these failures happening initially in the southeast side of the building, the building ends up tipping over. So before you can even get to all of the core columns failing east to west that NIST asserts — before you can even get that far, to the point where all the core columns have failed and you just have the exterior sitting there as a hollow shell, which then failed, according to NIST — before you can get that far, if you started losing those core columns on the eastern side of the building, the building is going to tip over to the southeast.
And that's what you would expect when the skyscraper actually loses lots of columns in a particular area of the building. It's going to fall asymmetrically — the same thing that Richard and so many others have been talking about for better hard 18 years. So that's why you see in some of those simulations, the building tipping to the southeast.
There's another simulation where the building tips to the south west. This is actually where Dr. Hulsey simulated, removing all of the core columns at the same time to see what effect that could have on the building. And because the building is a trapezoidal shape — meaning it's asymmetrical and has less support columns on the perimeter, on the southern side — and because they simulate it with some of those exterior columns being separated as a result of the debris, they get the building tipping to the southwest. Again, this is the kind of behavior that you would expect a building to undergo when it has, let's say, a certain degree of structural failures occurring within it and loss of columns.
The idea of a building coming straight down into its footprint — I mean, you could try a million different ways. There's not a lot of — I think what Dr. Hulsey discovered is there's not a lot of things that can do that aside from the near simultaneous failure of every column in the building starting with the core then the exterior columns about a second later. So I just wanted to clarify that.
I think the September 5th presentation, this happened two days after the release of the report in Berkeley, at the Faculty Club on the UC Berkeley campus. A lot of the engineers who were actually on our board of directors — Kamal Obeid and Roland Angle were present there — as well as several other engineers who had been working diligently with AE911Truth for the last several years. And then we had, I would say, from what I understand, a handful of students from the Berkeley engineering program show up, a lot of other interested architects and engineers in the area, some supporters. And I'm not going to go into describing how it went, because you were there so let's get your take on it. But I think it was really good that Dr. Hulsey went there and gave that presentation on the Berkeley campus. As everybody knows, most people listening to this know, AE911Truth was founded in Berkeley, in the San Francisco Bay Area. And so it was important that we brought Dr. Hulsey in there to give that presentation. And I think that the engineers who were present, students who were present, got a lot out of that presentation. And it was great to have Dr. Hulsey to make that trip and give that presentation.
Andy: Right. This was actually the first time I met Dr. Hulsey in person. So it was a great honor to do that and a great day. And I consider this event a success. I think that we had a reasonably filled audience in there. We did have many engineers in the audience. There were some students that came, some very impassioned.
Now, just a full disclosure, I got put on door duty to help people come in, because when Leroy Hulsey was talking, we don't want the outside noise in the hallway. There was another event going on across the hall. So we had to close the door but somebody might show up late. So I was out in the hallway watching the door and helping people in if they came late. But I did come in during the Q&A, and Dr. Hulsey gave a pretty much the same presentation that he gave at UAF. But the Q&A was where it really got interesting, because there were students there who were very impassioned and there was even one student — I won't identify him by name — but he was fixated on this presentation according to Kelly our COO who was present in the room. There was a lot of great back and forth and a lot of great interest in this and from a core group of young people.
Now, while I was out in the hallway, students were coming back from some kind of insurance industry events, and a lot of them were in there. They had food. But they would come by thinking that we are an insurance industry of mat or affiliated with it. I would clarify for them that they weren't. But I would talk to them about Building 7. And many of them said that they had already heard about this and showed some genuine interest, even if they were on their way to a class or something else at the moment. And then I got two friends talking about it. One kid had not heard of Building 7 before and the other one heard and they started discussing it right there. So I got some outreach done in the hallway. But a very successful, very worthwhile event down there.
And, Richard, I want to know, I mean, are we done? Are we going to reach out to any other universities? And are we open to doing any presentations at other universities?
Richard: Absolutely. We are going to ask all of our 3,000 architects and engineers who are signed onto our petition, of course, demanding a new investigation, to take this study to their — it’s 128 pages — take it to the dean of their local school where they came from, and get them to review it, to comment on it, and to invite our Project Due Diligence Team to come and give a presentation at the university about the study. Professor Hulsey himself is tied up with comments that have begun coming in and he's got to produce the final report by January. But we want to send the study, ourselves, also to all of the engineering universities in the country. And we're going to be about that coming up here very shortly. We're going to try to get emails out as well and just do whatever we can to make the fuss — because, I mean, here is the university study with open architecture — it's not a black box — it's concluded that NIST, who was responsible for the official story of this building’s collapse, which nobody buys once they actually see the videos of this building's collapse, they know it didn't come down by fire. And so here is the definitive study that refutes that piece by piece, pulls the rug out from under it.
And buildings — why is Building 7 important? Well, Building 7 was the third skyscraper to collapse on 9/11. The Twin Towers, more well known, are the foundation of the Global War and tTrror. We've lost $6.5 trillion now on this Global War and Terror, which has also consumed our civil liberties and dismantled them, through the Patriot Act, the Military Commission Act, etc. We've invaded two countries, and more countries have been invaded since, but starting with Afghanistan and Iraq. Two million people have been killed. It all goes back to the Twin Towers, but people are often too damaged to evaluate clearly the evidence at the Twin Towers, because we were filled with shock and awe on that day. But when we show them Building 7, and what really happened there, they have an open mind. According to the official story, nobody died at Building 7. So we're not laced with the trauma that we are with regard to the Twin Towers and everybody can see instantly that this was a controlled demolition. And the study simply proves it to the academics who tend to be more open minded to that type of information. They're curious, they can't stop themselves from looking at a good finite element analysis. So we've got it to give them. And we think this will turn things upside down in the architecture and engineering industry. So that's what we're going to be about, Andy.
Andy: Exactly, can't turn away from a good finite element analysis. I like that. Some light reading before bed. So, Richard, you went to New York City. And, actually, Ted was at the event as well. But this was a Lawyers’ Committee event. There were a lot of good speakers, well known speakers and the truth community there. Tell us about that and also tell us what you talked about when you were speaking there.
Richard: This was an event on September 7th, Saturday, in New York. 250 people packed the Unitarian church. We were invited to speak and, along with, I think, five or six others, including Gary Null, Bill Binney, who couldn't come due to an illness, surgery. But [Kirk] Wiebe was set in his stead, who did a great job providing context for secrecy and surveillance of American people. Gary Null spoke quite eloquently as well. And David Meiswinkle from the Lawyers’ Committee, talking about these lawsuits that are going to be helpful in reinforcing the openness of the U.S. Attorney about the grand jury, which he is compelled to impanel to review the evidence that we've been talking about for 12 years now at Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
We also had, of course, Chris Gioia, who, as Ted mentioned, has been just a pioneer in the fire-fighter realm emerged, as this marine who is just taking by storm this denial of 9/11 Truth. He will be working to get all firefighting associations and districts to join him in a call for a new investigation. And we're all excited about that.
I announced the release of the Hulsey study in my talk and the initial evidence as we highlighted here about Building 7's controlled demolition. So all of this works very well together — these speeches in New York. and I was just real excited to present for the first time, by me anyway, the University of Alaska study. I know Ted was there also. And what did you think about the event, Ted?
Ted: I thought the event was fantastic. As you mentioned, a lot of folks there, a lot of positive energy. I I have to commend the Lawyers’ Committee and others for putting together such a great event. And I think also just because of all the positive developments that have been taking place in the last several months, in the last year, I think that also played a role in that. And there was just so much to talk about and to update folks on, whether it was our efforts or Lawyers’ Committee or some of these amazing speakers like Gary Null and Mark Crispin Miller.
I thought that was the first time that we got to see Christopher Gioia speak at an event outside of the auspices of the Franklin Square and Munson Fire District. And his speech was, it was just mind-boggling, basically. It was beautiful and urgent. And just his ability to express the moral aspect of this fight that we are all engaged in is really inspiring and breathtaking. And I'm just thrilled and deeply grateful that he and his fellow commissioners and other people in this community are joining this fight and taking it to their own community.
And, Richard, I thought your presentation, discussing much of the evidence that you've discussed in the past, but also incorporating the findings from the UAF study was very effective, very succinct. The nail in the coffin, really. We obviously we have so much evidence, the evidence is overwhelming, it all points in one direction. But the reason that we embarked on funding this computer modeling study by engineers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks was to give an unbiased look at when you simulate different kinds of loads in this building, what can cause it to collapse. and the results of that unbiased research serve as the nail in the coffin. There was no question anymore and the only thing that will prevent anybody from seeing the obvious today is denial. And this study will go a long way in helping millions of people, in time, I believe, millions of people overcome that denial. And so seeing you there, presenting the study was — especially after the four years of oversight and hard work that we put into it, raising the funds to do it — it was very gratifying for me — and I'm sure you, to be there presenting that research.
Richard: And we have Ansgar Schneider who also appeared during my talk by Skype from Germany. He had been denied entry into the U.S. Here’s a physicist and a mathematician who's been invited to speak at the Association for Structural Engineering of Bridges in this country. And he had a very eloquent, simple — simple to mathematicians, anyway, and some of the rest got a little lost — but in 10 minutes, he showed exactly the fraud of the NIST report, which relied on Zdenek Bazant, who, two days after 9/11, submitted a detailed paper obfuscating the collapse. And, here, this mathematical equation was shown by Ansgar Schneider to be a completely in error. So that was a fascinating opportunity for him to speak live in the United States after having been denied through our government, Department of Homeland Security, I guess who wouldn't let him in the country. And we still don't know the real reasons for that.
But I also want to share that we had Mick Harrison there from the Lawyers; Committee for 9/11 Inquiry. We had Bob McIlvaine ,who spoke as well. Bob lost his son, Bobby, and he's been inspiring the Bobby McIlvaine Act. And then, Mark Crispin Miller was extraordinary in New York, journalist and journalism professor. He has just been fantastic and really focused on the media and how corrupt our media has been in refusing to report on the crime of the century, really. And then Rachel Hughes, of course, first responder at Ground Zero.
Andy: Right. Very good event from what I hear. And I'm glad that Richard was able to speak there. And now, I want to make sure we get everything in. There's so much to talk about that I don't know how we're going to fit it into the hour, but let's get to the press conference in D.C.
Now, Ted, talked about it at the very beginning, we got his impression of it. Richard, just give us your wrap-up of what happened there at the National Press Club. And, of course, we want to let our supporters know that we have a video right up AE911Truth.org. And it's good to hear about it, but better to see it for yourself. So, Richard, take the floor.
Richard: Yeah, definitely. Everybody has to go to the website and check this out. There's four speakers at the National Press Club, the most prestigious speaking event opportunity in terms of getting in front of the media. We had Fox News there and many other media organizations. And Chris Gioia started this off in uniform and just made an impassioned plea for the announcement of his campaign, Justice for 9/11 Heroes. And we were all just at the edge of our seats as he explained what got him so fired up. I mean, here's a first responder who lived that day on the pile and was at or near or might've even seen Building 7 come down. I can't remember if he actually saw it. Ted, will clarify that.
But I had the opportunity to speak after him and once again announce the Building 7 finite element analysis, the release of this 128-page major university study. I was just honored to present this.
And Bob McIlvaine talked about his experiences also trying to get truth about what happened to his son on that day as he was entering the North Tower. He was blown back in the explosions, typified the injuries that led to his death. And yet explosions are not a part of any of the official stories here. And so that's why Dave Meiswinkle updated everybody at the end of that conference as to why he's suing again the U.S. Attorney — to force his hand to tell us exactly how he's making progress on complying with the law requiring him to impanel a special grand jury. So, all in all, I think all of us were very excited. We did several interviews with the media representatives there afterward and then we skirted off to Capitol Hill.
Andy: That's right. And I was very impressed with Dave Meiswinkle’s speech. I'll tell you what: I wouldn't want to be cross examined by him. He's very dramatic speaker and very powerful. And everyone there did a great job that day.
And something I just want to note. Richard mentioned that there was a media at this event. And, Ted, I want you to comment on this. Fox News showed up. They came with their cameras, they unrolled all the cords, they set up the cameras, and they got footage, I assume from doing all that work. But as far as I say, and I had family watching Fox News all day and all night to try to get some kind of report on what happened there at the National Press Club with AE911Truth, and they didn't see any coverage. We haven't found any coverage as of yet. Ted, I just want to get your thoughts on that development.
Ted: Well, I don't have a lot to say, I guess, other than that I think there was too much truth in that room for Fox to put it on the air.
Richard: Yeah.
Andy: Exactly. Exactly. But that is why the people in this audience are so important. I mean this is really a worldwide movement of people who have been called to action from their own instincts and from their own ambition to see justice be done. So we can't give up and we can't get tired. We got to keep on spreading this information. We're relying on you out there in the listening audience to help us bring this message forward and do the job that the corporate media is not doing for the American people. And you will be remembered for that too when this truth comes out.
All right, let's talk about Capitol Hill. Big time. This is my favorite part of every anniversary that we've done in the past couple of years. First, I just want to acknowledge the great volunteers that we had show up around one o'clock in the afternoon. Kelly David, our COO, was in charge of commissioning the volunteers to hand out packets to every office in the congressional buildings on each side. Every single office got hit. In fact, when I went to a congressional meeting, I had one of the packets and the staffer commented that they had already received one earlier that day. So some people got there before me, which is just fine, just great. But, Richard, tell our audience about what we did there in the halls of the congressional buildings and all of the congressional offices, meeting with our representatives.
Richard: Yes. Well, thanks to these volunteers from the Washington, D.C. area, we now know that all 535 congresspersons have the packet that we delivered. That included the Bobby McIlvaine Act. It included our petition demanding a new investigation, signed by 3,000 architects and engineers. It included evidence about the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7, and a letter from Christopher Gioia explaining why he's doing what he's doing and why he's not going to stop until they introduce the Bobby McIlvaine Act and until the grand jury has been impaneled by the U.S. Attorney.
So, our specific role — we had a couple of dozen appointments, and it took three teams of us to cover them all. But I had the unique opportunity to speak with the representative from Iowa, Steve King, who, unfortunately, is embattled right now due to remarks that he's made that were controversial. But I found him to be very attentive to the evidence. And this is a unique experience for us, because we've spoken to aides and we've spoken to reps. But there's been a few experiences — and Ted, and Andy has some two here to share — but Steve King was looking at the evidence, for instance, the photograph of the Twin Towers during its explosion. He said, "That was like a waterfall! That doesn't look anything like a collapse!" Which of course gave me the opportunity to explain that four-ton structural steel sections were ejected laterally at 80 miles an hour, landing 600 feet in every direction, trailed by thick white smoke clouds. Yeah, there’s your waterfall! The evidence of thermite, which he asked about specifically. "Well, where does that come from?" "Who makes that?" The nano-thermite, particularly. He was deeply interested. So I'm going to be following up with him, as did his constituent, who has already written him a letter thanking him for meeting with us on his behalf. This Iowan, a supporter of AE911Truth. Bob McIlvaine impressed him as well with his personal story, which always opens the heart of these congresspersons. So that was a highlight of my appointments right there.
Andy: I found that everybody was attentive. Everybody took notes, at least in my meetings. I'll talk about my experience, some of them that I had to go to because — first of all, our supporters are so great. I mean, we put out the call to action to set up these meetings, and it was like a Walmart on black Friday. I mean, so many supporters were writing to their Congress members, I knew I was going to have a busy month when I looked at my inbox in the morning after that bulletin went out. This is a good thing. This is what I want. And we had so many appointments that we did have to split the teams. I went and covered some of them myself.
And I actually met with Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler and her staffer. She's a Representative from Missouri. And I consider that to be a successful meeting. No, I didn't get a commitment to pass the Bobby McIlvaine Act out of it. But she was attentive as well. She asked some questions. I could tell this might've been the first time that she was encountering this information. And so we all know that experience the first time hearing about Building 7, the first time hearing that there's any problem with the official story of what happened to these three towers, the first time hearing that there were three towers instead of two. We know what that is like, so most of us don't want to comment immediately. She did have to leave a little early to go vow on the floor. I finished up with her staffer and I had printed out a copy of the Building 7 study for myself to have, because I like to just have reference materials when I travel for one of these events. I only had that one copy in my bag and I decided to give it to Vicky Hartzler with his office. I just made that decision to do it right on the spot. So I do plan to follow up with them as well. But I thought she was a very nice lady. And I feel like our information was at the very least respected and listened to there. So we'll see what happens there.
There were meetings with other representatives, staffers that we went to throughout the week, because it wasn't just on the 11th. It was on the 12th and the 13th and I thought a lot of those interactions went well. Some of them I went to with Ted, too, so I'm going let Ted comment on some of them. Ted, you had your own group there and you saw many offices as well. So tell us about your experience that week.
Ted: Yeah, so just like Andy, this part of our efforts around the anniversary was very gratifying for me. And I was — as they mentioned, we had to break into a few groups in order to cover all the meetings that we had. I was in a group, it was sort of the New York-New Jersey-Philadelphia axis, where there was me from New York, Commissioner Gioia from Long Island, Dave Meiswinkle from New Jersey, and Helen McIlvaine joined us. And the McIlvaines live in Philadelphia.
And so we focused on a lot of the New York congresspersons. We met with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's office. We met with three other representatives from the New York area, including Kathleen Rice, who is Christopher Gioia's representative, representing the Franklin Square Munson Fire District area, as well as Congressman Suozzi. He is a district neighboring that district where Franklin Square is. And then a congressperson who I think most people are familiar with these days, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. We met with her office as well. We also met with a handful of others that I met with Andy and Kelly David the following day.
I would say, by and large, I think that just what the supporters did in terms of doing the outreach to try to arrange these meetings was incredible. They just paved the way for us to go in there and have some really, really meaningful conversations, the likes of which we did not quite have in the last couple of years. We had some good conversations here and there in the last two years. But this year, three times a charm, it just vastly trumped what we did in the last couple of years in terms of having really productive conversations.
By and large, I just want to say a little bit about some of the materials that we brought there. We had a letter from Christopher Gioia, which was really important, and in the packets all had the sort of the envelope Franklin Square and Munson Fire District on them. Also the materials generated out of all of our efforts in the last month or two were extremely effective. We went there with the Bobby McIlvaine Act, which we've been promoting for the last couple of years, and we hand them the Bobby McIlvaine Act and it’s got a picture of Bobby on the front ,and immediately you've opened their heart. And then we gave out the abstract of the UAF WTC 7 study to every person that we met with, so the cover and the abstract.
Along with a one-page summary of the YouGov survey that we commissioned that all of our supporters who donated in the past month made possible. It was a relatively short survey, which we've done in the past, but it had been a few years, where you show people — because this is an online survey, you can show people the collapse of Building 7, explain to them that this building came down late in the afternoon on 9/11, and ask them what they think is the more likely cause: "Are you sure it came down because of controlled demolition?” “Do you suspect it did, but you're not sure?” “Or do you suspect it was fires or are you sure it was fires?” And I encourage anybody who's listening to go to AE911Truth.org/yougov, all one word, Y. O. U. G. O. V. The results of that survey are consistent with what we've seen in the last five years. But they're even tilting more in our favor, which is two-and-a-half or 3-to-1 majority of people who see the collapse either suspect or are sure that it was controlled demolition, compared to a very small minority who suspect or are sure that it was fires. You then ask them, "Are you more inclined to believe the critics who say that it was explosives tghat brought the building down? Or are you more inclined to believe the government which says that office fire brought it down?" And you get the same lopsided margin about 50% of respondents say they would believe the critics, which is us, and about 20% they believe the government's account that it was fires. You ask them then, "Would you support new investigation?" There we get a 3-to-1 margin, 48% saying that they either strongly support or support investigation, and that's about half and half, compared to 15%, a tiny minority of 15% who say they would oppose a new investigation.
And so you have that hand in hand with the abstract of the UAF study. And, like, that's what members of Congress need to see. They need to see that if they were to suddenly champion this issue, and that the video of the building 7 was seen more widely, that at most there would be 15% of the country that would be opposed to what they're doing. And the vast majority would either agree or at least be indifferent and not sure. But so to have that hand in hand — and then if a staffer is sitting there, you're showing them the video of Building 7 and then you say, "This is the video that all of these people who took the survey watched." And you got a 3-to-1 majority saying, "It looks like a controlled demolition." Which one do you think? And the staffer right away — like, you suddenly feel crazy for thinking that it's fires, which is how anybody should feel if they think fires brought that building down. And then you pair that with a four-year computer modeling study that says there is no way the fires brought it down.
And, I'll just say this, I think everybody understood in those meetings that we were serious and they took us very seriously. And we see a real path forward to making this happen, to getting the Bobby McIlvaine Act or something similar passed in the next few years. That's just the beginning, it takes a lot more meetings, it takes a lot more public pressure. It takes the fire service throughout New York State getting on board. But there is a path forward and it's not necessarily the long path that we're all afraid it might be.
Andy: No, I came out of this very hopeful. And it was great to have Richard down there, the whole team, because we're all geographically, most of us are geographically located in different places of the country. And when we come together, we do some really good things. And you bring the volunteers in doing all their work, handing out these packets, it becomes excellent.
And I also want to give a quick compliment, shout out to members of our staff and family of the staff who had to help us put that packet together. We don't think about these kinds of things or mention these things when we talk about our outreaches. But to have these packets, we had to actually physically put the papers in the envelopes, and that is no small task. We had a whole night here, turned this office into a factory and a lot of people worked really hard that night. So I want to compliment them. I know one of them is listening to the show right now. He listens every week.
So I want to mention this, too, Ted. We did something that we didn't advertise that we were going to do when we were down there, regarding the Oversight and Science Committees. Do you want to briefly introduce this outreach to our audience?
Ted: Yeah, I do, because there's actually something that people can do right now to make a difference. And this is just one of the several ways that we are going to be advocating with Congress to take action here.
We did put out a notice, I think it was the day before the 11th, September 10th, asking supporters to contact both the House Oversight Committee and the House Science Committee, asking them to hold hearing or investigate the difference between the UAF WTC 7 report and the NIST WTC 7 report. For people that have been following this issue really closely for many years, you might remember that the House Science Committee is the committee that has held a number of hearings on the NIST World Trade Center investigation, where you've seen the likes of the NIST director and Shyam Sunder and other folks report back on what the NIST investigation did. This committee has direct oversight of NIST, rhw National Institute of Standards and Technology. And we believe this committee has a direct responsibility once the final report, the final UAF WTC 7 report, is published by the end of the year to hold a hearing, to look at how did another university in this country, engineers at another university, come to a conclusion so radically different from the conclusion that NIST reached. And we'd like to see that hearing include Dr. Hulsey. We’d like to see that hearing include Dr. Shyam Sunder from NIST, and others who are responsible both in the NIST investigation as well as the UAF study. And we're making the same request of the House Oversight Committee, which is the main investigative committee in the House of Representatives.
And so we sent out that message. I'm sure dozens, if not more people, contacted those committees throughout last week. We also made a stop to every single member of each of those committees, handed them a letter from Richard, asking them to do exactly what I just laid out. And along with that letter we included the abstract of the study and we included the YouGov survey, the one-page summary that I just mentioned as well.
And this is really powerful material. I mean, I think it's — for the people that have not looked at this issue in the past, who are looking at it for the first time in these congressional offices, there's probably a lot of eye opening, soul searching, maybe a little bit of cognitive dissonance — hopefully not too much — happening, and people are really starting to look at this seriously for the first time.
And so our supporters throughout the country: A) You can contact the House Science Committee or the House Oversight Committee directly. If you go to our website, AE911truth.org/justice, it is the page that we have for the Bobby McIlvaine Act, but there's also information about reaching out to these two committees, the House Science Committee, the House Oversight Committee. You can also look at the members of those committees. And there's approximately 40 members of Congress in each committee. So these are not small committees. So you look at who is on those committees, and if it's your member of Congress contact, call them, write them today, tomorrow, this week, soon. Ask them to review the draft report. They already got the letter from us, so they should be. But it is public pressure, it is numbers, that get these people to really act. And so that's key. So everybody out there who's listening to this can play a role, whether it's calling the committees themselves — if your representative is not in one of these committees, you could still call the committee, ask them to look at the report — and if one of your members or your members are on those committees, please call them or write them.
Andy: Absolutely. And typically I end this show with sort of a final wrap up thought, but there is no final wrap up thought because we are still in the midst of it. The story is still continuing and we are moving forward and we are not done. And so we need your help out there to make this happen. I think we've got the best chance right now than we ever have of getting some kind of justice regarding this issue. With the Building 7 study out, the Bobby McIlvaine Act ready and waiting to go. So many great impassioned people out there. You've got Chris Gioia coming out. You've got the lawsuits going on. I mean, it is a full frontal assault on the official story, on the official lie that we were given by NIST. And we need your participation out there. And this is the most important battle for truth and justice in U.S. history.
So guys, we are out of time. But I want to thank you so much — first, for all the work you've done over the years, for all the work I saw you do when we were in Washington, D.C. And thank you again also for coming on 9/11 Free Fall today.
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