May 8, 2008, Nicole Dial, City News Reporter
http://www.cityonahillpress.com/article.php?id=1229

Conspiracy theorist or skeptic Richard Gage believes that something other than terrorists brought down the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. His story involves specially timed explosives, a team of experts and a well-orchestrated cover-up by our own government.

As part of a group called Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Gage traveled to Santa Cruz on May 2 to present “9/11: Blueprint for Truth,” a PowerPoint and film presentation that contests the official story of what brought down the towers.

During the presentation, Gage challenged the theories put forth by several governmental agencies that studied the collapse of the towers, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), saying that none of the previous studies hold up under scrutiny.
“The skyscrapers, welded together and designed not to bend, dropped like a house of cards,” Gage said. “Theories of previous studies don’t account for straight-down collapse or the characteristics of demolitions.”

He rejected the notion that fire collapsed the towers, and told the audience that it was precisely timed explosives possibly deployed by our government.

“How could eight scattered fires bring down World Trade Center Building Seven in a few seconds?” he asked the audience.

Gage presented a side-by-side comparison of a controlled demolition of a building with that of the Twin Towers and the lesser-known World Trade Center Building Seven.

He explained that in controlled demolitions, thousands of cutter charges are precisely placed and timed, resulting in a vertical, symmetrical collapse into a tidy rubble pile.

He told the audience about a chemical compound known as Thermate, which can cut through and melt steel. Thermate has a unique chemical signature, and there was residue in the dust, rubble and on the very beams of the towers.

“[Thermate] is not made in a cave in Afghanistan,” Gage said.

He presented video eyewitness testimonies of Sept. 11 in which firefighters, emergency responders, news reporters and bystanders said they heard explosions which sounded like demolitions.

The Louden Nelson Community Center room was flooded with applause as the crowd gave Gage a standing ovation.

Rainey Shuler, an audience member, claims that the mainstream media could be just as responsible for a cover-up.

“The constant bombardment of news keeps people in a fog,” Shuler said.

Another audience member, Sandra Taylor, believes that citizens are part of the problem and remembers a time when more people organized and took action.

“We have to think beyond ourselves,” Taylor said. “To acknowledge the truth means we have to take it on.”

Demanding a new investigation by the government and a grassroots movement for change, Gage urged the audience for action.

“We’re not conspiracy theorists,” Gage said. “This is much bigger than just the buildings.”