Letter to NIST from Richard Gage, AIA
Request for meeting regarding NIST Reports - WTC7 and Twin Towers
[Ed: Copy of original letter dated July 20, 2009]
TO: Dr. Shyam Sunder, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Dear Dr. Sunder,
We have heard you state publicly after the WTC 7 press conference that it "would not be productive" for you to meet with the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. This is quite disappointing – as we now have over 700 architects and engineers at AE911Truth calling for a real investigation into the destruction of the three World Trade Center high-rises on 9/11. At what point will you take us seriously? Perhaps when our rapidly growing numbers reach 1,000 A/E's?
Here are our talking points:
1. The NIST November 2008 Final WTC 7 Investigative Report has many fatal flaws:
a. NIST was forced to acknowledge the free-fall collapse of Building 7 for 100 feet of its 6.5 second fall only after being grilled publicly by experts who are petition signers of AE911Truth. Yet you do not acknowledge the obvious implications of such free-fall collapse – that the structure had to have been removed – forcibly – by explosives. (Anyone knows that a building cannot collapse at the rate of a freely falling object while simultaneously crushing 40,000 tons of structural steel – because all of its gravitational potential energy has been converted to motion.)
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NIST's model
Shyam Sunder stated this at the press conference for the release of NIST's report on WTC7:
What the analysis shows...and...uh...the structural analysis shows, the collapse analysis shows that same time that it took for the structural model to come down from the roof line all the way for those 17 floors to disappear is...um... 5.4 seconds. It's...uh..., about one point...uh...five seconds or roughly 40% more time for that free fall to happen. And that is not at all unusual because there was structural resistance that was provided in this particular case. And you had...you had a sequence of structural failures that had to take place and everything was not instantaneous."
So obviously if their model did not account for free-fall then how can they pretend that it is genuine, valid, or otherwise accurately reflects what happened to WTC7.
Sometimes I wish the press would hound people like this instead of celebrities.
As long as the general public doesn't know about this.........
...........NIST doesn't have to care enough to respond.
No officials need to care as long as the media completely ignores our well documented and researched material.
We have it all. We have the best of investigators and thinkers and writers and scientists.
But it all goes to waste because the general public doesn't know about it.
And here is the important part: the general public, even if we get the word out to them person by person, will not take us seriously if they do not see our information in the media.
We won't get the msm to pay attention...........not until they are forced to later.
But I think it is possible to get the alternative media to pay attention to us and present our information.
Only thing.............we have to embarrass them to present 9/11 truth...................protests, confrontations with them, videos of their being questionsed about 9/11, etc etc. I really don't know the best way to twist the arms of the conspiratorial alternative media, but there are many in our movement who know how this could best work.
We have to realize that we are not just trying hard to get the attention of well meaning media people. We are dealing with people who have decided to forever avoid and ignore 9/11 truth, until one day the whole issue is deemed uninteresting and unimportant, like the JFK assassination.
Embarrass the alternative media
I agree with this approach, pfgetty, and have been doing just that for a couple of years. I've posted comments on AlterNet, contacted DemocracyNOW, the Village Voice, HuffPost, DailyKos, Rolling Stone, Air America, etc. For it is one thing that the MSM avoids these issues, but for 'alternative media' to censor us movement and evidence is wholly unacceptable.
We should publicly challenge them to debate. By name. An orchestrated campaign on the web, youtube clips, emails, calls etc--- that specifically challenge them by name to debate us. Some of these individuals are deliberately operating a cover-up, but others are just arrogant pricks who think they already know everything. It has to be personal. (Not just aimed at the media outlet, , but at each of the personalities).
We should shame them into being "anti-science" and "intellectually incapable" to take on the 9/11 Truth experts.
Some doubts
Much as I'd like to believe otherwise, for some time I haven't been able to see these alternative media sources as being all that different from corporate media when it comes to the one issue of 9/11. Any chance that appealing to them with information and well-resonsed argument would lead them to change their coverage where 9/11 is concerned was gone, I'd say, about the time of the fifth anniversary in '06, when Cockburn and other supposedly alternative journalists began joining in with the corporate media in explicitly mocking and attacking us. Whether out of fear, cooptation, or simple stubborn arrogance--the result is the same.
Before 9/11, I had achieved realization into the true nature of corporate media, though only after a long process of learning. What I still needed to learn though--and what has been one of the really bitter, rude awakenings for me over this first decade of the 21st century--has been that these alternative media outlets likewise operate within limits. So while the 9/11 truth movement needs to raise awareness among people who still put their stock in what they learn from major media, we simultaneously need to do the same with those who continue to think that all the information that is lacking in such media they can just get from so-called alternative media instead. These people, too, need to realize that however valuable such sources may be in covering many other topics, they are still not free to cover anything they might choose. And nowhere is this illustrated more vividly than in the case of 9/11.
If you're approach is intended to help expose the truth about these news outlets where 9/11 is concerned and thereby raise awareness among those who have been putting their trust in them, then there may be some value in it. But, again, if the intended purpose is actually to induce these supposedly alternative journalists to change their ways so that they start giving fair coverage to the issue of 9/11 truth, and thereby get the message out to their audiences, then I don't have much expectation that such confrontations and attempts to embarass will change anything. We need to appeal directly to the members of their audiences, just as we do with the audience members of the major news media.
Some doubts
(Delete double posting).
Shyam Sunder is a criminal. Haunt him with his crimes.
This letter is an excellent maneuver. It lets him know that we are not going away. We need to keep reminding him and others that we plan to expose their criminal acts.
A lot of lives have been ruined as a result of Sunder's actions.
Most criminals try to "make light of the crime" or justify the criminal act or "push it out of view" so they don't feel bad. When the finger is pointed at them for their criminal acts, it can cause an inner stress, an introversion -- despite how they may appear on the outside. When Cynthia McKinney nailed Rumsfeld about the lost trillions, we saw him start to introvert.
I like the idea that we let these criminals know they we intend to expose them.
The Not So Friendly Skies Nicely Take Care Of Troublemakers
I assume Dr. Sunder does a lot of flying, so I think he takes his handlers more serious than he does AE911Truth.
Hit and run is also a tool used by professionals, so ALWAYS pay attention to traffic from all directions when you cross the street!
Dean Jackson/Editor-in-Chief DNotice.org
Washington, DC
Concise and devastating, an
Concise and devastating, an excellent and timely challenge. It is abundantly clear that NIST's "analysis" is, to use a phrase borrowed from David Ray Griffin is "politics bracketed by science".
The professionalism inherent
The professionalism inherent in your letter is quite good. It adds immensely to the value of this transaction as a matter of public record.
And I like that you quote a person from the FBI, Michael Heimback, where he states that your work is "backed by thorough research and analysis." The public record synergizing from both sides, so to speak.
Please keep at it, Richard. Truth is more powerful than the lies.