Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Inc. (AE911Truth) is an American non-profit organization promoting the conspiracy theory that the World Trade Center was destroyed in a controlled demolition, disputing accepted conclusions around the September 11 attacks, including the 9/11 Commission Report, as well as FEMA's "WTC Building Performance Study" (2002). Their claims and theories lack support among the relevant professional communities.
Activities
Richard Gage, a San Francisco Bay Area architect, founded Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth in 2006. Gage's website states that he is a member of the American Institute of Architects and that he worked as an architect for 20 years and was involved in the construction of numerous "fireproof" steel-frame buildings. He became convinced of the need to create an organization that brings together architects and engineers after listening to an independent radio station interview with theologian David Ray Griffin.
Gage has given speeches at conferences organized by supporters of the 9/11 truth movement in various locations in the United States and Canada, and has presented his multimedia talk "9/11 Blueprint for Truth – The Architecture of Destruction" in 14 countries. His presentations focus on the sequence of events leading to the destruction of the three World Trade Center buildings and include videos of their collapses alongside footage of controlled demolitions. He went on a tour of European countries in 2008 and gave speeches in Australia, New Zealand and Japan in 2009. In 2009, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth had a booth at the annual convention of the American Institute of Architects. AIA media relations director Scott Frank has stated that "We don't have any relationship with his organization whatsoever."
The controversial two-hour movie 9/11 Blueprint for Truth, popular among members of the 9/11 Truth movement, is based on a presentation given by Richard Gage in Canada. Gage was also interviewed for an episode of the BBC television program The Conspiracy Files, an episode of the ZDF's series History, based on a co-production of the BBC and the ZDF, as well as for a documentary produced by the Canadian television news magazine The Fifth Estate.
The organization is the main constituent of the ReThink911 coalition, which ran an advertising campaign putting up signs and billboards in seven U.S. cities, as well as in Vancouver, Toronto, London, and Sydney in 2013.
Gage left Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth in September 2021, after being criticised for remarks he made suggesting vaccines were poisonous and allegations of antisemitism.
Advocacy
Members of the organization argue that the buildings of the World Trade Center could not have collapsed only because of the impact of the planes, or as a result of the fires that had been caused by them. On the one hand Gage has said that avoiding speculation on the attacks on the Pentagon or on the involvement of the Bush administration is critical to the mission of the organization. But on the other hand, Gage has said that if the destruction of the World Trade Center was the result of a controlled demolition, this would mean that part of what happened on September 11, 2001, would have been planned by "some sort of an inside group". According to Gage, an elevator modernization program that had taken place before the attacks would have provided an opportunity to get access to the core areas of the WTC towers without creating suspicion.
Investigations by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have concluded that the buildings collapsed as a result of the impacts of the planes and of the fires that resulted from them. In 2005, a report from NIST concluded that the destruction of the World Trade Center towers was the result of progressive collapse initiated by the jet impacts and the resultant fires. A 2008 NIST report described a similar progressive collapse as the cause of the destruction of the third tallest building located at the World Trade Center site, the 7 World Trade Center. Many mainstream scientists choose not to debate proponents of 9/11 conspiracy theories, saying they do not want to lend them unwarranted credibility. The NIST explanations of the collapses are universally accepted by the structural-engineering and structural-mechanics research communities.