Most observers consider the informal Coast to Coast “debate” between architect Richard Gage, chemist and scholar Niels Harrit, and physicists Dave Thomas and Kim Johnson to have been a success although who “won” depends largely on who you ask. The August 21st event, which was more of a conversation than a formal debate, explored what caused the destruction of the three World Trade Center buildings on September 11, 2001. Gage and Harrit argued that explosives destroyed the buildings while Thomas and Johnson reaffirmed the official explanation that office fires ultimately led to collapses.

A few days after the debate I asked Thomas to give me his impressions. “I think Kim and I did OK. We certainly could have handled some of the questions better, but being on Coast to Coast is a bit like being in a pressure cooker,” he said. “There were several questions I had ready answers for, but never got a chance to squeeze them in.” Thomas said he doesn’t think he and Johnson swayed many committed “truthers,” but he also doubts that Gage and Harrit made many new converts either. “We gave people new to the debate a lot to think about,” he said.

Physicist Dave Thomas

I asked Thomas what he considered to be among his strongest points delivered during the debate. He responded, “The collapses themselves, captured on so many films, and without the sounds of explosions going off. Plus, physics insights from the models and experiments I did helped me describe the collapses. Yes, they happened quickly (12 to 15 seconds), but were certainly not ‘free-fall.’ There was resistance as each floor was hit by the growing mass of the upper section. I think the descriptions of WTC7?s long burning times and complicated and long collapses were productive also. In the final moments of the show, a caller really thought he had me with his statement that the cores should have remained after the Twin Towers collapsed, and I was able to inform him that they did, and that these briefly-tottering columns are called “SPIRES,” and that they’re well-known, and discussed on the NMSR website.” Thomas added that these spires would not have existed if thermite had been used to cut columns.

Architect Richard Gage accuses Thomas and Johnson of “hand waving,” saying they simply dismiss inconvenient facts. “They just don’t deal with the evidence,” Gage said. “I thought that on several points Mr. Thomas avoided facing very clear sets of facts including the free-fall of Building 7. He tried to explain that because the inside of the building caved out first, there was just nothing left so the rest of the building came down, denying that over fifty very rigid columns of the perimeter gave absolutely no resistance to the collapse of this building up above that—in this case the perimeter of the building is falling at free-fall acceleration. This is one example of a direct denial of reality, Gage said adding. “At this point I’m doubting his sincerity.”

Early in the debate, Thomas used an analogy which many observers found unusual. He was discussing David Chandler, the physics teacher whose calculations regarding free-fall forced the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to modify its final report. “David Chandler took a movie of the tower collapse and measured it very carefully and found that the average acceleration was about two-thirds of the acceleration of gravity. And he contended because it’s accelerating at all, that means there’s not much of a dynamic force, and he estimates this force—which I calculate with my physics model as at least 30 times the weight, he only gets a third of the weight, and I think that’s really the fundamental flaw of 9-11 truth physics. They woefully underestimate the huge impact that—it’s like a ‘ton of bricks’ hitting you.

Then he launched into an analogy using a bowling ball.

“If you take a bowling ball and put it on your toe, that’s okay. If you drop it from 12 feet, you’re gonna break your toe,” Thomas said, “and that’s just what happened to those buildings.”

Architect Richard Gage, AIA

Gage said of the bowling ball analogy, “The problem here is that, yes, you can put a bowling ball on the foot, and it’s okay, but first of all you don’t have a 12-foot drop in the case of the North Tower, and even if you did, when the bowling ball hits the foot, it slows down, while it’s crushing bone, etc.” Gage said. “But when the North Tower hit the sections below there was no slowing down. In fact, it speeded up, violating the laws of physics.”

Dan Roggenkamp, an American university teacher in Taiwan who listened to the debate, said he was particularly amused by the bowling ball comment. “One of the things that really struck me was how Thomas’ ‘side’ tried to use simple analogies to explain complex events, an example being the bowling ball analogy,” Roggenkamp said. “He did it a number of times. Rather than arguing as a scientist, he’s trying to persuade listeners using false analogies. Your toe is the World Trade Center. The bowling ball is the combined force of … whatever. It’s ridiculous.”

Thomas said he was irritated when Gage “brought out his laundry list” of things on which the two supposedly concur. “While we agree on a few technical details (microspheres were found, WTC 7 had a two-second period of free-fall, and so on), Gage over-exaggerated these agreements and put false words into my mouth time and again,” Thomas told me, adding a few items “for the record.”

“Gage said we agreed that planes hit two towers, three came down. But, I also made the point that the third tower, WTC 7, was hit by one of the tallest skyscrapers in the world, something Gage dismisses. We agree that there were two seconds of free-fall at WTC 7 but disagree strongly that these prove controlled demolition,” he said. “The collapse took much longer than Gage claims—at least 16 seconds, not Gage’s 6.5 seconds. The collapse proceeded not only vertically, but horizontally as well. For a brief moment, a part of WTC 7 wasn’t supported as it collapsed. This in no way proves controlled demolition.”

I asked Gage how he believed Thomas had arrived at a different conclusion regarding the duration of the collapse. He explained, “There’s evidence that there is damage about six seconds prior to the overall collapse of the building—the east penthouse fails. The official theory tells us that that’s the result of an internal collapse starting on the 12th floor and column 79—due to the new phenomenon of “thermal expansion.” So, it’s theorized that this whole process takes about 15 seconds before the overall collapse. The problem is, if there was some sort of internal collapse that took out the interior columns, that would have taken out the penthouse long before it went down. So, since the penthouse on top—and I’m referring to the central penthouse—it went down a second before the overall portion of the building—then it was held up until that point by its structure, so its structure must have been all removed, synchronistically timed; therefore, the central penthouse went down a second before the overall structure, so the official theory of internal collapse leaving this building a cave inside doesn’t hold water.”

A good deal of the debate revolved around the possible use of thermite or nanothermite to destroy the buildings. Gage and Harrit argued that thermitic materials were used to cut core columns and explains the presence of iron microspheres in trade center dust.

“We agree there were microspheres in the dust but disagree completely about their significance,” Thomas said. “As I said, these were expected from the hot fires, and perhaps older welding traces, etc. The iron microspheres are not evidence of thermite,” he said. Gage remarked, “Mr. Thomas is in denial. He’s not facing the reality that these spheres take 2800 degrees of temperature to create.”

Industrial Physicist Kim Johnson

Thomas also said he agrees with Gage that thermite would create pools of molten iron, but despite witness testimony and photographic evidence Gage offers, he disputes that molten pools were ever found at the scene. “I say they were not, and only anecdotal stories of their existence are offered,” Thomas said. Elsewhere Kim Johnson has referred to these photos as “faked.” Similarly, Thomas and Johnson dismiss numerous reports of explosions by witnesses who insist they could distinguish between explosive blasts and other loud sounds. David Chandler claims acoustic evidence has been destroyed. “In any videos that would be reasonably expected to record the explosion sounds, the videos were cut and don’t show the segment where we now know a fast series of explosions occurred. I am not allowed to say NIST cut them, but they are all cut: either the audio or the whole audio/video segment was cut out,” he said.

Kim Johnson felt one of his strongest points involved bomb-sniffing dogs. “I got Harrit on the dogs. Apparently Gage does not understand how these dogs are trained and cross-trained. Dogs sniff out the combination of the blend of aluminum and iron oxides which form the basis of the thermite incendiary,” Johnson said. “Gage was making things up as he went along, or repeating earlier things that were made up or extreme speculation and treating them as fact, and this was one of his major errors.”

Gage didn’t take that criticism seriously. “Thermite is aluminum and iron. There’s aluminum and iron in everything, so there’s no way dogs can be trained to sniff for it,” Gage said. “Well, I won’t say there’s no way; I’m not a dog expert either, but these are normal office building materials, and you can’t train dogs for that, and that’s probably one of the reasons thermite was used,” he said.

In an interview with the German web site gulli.com, a reporter asked Niels Harrit, “Why did no bomb sniffing dog bark?” Harrit responded, “All the bomb sniffing dogs were sent home by the security company two weeks before. Furthermore, they are trained on conventional explosives which smell rather characteristically.” Some have suggested that the dogs would be trained to look for ignition devices, not thermite itself.

Johnson told me in an email message, “Truthers are still conspirators who aren’t quite sure of who pulled this off, but like to believe this kind of stuff, and the scientists who studied it got it right.” He also claims he tried to “test” me with some convoluted scheme that remains unclear. I never found the message he refers to and don’t know what he is talking about, but this is what he said:

“If you look back over your email, you will see that I worked an equation into one of them that should have said F = m * (dV/dt). Only I messed it up a bit (I don’t remember quite how at the moment) to see whether you would catch it. Dave did but you didn’t. I do apologize for deliberately doing that, but it was a test— a test that I did not think you would pass. Neither will most of the rest of the world, especially those who listen to Coast to Coast, few of whom are scientists. It set the level of understanding. It’s why Dave and I came up with the bowling ball analogy,” Johnson said.

I wrote back to Johnson saying I would have told him I lack a science background had he simply asked—that there was no need for subterfuge. The occasion seemed to reveal an unnecessarily deceitful approach.

Elsewhere Johnson says of David Chandler, “He certainly does not understand Newtonian mechanics, and neither does most of the population—especially the Coast to Coast listeners who have their minds already made up (probably most). Most cannot understand the real details of why scientists at NIST use and trust FEM models. Few even have a clue as to what an FEM model is!”

Professor Niels Harrit

So, it’s clear that according to Johnson, most people, including other scientists, are unqualified to understand why he, Thomas, and NIST have been right all along.

Danish scientist Niels Harrit, a chemist and professor at the University of Copenhagen who participated in the debate via telephone, said afterwards that the so-called “debate” was in no way scientific. Harrit pointed out that when scientists debate an investigation, they agree on the observations; otherwise, there is nothing to talk about. If A and B are both looking at the same thing and A says, “This is black” while B says “This is white,” it won’t work. Harrit said this is essentially what happens in discussions with Thomas, Johnson, and others like them. “They poison—quite deliberately—the supposed communication with false information. Luckily, they are not very clever, so they are easily caught—if the host lets you! Many lines of arguments were cut off—also as a consequence of the trick Thomas has learned to say three things at a time, preventing you from answering. You may choose: Either Thomas and Johnson are very stupid or they are being paid to pretend to be. The last thing is intellectually dishonest, of course, and in my universe, dishonesty is a kind of stupidity,” Harrit said.

The Center filed a FOIA Request with NIST on January 26, 2009, seeking production of “all of the photographs and videos collected, reviewed, cited or in any other way used by NIST during its investigation of the World Trade Center building collapses.” Following several unsuccessful attempts to get NIST to even acknowledge receipt of the Request, the Center was forced to file a lawsuit on May 28, 2009. Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, the Request was assigned a reference number, and NIST began periodically releasing batches of responsive records. To date, the Center has received over 300 DVDs and several external hard disk drives that contain responsive records – more than 3 terabytes of data so far – and NIST has indicated that additional records will be released in the future.

We are currently looking at the best ways to distribute these materials to interested researchers and journalists around the world. It has taken NIST more than 8 months so far to produce a partial archive of photographs and videos in their possession, but we hope to be more efficient in our efforts. Because of the huge volume of data, we are working on a wiki-style website to facilitate review and discussion of any interesting items that are discovered by researchers.

Justin Keogh, our Chief Technical Officer, is preparing the website and materials for release. The first batch of materials we are releasing is a group of video clips sent to us on an external hard disk drive labeled “NIST WTC Investigation Cumulus Video Clips.” We believe NIST entered these clips into a searchable database called the Cumulus database, and used them as the basis for the investigation and reports. Researchers may be interested to see which video clips NIST determined were important to its investigation, and compare these clips to the raw footage we release at a later date. Justin will be posting more details about the data release in the next week or two. Any questions about the FOIA Request, lawsuit, or data release should be submitted via the Contact Us page at the Center’s website: http://www.ic911studies.org/Contact_Us.html

Although the Center has extremely limited resources with which it can review this mountain of data, several interesting items have already been discovered. Below are five items the Center has uncovered so far. The items below have not been altered from the original provided by NIST, except in three cases where a short section of footage was extracted from a much longer video. Otherwise, no alterations have been made to the video or audio. For the best viewing experience, you should watch all of the videos below in the highest resolution available. We will supplement the list below in the coming days and weeks.

See videos at 911Blogger here.

A highly anticipated debate between two members of Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth and two physicists is scheduled for Saturday, August 21st, 2010. The debate will air on the popular late night talk show Coast to Coast AM with host Ian Punnett between 10pm – 2am Pacific time.

Richard Gage, AIA, founder of Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth and an architect for over twenty years, will be joined by Danish scientist, Niels Harrit, Associate Professor at University of Copenhagen—a chemist and university teacher with expertise in organic chemistry, photochemistry, fluorescence, and nanotechnology.

Challenging Gage and Harrit’s contention that explosives were responsible for the buildings’ destruction will be mathematician and physicist Dave Thomas from a group called New Mexicans for Science and Reason (NMSR).  Thomas, a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, publisher of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, will be joined by his associate, industrial physicist Kim Johnson, also on the Board of NMSR and past president of the New Mexico Academy of Science.

See full story here.

See also:

Taming the Beast: A Short History of the AE911Truth Debates
by Shawn Hamilton

Soon after Richard Gage, AIA, became interested in the subject of the destruction of the three World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11, he began debating critics who felt qualified to challenge the explosive evidence. Gage twice debated Ron Craig (International Society of Explosives Engineers), as well as Mark Roberts (tour guide), Michael Shermer (founder of Skeptic Magazine), and Dave Thomas (mathematician and physicist).

It has been over a year since the most recent peer-reviewed scientific article was published on the finding of energetic materials in the WTC dust.  During this time, the article was personally delivered to members of Congress and others in positions of power. Some of those leaders, like 9/11 Commission co-chairman Lee Hamilton, have repeatedly declined invitations to discuss the evidence. But ultimately, there has been no official response by the U.S. government, and we have seen only apathy or feigned ignorance in response to these explosive findings. In the last few months, however, one of the people who did the most to cover-up the crimes of 9/11 has surfaced again, and is requesting samples.

See full story here.

At 5:21 PM on 9/11, Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapsed, even though it had not been hit by a plane – a fact that is important because of the widespread acceptance of the idea, in spite of its scientific absurdity, that the Twin Towers collapsed because of the combined effect of the impact of the airliners plus the ensuing jet-fuel-fed fires. The collapse of World Trade Center 7 (WTC 7) thereby challenges the official account of the destruction of the World Trade Center, according to which it was accomplished by al-Qaeda hijackers, even if one accepts the government’s scientifically impossible account of the Twin Towers. This fact was recently emphasized in the title of a review article based on my 2009 book, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7,¹ by National Medal of Science-winner Lynn Margulis: “Two Hit, Three Down – The Biggest Lie.”²

by Clare Swinney on Sun, 11/22/2009

The Hard Evidence Tour Down Under hit a high note on Saturday afternoon at the Te Papa Museum in Wellington, when over 650 turned up to hear Richard Gage, the spokesperson for Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, (AE911Truth), talk about what really happened to World Trade Centre (WTC) 1, 2, and 7 on 9/11. It was the largest crowd the architect and founder of AE911Truth has ever spoken to since he began spreading the truth – what he calls the Architecture of Destruction, about the evidence of 9/11, and revealing the buildings were brought down by controlled demolition, not by jet fuel and fires.

Gage spoke during the entire two-and-a-half hour long event. Says Jeremy Morrison, who videoed the highlights, which will be posted on YouTube: “It was a great presentation, even for someone like me who knows a lot of this stuff already. I still got a lot out of it, mainly about the science behind the controlled demolition. It’s come a long way and he covered a lot of ground.” Morrison, who kept a watchful eye on the proceedings on the stage, as well as in the audience, said he was aware of only one person who loudly voiced his disapproval, and the heckler, which Morrison caught on camera, looked emotionally shaken by what he had learnt about 9/11. “Apart from him, the audience loved Richard. There was a really good atmosphere,” offers Morrison.

Says Helen Waddington, who was one the team who worked behind the scenes to contribute to the event’s success: “It was surreal. It was great when so many turned up. I had a smile on my face when the hundreds of people came!”

As fewer than 300 had been expected to attend, the Wellingtonian 9/11 truth activists involved, had booked the 300-seat Soundings Theatre at Te Papa. It wasn’t until the day of the presentation, did they realise a far larger venue was needed.

By 1pm, an hour before the presentation’s scheduled start, 328 had registered and a multitude more expected to attend, largely owing to the fact that Gage had received good media coverage. As well as a fair and balanced article in the Wellington paper, The Capital Times, he was interviewed by veteran radio interviewer Kim Hill, on the day of the presentation. Although Hill made repeated attempts during their 36 minutes-long exchange, to throw a wet blanket over the flames of truth he was throwing, her efforts were ultimately thwarted by his steely resolve to convey the facts. As one listener put it, it was very obvious as to who was invested in getting to the truth of the matter and who was invested in obfuscation.

Owing to the interest generated by the Gage-Hill interview, many phoned the Te Papa Museum to make enquiries, alerting the staff to the fact that the 300-seater theatre would not accommodate the numbers expected to swamp the venue. Offers Waddington: “Thankfully, Te Papa were excellent at managing the overflow of people. They were able to set up live audio and visual feeds in the large Oceania conference room, which held approximately 320.” Waddington, who did head counts, said there were about 648 people there for the entire presentation and that two of the event’s organisers estimated that around 100 people had to be turned away. “I estimated we may actually have had 700 who were definitely interested and close to 1000 people there at the end of the day, as visitors to Te Papa Museum were milling in and out of the Oceania room and listening to Richard speak all afternoon,” she said.

At the start of the talk, Gage asked for a show of hands of those in the Soundings Theatre who believed the building collapses on 9/11 were due to controlled demolition. About two-thirds raised their hands. Then, near the conclusion of his talk, he asked, who still believed the official story – and only two raised their hands. The audience, evidently grateful for having someone so adept at ripping the mask of Osama bin laden off 9/11, thanked Gage for his efforts, with a sustained round of applause.

Related:

Richard Gage will be speaking in Auckland on the 30th of November, at the Trades Hall, 147 Great North Rd, Grey Lynn, from 6pm. To book for the event, please e-mail: Will Ryan at nz911truth@hotmail.com. A gold coin donation would be appreciated, to give to Richard.

Richard Gage Interview On The Kim Hill Show.
http://clareswinney.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/richard-gage-goes-mainstrea…

He asks that people to write to Kim Hill. She had to opportunity to go to his talk – he asked her, but she refused. Her e-mail address at Radio NZ is: saturday@radionz.co.nz.

Fair & Balanced Article in Wellington Paper About Richard Gage & What Happened On 9/11
http://clareswinney.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/fair-balanced-article-in-we….

John Pilger Tells Kim Hill The Interview Is “A Disgrace”.
http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/face-to-face-with-kim-hill-john-pilger-2…

Speakers will include Richard Gage, AIA, Dr. Steven Jones, Janice Matthews, John Bursill, Dr. Frank Legge, James O’Neill, Dr David Leifer, Cosmos and Luke Rudkowski.

On Remembrance Day 2009 (11th of the 11th at 11am) this coming Wednesday, members of the conference will meet at the ABC Studios in Ultimo, Sydney to publicly ask “why the ABC Studios continue to fail in their fiduciary (of trust) duty to inform the Australian Public of the news about an alternate view of 9/11.” Organizer John Bursill states:

You may be surprised that after spending many hundreds of dollars in Press Releases to media in Australia through the AAP News Wire (the best way to access journalists) not one mainstream news journalist has contacted us about the “Hard Evidence Tour” www.thehardevidence.com ? You might also be surprised that “our” ABC the national government broadcaster has not yet reported on the discovery of Nanothermite in the dust at the WTC or on the growing numbers of Architects and Engineers questioning the official version of the 9/11 Attacks represented by Richard Gage (AIA) and www.AE911Truth.org . These are just some of the continuing failures of our tax payer funded news broadcaster the ABC, so it once again must be brought to account by protest!

For more info see:

The Hard Evidence Tour

The final stop was the White House where Gage, with Slesinger, laid an AE911Truth banner on the sidewalk and addressed the tourists gathered there. Gage got into a heated but cordial debate with a man who identified himself as Kevin, a “reformed truther” and the former “debunking director” on the JREF Forum.

Source: Baltimore GrassRoots Media
http://www.baltimoregrassrootsmedia.org

Niels Harrit made the front page of Gondola Magazine, a Swedish Alternative Health magazine.  The story, not in English, unfortunately, is located here.  You can put the title into google to see the translated version.  The title in English is: Niels Harriet and the 9/11- nanotermit exploded?

.

Below, Richard Gage, AIA made the front page of the Silicon Valley Weekly, Metro, with a story titled, Explosive Theory.  You can read that here.

After 9/11, BYU prof. Steven Jones’ teaching career imploded just like the twin towers, but he still insists planes were not to blame.

By Eric S. Peterson

The equation for free fall is pretty basic. Drop anything—from a dime to a rock—from a tall building, for example, and once that object hits an acceleration of 9.8 meters per second squared, it’s free falling. This equation applies to everything, even to buildings.

In the fall of 2005, Brigham Young University professor Steven Jones presented this simple principle in a BYU campus auditorium packed with hundreds of people to illustrate how several of the World Trade Center towers fell too quickly on Sept. 11, 2001, to have only been hit by planes. To reach free-fall speed, Jones explained, the building’s floor supports would have needed to be blown apart. In other words, the carnage of 9/11 would have required another catalyst of destruction beyond hijacked planes—an explosive to cause the buildings to implode.

The discussion ran two hours and only ended because students began arriving for a class to be held in the room. Before concluding, Jones asked if anyone was not convinced more investigation was needed. Only one professor raised his hand. “And he tracked me down the next day on campus and told me I changed his mind,” Jones says.

Full story here