More than 50 people turned out on Monday evening to see 9/11: Explosive Evidence — Experts Speak Out, the latest documentary from Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth), the non-profit activist organization that claims Americans don't know the whole truth (or even half of it) about the World Trade Center collapses on September 11, 2001.
The screening, which took place at the Woodfords Club in Portland, was part of a 30-city tour that will take AE911Truth founder Richard Gage, a member of the American Institute of Architects, from coast to coast, preaching his uncomfortable gospel: we have been fed misinformation and lies about what really happened 11 years ago in New York City. Unfortunately for those who hope to spread this message beyond a core group of skeptics, Gage was mostly preaching to a choir.
Before the movie began, only a few attendees (the crowd comprised more men than women, and very few people who appeared to be under the age of 50) said they "weren't sure" about what happened. The vast majority indicated that they were already on board with the AE911Truth narrative.
The film features more than 40 technical experts (including high-rise architects, metallurgists, structural engineers, and physicists) making the case that the three skyscrapers that fell on 9/11 (the North and South towers, plus "WTC Building 7") were brought down by controlled demolition. It raises questions about the scientific integrity of several major reports about the events that day, including those issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the 9/11 Commission. It calls for a new, independent investigation that takes into account evidence that is inconsistent with widely accepted explanations.
Among those pieces of evidence:
• The buildings fell symmetrically and with uniform acceleration. suggesting that critical columns must have been removed in a steady pattern;
•Eyewitness accounts of explosions;
•The pulverization of huge amounts of concrete;
•Remnants of thermite and nanothermite — which can create the extremely high temperatures needed to melt steel and iron — in WTC dust samples;
•The lack of precedent — no skyscraper before or since has ever collapsed due to fire.
Neither the 95-minute movie nor AE911Truth offers a hypothesis about why three buildings would have been demolished, or who orchestrated such a demolition.
The great challenge for the so-called truth movement isn't to answer those questions. It is to get more people on board. To be perceived as more than nut-jobs. To be taken seriously. In 9/11: Explosive Evidence, several psychologists and trauma counselors are interviewed about the cognitive barriers erected around 9/11.
"One of the biggest challenges we face is reaching and engaging with those who continue to take the US government's fairy tale at face value, despite the overwhelming evidence that it is a complete fraud — the very people who could give this movement the momentum it requires are the ones who stay away in droves, consider it old news, are afraid to get involved," says local AE911Truth member Tony Taylor (see "Inside the 9/11 Truth Movement," by Deirdre Fulton, September 9, 2011), who helped coordinate Monday night's event. "It is most frustrating because now after more than 10 years, we have a powerful new film covering a mountain of scientific evidence . . . highlighting what is clearly the crime and the story of the century, and to have so few interested in seeing it for the first time — continues to be disappointing."
Watch the film yourself at 911expertsspeakout.org.