AE911Truth Petition Signers' Expertise Unveiled

More than 2,000 architects and engineers have now signed the AE911 Truth petition to Congress calling for a new, independent investigation into the World AE911Truth founder and international speaker Richard Gage, AIA, was the first signer of the AE911 Truth petition to Congress, which now has the signatures of over 2,000 architects and engineers and 17,000 othersTrade Center attacks on 9/11.

By recently adding their names and reputations to the petition, the professionals who pushed us past the 2,000 mark in August bolster the foundation of credibility and scientific knowledge on which the AE911Truth effort is built. You can now download the full petition signer list.

Reaching this milestone is doubly exciting because it comes just in time for the kickoff of the worldwide ReThink911 ad campaign – itself a watershed event – on the 12th anniversary of 9/11.

“I am thrilled that so many architects and engineers have reached the same conclusions we have, and are willing to stand up and demand a real investigation,” said Richard Gage, AIA, founder of AE911Truth. “My thanks go out to all of our supporters who helped to educate the public and encourage their colleagues and friends in the technical professions to sign the petition.”

Gage was the first signer of the petition back in April 2006 – when, startled by the WTC evidence he heard from David Ray Griffin on the radio, he founded the organization and has since sought to find other A/E’s through radio interviews and live presentations in 28 countries – numbering almost 600 altogether. The number of signers has grown steadily over the years, and is likely to continue growing as more and more professionals encounter the compelling evidence that AE911Truth continues to work so hard to disseminate.

Architects and engineers are the core of AE911Truth’s program because they are the type of professionals most likely to have a deep understanding of the scientific principles underpinning the evidence we present. To ensure the integrity of our list, we individually verify each A/E petition signer’s credentials by contacting them directly, obtaining copies of their degree/license, and checking for authenticity.

While the sheer number of signers in these key professions lends weight to our call for a new investigation, our petition list reflects quality as well as quantity. It contains signers from an impressive array of professions relevant to the issues surrounding the three World Trade Center high rises destroyed on 9/11. For instance, more than 160 signers are civil engineers, nearly 160 are electrical engineers, and more than 240 of these are licensed professional engineers (P.E.).

“Credibility is crucial,” said Gage. “Harping defenders of the official story try to dismiss our evidence by charging us with ignorance or lack of understanding. Yet we are supported by Daniel Barnum, FAIA, explains why he challenges the official story of 9/11 in the film 9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Outthousands of architects and engineers boasting solid credentials, years of experience, and degrees from first-rate institutions. As well, the broader public pays closer attention when our compelling claims come from such acknowledged experts in their fields.”

A Closer Look at the Petition Signers

The architects and engineers who have signed our petition reflect a wide range of disciplines and specialties. A great many hold degrees from nationally and internationally respected colleges and universities, and many have received high honors from their professional or academic communities. Many are principals of firms, and several dozen have designed high-rise structures similar to the World Trade Center buildings. For most, the length of professional experience can be measured not in years but in decades, and collectively, they comprise more than 30,000 years of qualified technical experience. In short, they are precisely the kinds of people that our society turns to when trying to understand complex events like the catastrophic destruction of the World Trade Center – that is, experts.

More than 75 AE911Truth petition signers hold Ph.D. degrees. More than 190 hold M.S. degrees. Nearly 100 of our architects are members of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Seven of our signers are Fellows of the AIA (FAIA), one of the highest honors that the organization can bestow upon a member. High-rise architect Daniel Barnum, FAIA, is one of the signers who holds this prestigious distinction, which reflects great personal and professional achievement. More than 75 AE911Truth petition signers hold Ph.D. degrees. With more than 40 years of experience, Barnum has worked on major high-rise office buildings in Houston, Texas, and was project manager for a 22-story high-rise office building in Akron, Ohio. In recalling the collapse of World Trade Center 7 in the film 9/11: Explosive Evidence—Experts Speak Out, Barnum said, “…a few fires in that building and, I mean, they weren’t even raging, and how could that cause a building to collapse? Couldn’t happen.”

More than 60 petition signers received degrees from Ivy League institutions, including 16 from Harvard University, and 5 from Yale University, plus 17 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These are people who, as high school students, typically graduated with the top grade point averages in their class, in order to be selected for admission.

Architect Jody Gibbs, speaking here in 9/11: Explosive Evidence—Experts Speak Out, is a graduate of both Harvard and Yale, and was on the faculty of MIT.Architect Jody Gibbs, for example, is a graduate of both Harvard and Yale. He has commented on the six-ton structural steel section from World Trade Center 1 that somehow was thrown into the American Express building like a dart – indicating the use of explosives. “Gravity works vertically, not laterally,” he said succinctly but with the kind of appeal to basic physics that tends to demolish the official 9/11 story.

In a letter urging his fellow architects to attend a showing of a popular 9/11 Truth film, Gibbs exposed the failings of the 9/11 Commission Report. “Unfortunately the 9/11 Commission was not a court procedure or a scientific investigation,” Gibbs wrote. “Instead, it was a public hearing convened by politicians. There was no forensic investigation for explosives. World Trade Center Building 7 was not even investigated. No explanation was given for the pulverization of the concrete in midair, nor the free-fall time of the collapses . . . . There were members of the FBI, the NSA, military intelligence, and numerous scientific and engineering experts who wished to present information to the Commission contradicting the official story, but were denied the opportunity.” When Gibbs wrote this letter in 2009, he referenced “nearly one thousand” architects and engineers calling for a new investigation. Today there are twice that many.

Another Ivy League graduate, David Johnson, adds an uncommon level of first-hand knowledge to his stellar academic credentials. A Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners, Johnson holds both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Yale (where he studied under a professor who had worked on the Empire State Building) and a Ph.D. in Regional Planning from Cornell University, and is Professor Emeritus of Urban and Regional Planning at The University of Tennessee. “As a professional city planner in New York,” Johnson wrote in his petition statement, “I knew those buildings [the Twin Towers] and their design. I attended and participated in the hearings at the New York City Hall when the buildings were first proposed. . . . So I was well aware of the strength of the core with its steel columns, surrounding the elevators, and stairwells. . . . When I saw the rapid collapse of the towers, I knew that they could not come down the way they did without explosives and the severing of core columns at the base.”

9/11 researcher and AE911 Truth petition signer Dr. David Griscom is a graduate of both Carnegie Mellon and Brown UniversitiesIn addition to the Ivy Leagues, many other academic institutions with excellent reputations are represented among the signers of our petition, including Carnegie Mellon University, which specializes in engineering and is consistently ranked highly in engineering disciplines. One of the 15 signers with a degree from Carnegie Mellon is David Griscom, a physicist who received his B.S. from Carnegie Mellon and his Ph.D. from Brown University. Dr. Griscom worked at the Naval Research Laboratory, and was chosen by NASA from among hundreds of scientists as a team leader in analyzing the moon rocks from the Apollo missions. He has published 193 studies in peer-reviewed scientific journals and was a reviewer of the study on thermitic material found in the dust of the World Trade Center.

Dr. Griscom emphasizes the importance of credentialed professionals lending their expertise to the 9/11 Truth movement, saying, “I implore my fellow physicists and engineers who may have the time, expertise, and (ideally) supercomputer access to get to work on the physics of the World Trade Center collapses and publish their findings in refereed journals [such as] the Journal of Applied Physics.”

Our signers are geographically diverse as well – living, working, and receiving their education all over the country and around the world. The universities mentioned above, for example, suggest plenty of representation in the eastern U.S., but we also have verified signers educated at such schools as Northwestern University (near Chicago), Iowa State University, and Texas Tech University. On the west coast, the University of California at Berkeley has the greatest number of graduates on the petition (41), scoring the highest in the nation in the “9/11 league” of universities.

Richard Gage, AIA, received his degree in Architecture in 1986 from the University of Southern California. Nearby Stanford University and the California Institute of Technology are also well represented. We have several international signers as well, hailing from such countries as Denmark, Australia, Germany, France, and the U.K.

This is merely an overview of the people whose knowledge, experience, and scientific insights stand behind AE911Truth as we push on to create a broader awareness of WTC issues, bring about a new investigation, and eventually bring the real perpetrators to justice. Many of the petition signers have come forward to give video-recorded interviews stating their views on 9/11. They are featured in the film 9/11: Explosive Evidence—Experts Speak Out. This film has been playing for months on Colorado Public Television – becoming the “most watched / most shared” video on PBS.org and reaching millions of viewers. You can watch the film with pledge breaks featuring Richard Gage, AIA. A bonus DVD included with the full-length version of Experts Speak Out contains the video “Meet the Experts,” which is a two-hour compilation in which experts from the documentary introduce their significant credentials, personal experiences, and professional opinions about 9/11. The complete two-disk DVD set is available in our online store.

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The data used was the Petition List as of June 3, 2013. The summary will be updated every month or so. For the latest counts and more details, visit https://action.ae911truth.org/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=11418.