"I defy any architect or engineer to look at the evidence with an open mind and not be moved into seriously reconsidering what happened on 9/11."

As he sits in a lawn chair on his patio with a glass of iced tea in his hand, Richard Gage, AIA, looks reflective. He just gave his 51st public talk about the evidence that explosives, not the jet impacts and ensuing fires, brought down the World Trade Center seven years ago.

He's just returned to his home in an undisclosed Northern California location after an electrifying four-day visit to Denver and neighboring Boulder, Colorado. His outreach included roving hand-held laptop presentations to conventioneers at the Architectural Engineering Institute (AEI)'s annual conference at the Hyatt Regency, an updated 2-1/2-hour speech before 320 people at the Marriott, and promising visits with four academic leaders at two major local universities.

"I'm told this was one of my most powerful talks yet. It's always hard for me to know how well I've done, but we got the usual 75-90 percent conversion rates," Gage said.

Comments from the audience bear that out. "How the three buildings collapsed does not get any clearer than this," said Fran Shure, a local activist with Colorado 9/11 Visibility. "At times, the presentation just took people's breath away." "What Richard Gage brings to the table is so focused, so well presented, and so irrefutable that I defy any architect or engineer to look at the evidence with an open mind and not be moved into seriously reconsidering what happened on 9/11," said Rob Weiland, a courier who is active with We Are Change Colorado. "The science is clearly on our side."

On Saturday, Gage enjoyed a three-hour mountain hike in Boulder with three fellow 9/11 activists, followed that evening by a strategy session with two dozen local activists. Sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and attended by about 200 members, the AEI conference at the end of September offered a unique opportunity to engage architectural engineers and invite them to his presentation that evening, even though he had been denied table space at the event. This reporter was refused entry to the conference area with his video camera, but Gage nevertheless introduced himself to open-minded engineers just outside.

AEI is an arm of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the professional organization which conducted the first WTC investigation and which played a strong role in the subsequent FEMA study which advanced the now-discredited "pancake" collapse theory. In the months leading up to this conference, the event organizers turned down AE911Truth's request to rent a booth on the exhibit floor, and they prevailed on the hotel to block Colorado 9/11 Visibility's attempt to rent space for an AE911Truth evening during the conference.

Conference staff also denied this reporter permission to enter the event for free as a member of the press. The gatekeeper explained, "We have to know your assignment and the angle from which you intend to cover us. This is business. Free speech stops at that door."

Architect Gage, who paid the $600 registration fee, was able to enter, however, and over the course of the afternoon he handed out literature and spoke to about 30 conference attendees, inviting them to his lecture that evening.

Gage and Tim Boyle, an activist with Colorado 9/11 Visibility, were also pleased with the results they got reaching out to engineering academics at local universities, who seemed impressed by the evidence and promised to review AE911Truth's material in depth. "We were grateful to spend time with local engineering professors, and were very pleased with how they responded," Boyle added. Dorothy Lorig, a fellow activist who holds a master's degree in psychology, brought an architect friend to Gage's Thursday presentation.

"This was apparently the first substantial information he had seen that refutes the official story," Lorig said. "He literally sat on the edge of his seat for the entire talk, and Friday morning e-mailed me that he had signed on for a new investigation. I could tell it was a real shock for him to see the photos and videos and come to terms with the fact that the evidence completely supports controlled demolition. Richard laid it all out, with lots of energy and humor, but also with empathy for those just learning about this and being forced to suddenly change their worldview."

At the Saturday night strategy session, Lorig applauded Gage for his focused efforts. "The towers coming down constituted the core of the government's psychological operation. People's psychological resistance is now the key issue for the 9/11 Truth movement. Once you expose the lie that planes and small fires can bring down high-rise steel structures so evenly, the rest of the house of cards tumbles," she said.

Next stops for Gage and AE911Truth include Nova Scotia, Cincinnati, and New York City in October, and nine European cities in November.