Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth founder, Richard Gage, AIA, started the jubilant e-mail to AE911Truth members and supporters after the historic two-billion-candlepower Third Beam burst into the NYC skyline at 9:11 p.m. on Sept. 11:  “The Third Beam went on without a hitch! … It was awesome, Team!” (“AE911Truth Shines Third Beam into NYC Skyline for WTC 7”)

Indeed, that it ‘went off without a hitch’ was the appearance.  But the behind-the-scenes reality of this  brilliant success was that the Third Beam “almost didn’t happen” at every step along the way of an incredible months-long process -- and at every one of those steps, ‘something’ incredible happened in order to ‘make it happen.’

This is the story of those synchronicities and the AE911Truth team that brought the Third Beam into reality.

It all began at AE911Truth’s 1,000 Petition Signatures press conference in San Francisco on Feb. 19, which I attended along with some 200 others.  At the Strategy Session following the luncheon, Mr. Gage asked some 40 leading 9/11 activists to brainstorm the ‘next big activity’ that the truth movement and AE911Truth might take on, and polled those in the room on the level of support for each idea.  Good ideas flowed like water, each supported by many, but not all -- and then….  A representative from Better Bad News who had been standing at the back of the room in the doorway spoke up.  He’d brought  a 5” X 7” card of an artists’ rendition adding a third beam to the ‘official’ two-beam ‘Tribute of Light’ that pierces the New York City skyline on each 9/11 anniversary. This idea instantly electrified the room.

The moment I held that card in my hand, I instantly knew the Third Beam had to be ‘made real.’

After a couple of times suggesting to Richard that we make the Third Beam ‘real,’ he finally ‘got’ that I meant actually putting a huge Third Beam up in the NYC skyline, and got enthusiastically behind the idea.

The next step was researching and finding the brightest rentable spotlights on the East Coast, which quickly narrowed down to the ‘AD Lights’ manufactured by a Texas company called SkyView.  A spokesman there checked their database, and found a total of just four rentable AD Lights on the entire Eastern seaboard – two in Vestal, New York, about a four-hour drive from NYC, and two an 18-hour drive away in Florida.

As soon as we’d located the AD Lights, Richard Gage and myself, 9/11 victims’ family member activist Manny Badillo, 9/11 Truth New York founder Les Jamieson and NYC activist Steve White started meeting in a series of tightly-held conference calls in which I shared what I’d learned from the research and to work out the ‘who-does-what-when’ planning needed to make the Third Beam a reality.

Over the next three months, I worked with the AD Light  rental companies in New York and Florida on contract language and located an activist willing to drive the lights from Florida.  Steve White and I would drive the lights from Vestal into NYC.

On September 9, the day before AE911Truth’s press conference at the National Press Club in DC, I flew into JFK Airport and met up with Steve White.  That first day was taken with locating and renting what might have been the only affordable pickup truck with a bed wide enough to hold four of the 22-inch-wide AD Lights in the back, and securing the truck.

The next day, September 10, Steve and I started early for the trip to Vestal, NY, to pick up the two spotlights being held for us there.  About 8:30, shortly after we’d gotten on the road, I thought to call the owner of the rental company to let him know we were on our way and that we should be there in plenty of time to make our noon appointment.  He’d had unexpected severe headaches and had to go in for an MRI, he said, and wouldn’t be able to give us the spotlights unless we could make it before noon, as he had to leave for the hospital.  Suffice it to say, the pickup burned up the roads between the City and Vestal, New York, making it with seven minutes to spare.

With the first of the two AD Lights secure and roped into place vertically in the back of the truck, Steve and I bought a tarp at a local Lowe’s hardware store and began the trip back to NYC.  On the way back, we realized that Xeno Lights, where we’d reserved the two huge Honda EU-3000 generators needed to power the Beam, wasn’t open on Saturday and would close before we could get back to the City.  From the truck, I called the Xeno employee on duty and promised him a substantial reward if he waited until we got there, which he agreed to do.  When we finally pulled in front of Xeno nearly an hour after their official closing time, the loyal employee was waiting and helped us load the heavy EU-3000s into the truck next to the lights.  We then drove to Steve’s apartment a few blocks from WTC 7 -- which the spotlights were soon to represent -- and secured the AD Lights there.

Just as we did, Phil Restino, a dedicated 9/11 Truth activist from Florida and a colleague of Les Jamieson’s, arrived a few blocks from Steve’s place.  In another hour, all four AD Lights – representing two billion candlepower – were safely placed in the eighth-floor artist’s loft in NYC.

Over the months leading up to the ninth anniversary, first one, then two, and finally three possible rooftop locations for where to put the four spotlights were promised and then fell through, leaving the back of the truck as the last and final anchor point for the Third Beam on the night of Sept. 11^th.

Until literally almost the last minute, therefore, we had thousands of dollars worth of the world’s most powerful rentable portable spotlights and generators in the country, but no place to put them for “The Big Event.”

At that last minute, Manny Badillo came up with the idea of  parking the truck with the spotlights up the street from the INN World Report conference, “How the World Changed After 9/11,” at the corner of Church and Worth Streets.

At 9:00 p.m., Steve and I drove the truck with the four spotlights and generators hidden under a tarp in the back into a “perfect” parking place near that corner, as Richard Gage, AIA, took the podium at the conference up the street to announce the imminent Third Beam unveiling, inviting the 200 attendees to gather at the corner of Walker and Church Streets to witness the historic sight.

At precisely 9:11 p.m. on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, we climbed into the back of the truck, started up the generators, and pressed the ‘on’ buttons on the spotlights.  In an instant, the Third Beam representing the continued media blackout and government censorship of the forensic facts about the controlled demolition of WTC 7 – and of WTC 1 and 2 – burst into the NYC skyline to ecstatic whoops of joy from the 200 activists gathered by the truck on the sidewalk and at Church and Walker.

As the Third Beam took its rightful place in the sky next to those representing WTC 1 and 2, I announced, as promised, that it was dedicated “to the success of the 9/11 Truth Movement and to David Ray Griffin,” the leading light of the 9/11 Truth Movement, who could not be present due to a convalescence.

The postscript to the Third Beam story is equally amazing.  When Steve and I returned the lights to Vestal, NY, the next day, we were met by a relieved owner who said that his MRI had been negative – and that he was a regular visitor to 9/11Blogger!  The owner of two of the spotlights that had made up the historic Third Beam was a 9/11 Truther.

It seems that  “The Force” was with the 9/11 Truth Movement and Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth at every point along the way to bringing the Third Beam into reality.  And so we plan on making sure that this light will be shining during every 9/11 anniversary, as it becomes a familiar sight in the NYC skyline and in the skylines of cities around the world.

This ninth anniversary of September 11 was only the beginning of the Third Beam becoming “The Light Seen ‘Round the World.”   As they say, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”