A Deep Dive by RichardGage911 into the Evidence that Refutes the DEW Theory
(This presentation by architect Richard Gage, AIA, was the result of an invitation by Public Interest Attorney Mick Harrison to several individuals with differing theories and sets of evidence about what brought the Twin Towers and Building 7 down. Mick was acting alone in a personal effort to keep an open mind and try to get to the truth about 9/11. This recorded Zoom call followed two others, a few weeks earlier, on the subject of Directed Energy Weapons as a cause of the destruction of the World Trade Center)
All three World Trade Center skyscrapers, 1 (North Tower), 2 (South Tower), and Building 7 — are shown to have been destroyed by controlled demolition using conventional explosives and thermitic incendiaries, not by fires, airplane impacts, or Directed Energy Weapons (DEW). We review the physical evidence and eyewitness testimony at each building and explicitly explain why the DEW hypothesis fails to account for that evidence.
Building 7 (47 Stories – Not Hit by a Plane)
WTC 7 collapsed at 5:20 PM, falling straight down, symmetrically, into its own footprint in under 7 seconds — behavior he identifies as a textbook controlled demolition. Key evidence:
- Free fall: NIST itself acknowledged WTC 7 fell at free-fall acceleration for roughly one-third of its descent. No mechanism — especially DEW — explains how every single column on entire floors, synchronistically timed floor by floor, could lose resistance virtually simultaneously. Explosives pre-placed at key structural points are the only technology capable of this precision.
- Eyewitness explosions: Dozens of first responders reported loud blasts before the collapse. Barry Jennings (NYC Office of Emergency Management) reported multiple large explosions inside the building in the late morning. Deputy Director Richard Rotanz described an elevator car blown 40 feet down a hallway, with columns dangling and gaping holes — damage inconsistent with a fire extinguisher or “Scott Pack” tank, as DEW proponents claim.
- Seismic signal: A 0.6-magnitude seismic event was recorded ~10 seconds before the building’s overall visible collapse. Applied geophysics expert Andre Rousseau analyzed the bell-shaped waveform and concluded that it indicated an impulsive (explosive) energy source — not debris impact on the ground.
- Why DEW fails for WTC 7: DEW has never accomplished — and provides no mechanism for — the simultaneous, precise removal of all columns on multiple floors, resulting in a perfectly symmetrical straight-down collapse. He cites a structural engineer’s statement: “A localized failure in a steel frame building cannot cause a catastrophic house-of-cards collapse without the simultaneous and patterned loss of several columns at key locations,” — and there is no theory provided by the promoters of DEW as to how such accuracy could be achieved.
Twin Towers (WTC 1 & WTC 2)
The Twin Towers exhibit similar “implosion” features in the first three seconds, Phase I, then very explosive features in Phase II — all with very clear evidence of explosive destruction.
Sudden onset, near-free fall: Both towers transition from standing at rest to uniform downward motion with no jolt or deceleration when the upper section meets the lower, which was five to twenty times stronger than needed to support the load. The towers descended at approximately 64% free-fall acceleration, rather than slowing, with only minimal asymmetry. Again, the DEW theory offers no mechanism for how a weapon could remove columns floor by floor with split-second synchronization.
- Explosive ejections: Phase II of the destruction is characterized by massive structural steel sections — weighing up to 8 tons — hurled laterally 500–600 feet, impaling surrounding skyscrapers. The lateral force was sufficient to propel a 200-pound cannonball three miles. DEW, described as a “non-explosive event” by its proponents, does not, and cannot, account for this kinetic energy.
- 156 eyewitness accounts of the explosion compiled by researcher Graeme MacQueen from 12,000 pages of FDNY testimony and news footage. Witnesses described sequential floor-by-floor blasts, bright flashes on lower floors well below the impact zones, ground shaking, and sounds like “firecrackers in sequence,” which many of them heard several seconds before the collapse! These accounts are entirely absent from DEW promoters’ presentations, as they contradict the basic claim of “no explosions.”
- Seismic precursors: Seismologist Andre Rousseau found seismic signals occurring several seconds before each tower began descending — corroborated by tripod-mounted cameras that visibly shook seconds before the collapses. These signals cannot be attributed to debris hitting the ground (the debris hadn’t even landed yet) and instead point to subsurface explosive charges — corroborated by the eyewitnesses of the explosions noted above.
Evidence of Extreme Heat (All Three Towers)
The destruction was indeed an extremely hot event — directly contradicting DEW proponents’ characterization of the event as “cold.”
- Underground fires burned for up to 99 days, at temperatures up to 2,800°F (US Dept. of Labor, the American Society of Safety Engineers, and Mayor Giuliani’s own statements).
- “Hot Temperature Corrosion Attack on the Steel” was documented by FEMA in its metallurgical analysis, included in Appendix C of the 2004 BPAT Report, which required temperatures of 3,000°F. The FEMA author Jonathan Barnett describes the evaporation of steel, which requires ~4,000°F. FEMA documents steel beams, reduced from 5/8-inch thick to razor-thin, and silver-dollar-sized holes in the steel.
- Sulfur/eutectic reactions: FEMA documented intergranular melting and sulfidation on WTC steel — a eutectic never previously observed in structure fires. Sulfur is added to thermite, which creates “thermate,” much more effective at cutting through steel.
- Molten steel: Dozens of workers, engineers (including the WTC structural engineer Leslie Roberts), and cleanup supervisors personally witnessed or described pools of molten steel/iron “like lava,” running down channel rails, glowing red-hot beams, and buckets of the excavators dripping with molten metal weeks after the collapse. But the DEW theory claims a “cold” event.
- Iron-rich microspheres: The US Geological Survey and RJ Lee Group both found billions of previously-molten iron microspheres in the WTC dust — comprising up to 6% of some samples. These require temperatures above 3,000°F to form and are a known byproduct of thermite ignition.
- Nanothermite: An international team of eight scientists (led by Niels Harrit, 2009) identified red-gray chips in seven dust samples that, under electron microscopy, showed iron oxide nanocrystals and aluminum platelets in an organic matrix — the signature of engineered super-thermite. When heated in a differential scanning calorimeter at ~420°C, the chips ignited, producing iron-rich microspheres identical to those found in the dust. This is not paint. This is cutting-edge thermitic technology, patented prior to 9/1101, made only in the most advanced defense-contracting laboratories.
- No Steel Dust: The promoters of DEW claim “the steel turned to dust”. But steel is attracted to a magnet, and no one has claimed to find “steel” dust attracted to a magnet from the dust samples. The USGS and RJ Lee examined dozens of dust samples and found only concrete materials, gypsum, and man-made vitreous fibers as the three major inorganic components. There’s no steel dust in the dust. True — the 200,000 tons of steel are not in a pile at the bottom of each tower; they are laterally dispersed in a 1,400-foot-diameter area around each tower.
When the DEW promoters deny most of the above overwhelming and irrefutable evidence of extreme heat, thermite & nanothermite, (now) hundreds of witnesses of explosions, the lateral ejection of four and eight-ton structural steel wall units 600 feet, and provide virtually no evidence for their own theory, we have reason to not only doubt that theory, but suspect their intentions as well.