(dz: be sure to note StopLying's blog entry on how this event came to fruition!)

9/11 an 'inside job'?
Controlled demolition, claims California architect

Conspiracy buffs are in for a big treat.

California architect Richard Gage will be in Winnipeg this week to offer his explanation of why the World Trade Centre towers collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001.

Gage has become a leading figure of the so-called 9/11 truth movement, an informal campaign from people all over the world who challenge official accounts of what happened that day.

He argues that a deliberate, controlled demolition using explosive devices is what really destroyed the twin towers that day, along with another skyscraper known as WTC 7 or Building 7. Speaking to Sun Media from his Bay Area home this weekend, Gage said few people are even aware of the third building.

'SMOKING GUN'

"It's the smoking gun of 9/11," he said. "It was a 47-storey building, not hit by an airplane, that came down into its own footprint in 6.5 seconds, at nearly freefall speed -- symmetrically, smooth, straight down."

Gage says Building 7 fell after sustaining relatively minor damage due to the collapse of one of the twin towers hours earlier, with small fires on its fifth and 12th floors.

Explosions were heard around its base as it collapsed and a large amount of molten metal was found in the basement area, said Gage. He claims the only good explanation for the presence of the metal is that it came from certain kinds of incendiary charges.

"Two small fires -- even large, hot-burning, long-lasting fires -- have never brought down a steel frame highrise building, ever," said Gage.

By all official accounts, the 9/11 attacks were the work of the al-Qaida terrorist network but Gage is trying to spur the U.S. Congress to launch a new investigation into who was responsible. "We don't know who did it and we don't know why," he said. "That's why we need an investigation."

Gage is scheduled to address a public audience tomorrow at 1 p.m. with a free lecture in University Centre at the University of Manitoba. At 7 p.m. he'll conduct a seminar at the Fort Garry Hotel.

On Wednesday at 7 p.m., Gage will give a presentation at the Gas Station Theatre on what he calls the mainstream media's "code of silence" about the 9/11 "inside job."

Joe Hawkins, a Winnipeg chiropractor helping arrange the seminars, says no one wants to talk about who's really behind the 9/11 attacks.

"Clearly it points to elements within the government," he said. "If it's an inside job, it has to be inside the military-industrial government complex."

Hawkins says he's on hiatus from his practice, in part because he's been busy the past few years trying to get information out about 9/11.