Richard Gage Meets Noam Chomsky

INTRODUCTION

Richard Gage will speak in the UK on 5/7/16, and I introduce here my concerns about the 9/11 truth movement in the US. Richard and I met with my professor from college Noam Chomsky after which AE911Truth ignored Noam's suggestion that AE reach out to the civil engineering and physics professional associations if we wish to establish our credibility.

I charge Richard with no longer being dedicated to the excellent mission of AE911truth. He actually says often that Kelly David, the COO of AE911Truth, runs things. She is dishonest and mean. AE treats volunteers with contempt. Kelly has insisted AE not work with two major volunteers not mentioned by name in this communication. AE's purpose now is just to look good in order to raise money to pay the staff that Kelly directs.

The simple way to challenge this is to ask Richard to provide the AE contact in the UK with regular referrals of contact information of new UK petition signers of the AE petition, including architects, engineers and others. He might refuse. He might agree to do it and actually do it. He might agree to to it and not deliver, or not deliver fully or regularly. There is a new rule AE has against giving petition signer names and contact info to respected activists no matter how trustworthy, as you will see below.

Please also note that AE no longer processes petition signers in a timely fashion. I urge you to test that system to see if they even try to confirm AE's or others. Don't worry,they won't count them if they can't confirm them.

Keep in mind that Richard actually likes most people, understands the issues correctly, and should be acknowledged as the leader he is. He has sadly chosen to surround himself with people who give him bad advice.

We need brothers and sisters from across the pond to reach out to Richard to help him turn back to the the real mission of AE. Building a movement powerful enough achieve a real investigation should be its focus.

Gage Meets Chomsky

Noam Chomsky was my professor at MIT in the early 70's and played a significant role in radicalizing me during the Vietnam war. I still call him Noam because he's not a stuffed shirt.

Most of you realize he is hardly a supporter of 9/11 truth, insisting that a real inside job would have used Iraqis rather than Saudis to hijack the planes. Most truthers (an unfortunate term, but too prevalent to ignore) do not accept that any Arabs were on those planes.

I've met with Noam several times in recent years and happened to have an appointment with him when Richard Gage expected to be in Boston for an architecture conference. Richard asked if I could bring him to the appointment, and I did so. I reminded Noam as we walked into the room that Noam had publicly said he had spoken to Richard before.

In 2007 when I arranged for Richard to speak at MIT, Richard had called directory assistance for Noam's number, not realizing that when you take that action the phone company automatically tries to connect you. That wouldn't have had to have been a problem, except it was 1:30AM.

Noam answered the phone like it was 1:30PM. Richard introduced himself and invited Noam to his talk the next night. Noam politely declined.

At the meeting with Noam in November 2015 we presented Noam hard copies of the nearly 100 peer reviewed papers, since Noam had publicly called for the truth movement to produce such papers, not realizing most of the papers we gave him had already been published at the time of his remark.

Over 70 of these papers are available at the Journal for 911 Studies. The other 22 are available at www.911CA.org

The founder of that website, Rick Shaddock, has been working on Donald Trump for years.Trump's openness to discussing 9/11 is unusual and refreshing, though I doubt he will be open to any conclusion that Muslims were not the culprits.

Richard Gage kept that volume Rick had sent for Noam. Gage also still refuses to talk to Rick, who was thrown out of AE911Truth because former AE board chair Robert McCoy objected to where Rick had received his grad degree, not that Rick ever pretended to speak for AE.

Controlling what volunteers say should hardly be a priority since no one thinks anyone but Richard speaks for AE.That's what the excellent AE videos are for, to get the message straight.

Rick also raised $5000 three years ago to fund the work of chemical engineer Mark Basile, who intends to confirm the nanothermite research of Harrit et al. Basile has stalled out and Gage refuses to assist in pulling that problem together.

One proposal from Noam to Richard and I was to arrange a Russell Tribunal type investigation about 9/11. UK citizen Bertrand Russell is clearly Noam's hero. When I would go to Noam's office as a student, he would have a huge poster of Russell on the wall. Noam also did not think AE could ever achieve a Congressional subpoena powered investigation of 9/11, the stated goal of AE911truth. He thought it was too huge an issue.

He DID, however suggest AE reach out to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the American Physical Society (APS). Noam had no idea that I had been urging Richard to support the formation of outreach teams to civil engineers and to physicists. Before I was thrown out as a result of my tremendous anger at the suicide of the founder of the 911 truth legal team after she had been treated so viciously by AE staff and board, I had found a retired civil engineer petition signer willing to organize the over 340 civil engineer petition signers for outreach purposes to their professional community. That team is not currently authorized to exist within AE.

A year after my departure from AE I found a PhD physicist petition signer willing to be team leader of an AE physics outreach team. Richard allowed it, and Dr Miller did receive a list of physics petition signers. That list, suspiciously, was only eight people long. If there are 340 civil engineers, do you believe there are only 8 physicists? Richard has shown zero concern that the people who produced that list undermined that team, which never got off the ground.

Currently we established a physics and civil engineering outreach website with comparable standards to AE. It is BazantMisconduct.com and receives no assistance from AE, though we urge readers to respect AE's work. Soon we will add the website PhysicsDenial.com for further outreach work at colleges.

There has not been an engineer on the AE board since Wayne Coste, the most prolific speaker after Richard, was thrown out of AE WHILE HE WAS STILL ON THE BOARD. I believe Wayne was expelled because of his closeness to me. He had also founded 911truthoutreach.org. He felt correctly that AE would turn away from building a movement, which it has.

Wayne eventually prepared a basic leaflet to the ASCE, which was leafletted to the ASCE at conferences in NYC,Miami, and Phoenix. A more advanced leaflet was made available for a conference in Orlando.

After seeing Chomsky, we returned to the convention. Richard then noted that he had tried to rent a booth at the ASCE convention, only to be refused. I had proposed that ASCE booth idea the previous May.

After the Chomsky meeting I suggested to Richard that he let me back into AE especially to organize support from AE civil engineers and physicists to get into their conventions. He was open to it. He just needed me to apologize to COO Kelly David for the rumor she heard that I had accused her of being a police agent. Since I HAD told that to only a handful of people, embargoed, I was open to giving such an apology, but I asked to have an in depth conversation with Richard first.

Eventually I did have that conversation with Richard. I raised a variety of concerns about Kelly, the most important of which was her refusal to respect Richard's continued insistence that she provide Wayne Coste, WHILE HE WAS STILL ON THE AE BOARD, access to the petition signer list. Wayne had organized the list to support outreach to Congress, a team AE no longer allows to exist.

When I raised this issue recently at a 9/11 call, Kelly asserted she ignored Richard's mandate because AE board Chair Robert McCoy had overruled Richard, ostensibly because Wayne was going to help me with the list, and I had presented myself as an adversary on an AE Board conference call. I HAD gone on a board call, but that was before Susan Watkins had committed suicide, so it is dishonest of Kelly to claim I had presented myself as an AE adversary on that call. I would never have been allowed on a board call if I had taken an adversarial position. I even had requested that McCoy and I meet in person with the hope we could become friends. I had struggled diligently to become friends with Gregg Roberts, my primary adversary for years at AE.

Later, Richard threw me out immediately after I presented myself to him as an adversary. The terrible treatment of Susan Watkins had overwhelmed me. For years I had been the first person anyone who contacted AE would get to talk to, and I felt close to Susan.

All could have been resolved to allow me back to help organize civil engineers and physicists, but THERE WAS NO MENTION OF CHOMSKY'S SUGGESTION OF REACHING OUT TO CIVIL ENGINEERS AND PHYSICISTS when AE reported the meeting between Richard and Noam. All they did was report the giving of the hard copy peer reviewed papers and include the picture I took of Richard and Noam. They did not note that Richard kept the 22 article gift from Rick to Noam.

My criticism of AE is summed up in this Gage/Chomsky experience. AE911Truth, whose insistence on only saying what they can prove I have always fully supported, no longer takes seriously its goal of building a movement to mandate a real investigation. They just want to look good to raise money to pay their staff. The charge I make is encrusted bureaucracy.

We were so very close to repairing what was needed to reconstitute working together so AE at least would TRY to do outreach to build a movement. I was ready to apologize to Kelly, but when Richard suggested I work with Andy Steele, who coordinates scientist outreach, Andy refused to even talk to me. This is a too common problem in the 911 truth movement, where people who fully agree that the official story is a lie often refuse to talk to each other. I had originally recruited Andy years earlier and later gave up my $300/month pay for 2 months so Andy could have money to pay for the first couple of months of hosting his radio show.

Mass emailing AE's excellent Beyond Misinformation is Andy's way of doing science outreach. His efforts don't hurt anything because the booklet is so great. However, as a common sense issue, do you think unsolicited emails get read? I'm sure some people read them. My expectation is the percentage reading those emails is trivial. Same for the original unsolicited hard copy snail mails to 20,000 people. AE never mentions that these efforts fall largely on deaf ears.

They also don't make a free downloadable leaflet of proper graphic quality available on the website. They don't care if people who can't afford their beautiful but expensive leaflets actually are able to leaflet.

It doesn't matter if a leafleter is good at explaining the issue since most people who take leaflets never interact with the leafleter. Most people don't change their mind quickly. It usually takes months and years.

I prefer to get actual scientists and engineers to communicate by conference call and email to take up projects. I prefer to have increased volunteers personally contacting people they know to read Beyond Misinformation.

I actually proposed to Richard an idea he said he liked, that architect Jan Utzon of Denmark, an AE petition signer, be supported in sending snailmail copies of the booklet to all living recipients of the Pritzger Prize. His father, Jorn Utzon, had designed the Sydney Opera House and had won that most prestigious architecture prize in the world. This simple project, which might turn around top architects, will never occur because I proposed it, and the AE staff hates me. Please consider inveighing upon Richard to follow through with Utzon, whose last name on the return address of a snail mail package would be recognized by all Pritzger Prize winners. AE has Danish activists who can do the legwork.

3. Allow me to return to the issue of Richard giving you lists.I urge your group to request of Richard that you regularly (weekly or monthly) be given the names and contact info, including date signed, of UK petition signers. They used to give out such lists without a date signed column so the person receiving it wouldn't know they no longer confirm petition signers in a timely fashion. In January AE made a rule against giving out such lists, even though there has never been an abuse of the list in 10 years. I actually would have sent this essay to all UK petition signers, but I don't have that list. The new rule holds that those who want to reach out must get an email approved by Kelly David and Bill Jacoby. Then that organizer may only call those who respond to the email. It is absurd to consider that recruiting volunteers by email is as effective as recruiting volunteers by phone.They DO NOT CARE ABOUT BUILDING A MOVEMENT. THEY ONLY CARE ABOUT LOOKING GOOD TO RAISE MONEY TO PAY STAFF. AE is run like a profit making business rather than the most important truth movement organization in the world.

Ask Richard if the petition signer list has ever been abused. I'll be shocked if you get an answer. He's pretty honest, so an answer would be good to have.

I once asked Gregg Roberts if the list had ever been abused. All he thought of was two times people received a list and then disappeared. There have never been reports from signers that they had been inappropriately contacted by people we had given a list to.

Why would they assume that calling petition signers who donate and can't volunteer would offend those donors? My experience is those folks are quite happy to hear that volunteers are being recruited. That in fact is a GOOD REASON to donate more. Shouldn't we be suspicious of whoever proposed this rule? Ask Richard who proposed the rule.

AE does have a serious problem even processing the signatures. In May 2015 they had about 2350 A & E's. They went to the AIA convention in Atlanta and announced they had signed up 150 architects. They just admitted to having 2500 a couple of weeks ago. Nearly a full year later. It seems hundreds of petition signers have not confirmed their signature because it took too long to get back to them. I know both a civil engineer and another signer who they won't respond to.

Most American truthers could care less about building a movement. They care about debating fine points with other truthers. We in the US may be relative rubes, but rubes usually have good common sense. The US movement does not have common sense. The problem is hardly all with AE. At least they still only say what they can prove.

I''ll bet the UK truth movement has good common sense.

Happy to hear from anyone.

Skype>>  davidslesinger  (Baltimore)

email>>   dslesinger@alum.mit.edu