Editor’s Note: On our most recent episode of 9/11 Free Fall — which can be read below or heard on YouTube or SoundCloud — Andy Steele is joined by actor/activist Ed Asner and Richard Gage, AIA. They remark on the recent development of the U.S. Attorney agreeing to present the WTC evidence to a special grand jury. They also discuss the joint project of AE911Truth and the Lawyers' Committee for 9/11 Inquiry — on whose board Asner sits — aimed at ensuring a thorough grand jury investigation. To learn more and support this historic effort, visit AE911Truth.org/grandjury.
Andy Steele: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another episode of 9/11 Free Fall. My name is Andy Steele, and I am the host.
Tonight we’ll be joined by Richard Gage, AIA, president and founder of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, and by none other than actor, activist, and board member for the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, Ed Asner. They’re going to be talking about that group’s petition to the U.S. Attorney and the fact that the World Trade Center evidence is now going to be heard by a grand jury.
Now, as you may or may not know, Ed Asner has a long history with AE911Truth and hosted AE’s short documentary called Solving the Mystery of World Trade Center Building 7 many years back. But this is the first time he’s been on this show. So before we get to that [pre-recorded] interview, I’m going to just play two short clips of him from that documentary totaling a little over a minute long. And then I’ll be playing that interview for you. So stay tuned!
Asner: “Architects and engineers of today use computers to design and engineer buildings that will endure the forces of nature, such as earthquakes, fires, and hurricanes. This modern skyscraper was also built to last. [Video of Building 7’s collapse plays.] We’ve seen buildings completely destroyed like this before, but only when done intentionally. Let’s compare. Explosives are used to demolish buildings like this in just seconds. Okay, so it’s a controlled demolition. What’s the problem with that? Well, it happened on the afternoon of 9/11 at the World Trade Center. Let’s just think about this: Controlled demolitions cannot be engineered and rigged in a day; it takes months. And therefore this event must have been planned in advance.”
[Musical interlude.]
Steele: Richard Gage, AIA, is a San Francisco Bay Area architect of 30 years, a member of the American Institute of Architects, and the founder and president of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. He’s been all over the world and on television sharing the World Trade Center evidence with audiences and tirelessly pushing for a new investigation, now for over a decade. Richard, welcome back to the show.
Richard Gage: Thanks, Andy. It’s an honor to be here with you.
Steele: And our other guest today is Ed Asner. Ed is an actor, a voice actor, and a former president of the Screen Actors Guild. He is known for his role as Lou Grant on both The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spinoff, which was titled Lou Grant, as well as several other TV shows, movies, and other dramatic projects that are too numerous to list here. He has won seven prime time Emmys and continues to appear in TV and films. He now also serves on the board of the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry. Ed, welcome to 9/11 Free Fall.
Ed Asner: It’s a pleasure to be with you.
Steele: So, we’re having a special show today because there’s some very special things happening in the 9/11 Truth Movement. We touched upon it two weeks ago when we had Mick Harrison and Dave Meiswinkle on from the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry to talk about the grand jury process, the petition that was filed. We know the two gentlemen here are not lawyers, but there’s some commentary about this grand jury petition and about the 9/11 Truth issue in general that they have to add. So we’re going to start off with Richard. Richard, talk about why you and Ed Asner are here on the show today.
Gage: We are excited at AE911Truth. For 12 year now we’ve been just pushing against the machine, if you will — the machine of censorship out there about 9/11 and what really happened to these three World Trade Center skyscrapers. Ed and I have been working together since Ed assisted us in producing and premiering and appearing at our landmark documentary, 9/11: Explosive Evidence — Experts Speak Out. And he’s been an incredible force of getting the word out there, because of his credibility, and he’s famous! He’s one of the few actors in Hollywood who have had the courage to step forth and join forces with the 9/11 Truth Movement and push it out there.
And so we have been developing with 3,000, now, architects and engineers demanding a new investigation and signing the petition calling for a new investigation, demanding of Congress that they wake up and really investigate what happened to these towers.
The evidence shows that we have explosive demolition at not only the Twin Towers but also Building 7, the 47-story skyscraper that also came down on 9/11 at near-free-fall acceleration even though it wasn’t even hit by an airplane. So we’ll talk about all that evidence today.
But I just want to thank Ed publicly for taking such a stand with the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, which has put a petition to the U.S. Attorney and demanded — based on our evidence that we’ve collected over the last 12 years — a new investigation, a grand jury investigation. And guess what: The U.S. Attorney finally agreed, [saying, in substance,] “Yeah, we will empanel a grand jury to investigate this evidence.” Now, this is historic. In the 9/11 Truth Movement, we’ve never had such a victory. So that’s why on this call today, and for the last week, we have initiated a fundraising campaign to support the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, because they’ve now got hundreds of hours of work to do to communicate with — and get the background of all of this evidence to — the grand jury once they’re empaneled.
So we’re on a mission to raise $50,000 for this incredible effort and also — for the experts who appear in the movie 9/11: Explosive Evidence — Experts Speak Out — we’ve got to put all of their credentials together and their declarations for their testimony. And we’re talking about physicists, controlled demolition experts, high-rise architects, structural engineers, metallurgists, chemists — all of these kinds of experts that we have on our petition are going to be presenting this information either in writing or personally to the grand jury.
So that’s the exciting news for the day. And Ed, being on the board of the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, I’m sure has important perspectives he’d like to share about all this, too.
Steele: Yeah, and I’m looking forward to hearing them. Ed, this is the first time that you have ever been on this show. And I admire you not just for the work that you’ve done in your acting career, but for having the courage to speak out when so many people keep their mouths shut, even if they question the events of that day. You have been out front and unapologetic about it. I think that commands a lot of respect, not just from the 9/11 Truth Movement, but from people in general who may be less inclined to speak out when they see injustice being done.
I always ask this of every guest and I’m going to ask you to tell your story. Please tell us where you were and what you were doing when you heard of the events of 9/11 as they happened that day.
Asner: I was in my house in Southern California — Los Angeles. A normal day. I don’t know what alerted [me]. I usually don’t play the TV at that time of the morning. But for some reason I was alerted to turning on the TV and watching the circus that was to take place, costing 3,000 lives. And I was appalled and I was disgusted, and I’ve been disgusted ever since.
Steele: What made you begin to question the events of that day? I mean, we all watched it. The entire world watched it. Then we were given a story of what happened, in particular what happened to those towers. Most of us bought it at first — didn’t begin to question it. We were in such a state of shock and awe that day. But then years would pass for many of us and we would see people like Richard and others speaking about the evidence. And it would open our eyes and wake us up. What made you begin to question the official story?
Asner: I smelled a rat from the very first moment. I don’t know why I did. But the more I watched, the more I heard, the more alarmed I got about what a scam was being inflicted on the people who were listening, who were watching. I couldn’t believe it.
I was involved with a lady at the time who was in the area of the Twin Towers, or close enough, so that she suffered tremendous fright and alarm about what was happening. And all I could do was speak from the fact that somebody was pulling a scam on the willing listeners. And I still believe that.
Steele: Obviously, we have the tragedy of what happened on that day with the 3,000 lives lost. Then we have the tragedy of the foreign policy that we had afterwards — the wars, loss of civil liberties at home. And now, as we’re finding out, we’ve got the continuing tragedy of all the people who are sick, dying from cancers and other diseases from being exposed to the air down there, the air quality down there. And so for them, 9/11 is still happening. And those people didn’t get sick because airplanes crashed into buildings. They got sick because the towers came down, because they turned to dust in midair. So for them, in their situation, it makes our issue so much more relevant. For them, it’s not over. It’s still happening every single day as we lose more of them. So that is why it’s so important to speak out, why your advocacy for this issue is so important for us and for the overall picture of America, too.
I’m curious, Ed. I know you were involved in issues before September 11th even happened. When you came to this revelation — when you first smelled a rat — did this change your worldview, as it had for others? Or did your previous life experience and activism already acclimate you to the idea that we could be getting lied to about this event?
Asner: Well, I don’t which part of that to answer. Yes, I had been involved in controversy with the training of Latin American officers at the School of the Americas, who then went down and brutalized the peasantry, calling them communists. And I was given that title, as well. So I was used to controversy and to bitter reaction already.
But to try to talk about 9/11 — my feeling at the time was Bush had introduced a phenomenal program in his first year of his presidency, and the country had gone steaming along profiting. And finally it began to sputter and stop — the phenomenal progress the economy had made. And I thought, “How perfect to create a foreign incident, blame it on certain foreign powers, and create a more martial aspect in America.” And that’s exactly what we did. We issued a document, which most members of Congress hadn’t read, hadn’t heard about, calling for the martialization of our society. It was passed with very little response that would be called negative. And we’re still living with the results. Bush fared very well. Mr. Cheney, of course, did very well by the installation of those powers, and [so did] Mr. Rumsfeld.
I know I sound like I’m ranting and raving. But the passage of that document, which nobody [in Congress who voted for it] read, has governed our lives ever since.
Steele: I know. Isn’t that crazy that nobody hardly even read this important piece of legislation that would change our lives so many years afterwards? I know for me, being very young at the time, the idea that we could be getting lied to about this event was like introducing a new color that didn’t exist before to me. You can’t conceive of it because you’ve never seen it before. This was a complete paradigm shift when I actually was awoken to this evidence.
But I respect the folks who have been involved in other issues for decades before, because I feel like their minds were more open to the idea that we could be getting lied to that day. And it really put them in a position, ahead of others, to be at the forefront of calling for a new investigation.
Now, Richard, as I mentioned before, we already had Mick Harrison and Dave Meiswinkle on the show. They’re the lawyers and they gave us some great insight on the grand jury process. Anyone who wants to listen can listen [to the show] from two weeks ago. But I know you’ve been working with them. You’re not simply on the sidelines here. And AE’s going to be working with them. Can you tell our audience, from your own non-lawyer perspective, what can we expect over the next year or so? And what role is AE911Truth going to be playing in this important work?
Gage: We have assembled the irrefutable scientific evidence for the explosive and incendiary destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7. And the lawyers have packaged it. This is a dozen lawyers in the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry. They have taken our work, beginning, historically, in 2016, at the “Justice In Focus” conference at Cooper Union in New York, where they held an inquiry. And there were a dozen attorneys, including the famous attorney, “People’s Advocate” Danny Sheehan. What they’ve done is taken that testimony — we had maybe six or eight experts present that evidence — [and] they’ve now packaged it and presented in a 52-page petition to the U.S. Attorney in such a way that the U.S. Attorney had no choice but to comply with the law, because it requires that a grand jury be empaneled when such a petition from citizens is put forth. So they now have the obligation to assemble a special grand jury, which is 16 to 23 New York citizens. And they will be reviewing the actual evidence. Can you imagine 16 to 23 citizens reviewing the evidence, as we’ll talk about here today? That is absolutely explosive. And if you want to know what the evidence is, again, I’d go to YouTube and look at the free video 9/11: Explosive Evidence — Experts Speak Out.
So, over the next several months, a grand jury will be assembled and they will review the petition. And the work that the lawyers are doing now is to assemble additional evidence. That will be submitted as amendments to the petition, which have to, by law, go straight to the grand jury. Now, that will also include suggestions to the jury about people of material interest — in other words, [people] who we recommend that the grand jury subpoena in order to get to the heart of this matter. Not just experts, but individuals who may have been involved in the crime of 9/11. So there’s a lot of work there that the attorneys have to do, which is why we’re encouraging everyone to make the donation at LCfor911.org or at AE911Truth.org. We have a joint project here to raise these funds because we are working hand in hand together to get this evidence straight to the grand jury.
So, yeah, we hope the grand jury will subpoena witnesses as well. We hope we will appear personally to present the evidence to them. And we expect indictments to come from this process, which could take a year or more. It’s a long process. It takes legal motions and so forth. So we’ve got to have the support of all of our listeners today. It’s really important. This is a huge, huge, historic breakthrough. And the motions that are required here are needed in order to keep the U.S. Attorney honest, because we’re not under any illusions about the U.S. Attorney’s role here. But, by law, they have to send this information straight to the grand jury, who are ordinary citizens who have the constitutional obligation and right to proceed independently, to a great extent, of the U.S. Attorney’s office. So that’s we’re the hope lies. This is the fourth branch of government. We have the grand jury system, which comes straight from English common law.
And so it’s a wonderful, wonderful opportunity to get our freedom back and reverse the Patriot Act, as Ed was talking about, where any of us can be arrested without a right to a lawyer, a trial, a jury. We can be even tortured and assassinated, as American citizens, just for being associated with terrorism, which is not even defined. It’s a really bad state of affairs that could be turned on us at any moment.
So that’s what we expect, or hope for, in the next year or two as a result of this. But, again, we’ve got to have that support from each of our listeners. Go to AE911Truth.org or LCfor911.org.
Steele: That’s right. And the evidence Richard is talking about has been documented many times — in our films, Blueprint for Truth; 9/11: Explosive Evidence — Experts Speak Out; Solving the Mystery of Building 7, which Ed Asner hosts; [and] our book Beyond Misinformation. Materials are out there, and we’ve been giving them to the corporate media for years, we’ve been giving them to our politicians for years. This is the big elephant in the room of America. And while some may try to portray this as just a small group of people who agrees with this, who are behind this issue, that is not what I see when I actually go out into America. Most people, people who make up our nation, say they have questions about this event.
What is the harm in reinvestigating it, considering the impact that it has had on our country and the overall world? What harm would there be to NIST releasing the input data on its World Trade Center 7 models or doing the same test that Niels Harrit and his team did on the World Trade Center dust for the presence of nano-thermite? What harm would there be? And that is why we are calling for this new investigation. That is why we are behind this grand jury project.
I don’t know, Richard: I feel like there’s something almost miraculous about the 9/11 Truth Movement — ordinary people coming together from all over the world. Look at our show today. We have a Hollywood actor, an architect, and just a regular run-of-the-mill internet podcaster together on this important issue, because it transcends everything in our society. I just find something really excellent about that state of affairs.
Richard, you touched on this a little bit. But, having the perspective that you do, involved for so long, remind our audience why this project is so important. We talk about projects all the time here on this show. But why is this a big game-changer for the 9/11 Truth Movement?
Gage: Well, for the first time — our mission, by the way, is to achieve a new, independent, unimpeachable investigation of the destruction of all three World Trade Center skyscrapers. That’s been our mission for 12 years. We’ve been hammering at the legislature. Four times in the last 12 years we’ve taken our petition to them, now signed by 3,000 architects and engineers. We’ve taken the list those petitioners. We’ve taken the evidence, in the form of our DVDs and our written materials, [such as] Beyond Misinformation, the 50-page booklet that we have that outlines this in writing. We have so many different formats — our brochures, of course. But we haven’t succeeded yet in finding one legislator to introduce the Bobby McIlvaine Act, which is the act for a new investigation. We’ve written it for them. It’s based on the Benghazi Act. All they have to do is introduce it.
So, this opportunity is a breath of fresh air for the 9/11 Truth Movement — that a grand jury will see this evidence. There’s no question about that. That’s the law. And, by the way, if the U.S. Attorney somehow fails or tricks us, a Mandamus lawsuit is waiting in the wings, for a slip up on the part of the U.S. Attorney. The Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, which Ed is a board member on, they are ready to follow up with the Mandamus lawsuit, forcing [the U.S. Attorney’s office] to act according to their obligations, according to the Constitution.
I wouldn’t say it’s a “for sure” thing. We’ve had so many of our efforts bounce off the wall of the system that brought us 9/11 that some of us have become a little jaded. But not Ed, and not myself, and not you, Andy, and not millions of others in the 9/11 Truth Movement. We keep on going. This opportunity, especially, it’s poised for success. Especially with the forthcoming World Trade Center 7 finite element analysis being performed [at] the University of Alaska. One of the top forensic structural engineers in the country, Leroy Hulsey, chairman of the Department of Civil Engineering, is completing the three-year $300,000 study. This is a proof of all proofs that the NIST initiation of collapse theory for Building 7 is complete garbage.
And this [study] will go to the entire academic and professional engineering world — and architecture. In January and February, it goes out, after its peer review. We invite engineers out there to review this with us during that period. That [report] will go straight to the grand jury as well as proof that the National Institute of Standards and Technology has produced a fraudulent cover-up of what really happened at the World Trade Center, producing these theories that they have to try to explain the collapse of this third tower, which wasn’t even hit by an airplane, by fires — normal office fires. And yet normal office fires have never brought down a skyscraper before 9/11.
So, on that alone, the grand jury is going to know that there’s foul play. But [on top of that,] there’s evidence of incendiaries and explosives at the Twin Towers. We’ll still bring that evidence to you, in summary, I hope here. But I don’t want to go on and on here when we have such an esteemed guest waiting in the wings also.
Asner: I’m eagerly listening!
Steele: Well, I’m not going to let you off the hook, Ed, because I’ve got plenty of questions for you, too. I’m going to take advantage of this moment.
But I just want to say to the audience: This is a very important development in the 9/11 Truth movement. Over the years, our detractors’ stories have changed. Most of them don’t even know the official story that they’re defending. When you read some of these media articles, they just have a standard line of what NIST says. Probably the best gift they could have given us was the official story, because it is so weak that it’s easy to debunk and point back to our evidence. The only thing that changes about our evidence is its sheer volume. And when the World Trade Center 7 study comes out, it’s just going to be even more to pile on.
So, Ed, I want to get back to you, because you questioned 9/11 right from the very start. A lot of people did that. But you actually spoke out about it. So, what I want to know, because I don’t know this story personally: How did you get involved with AE911Truth and how difficult was that decision to be public with your questions about September 11th?
Asner: I’m afraid that going public has never deterred me. And I kick myself because I should argue with myself about speaking out, because it undoubtedly will create further and future enemies. But, in this particular case, I was an immediate target of AE911Truth and I was delighted at their presence, at their existence. So there was never any question about my joining them.
Steele: Well, and again, your endorsement of that video makes it so much more powerful for the general public. You talk about making enemies as a result, and I have no doubt that people in the public eye have that fear when considering whether or not they should speak out. I know there was a football player several years ago who made a comment when they had the bin Laden kill announced. And he made some comments about “We never really found out what happened to the towers.” I’m paraphrasing a bit. The whole corporate media just swarmed on this guy. It’s almost like this machine just kind of goes into motion when someone prominent speaks out.
Was there any kind of pushback that you experienced either in your personal life or from the media, that you can remember, as a result of your speaking out?
Asner: Contrary to what most people believe, I don’t work as much as I could. And I’d say that there has been a slowing of my employment. But, thank God, there’s somebody who picks up the pieces and runs with them. And I’m dragging along, working when I can.
Gage: Ed, how about from other actors? Have other actors been critical at all? Or have you had any success or failures in getting others in your profession to join?
Asner: There are very, very few actors who jump aboard, who are eager to be identified with this suspicion. They fail to take into consideration the fact that Big Brother is watching. We have a Big Brother in this country. And his all-seeing, all-purveying watchdog attitude is not comforting. We fail to take into consideration the fact that government has been suspected in almost all cases. We create incidents which allow us to move forward with the public opinion. And I feel very strongly that 9/11 is one of those instances that open the door to aggression in the Middle East. We’ve been involved in Afghanistan now, I read, according to the papers, 17 years and have yet to accomplish a hell of a lot. Iraq was a glaring example. We’re seeing some progress now in our Congress acting on the starvation that’s going on in Yemen. And perhaps we will no longer be complicit in that starvation. But 9/11 is still something that nobody wants to talk about. Even the chairmen of the committee assigned to investigate said it was not well-conducted or well-supplied by the government.
Steele: Right, the 9/11 Commission was really just a whitewash, a dog and pony show that had to be forced onto the government by 9/11 widows. Had they not done their activism in support of that, we probably wouldn’t have even had a 9/11 Commission. And, of course, there are problems with that story and with NIST’s story. Hence, why we exist. Hence, why we’re on this show right now. Hence, why we’re forcing them to talk about it. We’re not going away. We’re the telltale heart of this nation beating beneath the floor boards and making the murderers go insane. And hopefully in the future we’re going to have the vindication, the acknowledgment of what really happened on that day, because of the work of you and Richard and so many others who have been working at this for so many years.
And, Richard, I’m going to get a little personal now with you. How do you feel to see the years of work you’ve put in to this cause finally getting an opportunity to be presented in the judiciary?
Gage: It’s almost a bit unbelievable. I have to agree with Ed. It’s like, “Is this really happening? Can this really happen?” We’ve been at it for so long and we’ve been well-supported by the 9/11 Truth Movement, because they believe in us, because we have the truth, we walk in truth, we carry the truth of solid evidence that, once anybody looks at [it], will actually convince them.
And that gives me hope. The fact that the grand jury legally has to look at this — [has to] be assembled and has to look at this — gives me a great deal of hope.
Because here’s what they’re going to see. They’re going to see that a 47-story skyscraper, after witnesses hear explosions at about 5:20 in the afternoon of 9/11, this building drops suddenly, symmetrically, straight down into its own footprint almost in the exact manner of a classic controlled demolition in under seven seconds. We put this building side by side with other controlled demolitions; it looks exactly like them. The jury is going to see that.
They’re going to see that there are extreme temperatures — found and documented by first responders, structural engineers, iron workers, and others agencies — of 2,800°F. These are temperatures associated with the melting of steel. Normal office fires don’t even get to be a quarter of those temperatures. So where did all of this heat come from? This molten iron that is documented by so many of those, including agencies like FEMA, which documented the hot sulfur corrosion attack on the steel in their Appendix C of the Building Performance Assessment Report that came out in 2002 — where they actually document molten iron invading the steel. Where did this sulfur come from in this hot attack? They have no idea. They don’t even begin to speculate. But this is a metallurgical examination that was included in their final report.
And guess what: NIST came in and took over the effort, threw out that report and anything associated with the melting of steel. And yet it’s happening and documented in the beams found in World Trade Center 7 and in the Twin Towers. Structural engineer Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl says, “I saw melting of girders at the World Trade Center.” Jonathan Barnett, the FEMA author, says, “The ends of the beams were partially evaporated.” That takes 4,000 degrees to evaporate steel.
Well, wait. Why are the ends of the beams — can we look at those? Oh no. Because within two weeks after 9/11 the steel had begun to be shipped — put on barges and shipped to China for recycling — before investigators could ever get their hands on it to do a proper forensic investigation. 99.9% of the steel had been destroyed before that could happen.
And the Twin Towers: We’re told that the upper part of these buildings above the point of jet plane impact drove the rest of the building down to the ground and then destroyed itself, which is ludicrous because the videos all show that that upper part is destroying itself in the first four seconds. After that, we have ejected four-ton structural steel sections, thousands of them, laterally freely flying at 80 miles an hour out of the building, not down. Gravity works down. But these are flying laterally out of the building and they land 600 feet in every direction. So the steel is all disbursed outside the footprint.
The concrete floors, 90 thousand tons of them, are pulverized in midair and disbursed over a three-square-mile [area] of Lower Manhattan. So we don’t have the weight of the concrete, the weight of the steel to drive the building down to the ground at. It’s not there. That’s most of the weight of this building. There’s nothing left hardly to drive the building down to the ground at any rate, much less [at] near-free-fall acceleration, as if that steel weren’t even there. It had to be removed to accelerate downward.
And so we have the evidence of incendiaries found, not by conspiracy theorists, but by the U.S. Geological Survey and environmental engineering firms like RJ Lee, who document billions of previously molten iron microspheres in all the World Trade Center dust samples. How did molten iron get in the dust samples? That’s the evidence of the incendiary thermite, an incendiary that cuts through steel like a hot knife through butter. And they can be used in shaped cutter charges, which were indeed patented prior to 9/11, to issue molten iron because of thermite in just seconds, milliseconds. This is much more effective at cutting through steel.
And another team of international scientists, led by Niels Harrit in Copenhagen, finds the un-ignited red-gray chips, up to ten tons of this material — after ten tons of the previously molten iron microspheres found by those other agencies — these guys find red-gray chips of nano-thermite, ten tons of it, in all the dust samples.
So, we’ve got to get a real investigation that will look at this evidence that we’re laying out here and is in front of the grand jury as well. So [we're] finally getting that. And to make a long story short, I’m very excited about it, Andy!
But we’ve got to produce the additional motions and papers and documentation and declarations from the lawyers, and that’s going to take the next year. That’s why we’re raising $50,000. And that’s why we’re asking everybody to go to LCfor911.org or AE911Truth.org and help out. Make that donation at whatever level that you can afford, because it takes thousands of us at the lower levels, and hundreds of us at the mid level, and a few dozen of us at the highest levels of financial support. And so we’re very grateful for that.
Steele: Absolutely.
Asner: God bless you.
Gage: Thanks, Ed.
Steele: God bless you. And I want to say, it’s not just a small group of people doing this. This is everybody in the 9/11 Truth Movement. I know that there’s people who work with the Lawyers’ Committee. We’ve got our volunteers who do the work for us. We’re collaborating on this, and our staff burned the midnight oil to create a very special webpage just for this effort: AE911Truth.org/grandjury. Very slick page. It’s got some documents. It gives you a way to donate. And it’s all in here. We’re not going away, as I said before.
First Richard and then Ed, give your opinion on this. Something that I observed when this talk of 9/11 and the fact that we were lied to first started is that you would have scientists be invited onto a show such as Fox News. Some of these scientists may not have been known for having combative personalities. They’re just presenting facts as you just did. Corporate media hosts would jump down their throats, try to shut them down, not with any kind of facts or real insight, but just through bullying tactics. That set the tone for this debate for a number of years.
Now, I know that we’re very passionate about other things in this country and on other issues. But on this particular issue, 9/11, do you feel at all that the volume may have been turned down on the event because so much time has passed, to allow our citizenry, and maybe even some members of the media, to look at the evidence in a more scientific way than they did before?
Gage: I would have to say “yes.” We indeed have diminishing of the chatter and even the response to the 9/11 Truth Movement out there. We have less opportunity to get the attention of radio talk show hosts, even about this important development. I mean, isn’t that news, the fact that the U.S. Attorney is empaneling a grand jury to investigate the destruction of the three towers on 9/11? That is really big news. And yet not a peep from the mainstream media.
Steele: Ed, how do you feel? Do you feel the tone has changed since when we first started in this movement?
Asner: I think people are afraid. I think they are becoming sneakily aware that it’s not going away, [and] as much as they wish to dodge confrontation with this subject, they can’t dodge it. It’s going to be there, it’s going to be there forever until some answers come forth. I think people are beginning to — just the fact that Berman has presented the grand jury with this opening creates a stir that is hard to believe. And, hopefully, it will be a continuum that won’t be stopped.
Steele: Well, it hasn’t been stopped yet. It just keeps on growing despite what the corporate media tries to do, despite politicians who do everything they can to avoid this issue. We’re going to keep going.
And that’s an important thing to highlight here, because obviously our goal is to have this acknowledged, have it on the front page of The New York Times. I believe there’s secondary benefits of our activism, and I want to always remind our audience that. And I’ve said what my opinions are on this show in the past. But I want to hear it from both of you, starting with Richard. Aside from the goal of getting a new investigation, why is the work of constantly reminding the populace of these important issues with the September 11th official story so important?
Gage: Why are we doing this 12 years on, pushing a big rock up a big hill? This takes an incredible amount of energy, persistence, dedication, passion, and work. Ed’s been doing it. I’ve been doing it. You’ve been doing it. The Lawyers’ Committee’s been doing it. AE911Truth’s been doing it. Many other 9/11 Truth groups in every major metropolitan city around the country and around the world — we’ve given 600 presentations around the world.
And yet I would have to say, “What’s the motivation for that?” Well, we’ve been lied to on a massive scale. When I found this out on the radio as a normal architect, Reagan Republican, flag waving — I did not want to believe that this could have happened. I heard it on the radio, David Ray Griffin. He was talking about all this evidence we just summarized. And I’m going, “This couldn’t be true. This would mean I would have been — and everybody has been — lied to on a massive scale.” I don’t want to live in that kind of society. I’m not going to be silent when 3,000 Americans were murdered, two million Afghanis and Iraqis were murdered. We’ve invaded them. We’re spending now $6.5 trillion since 9/11. On what? On wars and a global War on Terrorism. Because of what? We were attacked on 9/11 by Muslim hijackers — well, when you really look into it, you find out it probably couldn’t be true. Muslims probably didn’t have access to the Twin Towers and Building 7. And the evidence seems to point elsewhere.
So this all a huge lie of such mammoth proportions that every American should be sitting in the streets not working. And we should throw every member of Congress out who hasn’t called for a 9/11 investigation. And we should not watch movies with actors in them who are not speaking out about 9/11. And so that’s why I’m going to be encouraging Ed to keep talking to his fellow actors until we can get some real publicity on this. Because that’s, these days, where a lot of publicity comes from, is when celebrities speak out.
Steele: Exactly. Ed, other than trying to get a new investigation and acknowledgment of the obvious, what is the benefit of raising these issues continuously throughout the years?
Asner: Trying to create a more intelligent citizenry, if you’ll forgive me. Trying to say that this is the best country in the world, but the government, whoever’s in charge at the time, then decides that they must keep this secret from the people. Or the government initiates an action and the people are expected to go along with it. I think we can afford to hear the truth. And after hearing the truth, then we can make up our minds what we want of our country. We’ve gone through a lot of lies over the years, and they’re rarely exposed. And I think, “Know ye the truth and the truth shall make you free.” I guess it’s that simple.
Steele: And you made a comment earlier about kicking yourself for not being more afraid to speak out. I think that you should not be kicking yourself. I think you speaking out is one of the most important things you can do, and it transcends worrying about what some random, unremarkable gossip columnist writes in an online [article] that will get forgotten the next day. It’s essentially them sticking their tongue out at us. That’s all it amounts to. I think that you have spoken out and that Richard has done the work that he has done and what the Lawyers’ Committee is doing right now, of course. And we’re going to keep everybody updated on that.
Guys, we’re almost at the end of the show. And I’m just going to ask you, beginning with Richard, do you have any final thoughts?
Gage: Yes, I think everybody can and should do something. Our conscience will guide us. My conscience guided me to start an organization. Not everybody needs to do that. From our own computer, we can get on and email a half a dozen, a dozen, or even a hundred people to send the link to AE911Truth.org to all those people and say, “Hey, there seems to be 3,000 architects and engineers who are demanding a new investigation. Are they all conspiracy theorists?”
You see, you don’t even have to hang your neck out there. We’re hanging our neck out there for you to use. How much easier can we make it for you? Ed Asner is hanging his neck out there publicly, for at least ten years or more, on this issue. So use us, for God’s sake! Send the LCfor911.org link to others and say, “Hey, did you know there’s a grand jury investigation of the destruction of the towers. Check. It. Out.” And, if you want, ask them to support it.
So this is what people need to do, Andy. They need to either volunteer with AE911Truth, sign our petition with AE911Truth (we have 20,000 others in addition to the 3,000 architects), or support us financially. Those are the choices. Otherwise, we’re going to lose our country.
Steele: Ed, any final thoughts?
Asner: I think Richard said it all. Money talks. Money helps solve this situation. And it’s not a lot of money we’re talking about. $50,000 is the goal, and to just show that we’re still alive. We’re still casting aspersions on the truthfulness of our government.
I think that the time has come for the military to be called into question as to what its purpose really is in the Middle East. What are we doing there? We brought Trump into power, and Trump immediately disparaged the agreement achieved with Iran and is out to punish our European allies for going along with it, condemning them, punishing them. And it merely muddies the Middle East situation even more. He has supported Saudi Arabia, even with its transgressions in Yemen and now Kashoggi’s death. I think we need a bracing type of news show such as you’re doing, Andy, of informing the people what the hell is going on with our country, so that we don’t keep making mistakes. And I think we’ve made a mistake in the Middle East. And I think that we made a very large mistake with 9/11.
Steele: Those are words to end it on. Richard Gage, Ed Anser, thank you for all you’re doing and thank you for coming on 9/11 Free Fall today.
Gage: Thanks, Andy, and thanks so much, Ed.
Asner: Thank you. Thank you for the honor.
