He cherry-picks the appearance of three nonexperts from the 15-minute video “Architects & Engineers — Solving the Mystery of Building 7,” but doesn’t highlight any of the film’s “various experts.” Noting that some Americans think that what happened that day hasn’t “been fully explained,” he declares, “I don’t agree,” but gives no evidence-based reason for disagreeing. His position rests on his revulsion at the idea that someone — “our own government,” he supposes — consciously demolished the World Trade Center.

Sadly, not one sentence of Beam’s column examines the evidence for or against the controlled demolition of the Twin Towers and WTC Building 7. Instead, he devotes 600 words to revealing his own ill-founded bias.

Alex Beam’s portrayal of “architect truthers” is yet another disappointing example of a journalist resorting to ad hominem attacks and avoiding the facts when discussing the destruction of the three World Trade Center skyscrapers on Sept. 11, 2001 ( “The ‘truthers’ and 9/11,” Opinion, Nov. 16).


As building professionals, we at Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth try not to let personal feelings interfere with investigating the three worst structural failures in modern history. Nearly 2,400 architects and engineers, not including the 109 who signed our petition at the recent annual trade show ABX, have joined us because we stick to science.

The physical evidence shows that scattered office fires could not have caused the 47-story WTC 7 to collapse symmetrically into its footprint. (Imagine Boston’s 52-story Prudential Tower completely collapsing in seven seconds from small fires — it’s hard to, isn’t it?) The evidence also shows that the twin towers were not leveled by the airplane impacts and ensuing fires.

The implications are indeed far-reaching, and that is why we urge people to study all the evidence before reaching a conclusion.

Richard Gage

Berkeley, Calif.

The writer is the founder and CEO of the nonprofit organization Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.