Richard (Tricky Dick) Gage is the president and founder of the group Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (ae.911truth.org ) which advocates among other things that World Trade Center 1, 2 & 7 were not destroyed by a natural collapse due to aircraft impacts and raging fires but rather by controlled demolition - ie: the event was staged by someone "on the inside". In 2006 Gage quit his day job as a working architect and took up his favorite hobby full time, travelling the world spreading his message, collecting donations and signatures worldwide for his Petition calling for a new official investigation into 9/11. Signers must be either current or retired architects or engineers although his definition of these terms is very broad. While there are tens of millions of architects and engineers around the world, 7 years later the petition is currently up to only 1,813 names - a pathetic turnout by any measure - with just 1 to 3 new names added every month. Here is what the petition says:
On Behalf of the People of the United States of America, the undersigned Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth and affiliates hereby petition for, and demand, a truly independent investigation with subpoena power in order to uncover the full truth surrounding the events of 9/11/01 – specifically the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers and Building 7. We believe there is sufficient doubt about the official story to justify re-opening the 9/11 investigation. The new investigation must include a full inquiry into the possible use of explosives that might have been the actual cause of the destruction of the World Trade Center Twin Towers and Building 7.
The so-called "petition" is written so it is easy to agree with and it carries no obligation to "do" anything. This is good because none of the signers have done anything. They don't publish articles in peer reviewed journals, they don't speak at engineering conferences - nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero.
This petition was started before the release of NCSTAR 1-9 that includes an investigation into "Hypothetical Blast Scenarios".(Appendix D), therefore his request has been fulfilled, yet he keeps plugging away at it, begging for new donations and selling DVD's and "Activist Packs" while he ignores the findings of NCSTAR 1-9 and fails to tell his audience it even exists. This is at the least dishonest.
What is perhaps worse, Gage doesn't even use the alleged expertise of his collected experts in his "research". The latest example is this article at ae911truth.org: FAQ #11: Does the NIST WTC 7 computer animation of the collapse prove that the skyscraper came down by fire? This discusses NIST's simulations - FEA and all. You'd need expertise with FEA as a structural engineer to expertly opine on that issue. But the authors have none: Chris Sarns is a carpenter who does fire simulations with MS Paint. Gregg Roberts is a business analyst, and Richard Gage is a run-of-the-mill-architect-turned-marketing-ace. In similar vein, David Chandler, physics teacher in high school, is presented as an expert because he is a physics teacher. But he isn't an engineer, his expertise is with simplified scenarios suitable for basic understanding in high school. No wonder the conclusions they reach are so laughably wrong. A real investigator would not try to determine things that are outside of their area of expertise. They would bring in experts who understood those things. That is the difference between Gage and say Popular Mechanics. He does it wrong, they did it right but a layperson, seeing Gage's site for the first time doesn't know this.
AE911truth is not a research organization. It is a money-making propaganda machine. None of the experts that Gage presents offers original research or original conclusions and Gage had his mind fully made up long before the first architects or engineers showed up. His "experts" follow him, not vice versa. The "experts" are selected by conclusion, not by how they applied their expertise to the problem at hand.
Every profession has its share of quacks, charlatans, and crackpots, despite the best efforts of universities, licensing authorities, and professional societies to weed them out. That's just a fact of life. Gage has collected a bunch of them. Crackpots attract other crackpots and eventually you have a cult following - which is exactly what Gage has.
Sorry to be so blunt but I really have no respect at all for what Gage does or how he does it.