Changes to Characteristic Features List

The backbone to the AE911Truth argument is a list of characteristic features of controlled demolitions.

Lists, I should say, because there are three different lists being used right now, and they keep undergoing revisions without a single acknowledgment of such from AE911Truth.

Table of contents

• First Slideshow — Irrelevant Items, Special Pleading
• Second Slideshow — New Category, New Items
• Third Slideshow — Three Lists
• Fourth Slideshow — Elimination of "Fire cannot produce..."
• Fifth Slideshow — "Beyond A Reasonable Doubt"
• Conclusion

Please note - this page sets aside the question of whether or not AE911Truth actually proves any of these characteristics. This is strictly an examination of how their argument keeps changing.

First Slideshow — Irrelevant Items, Special Pleading

The very first lists come from the first version of the slideshow:



This is slide 15. As is clearly implied in this slide, a controlled demolition will have all of these characteristics. Several of them are unusual, such as Foreknowledge and Gov't Documentation. Of course, actual controlled demolitions are documented by official sources, with permits and the like. That isn't what Gage means, though. He's talking about studies of the WTC collapses, and that's not something that is actually a feature of controlled demolitions, not unless there's something that goes very wrong and requires an investigation. And the type of "foreknowledge" displayed by people on 9/11 doesn't approach the necessary foreknowledge of an actual controlled demolition. That is known beforehand because people know they are putting charges into a building stripped cleaned of furnishings and combustibles. The only foreknowledge demonstrated on 9/11 is an educated guess based on prior information. Richard Gage and company seems not to be able to believe that firefighting officials could observe the collapse of the South Tower and not realize that the North Tower and then 7 World Trade could fall in the same way.

This, then, is a summation of their basic argument at this point in time:


This is a perfectly valid argument, by the way. Should the truth of the first and second premises be demonstrated, we would all have to agree that the conclusion was correct. The list of features above is the backbone of his entire presentation.

This is what Richard Gage intended to do, and therefore he worked through this list twice in the first slideshow. He left it unaltered for WTC 7:



But as you can see, he changed several items to apply this list to the Towers. This is known as Special Pleading, in which a person asserts that they are exempt from a standard without adequate justification. This is quite interesting because Gage is the one who put this particular standard into place. He constructed this list of CD features and must alter his own standard to apply it to the Towers!

Please do notice the caption on the left there. Clearly AE911Truth intends that all of the characteristics of controlled demolition using explosives have been listed. Otherwise, their argument wouldn't make any sense. If some CD features weren't listed, then how could AE911Truth claim that all of the features had been demonstrated?

Second Slideshow — New Category, New Items

Gage continued this trend in the second version of his slideshow:




There are some important differences here, however. Gage presents no blanket slide of a CD features list. There are only the two slides you see above, with most instances of special pleading clearly underlined and printed in yellow type. However, the notion of a standard list is present on both slides.

The same irrelevant features appear, but the WTC 7 slide has labeled only those characteristic features on the right that of controlled demolition. The Twin Towers' is now labeled Characteristics of Explosive Demolition. Having created several exceptions to their own list of CD features, they have actually created their own category of demolition. Never before or since can Richard Gage and AE911Truth point to a single example of explosive demolition. It is a category they have produced to cloak their special pleading with scientific-sounding analysis.

They have also added new items to their lists. Even though they had claimed to present all of the features of CD using explosives in their first presentation, they now have added iron microspheres to their pools of molten steel feature. The explosive demolition list has added a Lateral Expulsion feature, dropping the All Columns Cut At Once feature. Evidently, the creation of this new category means that they can go crazy adding characteristics. Why not when you're the one stacking the deck?

Third Slideshow — Three Lists

When you are the one stacking your own deck, you should be able to play with it, correct?



In the third version of the slideshow, AE911Truth replaced the blanket CD features list. That's it up above. However, right before this change of slideshow, Richard Gage made the following announcement at 911Blogger:


I'm glad Gage gave up this argument, but he's wrong about the smoke "poofing out." That's actually a part of the building ripping loose. (More details at Squibs.)

However, this left Gage with a dilemma. He could either admit that he couldn't prove all of the characteristic features of a CD in the case of Building 7, or he could change the list for Building 7 and pretend that he had indeed proven all characteristics of controlled demolition for it.

Guess which one he chose?



As you can see, the list for 7 World Trade (170 slides away from the blanket CD slide) doesn't include squibs in the list. Instead, he's replaced it with Pools of Molten Iron, even though he never presented any specific evidence for pools of molten iron in the vicinity of 7 World Trade.

Of course, the Twin Towers' list is radically different from either of these:



Now we find that Gage must not only make a case for special pleading for his Towers list, the same holds true for his 7 World Trade list as well. Funnily enough, these slides don't maintain the difference between controlled demolition and explosive demolition as established in the second slideshow. This distinction is also maintained on their front page, so why the distinction has been eliminated in the slideshow I couldn't tell you.

Fourth Slideshow — Elimination of "Fire cannot produce..."

The fourth slideshow didn't change these slides very much as far as I can document. (It changed so quickly into the fifth version that I had not yet documented all the slides for myself!)




I only have the main list and the list for 7 World Trade. As you can see, the only change from their third-version counterparts is the elimination of the sentence "Fire cannot produce even ONE of these characteristics...". I guess someone must have made him aware that fires can produce large explosions without the need for human-controlled devices. Perhaps it was only to clean up the appearance of the slide. Who know? Only the inner sanctum of AE911Truth.

Otherwise, Squibs remain dropped for Pools of Molten Iron in 7 World Trade, and the features are described as those from explosive demolition, all just as the third slideshow had it.

Fifth Slideshow — "Beyond A Reasonable Doubt"

The fifth slideshow changed somewhat, but the main characteristic features slide is exactly the same:



However, the 7 World Trade slide and the Twin Towers slide have a single, major addition:




In the Proof of Controlled Demolition element, the phrase "Beyond a reasonable doubt" has been added to both slides. This appears to have been a response to someone pointing out to them that "pools of molten metal" is not a characteristic feature of controlled demolitions:




YouTube video detailing email conversation

This is a major change in the argumentative strategy of AE911Truth.

Before now, they were claiming that they had listed all the features of a controlled demolition and that the buildings fit them all. As you can see, they had modified this list from the beginning for the Twin Towers. When Richard Gage (or this "AE Team") became convinced of the falsity of the "squibs" argument for 7 World Trade, that list was altered, leaving them to issue special pleadings in both cases against their own specially made list.

But now they have reversed course. Now they are not claiming to prove an inescapably logical case. Now they are only claiming that the evidence suggests controlled demolition. It is a far weaker argument, but one they have been driven to by the silly way they'd constructed their argument before.

Or have they? They continue to maintain the trappings of their old argument. Their front page still claims that all the features of a controlled demolition or demolition using explosives are demonstrated by the collapses of these buildings. They had given a nod to this new strategy by saying some unspecified features were non-standard characteristics, but even that fig leaf is gone now.

And you will notice from that above exchange that a) they could not provide a single example of reports of molten metal resulting from an actual controlled demolition, b) they shifted the goalpost from all CD features proven to "incompatible with the official story", and c) they shifted the goalposts again from "incompatible with the official story" to "not explained by the official story."

In other words, they have adopted the recent strategy of their mentor, David Ray Griffin, when in promoting his most recent 9/11 CT book, 9/11 Contradictions, he explained his reasoning for not producing an actual alternate hypothesis:


However, Griffin, Gage, and the gang are indeed pointing a finger at a guilty party (or two). And an examination of their actual questions shows a pitiful lack of factual basis behind their questions.

Conclusion

So here is where it stands. Over the year or so of its existence, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth have repeatedly retreated from their argument. Where they started with a clear list of features and the need to only special plead against that list for the Towers, they are now special pleading the Towers, Building 7, and even features within their own specially composed list. They have gone from the basis of a valid deductive argument (though they could not prove the premises of it) to one which is only circumstantial and "beyond a reasonable doubt."

This leads me to conclude that AE911Truth's argument is unfalsifiable. There is no evidence that would change their minds about the way these buildings fell. They would only ever retreat from positions and even alter their hypothesis without comment to maintain their ironclad position that the buildings were destroyed with explosive devices. Their pursuit of these matters is a mockery of science as palpable as creationism, for much the same reasons.

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