Unless the buildings were indeed the victims of some elaborate and sinister conspiracy involving thermite and demolition charges, then we must concede the airplane crashes destroyed them. I don't doubt the designers considered the mechanical effects of being struck by aircraft, but the thermal effects caused by flame were obviously overlooked.

The immediate cause of the collapse was obviously not planned for. My speculation is that it was the result of the burning fuel and the massive amounts of paper in the building, not to mention other flammables, plus perhaps the ventilating properties of the building which created updrafts and furnace-like conditions. Perhaps the combination of aluminum and iron (which is nothing but steel with extra carbon in it) and intense heat created the ingredients for thermite (Iron and Aluminum oxides). Aluminum was also a major building structural component. We don't know, and I'm sure better minds than ours are puzzling over this right now.

Since both identical towers had similar initial damage and identical fates, it is not unreasonable to assume that there was something about their design that contributed to their destruction. Perhaps, because of their design, a draft was set up which force-fed oxygen to the flames and weakened the internal structure in a way which led to the nature of the collapse. Perhaps we will never know, but the accusation of deliberate destruction, and the implication that it was an elaborate case of politically motivated mass murder is highly irresponsible. The fact that even if we accept this heinous motive it makes no sense from the point of view of the alleged conspirators, makes me very suspicious of this accusation. Too many things just don't add up, even before you get into the architecural questions.

Every fact broght up, the noises, vibrations, explosions, flashes, smoke events, etc might very well have innocent explanations. And of course, we only have Gage's word and the cherry picked testimony of his expert witnesses to tell us otherwise. His insinuations of cover-ups and sweepings under the rug do not ring true, and his quoting of witnesses during the event itself strike me as cheap shots designed to dramatize what he has already decided to prove.

It is easy after the fact to select data to prove almost anything you want. For example, consider the following scenario which I once concocted as a possible plot outline for a novel; beware, this is purely a fictional scenario:

************begin fictional scenario*************************

The South African Apartheid government, afraid of negative world opinion and possible invasion and infiltration from African states to the north, develops a biological warfare plan aimed at black Africa. Using their extensive knowledge of the human immune system (South Africans pioneered heart transplants) the evil scientists design a biological weapon system they feel certain will only affect blacks. They develop a virus that only affects the immune system, so that actual death is by some secondary cause, to help cover their trail. They design the pathogen so it can only be transmitted by direct infection through injections, it is not highly contagious, so it is not likely to spread to white South Africans.

They also design the virus so it's incubation period is very long, making it very difficult to trace its origin, further covering their tracks. The disease is not very contagious, so it must be spread deliberately, they choose to include the pathogen in a super vaccine for multiple common tropical diseases, which they accomplish by hijacking and counterfeiting legitimate vaccine stocks and inserting their deadly bug into it. The plan is that many years after innoculations are administered to children by unknowing aid workers and health agencies, young and otherwise healthy people start dying, apparently of other causes.

What they fail to consider is that the virus mutates, and it evolves into a form that can be sexually transmitted. They also fail to anticipate that a totally unexpected cluster of the disease in San Francisco puts medical detectives on the trail and they isolate the bug way ahead of schedule.

*****************end of fictional scenario***********

I eventually abandoned this idea when, during my research, I uncovered some facts about the disease that made this scenario highly unlikely. But the point I'm trying to make is that if you set out to prove something outrageous, you can usually find the superficial evidence you need to make it plausible.

PS. My novel was going to be about a ship loaded with this vaccine that sinks, and a private salvager decides to raise the wreck and recover the expensive (but long shelf life) vaccine, repackage it, and sell it at an enormous profit. He is not aware of the true nature of the deadly vials, but the evil SA government agents (now desperately trying to cover up evidence of their involvement in what has become a world-wide epidemic) tries to stop him, with every dastardly means at their disposal. Not bad, eh?