By Craig McKee
But what follows actually happened.
In my view, this is a story of incomprehensible judgment and betrayal. At stake is the survival of the most important 9/11 truth organization – Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. (For those who are not familiar with it, AE911Truth is a California-based nonprofit founded in 2006 by Richard Gage to advocate for a new investigation into the destruction of the World Trade Center towers.)
I witnessed this saga firsthand as AE’s principal writer (I have been involved with the organization in one capacity or another since 2014).
AE announced last week that it was bringing Gage back as CEO, four years after he had been fired. “Welcome Back!” exclaimed the notice posted by both parties. It listed Gage’s new board: himself; his wife, Gail (she would also be chief operating officer); and several architects and engineers. Current chairman Kamal Obeid would stay on in that role for an unspecified length of time while the only other current board member, Kelly David, would leave immediately.
In the weeks leading up to all this, Obeid told executive director Andy Steele he was ready to move on and believed AE should be handed back to Gage. Andy and I had serious reservations about this, although we didn’t like the status quo either.
The parties had weeks to work through the details. To make way for the new administration, and apparently at Gage’s insistence, Obeid and David terminated Andy – and me – without cause. (Andy understood this from communications with both David and Obeid.)
Andy was also voted off the board by the other two in what appears to be a violation of AE’s bylaws (Article 3, paragraph 1 requires that the board never dip below three members). Shortly after the vote, David and Obeid voted to add Gage and his entire team to the board.
So, with all the details seemingly worked out, the celebratory announcement was released on November 5. Gage would return, David would leave, and Obeid would remain chairman, at least in name.
But to paraphrase Pacino: Just when it seemed that David was out, she pushed herself back in.
Before the celebrations could begin, David indicated suddenly that she was not leaving after all, and that the conditions of the transfer had changed. According to Gage, David cited a 2016 AE policy that new board members must go through a two-month probation period before gaining voting rights. This was apparently a deal breaker for Gage. He calls this policy illegal, although he admits that he voted for it when he was on the AE board. It was also used in more than one instance while he was there, so his protest about its illegality now rings a bit hollow.
Ironically, the AE board waived this same probation period when it brought David back to the organization in 2024. Observers might wonder why she couldn’t agree to do this here, under the circumstances. After all, she had already voted to add the new board members. Whatever her reason, and whatever Obeid’s reason for going along, this has created a crisis that could sink this cornerstone of the 9/11 Truth Movement.
With the deal in shambles, Gage informed Obeid on the 9th that he was pulling out. He then shared the news on the 9/11 War Room podcast the same day, which I attended. Rather than hearing about the triumphant return, we got the shocking announcement from Gage that he had withdrawn. I usually like to think I’m a couple of steps ahead of the rest of the Truth Movement in knowing where things are going, but this time I was floored.
Supporters on the podcast urged Gage to wait the two months until he and his board could attain voting rights – then they could vote Obeid and David out. But in his own description of the situation, Gage has balked at this idea. He says he doesn’t want to be on the hook for decisions he has no control over, and he knows he has no guarantee that he won’t be voted off prior to the end of the two months.
Door still open?
Nevertheless, it appears that Gage is leaving the door open to a return. And my sense is that this is still what will happen. But it’s impossible to know, especially with David and Obeid involved. A key point that is unclear at the moment is whether Gage and his team are officially off the board now. If they remain on the board, then they could just wait the two months. But if they have been removed, then they would have to be voted on again by Obeid and David.
What is very clear is that Obeid and David have backed themselves into a corner that I see no way out of. They are clearly not equipped to run the organization themselves. They had already failed to attract new board members prior to the Gage plan, and they fired the two people who had been carrying the AE banner alone for months. In fact, Andy had been principally responsible for keeping AE going since he returned in early 2023.
David asserted in a communication with me that she is acting to protect AE by her current action, but instead I fear she may have sealed its doom. Since her return to the organization, David has contributed to escalating tensions, including through her relentless criticism of me to Andy and others even though she and I had hardly any work interactions. I dealt almost exclusively with Andy, who was quite happy with the work I did.
In her first stint with AE, David did very important work to keep the organization financially solid. She also played key roles in the AE films SEVEN and The Unspeakable. But amid a power struggle with AE’s then director of strategy, Ted Walter, she resigned as COO and board member in late 2022.
Then, at Andy’s invitation, she returned to the staff in the fall of 2024 to help with social media and fundraising, which is a portfolio that I had asked to take on. A year later, AE was nearly out of funds, and its remaining social media activity was handled almost entirely by Andy and me.
At some point after being added to the staff, David was made a board member once again, a move that made me very nervous at the time. Fast forward to last week, and she votes with Obeid to fire Andy, the very person who brought her back. To me, this is a stunning betrayal.
We were not removed because we were not doing good work – in fact, we were the only people doing any work for this organization. We had just come off what I think was a very successful online anniversary conference, Dawn of the Truth. No, our removal was done to pave the way for the handing back of AE to Gage.
It must also be pointed out that the duo bringing Gage back was part of the crew that sacked him in the first place. It’s like they’re admitting that they were wrong in 2021, that the reasons they considered Gage to be a detriment then were wrong. If that’s the case, then they shouldn’t have fired him in the first place. But were they wrong? I’ll save that question for another article.
To be clear, Gage is far from blameless in all of this. He wrote an announcement of his return (approved by Obeid) that contained the false statement that Andy had “stepped down” to pursue a film version of his graphic novel Born on 9/11. I don’t know if they both thought Andy would be happy with this sanitized version, but he was not. My view is that they didn’t include this false statement to spare Andy any embarrassment, they did it to obscure the fact that Andy was forced out. But it was not their right to do this.
Even more problematic was that on the podcast, Gage recounted that he received a call in September from Obeid and David, who said they weren’t happy with “some of the people they were working with,” and they pleaded with Gage to come back and save the day. David contradicts this version in a recent email to me. She denies having been part of such an approach. But whether she was or not, it was inappropriate for Gage to share this, which unfairly casts Andy and me in a negative light. There are also serious concerns with Gage’s new board, but I’ll address that subject in a future article.
Then today, on his Substack page, Gage “liked” a comment that read: “Sounds very much like there is infiltration (by gifts or threats) by those who don’t want the truth of the events exposed. One is down last week, but many others remain…”
Who did the commenter mean? And to whom does, “one is down last week,” refer? Gage should clarify this and explain why he liked this comment.
This is a real crisis for the 9/11 Truth Movement. AE is too important to be allowed to die. I continue to care about it despite how I was treated. I write about it not out of spite but because transparency and accountability are essential for any movement that seeks truth.
What happens next will determine whether AE survives as an independent voice or whether it collapses because of poor judgment and internal dysfunction.
Is that the whole story? Not by a long shot. But it’s a beginning.
Please check out Part 2, which deals with Gage deleting a crucial Pentagon interview from the AE911Truth website and Part 3, which addresses the November 21 statement by the AE board.