Walter sabotaged AE after being fired. Then he joined forces with those who have been undermining AE and suppressing the Pentagon evidence for years

January 21, 2024

By Craig McKee

I’ve been asserting for some time that there is a campaign being waged – now under the banner of the recently created “International Center for 9/11 Justice” – to eliminate and replace Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth as the Truth Movement’s leading organization.

Although the pattern has been evident for months, I can now bring you the most glaring piece of evidence yet to show what the IC911’s agenda really is. This comes in the form of a damning January 19, 2023, email from Ted Walter, now the executive director of the IC911, to Professor Leroy Hulsey of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). The message urges Hulsey to abandon his association with AE911Truth, the organization that funded his four-year computer-modeling study on the destruction of World Trade Center Building 7.

Walter wrote the email just eight days after being fired from his job as AE’s director of strategy and development.

As most reading this article know, Hulsey’s ground-breaking UAF study, published in March 2020, concludes that for the building to have come down as it did, all the steel support columns had to have failed at virtually the same instant. These findings were featured, as was Hulsey, in the AE documentary SEVEN, directed by Dylan Avery, with Kelly David managing the production throughout. (She served as AE’s chief operating officer until her resignation at the end of November 2022.)

In his email to Hulsey, Walter launched venomous attacks against AE operations manager Andy Steele and AE board members Kamal Obeid and Larry Cooper (Cooper is no longer with the organization). Walter concluded his email by writing that if these three are “the kind of people running AE, how long are you going to continue to work with this organization? Others will certainly be leaving soon.”

When Walter wrote this, he wasn’t just speculating, he was working aggressively to make it happen.

Walter worked for AE for eight years, but it took him just eight days after being fired to betray the organization. His boss for all of those years was David, who decided to move on from AE amid Walter’s internal lobbying campaign to get her fired.

“What he did with Hulsey is really like sticking your middle finger up to the 3,600 architects and engineers who put their reputations on the line for something this important,” David said in an interview. “And this cause is so important.”

More about Walter’s attempted AE coup in a moment. But first, let’s take a closer look at the organization Walter helped create, the IC911, which pretentiously refers to itself as an “institute,” and its activities as “international in scope.” (It’s all about the spin.)

The group is actually not new at all. It is just a rewarmed combination of three “organizations” that had become largely inactive: the Journal of 9/11 Studies, the 2011 Toronto Hearings, and the 9/11 Consensus Panel. Featured on the IC911’s board are people who have spent the past decade or more suppressing critical evidence concerning what happened at the Pentagon on 9/11 – evidence that is essential for proving government complicity in the event. The board members in question are David Chandler, Kevin Ryan, and Elizabeth Woodworth. (For more about the Pentagon cabal, check the links at the bottom of this article.)

Also on the board are Piers Robinson, Marilyn Langlois, and James Gourley.

 

Erasing the role of AE

It gets worse.

Walter’s email to Hulsey was CC’d to then AE board members Scott Grainger and Bill Brinnier. Both resigned from the AE board a couple of weeks later (Grainger on February 2, 2023, and Brinnier on February 4). Brinnier, who supported Walter in his coup attempt, is now on the IC911’s “9/11 Community Advisory Committee” along with two high-profile 9/11 family members that Walter also took with him: Bob McIlvaine and Matt Campbell. Both have significant histories with AE.

I have a hunch that it isn’t “advice” the IC911 is looking for from these three; it’s the credibility and prestige that comes with their names. They are valuable because they reinforce the false and manufactured notion of the IC911 supplanting AE as the Truth Movement’s go-to organization.

McIlvaine’s collaboration with AE goes back many years – in particular with the effort to get Congress to launch a new 9/11 investigation. Most recently McIlvaine and his wife, Helen, appeared in the AE documentary The Unspeakable (which reunited the creative team of Avery and David).

From McIlvaine’s biography on the IC911 site, we learn that he “helped spearhead a campaign to introduce and enact legislation named after his son — known as the Bobby McIlvaine World Trade Center Investigation Act — which would establish a select committee in Congress to reinvestigate the destruction of the three World Trade Center towers.”

What the bio leaves out is who McIlvaine helped. The fact that this Act, and the campaign to promote it, were AE initiatives (the idea came from Andy Steele as did much of the work) is not even mentioned. Neither is the fact that The Unspeakable was an AE film.

As for Campbell, it was AE that funded the legal effort to reopen the UK inquiry into his brother Geoff’s death in the World Trade Center’s North Tower. The legal costs to AE exceeded $90,000. Now, the IC911 has hijacked the Campbell case to boost its profile and create for itself a reputation it did not earn. On the IC911’s website we read: “Among other things, the Center is currently assisting the family of British 9/11 victim Geoff Campbell in their effort to open a new inquest into Geoff’s death in the North Tower.”

The IC911 now takes credit for “assisting the family” as the Campbell family awaits an answer from the Attorney General for England and Wales on whether a new inquest will be granted. Not a word about how AE made the whole thing possible. In fact, not any mention of AE at all in Campbell’s bio.

In fact, AE never indicated that it would not be continuing with the case in the event that the AG gave the green light to a new inquest. What was in doubt was whether AE would have been willing to fund an appeal of a negative decision.

I would have thought Campbell would have shown more gratitude for all the help he has received from AE and its donors. Perhaps he was convinced by Walter that the IC911 was taking charge of the case, but to allow his bio to go up without any mention of all that AE did for his family? That’s not right.

As far as I’m concerned, the case should either go back to AE or the IC911 should reimburse AE for its costs so far. The way it has been left is completely unfair. Outrageously unfair. AE and its donors funded this case, and the IC911 is going to take all the credit if it succeeds.

So, Matt, what’s it going to be? It’s also up to AE to reassert its involvement in this case.

There are other examples of the IC911 competing with AE and trying to steal its thunder – like Walter latching onto Jimmy Dore’s interview with Hulsey, which was set up by Steele. After failing to poach Hulsey a year ago, Walter and the other “ethical” folks at the IC911 couldn’t just let AE have the Jimmy Dore success. They couldn’t leave AE to develop that relationship for the benefit of the movement. They just had to move in on Dore to gain control of AE’s relationship with this valuable ally and get the attention back on them.

The article on the IC911 site about the Dore/Hulsey interview has this headline: “Big day for 9/11 justice: Jimmy Dore interviews Leroy Hulsey and IC911 debates Twin Towers’ destruction.”

Did you notice the almost subliminal reference to “9/11 justice” as opposed to “9/11 truth”? This isn’t a coincidence; it’s spin. It’s psychological manipulation of the kind we’ve been seeing in the Truth Movement for the better part of two decades from Chandler and his cabal.

It’s a sales job aimed at convincing us all that we need to buy a shiny new “International Center for 9/11 JUSTICE” and trade in our older “Architects & Engineers for 9/11 TRUTH.” If we fall for this, we are heading for some serious buyers’ remorse. Soon enough we’ll find out that the IC911 isn’t a shiny new car; it’s a rusted 15-year-old Hyundai with some new paint slapped on.

 

AE role in MacQueen film erased

Those reading the IC911 article are also asked to write to Dore to urge him to interview IC911 board member Kevin Ryan about who was responsible for 9/11. In fact, the IC911 is pushing a lot for Ryan to be interviewed lately. He spoke at the IC911 co-sponsored conference “Genocide and Empire,” which focused on the “geopolitics of Israel’s war on Palestine.” I learned of this through one of the regular emails sent out by Colorado 9/11 Truth, which is run by IC911 board member David Chandler and his partner, Fran Shure. Chandler, Shure, and Ryan are all members of the cabal that has been dividing the Truth Movement for years while they push almost the entire government narrative about what happened at the Pentagon.

Some of you might recall that Ryan virtually ignored the possibility of Israeli complicity in 9/11 in his book Another Nineteen. In the introduction to this book (p. 14), he also gave us this pearl: “For simplicity, this alternative conspiracy should accept as much of the official account as possible, including that the alleged hijackers were on the planes.”

According to the agenda of the most recent meeting of Boston 9/11 Truth, Walter is now lobbying Dore to promote the documentary Peace, War and 9/11 about the late Graeme MacQueen. This was an AE project that was proposed by Walter, who co-directed. It was shot entirely while Walter and David were still at AE, although all post production was done after Walter left. The funding went through AE, although the money didn’t come from AE’s regular donors. David did extensive work on the film, including arranging for director of photography Ryan Patrick O’Hara. (He also shot SEVEN and The Unspeakable and is a regular member of Dylan Avery’s team).

The problem with all this is that the film is now billed as having been made by the International Center for 9/11 Justice through its “production company.” The fact that the film was conceived and shot as an AE project, and that David did much work on facilitating the production, is not acknowledged. She is not even mentioned in the film’s credits. A list of people given “special thanks” doesn’t mention her.

More spin by omission. More truth goes down the memory hole.

 

Walter’s tactics exposed

Kelly David explains that she and Walter worked very closely together during their time at AE, with him often telling her that he considered her to be “like family.” Despite this, he was determined to become AE’s executive director, even after a vote had been held to appoint David to that position late in the summer of 2022 (the promotion would have taken effect at the beginning of 2023).

Walter had previously pushed for the CEO position in 2021 even while discussions were still going on about whether Richard Gage (who was the CEO at the time) would be fired. For years Walter was the loudest voice at AE calling for Gage’s dismissal.

After David was appointed executive director, Walter proposed to her that he be named co-executive director. When this didn’t happen, she says he began a ruthless campaign of character assassination against her to get the AE board to dump her and give the executive director position to him. David says Walter’s campaign led her to decide that she had had enough.

Following her departure, Steele stepped down in protest over how she had been treated. He only returned after Walter was fired on January 11, 2023.

Here’s what David, who remains a strong supporter of AE, has to say about what Walter did:

“This guy stabbed me in the back, screwed me over, lied about me, made stuff up, took stuff I told him in confidence, and sent out screen shots to people in the movement to complain about me and others,” David explains. “He literally searched through years of texts that should have been kept confidential and sent them to others.”

She adds: “Now you have this new organization [IC911] that is headed up by the guy who doesn’t care about the cause. If he cared about the cause he wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to AE.”

According to Chandler, it was Walter who approached him, and others, in early 2023 about creating a new organization. This may be true – Walter would certainly be looking to replace his lost income as quickly as possible – but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, based on past behavior, to hear that Chandler was the one who contacted Walter. Chandler did exactly that when Gage was fired.

Chandler also wrote to AE chairman Roland Angle after Gage’s firing, looking for the same thing. He evidently thought he could influence the new AE CEO (Angle was appointed to this position when Gage departed). Angle, however, declined to talk to Chandler. In fact, he rebuked him for his incessant attempts over the years to interfere with AE’s internal operations. Angle deserves the respect of the Truth Movement for having the integrity to do this. He certainly has mine.

 

If you can’t join ’em, beat ’em

Most so-called “leaders” of the movement have bent the knee to Chandler as if he has compromising photos of them. Those who have done so should be ashamed of themselves for choosing collegiality and pseudo “respectability” over truth. As I unveil this whole story in the weeks and months ahead, I’ll be writing more about the failure of integrity of these 9/11 truth “celebrities” and those who enable them.

Chandler wrote to Gage often while Gage was still with AE, pressuring him on a number of subjects. He tried to establish a “formal relationship” between AE and Scientists for 9/11 Truth of which Chandler is the “coordinator.” AE declined. He pressured Gage and the AE board to fire me on numerous occasions over a period of years (I’ve worked with the organization in various capacities over the past decade). Chandler also suggested that David and Steele could be agents (or were at least acting that way) because, independent of AE, they added their names to my “No 757 hit the Pentagon” list.

Apparently, it’s a “conflict” for David and Steele to state independent positions on the Pentagon (opinions that, incidentally, go entirely against the official story), while it’s not a problem for Chandler and his cabal to push ALMOST EVERY ELEMENT OF THE PENTAGON OFFICIAL STORY year after year.

Gage plays a big part in this story also, but that’s another article. I have been critical of him for competing with his former organization instead of finding a way to complement it. I address (or at least introduce) the subject of Gage’s role in trying to marginalize AE in a Truth and Shadows post.

It’s also worth mentioning that Gage posted an article about the Hulsey interview, claiming personal credit for having “hired” Hulsey. Gage later added that this happened while he was at AE but only after I challenged him on it. Hulsey wasn’t actually hired at all (except by the UAF). I urged Gage to remove the word “hired” because it makes it sound like Hulsey’s findings were bought and paid for. They weren’t.

Chandler and Shure’s Colorado group sent out a message about the interview, acknowledging that the UAF study had been initiated by AE911Truth but adding: “under Richard Gage.” The IC911 and Chandler’s cabal are happy to pump up Gage if it means damaging AE. (Keep that spin coming…)

In fact, it was the firing of Gage in 2021 that marked a change in strategy by those seeking to take control of the Truth Movement. Where they had previously been pressuring and manipulating the leadership of AE, after Gage was fired they focused on trying to make AE seem irrelevant. It’s a propaganda campaign every bit as insidious as the mainstream media effort to crush 9/11 truth by calling all of its advocates “conspiracy theorists.”

The emergence of the IC911 and the intensifying campaign to obliterate AE911Truth mark the beginning of another chapter in the battle for the soul of 9/11 Truth Movement. The attempt by the IC911 and Chandler’s Pentagon cabal to rewrite history is just a continuation of two decades of deception and spin. What I’ve described in this article just scratches the surface of the long-term attempt to poison this cause.

They say that history is written by the victors. We mustn’t let the history of 9/11 truth be written by those whose priority isn’t truth.

 

Links:

https://thoughtcrimesandmisdemeanors.substack.com/p/the-assassination-of-a-movement-the
https://truthandshadows.com/2018/09/04/cabal-props-up-pentagon-official-story/
https://truthandshadows.com/2019/02/13/most-persistent-911-threat/
https://truthandshadows.com/2017/12/11/the-no-757-hit-the-pentagon-list/
https://truthandshadows.com/2015/10/03/chandler-goes-debunker/
https://truthandshadows.com/2015/10/19/credibility-of-ae911truth-co-opted-to-push-pentagon-plane-impact/ 
https://truthandshadows.com/2015/10/19/credibility-of-ae911truth-co-opted-to-push-pentagon-plane-impact/
https://truthandshadows.com/2013/08/03/the-kevin-ryan-paradox-the-way-to-show-the-911-official-story-is-false-is-by-accepting-as-much-of-it-as-possible/