Pentagon interview censored on AE site in Gage return: Assassinating AE911Truth (Part 2)

Gage claims he deleted Aldo Marquis interview to maintain 'neutrality'

By Craig McKee

When Andy Steele and I learned that control of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth was being transferred back to founder Richard Gage, we were worried that Gage would delete articles and videos that Steele and I had created. We were especially concerned about material dealing with the Pentagon evidence.

It turned out that our concern was justified — shortly after the transfer collapsed, one of our Pentagon pieces disappeared from the website.

And how it happened is just as troubling as the fact that it did. And, yes, it does matter very much to the 9/11 truth cause, as I will explain. But first, I’ll lay out the sequence of events.

The return of Gage to AE was announced with much fanfare on November 5, but by the 9th it had all come undone, and Gage withdrew. Several days after the collapse of the leadership transfer, an interview done by Steele and I with Pentagon researcher Aldo Marquis of Citizen Investigation Team suddenly disappeared from the AE website. The interview covered CIT’s findings on the North-of-Citgo flight path — a path incompatible with the physical damage at the Pentagon.

The video was one of 10 done for the Dawn of the Truth online conference, broadcast on September 13. A wide range of topics were discussed in the conference, including the plans of the global elite, censorship, and the Ukraine war. But the Marquis interview is the only one that disappeared.

There appear to be only two people who could have removed the article: Gage himself and IT man Chris Rocco, who had been volunteering for AE for many years and who was helping Gage make changes to the site before the transfer of control collapsed. But what is concerning is that both men claim to have taken this action independently.

Gage says he removed the article himself before the collapse (while working on updating the site with Rocco), while Rocco says he removed it after the collapse without Gage’s knowledge. Both cannot be true.

I asked Gage on November 17 to explain why he wanted the article removed, and he responded:

“I unpublished the article because it appeared in the article carousel right next to my AE transition article. And I thought that was a bad combination. My intention as CEO was to stay out of the Pentagon controversy.”

Mission not accomplished.

Here is what Gage wrote to AE board member Kelly David, also on November 17:

“Rocco was acting under my authorization. He accessed only the platforms that I previously listed, and he undertook the actions that I previously listed.”

And in another message the same day:

“The Aldo marquee [sic] article appeared right next to the transition article in the article carousel. I did not like that juxtaposition so I unpublished the Aldo marquee article myself. This was done on the evening that I worked all night with Rocco. It may or may not have disappeared right away because of caching issues which were plaguing us. But that’s when it was done. That was my desire to have that article removed. He had no agenda one way or another about it.”

But how does that line up with Rocco’s version? In an email exchange with me that started on November 16, Rocco wrote:

“…I had to assume that there would not be any new articles for a while. As the Pentagon article was the top article, I believed this was an issue if it was to be this way for a while, so I turned the article off for now.”

And in a follow-up message:

“I don’t know anything at all about Richard’s opinion on any article I turned off for the reasons I gave. Richard has absolutely nothing to do with it.”

According to Steele, the article did not disappear from the website until the 13th or 14th — several days after Gage says he removed it. David also confirms that the cache on the AE website refreshes every 15 minutes, which undermines Gage’s explanation that “caching issues” might have delayed the article’s disappearance for days.

It is worth noting that in an internal AE email several years ago, Rocco expressed his opposition to my criticism of David Chandler and his Pentagon “research” group, which has been relentlessly pushing the official claim of a 757 impact with the Pentagon.

Gage opposed Pentagon content

When Steele noticed the Marquis article was gone, he texted chairman Kamal Obeid and David, asking whether they had removed it. He wrote:

“I want to believe that Chris Rocco did this unilaterally, in which case he needs to be fired and his access to the website cut off before he deletes more stuff.”

Steele then asked Obeid and David if they had authorized the deletion.

Obeid responded:

“Thank you. No, I did not and will demand that he fix this.”

And David weighed in:

“I want to be clear that I did not authorize anything either. And I would NEVER remove or weaken any Pentagon evidence. This has been of grave importance to me since 2014. Rocco is not under us. Richard brought him in, and he acted without our permission. His access needs to be removed.”

Rocco’s access was removed, and the deleted piece was restored to the website.

It was clear during the negotiations between Gage and Obeid that Gage was not happy with the Pentagon content on the website. Obeid informed Steele that Gage opposed a clause in Steele’s severance agreement that would have bound the new board to keep all content by Steele and me on the site, unaltered and unhidden.

As I wrote in Part 1 of this open-ended series, Obeid and David had purged Steele and me from the organization before voting to add Gage; his wife, Gail Gage; and seven others to the board. We were told that Obeid would stay on (likely temporarily) as chairman while David would leave immediately. Gage would become CEO.

But then on the 9/11 War Room podcast, Gage stated that he was pulling out of the transfer after learning that David was not leaving after all and that he and the other new board members would have to serve a two-month probation before they achieved full voting rights (a policy dating back to 2016 and voted for at the time by Gage).

It’s unfortunate that Gage thinks the way to stay out of the Pentagon “controversy” is to censor an interview with a researcher who did as much as anyone to prove that the Pentagon part of the 9/11 official story is a lie.

But it’s not surprising, since Gage posted a damaging statement back in 2011 titled “Complete Withdrawal of Support for CIT,” a statement he was clearly pressured to write.

After Gage was fired by AE in 2021, he created a new site and reposted this problematic statement, which calls into question his claims of “neutrality.” Adding to this concern is that Gage named Jonathan Cole to his new board. Cole is part of Chandler’s Pentagon group, and he is now on record as supporting another official claim, that Flight 93 buried itself in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Events related to AE and Gage continue to unfold, so it’s difficult to commit to what will be contained in Part 3 of this series. But there will be a Part 3, because the recent events threaten the survival of AE911Truth, and this is extremely concerning for the 9/11 Truth Movement as a whole. And it is the cause that matters much more than anything.

Stay tuned.

Please check out Part 1, which tells the story of how the Gage return fell apart, and Part 3, which addresses the November 21 statement by the AE board.