The Freedom Tower

The Arizona Republic reports:
Blair Gadsby, the 45-year-old former owner of an adult-care home and an adjunct professor of religious studies at a community college, never figured he would be the type of person to stage a hunger strike outside the Phoenix office of U.S. Sen. John McCain.

But about a year ago, Gadsby convinced himself that the U.S. government, not terrorists, demolished the World Trade Center buildings in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. And that belief has turned him into a fasting activist.

“I’ve never been politically active until the 9/11 subject came up,” he said, sitting on a fabric folding chair last week along 16th Street, outside the complex that houses McCain’s Phoenix office.
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Gadsby’s vigil on the sidewalk goes from sunrise to sunset. He holds up a sign that features a Canadian tabloid’s front-page photo of a jet hitting one of the towers. Underneath is his count of the days he has been fasting. Today, it will be Day 15.

He has dropped 15 pounds. He feels weak by the end of the day. He has had eggs thrown at him by taunting motorists. His wife is not happy with him. He worries whether he’ll lose his teaching job.

Still, once he locked in on the idea that the government planned the murder of thousands of its citizens, it became his overriding priority. He wondered why it wasn’t getting more attention, so he got the idea to sacrifice himself for some attention.

“I felt we needed the coverage,” Gadsby said. “We’ve just been ignored, if not downright suppressed.”

In May 2007, Gadsby, who was already skeptical that terrorists caused the attacks, found a video online that showed the collapse of World Trade Center 7. He believes the government has ordered media outlets not to show the footage, which shows the building falling in on itself, much like a building does when it implodes.

The footage clinched it for Gadsby. He had to rethink all he had accepted about the terrorist attacks. He spent sleepless nights thinking about how the government planted explosions in Building 7 and then, most likely, the twin towers. Then, how they must have hired men to pilot the planes. And then ordered the media to cover it all up. And so on, and so on.