“When I went to Venezuela the government gave me five bodyguards, because they thought that the American government would try to kill me, and blame it on Venezuela,” he says. He has already spoken in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester and Birmingham on a month long tour of venues in the UK. Lewes is the last stop on his trip to this country, and the only place he will have spoken in the South East. So far his story has been covered in a number of local papers and TV stations, but none of the nationals have taken it up. This is worth thinking about. Why would they not want to hear him out?

Is Rodriguez to be believed? It is certainly, when talking to him, difficult to think that he is lying. He lost hundreds of friends and colleagues that day. If his stories of other explosions - stories which have been repeated by a number of other sources - are true, it is easy to understand why he wants to tell the world about them. “I want to find out the truth. I want to stop this from happening again.” The best way to decide is to go and judge for yourself. This is not some conspiracy crank who’s spent a lot of time on the internet. This is the last person who came out of the World Trade Centre alive. He is an eye-witness to the most cataclysmic world event since 1945. If just for this, he is certainly worth hearing out. AL