Thread: 9/11 was an inside job

^ I guess that's harry button the halliburton clone.

I'm bored with your shit now.

Hey ENT,

How is it possible to keep the Humans responsible for you're so called conspiracy quiet for so long.

I mean Humans are basically fuked up Right ? Some tosser shags his mates wife and 30 seconds later its all over the Internet.

When I was on the Job we would start a rumor and see just how long it would take to reach one of our furtherest Out Stations.

It was staggering just how quick info travelled. Speed of sound actually.

So you have all these experts and also general dogs bodies planning to off the Twin towers and the pentagon and not even a fuking rumour has got out.

Fuk off ENT. Idiot.

Thats two reds I owe you now cock face. Keep sending them, they'll come back.

So a quick summation of where we are at this point.

1: Twin Towers.

Both were hit by planes, but some witnesses describe them as non commercial planes. However, there was no way that the planes hitting them bought them down. They were bought down by explosives that were rigged during "elevator" work and/or "re-cableing work"

WTC 7 was bought down by explosives too.

2: The Pentagon:

No PASSENGER plane hit the pentagon, it's impossible. Must have been a missile or a drone.

3: Shanksville:

It's obvious that no plane crashed in shanksville. Most likely the white "private jet" dropped various "plant" debris and some sort of bomb/mine

Here you go here's some more bollocks for ENT and Shaggy to jerk off to.

13 World Mysteries Without Explanation | Beyond Science

Would it be unreasonable or reasonable to concider that all the people involved in a conspirocy of this size would be able to actually keep it quiet for so long.

I mean one would expect that maybe one of the lads would let it slip when he was on the piss with his mates that he was involved in rigging WTC 7 or rigging the Twin Towers or whatever.

Then that guy would go to the media and say, Hey, I know this guy who recons he was involved with rigging up WTC 7.

Happens every day of the week with other important stuff so why not this story ?


I mean, thats all I'm saying. This has never happenned. Why not ????

Cause it did'nt happen that way.

Originally Posted by terry57

Would it be unreasonable or reasonable to concider that all the people involved in a conspirocy of this size would be able to actually keep it quiet for so long.

I mean one would expect that maybe one of the lads would let it slip when he was on the piss with his mates that he was involved in rigging WTC 7 or rigging the Twin Towers or whatever.

Then that guy would go to the media and say, Hey, I know this guy who recons he was involved with rigging up WTC 7.

Happens every day of the week with other important stuff so why not this story ?


I mean, thats all I'm saying. This has never happenned. Why not ????

Cause it did'nt happen that way.

These obviously weren't your average mugger or petty criminal. They must have been military/ex military/ etc.

These guys keep their mouths shut - they can only become such a soldier IF they have this trait - logical right?

Let's say these guys were top criminals who had stolen a vast amount of money - how likely is it that one of them becomes drunk and starts talking?

Pretty unlikely really.

If you bother to watch those videos Terry, you'll see that there are hundreds and hundreds of eye-witnesses to things totally different to the official story. There are 1000's of engineers, architects and pilots screaming blue murder.

Difficult to imagine a gang of maybe 20 people who rigged the towers keeping shtum? - not really.

So you don't think one of the thousands of workers in Building 7 or the WTC wouldn't see people installing explosives on every level then?

Yeah right.

Originally Posted by terry57

Would it be unreasonable or reasonable to concider that all the people involved in a conspirocy of this size would be able to actually keep it quiet for so long.

I mean one would expect that maybe one of the lads would let it slip when he was on the piss with his mates that he was involved in rigging WTC 7 or rigging the Twin Towers or whatever.

Then that guy would go to the media and say, Hey, I know this guy who recons he was involved with rigging up WTC 7.

Happens every day of the week with other important stuff so why not this story ?


I mean, thats all I'm saying. This has never happenned. Why not ????

Cause it did'nt happen that way.

On the other hand, we would know nothing about the NSA spy affair without Snowden, yet tousands of people are initiated. Take him, Assange, Manning, and you can imagine what happens to whistleblowers.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

So you don't think one of the thousands of workers in Building 7 or the WTC wouldn't see people installing explosives on every level then?

Yeah right.

They were supposedly installing new cable networks. The rolls of cable used for broadband/large volume of phonelines is indistinguishable from the thermate explosive cable to most people. I mean, it's not like any normal person would think to check if the guys installing data/communication cabling were actually installing explosive charges - it would be unthinkable.. wouldn't it?

Also, when the buildings were close to being made extinct (due to prohibitive costs of removing all the asbestos in the building) - why the fuck would they carry out a huge refurbishment to the lift shafts? - at the same time?

Right under everyones noses.

Not a big fucking conspiracy - A heinous fucking crime.

Avenge the millions who have died and suffered due to this crime of the century.

Hang them all.

Originally Posted by Rainfall

Originally Posted by terry57

Would it be unreasonable or reasonable to concider that all the people involved in a conspirocy of this size would be able to actually keep it quiet for so long.

I mean one would expect that maybe one of the lads would let it slip when he was on the piss with his mates that he was involved in rigging WTC 7 or rigging the Twin Towers or whatever.

Then that guy would go to the media and say, Hey, I know this guy who recons he was involved with rigging up WTC 7.

Happens every day of the week with other important stuff so why not this story ?


I mean, thats all I'm saying. This has never happenned. Why not ????

Cause it did'nt happen that way.

On the other hand, we would know nothing about the NSA spy affair without Snowden, yet tousands of people are initiated. Take him, Assange, Manning, and you can imagine what happens to whistleblowers.

Yeah, and look at Omerta - seems to have worked mostly perfectly for the Mafia for centuries.

Here's some Det Cord
http://willyloman.files.wordpress.co...cord.jpg?w=468

Looks just like the ADSL cable in my condo.

Originally Posted by Albert Shagnastier

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

So you don't think one of the thousands of workers in Building 7 or the WTC wouldn't see people installing explosives on every level then?

Yeah right.

They were supposedly installing new cable networks. The rolls of cable used for broadband/large volume of phonelines is indistinguishable from the thermate explosive cable to most people. I mean, it's not like any normal person would think to check if the guys installing data/communication cabling were actually installing explosive charges - it would be unthinkable.. wouldn't it?

Also, when the buildings were close to being made extinct (due to prohibitive costs of removing all the asbestos in the building) - why the fuck would they carry out a huge refurbishment to the lift shafts? - at the same time?

Right under everyones noses.

Not a big fucking conspiracy - A heinous fucking crime.

Avenge the millions who have died and suffered due to this crime of the century.

Hang them all.

Oh don't talk such horseshit. Wouldn't it be easy to find if a company installing cable was a bona fide networking company hired by whoever wanted it or a bunch of spooks that just turned up in an unmarked van?

You really are retarded.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Oh don't talk such horseshit. Wouldn't it be easy to find if a company installing cable was a bona fide networking company hired by whoever wanted it or a bunch of spooks that just turned up in an unmarked van?

Ok then Harry, see if you can find the names of the contractors that were doing the work - as "it would be so easy"

Bet you what though - you won't be able to.

But if it helps - Jeb Bush (Georges brother) ran the security company that controlled the towers at that time -

On September 13, 2001, Engineering News-Record (ENR), a national weekly for the construction industry, reported: "LVI Services Inc., New York City, which has done extensive asbestos abatement work on the towers in the past, is involved in similar work now as well as other cleanup efforts."

AFP asked LVI president Burton T. Fried about the work his company did in the towers prior to 9/11.

"We did not do it," Fried said. "It was a company called AASI but they went out of business."

Asked about the evidence that the towers and WTC 7 were destroyed by demolition charges, Fried replied, "No comment."

Demolition Access to the WTC Towers by Kevin Ryan

A four-part series first published 2009-2010

Part One – Tenants
The North Tower Impact Zone The South Tower Impact Zone The Washington Group Other floors and companies of interest Conclusions and next steps

Part Two – Security
3
15
36
45
63 68 79 82
92
The PANYNJ and its WTC Director Kroll leaders and history Electronic Systems Associates and E.J. Electric Ensec International Securacom Silverstein Properties Giuliani, Cherkasky and the BCCI Investigation Conclusions

Part Three – Convergence
The Carlyle Group SAIC Halliburton and BCCI Kissinger and his associates

Part Four – Cleanup
Foreknowledge An unprecedented destruction of evidence The Cleanup Operation Debris removal and theft Conclusion
Notes

Part 1 – Tenants Part 2 – Security Part 3 – Convergence Part 4 – Cleanup
Appendix: Kevin Ryan’s 2004 email to NIST’s Dr. Frank Gayle Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers
1
ContentsCompilation note: This four-part series was originally published on the web as separate essays on several sites beginning in July 2010 and ending in February 2011. It has been collected here for easy reference. The only changes made were to put all the Notes at the end, rather than after each section, and to provide live links when broken ones were found in a spot-check. Ryan’s Nov. 11, 2004 email to NIST, which resulted in his being fired from Underwriters Laboratories, is appended for its historical significance.
The version produced below was copied from 911Review.com:
Demolition Access to the WTC Towers: Part One - Tenants Demolition Access To The WTC Towers: Part Two - Security Carlyle, Kissinger, SAIC and Halliburton: A 9/11 Convergence Demolition Access to the WTC Towers: Part Four - Cleanup
More information can be found at 9-11 Review: Articles by Kevin Ryan Ryan’s new website is Dig Within | The blog of Kevin Ryan His former site is Kevin Ryan is former Site Manager for a division of Underwriters Laboratories
[End Compilation Note. ~R. Ananda Feb. 22, 2012]
Kevin Ryan is the former Site Manager for Environmental Health Laboratories, a division of Underwriters Laboratories (UL). Mr. Ryan, a Chemist and laboratory manager, was fired by UL in 2004 for publicly questioning the report being drafted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on their World Trade Center investigation. In the intervening period, Ryan has completed additional research while his original questions, which have become increasingly important over time, remain unanswered by UL or NIST. More information Legal Defense Fund for Kevin Ryan feedback kncryan@msn.com
Author’s Note: The author is indebted to a few particularly useful sources of information and inspiration, including Russ Baker's book "Family of Secrets", the websites nndb.com, sourcewatch.org and secinfo.com, and Richard Gage.
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 2

Part One - Tenants
On occasion, the public has been asked by George W. Bush to refrain from considering certain conspiracy theories. Bush has made such requests when people were looking into crimes in which he might be culpable. For example, when in 1994 Bush's former company Harken Energy was linked to the fraudulent Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) through several investors, Bush's spokeswoman, Karen Hughes, shut down the inquiry by telling the Associated Press -- "We have no response to silly conspiracy theories." On another occasion, Bush said in a televised speech -- "Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th."
But paradoxically, we have also been asked to believe Bush's own outrageous conspiracy theory about 9/11, one that has proven to be false in many ways. One important way to see the false nature of Bush's conspiracy theory is to note the fact that the World Trade Center buildings could only have fallen as they did through the use of explosives. A number of independent scientific studies have pointed out this fact [1, 2, 3, 4], but it was Bush's own scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), through their inability to provide a convincing defense of the official line, who ultimately proved that explosives were necessary. [2, 5, 6, 7]
This leads us to ask the obvious question -- Who could have placed explosives in the World Trade Center towers? To answer that question, we should first consider who had access to the buildings, specifically the areas of the buildings that would be relevant to a demolition operation. We should also consider the time periods of interest. Those who had access at the necessary times should be further considered in terms of their ability to obtain the necessary explosive technologies and expertise, their ability to be secretive, and the possibility that they could have benefited from the destruction of the WTC buildings or from the resulting War on Terror. But one thing is certain, unless it was done by one person acting alone, it must have been a conspiracy.
The Twin Towers and WTC 7, all highly secure buildings, were most readily accessed by tenants, security and building management staff, and construction-related contractors.
Evidence suggests that the period of interest should include the years between the 1993 WTC bombing and September 11th, 2001. This evidence includes the warning from 1993 bombing conspirator Nidal Ayyad, who reportedly wrote -- "next time it will be more precise." [8] Additionally, evidence of a multi-year plot included the detailed information that FBI informant and mafia kingpin Gregory Scarpa Jr. received while in jail, as early as 1996, from Al-Qaeda operative Ramzi Yousef, while imprisoned in the adjacent cell. Yousef described plans to "bring New York to its knees" by blowing up the World Trade Center with American-owned "flying massive bombs." Scarpa Jr. provided this information to Assistant US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and FBI Counsel Valerie Caproni, who were apparently not interested. [9] Another example is the recorded
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 3
conversation between FBI informant Randy Glass and Pakistani ISI agent Raja Gulum Abbas, in which Abbas claimed "Those towers are coming down", indicating that a plan was in progress as of July 1999. [10]
Throughout the life of the WTC buildings, modifications were made to each structure. The modifications included upgrades to electrical, fire protection, and elevator systems, as well as general construction activities. As a rule, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) was responsible for initiating the modifications in the public access areas, and the tenants were responsible for completing the modifications throughout the leased spaces. [11] For this reason, the tenant companies would have been capable of coordinating the installation of explosive materials and other devices with reasonable certainty that those materials would not be detected by others. For a demolition plan to work, however, such tenants would need to be managed as a group, and explosives would need to be placed on enough floors to ensure the fall of each building through what would otherwise have been the path of most resistance.
While examining the tenants in each critical area, we should ask – Cui Bono? That is, who benefited from the destruction of the WTC buildings, and the resulting War on Terror? The obvious answer includes, primarily, the Bush Administration and its friends. It also includes overlapping groups of oil and gas companies, defense contractors, and those who desired to wield undue influence on international policies related to a wide number of issues from civil rights to space domination.

The North Tower Impact Zone

On 9/11, American Airlines Flight 11 hit the north face of the north tower (WTC 1) between floors 94 and 99. In a stunning coincidence, these floors bracket those that had been upgraded for fireproofing shortly before 9/11. [12] This coincidence was amplified by the fact that one tenant occupied all of those floors – Marsh & McLennan (Marsh), which at the time was the world's largest insurance brokerage company. One other tenant, Sumitomo Bank, shared part of floor 96 with Marsh.
During the years from 1993 to 2001, Marsh made several modifications to these floors, in addition to the fireproofing upgrades mentioned above. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Marsh made modifications to the south side of floor 94 in 1998. That same year, the PANYNJ helped Marsh demolish floors 95- 98 in order to rebuild the fire alarm and sprinkler systems. Marsh did further modification work on floor 95 in the year 2000. [13] The full floor fireproofing upgrades on floors 93 through 100 were accomplished in August through November of 1998, except for floor 94, which was done in December 1996.
Marsh was a large company, with a number of subsidiaries, including Putnam Investments, Mercer, Johnson & Higgins, and Guy Carpenter, a company that occupied floors 47 to 54 of the south tower. Marsh was also known to be notoriously secretive, and had been likened to the CIA. [14] Its chief executive on 9/11 was Jeffrey Greenberg, a
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 4
member of the Brookings Institution, the Trilateral Commission, and the son of the chairman of American International Group (AIG), Maurice Greenberg. AIG has been reported to be at the center of a number of CIA operations. [15]
Jeffrey Greenberg rose quickly through management at Marsh, having come there directly from AIG in 1995, and then becoming CEO just four years later. At Brookings, Greenberg hobnobbed with Lee Hamilton, co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, and the Iraqi Nemir Amin Kirdar, CEO of Investcorp, a BCCI-related company founded by the Saudi Abdullah Taha Bakhsh. [16]
BCCI was founded by a Pakistani named Agha Hasan Abedi, and was "made up of multiplying layers of entities, related to one another through an impenetrable series of holding companies, affiliates, subsidiaries, banks-within-banks, insider dealings and nominee relationships." In the early nineties, BCCI was extensively investigated for money laundering and terrorist financing, and was ultimately shut-down by the Bank of England in 1992. [17] Like BCCI, AIG developed the same fragmented and difficult to trace network of subsidiaries, spread across 130 countries and 400 regulators. [18]
Other very powerful and well-connected people worked in senior management at Marsh. These included Stephen Friedman, a senior principal at Marsh Capital and former partner at Goldman Sachs, who later became George W. Bush's top economic advisor. Friedman was also a member of the Brookings Institution, the Bilderberg group, the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and the board at In-Q-Tel, the investment firm founded by the CIA in 1998. In-Q-Tel invests in state of the art technologies related to defense and intelligence work, including nano and chemical technologies, according to its website. [19]
In another interesting coincidence, Friedman belonged, through Cornell University, to a secret society called Quill and Dagger, the membership of which includes Paul Wolfowitz, Sandy Berger and Stephen Hadley. Wolfowitz, the neo-con deputy secretary of defense in the Bush Administration, was the author in 1992 of the "Wolfowitz Doctrine" of pre-emptive warfare. He also made comments about a "surprise like Pearl Harbor" months before 9/11, and met with Pakistani ISI General Mahmud Ahmed in the week before 9/11. [20] Berger, the National Security Advisor to President Clinton, was later caught stealing documents from the 9/11 Commission investigation. [21] Berger was also the boss of White House counterterrorism Tsar Richard Clarke, and together with Hadley - who was Condoleezza Rice's deputy - was responsible for delaying or obstructing Clarke's plans to stop Al Qaeda in January 2001. [22]
The President of Marsh Real Estate Advisors, from 1982 to 2001, was Craig Stapleton, the husband of George W. Bush's cousin, Dorothy Walker Bush. Stapleton's Marsh division was responsible for negotiating office leases in the US, Canada and Europe. He once co-owned the Texas Rangers with George W. Bush, a spectacular investment for all involved. In 1997, Stapleton was a member of the board of a company called Cendant that was charged in 1998 with massive accounting fraud. The President of Cendant at the time was Henry Silverman, a former partner of the Blackstone Group and later Vice
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 5
Chairman of the PANYNJ. Stapleton went on to join Winston Partners, a privately owned investment firm founded in 1993 and led by George W. Bush's bother Marvin.
The Vice Chairman of Marsh on 9/11 was Mathis Cabiallavetta, a Swiss citizen. Although Cabiallavetta was a member of the Marsh board from 1993 to 2000, he took his position as Vice Chairman in 1999, after having been President of the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) from 1996 to 1998. This was the same UBS that bailed out George W. Bush's Harken Energy in 1987, with the help of billionaire Jackson Stephens. UBS was linked in other ways to the fraudulent terrorist financing bank BCCI. [16,23]
Another connection to the Bush family can be seen in the Marsh acquisition of the New York insurance brokerage Johnson and Higgins in March 1997. Johnson and Higgins was the long-time employer of Prescott Bush Jr, brother to George H. W. Bush. Although Prescott Jr. no longer worked there, he had spent 33 years at Johnson & Higgins, retiring as Senior Vice President. After retirement, Bush continued to consult for the company, in Asian dealings. With Prescott Jr, Friedman and Stapleton, Marsh clearly had strong ties to the Bush network. Additionally, it seems possible that some members of Marsh management, particularly Stephen Friedman, through In-Q-Tel, had access to technologies that could have been used to bring about the deceptive demolition of the WTC buildings.
Add to this L. Paul Bremer, and the possible Marsh ties to demolition technology become clearer. One month after 9/11, Bremer would become the CEO for a new division called Marsh Crisis. Interestingly, the Yale graduate Bremer had been working to complete the National Report on Terrorism, and prior to that had been managing director for Kissinger Associates. According to a US Senate report, Kissinger Associates had a number of meetings with BCCI representatives in the late eighties and early nineties, and it refused to provide documents requested by the Senate investigators. [17] Bremer was also a member of the board for Akzo Nobel, the parent of International Paint, a company that produced a fireproofing application for skyscrapers called Interchar. [24]
Bremer was on the international advisory board for the Japanese mining and machinery company, Komatsu. At the time, Komatsu had been involved in a joint venture agreement with Dresser Industries, the oil-services/intelligence front in which Prescott Bush Sr. and George H. W. Bush got their start with Neil Mallon. The Komatsu-Dresser mining division operated from 1988 to 1997. In July 1996, it patented a thermite demolition device that could "demolish a concrete structure at a high efficiency, while preventing a secondary problem due to noise, flying dust and chips, and the like." [25] Residues of thermite, the highly energetic chemical mixture, have been confirmed in samples of the WTC dust, and the use of thermite at the WTC was also revealed by environmental data. [1, 2, 3, 4, 26] Dresser Industries merged with Dick Cheney's Halliburton in 1998.
It is less well known that Bremer's relationship to Marsh started earlier. In fact, on 9/11, Bremer was the CEO of Marsh Political Risk Practice and he had an office in the south tower. That day, he was interviewed on NBC television, stating that Osama bin Laden was responsible and that possibly Iraq and Iran were involved too, and he called for the
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 6
most severe military response possible. Google removed the interview video from its servers three times, and blocked it once. [27]
Bremer was called away from Marsh in 2003, to be the Iraq Occupation Governor. His work in that role has been widely criticized. [28]

The South Tower Impact Zone

United Airlines Flight 175 hit the south tower (WTC 2) between floors 78 and 83, in the southeast corner of the building. In the impact zone, Baseline Financial Services (Baseline) was located on floors 77 and 78, Fuji Bank was on floors 79 to 82, and AON Corporation was on floor 83.
Baseline was led by a very interesting individual named Joseph Kasputys, who had a history of being well connected to the highest levels of government, as well as to defense and intelligence industries. Kasputys worked, from 1972 to 1977, for the US departments of commerce and defense. He was also the deputy director of Nixon's White House taskforce that dealt with the Arab oil embargo of 1973, and he was instrumental in the creation of the Department of Energy (DOE).
Kasputys' connections to the DOE, from 1977 through at least 1997, are interesting considering that the DOE was developing thermite ignition devices as early as 1983. [29] Additionally, national laboratories working within the DOE developed nanothermites in the late 1990s. Nanothermites are explosive thermite mixtures where one or more reactants are present at the nanometer scale. These are also called super-thermites due to the extraordinarily large amount of energy released upon ignition. [3, 30]
Kasputys was also a member of the Logistics Management Institute (LMI), whose members included Paul Kaminski of In-Q-Tel and General Dynamics, Charles DiBona of Halliburton, Skull and Bones member Joseph Samuel Nye, and Michael Daniels of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). It has been noted that SAIC, a defense contractor with expertise in thermite-related technologies, played a large part in the NIST WTC investigation. LMI's self-proclaimed role is "advancing the science of government." [30, 31]
Better known for his leadership of Primark Corporation from 1987 to 2000, Kasputys was CEO for both companies after the Primark acquisition of Baseline in 1996. Primark owned as many as 50 companies during that time, and was acquired by Thomson Financial in June 2000. Kasputys then became CEO for Thomson, and he later founded the intelligence-services company IHS Global Insight, in March 2001. Another Primark company, Primark Decision Economics, was located in the 11th floor of the north tower.
The sheer number of companies involved with Primark, along with the vague business descriptions given (Baseline was described as "an international provider of information"), gave the impression that something more than legitimate business was involved. Primark
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 7
owned Triad International Maintenance Company (TIMCO), a company that, among other things, modified Boeing 757s and 767s. Primark also owned The Analytic Sciences Corp (TASC), a security and intelligence (spying) company that had contracts with the DOE. As CEO of World Markets Research Centre, Kasputys predicted in 2003 that the US was the country with the fourth-highest risk of terrorism, and that – "Another September 11-style attack in the US is highly likely." [32]
According to NIST, Kasputys' Baseline modified the southeast corner of floor 78 in 1999, exactly where the aircraft hit on 9/11. [33] Floors 77 and 78 were upgraded for fireproofing in June and April of 1998, respectively.
Another company with an office on floor 78 was First Commercial Bank. This was a Taiwanese national bank that had, in January 1998, privatized all but one third of its shares. The other two thirds went to First Commercial Financial Corp (FCFC) of Seguin, Texas. Unfortunately, it is not clear if FCFC is related to First Commercial Financial Group (FCFG), owned by Abdullah Taha Bakhsh. FCFG was a commodities brokerage firm that was forced to distribute its customer accounts in 1994, after regulators raised concerns about capital shortfalls and customer complaints. [34].
Interestingly, another company located in Seguin, Texas is the machinery manufacturing company, the Alamo Group. Dave Grzelak, CEO of Komatsu-Dresser, was a director at Alamo. He was also a board member at Aoki Construction Co, a mining company associated with Prescott Bush Jr, as we'll see below.
The tenant located just above Baseline, on floors 79 to 82, was Fuji Bank. Fuji modified the core of floor 78 in 1998, the east wall of floor 80 in 1999, unknown parts of floor 80 in 2001, and the southeast corner of floor 82 in 1997. [33]
Prior to the year 2000, Fuji Bank was the second largest bank in Japan. Fuji's largest investors were Union Carbide, Mobil Oil and Raytheon. In 1996, Yasuda Trust became a Fuji subsidiary and in September 2000, Fuji merged with Dai-ichi Kangyo Bank (DKB), and the International Bank of Japan (IBJ), to form the largest bank in the world under the name of Mizuho Holdings. The second largest at the time was the Sumitomo-Mitsui Banking Corp, formed in October 1999. But the Fuji Bank merger meant that, as of 9/11, Mizuho Holdings controlled companies not only in the impact zone of the south tower, but also on floors 48 to 50 of the north tower by way of DKB.
Toru Hashimoto, chairman of Fuji Bank, was also with Deutsche Securities Limited Tokyo Branch and is now on the board of Deutsche Bank with Norman Augustine. Augustine, also known for being the CEO of Lockheed Martin, was founder of In-Q-Tel and a board member of Riggs National, the banking firm of Jonathan Bush, the other brother of George H. W. Bush. A 2004 expose by the New York Times revealed Saudi Arabian accounts at Riggs were being investigated for money-laundering and possible financing of the September 11th terrorists. [35]
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 8
Deutsche Bank was the bank of the German Gestapo during World War II, funding the construction of concentration camps. It was broken up after the war, only to merge together again in 1957. [36] In 1998, Deutsche Bank added Banker's Trust, which had purchased Alex Brown and Sons in 1997, to its group of companies. It was Deutsche Bank and these subsidiaries that were identified as being involved in insider trading related to the 9/11 attacks. The person of most interest in these dealings was A.B. Krongard, the CEO of Alex Brown, and CIA counsel to George Tenet. [37] From 2001 to 2004, Krongard was executive director of the CIA. Another significant player was Wolfgang Demisch, managing director at Alex Brown from 1993 to 1998, managing director at UBS Securities from 1988 to 1993, and member of the board at SAIC.
Fuji Bank had a history, in the early 1990s, of scandal related to fraudulent loans and gangster connections. It had also been linked to large CIA-related payments deposited in the Cayman Islands, and to the BCCI connected First American Bank. [38, 39, 40]
Moreover, Fuji Bank was not the only Mizuho company that was accused of criminal activity. In June 1997, executives of DKB were accused of conspiring to provide $80 million in loans to Ryuichi Koike, a Japanese gangster. Koike used the money to purchase shares in securities brokerages, like Nomura, Nikko (located on floor 79 of the north tower), and Daiwa. Some reports put DKB's extorted loans to Koike at $272 million. [41] DKB was reported to have made loans to other Yakuza crime syndicates as well, and in June 1997, the chairman of DKB ultimately resigned over the scandal. [42]
Additionally, Mizuho subsidiary IBJ was discovered to have generated $2.5 billion in fraudulent loans to a businesswoman named Nui Onoue in 1991. IBJ was also reported to have indirectly supported predatory lending by securitizing high-loan-to-value loans to companies like Dallas' FirstPlus Financial, a company that shot to financial stardom in 1996 and then collapsed in 1999. Dan Quayle was on the board of directors. [43]
Back in the summer of 1989, while his brother was President, Prescott Bush Jr. was the middleman in the takeover of two companies by West Tsusho, a Tokyo-based investment firm linked to one of Japan's biggest mob syndicates. West Tsusho was part of the empire of Susumu Ishii, head of the Inagawa-kai yakuza gang. In 1992, two days after an article linking him to Bush appeared in the Daily Yomiuri, Ishii was dead, reportedly from a "long illness." [44]
At the time, The Boston Globe reported that Prescott Bush Jr. had also been a business partner with Tokyo-based Aoki Construction Corp (Aoki), in its deals to build in China. Masahiro Sakane, now the CEO of Aoki, was managing director at Komatsu from 1994 to 1999. Komatsu and Aoki shared many other links in management.
The two companies West Tsusho acquired through Prescott Bush Jr., were Quantum Access (of which Bush was a board member) and Asset Management International. As a consultant for Asset Management, Prescott introduced Hughes Aircraft to Japanese investors in a deal in which Hughes and the government of China would launch satellites that would beam television programming to broadcasters in China. [45, 46] In December
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 9
1989, President Bush lifted the sanctions that blocked the satellite deal, citing "the national interest." The Bush administration had earlier granted Hughes Aircraft "preliminary licenses" to exchange data with Chinese officials. [47] Also involved in the West Tsusho mob dealings was Nikko Securities (floor 79 of the north tower).
After his death, West Tsusho's Susumu Ishii was replaced as the leader of the Inagawa- kai gang by Toi Inagawa. In September 1996, Inagawa formed an alliance with Yoshinori Watanabe, head of the largest yakuza gang, Yamaguchi-gumi. Nui Onoue, who received the fraudulent loans from Mizuho's IBJ, was said to be associated with Yamaguchi- gumi's Takumi gang, and also an investor in Inagawa-kai. [41]
Japanese Banks had experienced a relatively tough time in the 1990s, referred to in financial circles as "the lost decade", and in general were still doing badly in the years 2000 and 2001. In November 2000, Mizuho Holdings had problem loans and bad debts of more than 4 trillion yen ($36 billion). By mid-2001, the company was trading at half the value it had been at just a year before, when the merger was announced. [48, 49] Japan's financial system began to recover in 2002. [50]
Moving to floor 83 of the south tower, there was AON Corporation, a Chicago-based competitor of Marsh. Today, General Richard Myers, one of the people most responsible for not protecting us on 9/11, is a director at AON. But on 9/11, the most interesting character working for AON was Jim Pierce, the cousin of George W. Bush. Jim's father Scott Pierce, formerly a partner at G.H. Walker & Co, pled guilty to 2,000 counts of mail fraud in 1985, as President of E.F. Hutton.
Jim Pierce was managing director of AON on 9/11, and he had arranged a meeting on the 105th floor of the south tower for that morning. Pierce survived that day, despite the fact that twelve people came to the meeting in the south tower, and eleven of them died. The location of the meeting had been changed, the night before, to the Millenium Hotel, where Pierce watched the south tower as it was hit by the aircraft. Apparently the meeting attendees were not all notified of the change in location. [51]
AON modified "unknown" parts of floor 83 in 1997. Some photos of the impact zone suggest that the most explosive part of the fireball erupting from the south tower came from the east side of the building, near floor 83 (see NIST report NCSTAR 1-5A, figure 7-7).
Chuo Trust, which shared floor 83 with AON, was the trust portion of Mizuho's DKB. According to NIST, Chuo modified the southeast corner of floor 83 in 1999.
An unusual feature of the destruction of the south tower was the "cold spot" on the north face of the building. This section along a twelve-column area of floors 80, 81, 82 did not experience any fire, despite the fact that the areas on both sides did have fire. In its report NCSTAR 1-5, NIST "concluded that insufficient information is available to allow a likely formation mechanism for the cold spot to be postulated."
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The Washington Group

Another company of interest, on floor 91 just above the impact zone for the south tower, was Washington Group International (Washington). This company was known primarily as a construction and mining firm, and it had just acquired Raytheon Engineers in July 2000. Raytheon was reported to have also occupied floor 91.
Washington had an interesting history. It had been a contractor for the DOE and its predecessor agencies since 1942, when it was involved in the Manhattan Project. In 1995, a management shake-up at Washington resulted in the temporary installment of William Clark as acting chairman. Clark was a member of the Center for Security Policy, along with many neo-cons including Richard Perle, Eliot Abrams, Norman Augustine (In-Q- Tel), Douglas Feith, and 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman. After re-organizing the management at Washington, in just a few months, Clark resigned.
In 1996, Washington took over Morrison-Knudsen, an engineering and construction company that had a history of working on large projects around the world, including in China, Iran, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. In Vietnam, Washington led the RMK-BRJ construction project with Brown & Root. During the 1980s, it worked closely on hazardous clean-up projects for the DOE. The Army Corps of Engineers hired Morrison- Knudsen to demolish over 200 buildings in 1995. [52]
In 1999, Washington acquired Westinghouse Government Environmental Services Company (WGESC), a firm that provided management services to the DOE and DOD. In July 2001, E. Preston Rahe, Jr, the President of WGESC, was promoted to Executive Vice President of Business Development for Washington Group's Government operating unit. Rahe went on to form a new company called Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, along with General John A. Gordon.
Gordon was George H. W. Bush's Senior Director for Defense Policy on the National Security Council, and he worked with George Tenet at the CIA from September 1996 to October 1997, as associate director of central intelligence for military support, and as deputy director of the CIA from October 1997 to 2000. During this time, Gordon would have worked closely with A.B. Krongard, who was Tenet's counsel from 1998 to 2001. Later, in 2003 and 2004, Gordon was George W. Bush's Homeland Security advisor.
Apart from Lawrence Livermore labs (LLNL), one of the DOE facilities for which Washington was responsible, well before 9/11, was the Savannah River site near Aiken, SC. In February 1997, LLNL and the Savannah River site signed an agreement of cooperation to share technology. Savannah went on to add "Developing sol gel technology for fuels and other applications" to its portfolio. [53, 54] Sol-gel technology is utilized by LLNL for making nanothermites. [55] In another coincidence, Savannah River Technology staff participated in the search and rescue operations at Ground Zero by providing unique tools. [56]
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Today, Washington is owned by URS Corp, and they still "help manage and operate Idaho NL, LANL and LLNL," through a partnership with Battelle. [57] But just before 9/11 they were going through a tough time financially, and sought chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) documents show that Washington made court-ordered pre-petition payments, as part of these proceedings, to a number of companies including Komatsu. Washington also made payments to Greenhorne & O'Mara, whose employee Theresa McAllister was a lead author for the FEMA and NIST reports on the WTC disaster, and to Sumitomo Bank. [58] Sumitomo Bank was closely allied with Komatsu, and was involved with defense-related production. [59]
Other floors and companies of interest
If a "top down" demolition were implemented in the WTC's Twin Towers on 9/11, then it would have been necessary to plant explosives on floors below the impact zone. From a novice perspective, it would seem ideal to have planted such explosives at regular intervals below the impact area, around floor 50, for example, and below that around floors 25 to 35, and lower. Videos show "squibs" emanating in these general areas of each tower, at levels spaced between the mechanical floors on 41-42, and 75-76.
We have seen that Marsh occupied the impact zone for the north tower, and floors 47 to 54 of the south tower. Additionally, in a reflective criss-cross pattern, Fuji Bank's parent company Mizuho Holdings occupied the impact zone for the south tower, as well as floors 48 to 50 of the north tower (DKB). Primark Corporation occupied part of the impact zone for the south tower, and also floor 11 of the north tower.
To evaluate floors 25 to 35 of each tower we should note that, in 1997 and 1998, big leases were signed at the WTC involving AON, Marsh, and Bankers Trust, and two other companies of interest, Exco Resources and Oppenheimer & Co. At the time, tenancy had gone way up and the complex was expected to be at full capacity due to growth of the financial sector. [60]
Exco Resources (Exco), of Dallas Texas, was an oil and gas holding company that was the parent to Garban Intercapital, located on floor 25 and 26 of the north tower, and also on floor 55 of the south tower, just above Marsh subsidiary Guy Carpenter. Exco experienced rapid growth as of 1998, in part due to some very well connected management representatives. Member of the board Mark Neporent also represented Cerebrus Capital, along with Dan Quayle. Robert L. Stillwell, senior partner at Bush friend James Baker's firm Baker Botts, is currently a director at Exco.
Directors and Officers at Exco, during the period of interest, were associated with Enron affiliates, Anadarko Petroleum, a company owned and operated by long-time Bush family partner Robert Allison, and many other oil and gas exploration firms. Both Enron and Robert Allison met with Dick Cheney in regard to his secretive energy task force in early 2001. [61] In general, oil and gas exploration companies use explosives to
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underground create shock waves, so that oil reserves can be found through the seismic responses. Usually there is only a 10% success rate for finding new productive oil fields. [62]
Another Exco executive was Jeffrey Benjamin, who served on the board of Exco starting in 1998, and from 1996 to 1998 was managing director of UBS, the BCCI connected bank mentioned above with Mathis Cabiallavetta and Wolfgang Demisch. Just prior to working for UBS, Benjamin was managing director of Bankers Trust. Through Bankers Trust, he worked with A.B. Krongard, and as of 2002, Benjamin is a senior advisor to Apollo Management with Krongard's wife, Cheryl Gordon Krongard.
Oppenheimer & Co, an investment bank, was on floors 31 to 34 of the south tower. Oppenheimer's leadership once included Stephen Berger, former executive director of the PANYNJ (1985 to 1990). Berger was also on the board of Dresser Industries, the Bush dynasty firm, as well as being on the board of Forstmann Little & Co. with managing director of the Carlyle Group, Daniel Akerson, and with Alex Mandl of In-Q-Tel.
Oppenheimer was sold, by Stephen Robert and Nathan Gantcher, to the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) in 1997. Mr. Gantcher continued to serve as Vice Chairman of CIBC Oppenheimer from 1997 to 1999 and also served on the board of Jacobsen Partners with Gerald Parsky, the former undersecretary of the Treasury who introduced Saudi investors to America. Parsky developed a close relationship with the Bushes, and by 1976 was "the undisputed go-to man for the Saudis on oil and money." He also raised a lot of money for George W's campaign. [63] Parsky, Gantcher and Stephen Robert were all members of the Council on Foreign Relations as of 1997, along with Friedman, Bremer, Augustine, Gordon, and Maurice Greenberg (and about 3,000 others).
CIBC Oppenheimer was invested in a number of powerful and politically wired companies, including Hollinger International, whose board included Henry Kissinger, Richard Perle, and 9/11 Commissioner James R. Thompson. CIBC Oppenheimer was also invested in Robert Allison's Anadarko Petroleum, and several DKB subsidiaries including CIT Group, on whose board sits 9/11 Commissioner Thomas Kean. On a side note, Kean is also a Trustee of Drew University with Garnett Keith of Komatsu.
In 2003, the SEC fined CIBC Oppenheimer $80 million for helping to manipulate the financial statements of Enron.
Conclusions and next steps
If we look at the companies that occupied the impact zones of the WTC towers, and other floors that might have played a useful role in the demolition of the towers, we see connections to organizations that had access to explosive materials, and to the expertise required to use explosives. Mining companies like Washington, Morrison-Knudsen, Komatsu and Aoki Construction (and John Lehman's Special Devices Inc.) have access to
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many types of explosive materials. Oil and gas companies, like those associated with Exco, use explosives for exploration. Some of the explosive technologies available to these companies, for example Komatsu and Washington, involve thermite, a chemical mixture that has been identified in the WTC dust and in the environmental data at Ground Zero.
It seems that, if certain management representatives of the tenant companies listed above wanted to help bring the WTC towers down, they would have been well suited to do so. The companies mentioned were located at well-spaced intervals in the buildings, and some, for example Marsh and the Primark subsidiaries, had a reputation of being secretive. In fact, a number of the executives from these firms were either on the board of intelligence firms (e.g. In-Q-Tel, TASC), or were closely related to others who were. Others were connected to the CIA itself, and to some of the largest defense contractors in the world, like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Halliburton, and SAIC.
There are also strong connections to those who benefited from the 9/11 attacks, most notably the Bush family and their corporate network, including Dresser Industries (now Halliburton) and UBS, and to Deutsche Bank and it subsidiaries, reported to have brokered the insider trading deals. There are links between these tenant companies and the terrorist-related fraudulent bank BCCI.
In Part II of this series of essays, we'll look at the security companies and other contractors that had access to the WTC buildings. We'll then see more connections to the Bush family, through the companies that restructured the security systems in the late 1990s, like Securacom, where Marvin Bush and Wirt Walker were directors. Also involved in these security upgrades was Ensec, where future Democrat National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe was added as a director in 1996 and later worked for Harken Energy's Alan Quasha. The second essay will also look at E.J. Electric, owned by J. Robert Mann of the Yale Glee Club, and examine particulars about the PANYNJ management staff, and the Giuliani and Silverstein teams that were involved.
Part III will review the clean up of Ground Zero, and some of the people involved in the cover-up investigations. For example, we'll look more closely at Donald Evans, a close friend to George W. Bush since 1968 and his largest fund-raiser, and who also happened to be secretary of the Department of Commerce during the NIST WTC investigation. This is interesting because NIST reports to the Secretary of Commerce.
In the end, we might see that conspiracies are not just limited to the powerless people who happen to live on the most strategically important lands in the world. The conspiracies that matter might involve the powerful people who seek access to those lands, and who have spent their lives seeking more power.
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Part Two - Security


Who could have placed explosives in the World Trade Center (WTC) towers? This is the second essay in a series that attempts to answer that question. The first installment began by considering the tenants that occupied the impact zones and the other floors that might have played a useful role in the demolition of the WTC towers. [1] The result was a picture of connections to organizations that had access to explosive materials and to the expertise required to use explosives. Additionally it was seen that, in the years preceding 9/11, the impact zone tenants had all made structural modifications to the areas where the airliners struck the buildings.
The management representatives of these tenant companies were seen to be secretive and powerful. Through these powerful people, the tenants were connected to organizations that benefited greatly from the 9/11 attacks, including the defense contractors Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Halliburton, and Science Applications International Corp (SAIC). The tenants also had strong connections to the Bush family and their corporate network, including Dresser Industries (now Halliburton) and UBS, and to Deutsche Bank and its subsidiaries, reported to have brokered the insider trading deals. There were also links between these tenant companies and the terrorist-financing Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
Throughout this review we should keep in mind that, according to 2009 estimates, the membership of Al Qaeda's conspiracy network is estimated to be "as low as 200 or 300." [2] Other reports suggest the group numbers in several thousands, and that Al Qaeda maintains a presence in at least forty different countries, not including the western countries that fear it the most. Including those western countries, however, it was reported in 1996 that Al Qaeda had an economic and financial establishment spanning more than thirteen countries. [3] It is clear, therefore, that Al Qaeda is typically described as a "vast conspiracy". , [4,5]
Given the considerable evidence in support of the WTC demolition theory [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13], it is reasonable to ask if Al Qaeda's reach allowed it to have unlimited and secretive access to the three WTC skyscrapers that were destroyed that day, which were among the most well-secured facilities in the world at the time. If Al Qaeda did not have such a reach, we must wonder if other powerful people within the US or other western countries, specifically those who did have unlimited access to the WTC buildings, were involved in the attacks.
Approximately fifty people were named in the review of the WTC tenants and their possible links to explosive technology and expertise. Of course this assessment was not meant to suggest that all of those people were involved in planting explosives in the WTC buildings, but it merely answered the question of whether or not those who had the necessary access to the buildings, at the appropriate times, might have also had access to
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 15
the necessary technologies. But it is worthwhile to note that, even if all of those fifty people were involved, we would still be well below the lowest estimates of the extent of the Al Qaeda organization. Therefore, the common claim made by those opposing any further questioning of 9/11 -- that any conspiracy involving insiders would have had to be too vast and could not be kept secret -- is not supported by the facts. In actuality, as we will continue to see in this series of essays, the hypothesis of insiders being involved remains a simpler explanation than the "outsider only" hypothesis in terms of the complexity of the conspiracy, in addition to being far more feasible logistically.
In this second essay, we'll review the security organizations and contractors that had access to the Twin Towers. Due to the complete rebuilding of the security systems at the WTC complex after the 1993 bombing, it is clear that a plan could have been developed at that time to allow access to those who might desire to bring the towers down. The few primary security companies involved could have enabled such access by installing loopholes or providing access keys to anyone, including demolition contractors. Other WTC contractors, particularly those hired to complete certain electrical or construction related upgrades, could have been involved in the installation of demolition devices or related infrastructure. The primary security companies might have also controlled access to certain areas in order to prevent others from discovering what was going on. Additionally, other authoritative groups (e.g. Silverstein Properties and local government offices) could have facilitated the plan.
Because access to explosives was well established in the first essay, evaluation of these security related organizations would be best approached by considering their tendency to be deceptive, secretive or corrupt, and by examining the possibility that they might have benefited from the events of 9/11. First, we'll take a look at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ).
The PANYNJ and its WTC Director
The PANYNJ is the quasi-governmental agency that directed the construction of the WTC towers, and managed the WTC complex for all but the last three months of its existence. The PANYNJ was created in 1921 to "run the multi-jurisdictional commercial zones in the region." [14] As a result of their authority, the PANYNJ was responsible for managing both the WTC and Newark Airport, two facilities involved in the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Within the towers, the PANYNJ was also a tenant, occupying much of the available space, including offices on floors 3, 14, 19, 24, 28, and 31 of the north tower (WTC 1).
PANYNJ management includes an executive director and a board of commissioners comprised of twelve members. Six of the commission members are appointed by the Governor of New Jersey and the other six are appointed by the Governor of New York. The board of commissioners then appoints the executive director, with recommendations from the governors. [15]
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On 9/11 the commission chairman was Lewis Eisenberg, appointed by Governor Christine Todd Whitman in 1994, and the executive director was Neil Levin, who had previously been Superintendent of Banks for New York State, and a general partner and vice president at Goldman Sachs. , [16,17] Mr. Levin died in the towers during the attacks, after having been in the position less than six months. [18] His wife, journalist Christine Ferrer, went on to be Mayor Bloomberg's representative to the 9/11 Families and was later appointed by Governor Pataki to the PANYNJ board of commissioners. Levin's predecessor as PANYNJ executive director, Robert Boyle, filled the position from February 1997 until Levin took over in 2001. Boyle had worked, for twenty-two years, as an executive and major stockholder in the construction industry prior to joining PANYNJ. After the attacks, Boyle returned to the PANYNJ position temporarily, and he is now the President of Empire Strategies. [19]
Past Commissioners of the PANYNJ included Robert R. Douglass, a close friend of David Rockefeller and later chairman of Clearstream International. Clearstream was accused of playing a major part in the underground economy, of being a main platform for money laundering and operating "hundreds of confidential accounts for banks so they could move money undetected." [20] It was reported that Bahrain International Bank, which has been suspected of moving Al Qaeda's money, had an account number at Clearstream, and that BCCI and The Carlyle Group also had accounts there. [21]
Seven PANYNJ representatives contributed to the WTC report that was generated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2005. This report, for which both professionals and 9/11 victim's families have sought out formal correction, has since been found to be false in many ways, and appears to be intentionally deceptive. , [22,23] Of those PANYNJ representatives that contributed to the NIST report, one stands out for his authority and control over the facilities -- Alan Reiss.
Alan Reiss was the PANYNJ's World Trade Center Director, and as such was considered "mayor" of the WTC. [24] Reiss was employed at the WTC since 1984, working on building systems, the engineering and capital program, and eventually helping to secure major leases for tenants like Banker's Trust and Fuji Bank. In 1988, he was promoted to the position of the World Trade Center's supervising engineer, in charge of the complex's major systems. He was later promoted to Special Assistant to the Director, and eventually, WTC Director.
Reiss took the lead in the response to the 1993 terrorist bombing at the WTC, and it was reported that -- "As Special Assistant to the Director, he managed the design and construction team that restored the World Trade Center's infrastructure, allowing the Twin Towers to reopen within a month." [25] At the time he was put in charge of reconstruction, "a job that required him to meet with top brass twice a day." Reiss said about this period -- "there were so many innovations we made.... After the 1993 bombing, we implemented a ten-year redevelopment program. We were spending half a billion dollars on upgrades. It was an engineer's dream." [26]
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Part of these upgrades involved constructing new command and control centers throughout the buildings. A new Security Command Center was built on the 22nd floor of the north tower (WTC 1), and a new Operations Control Center was constructed in the B1 level of the south tower (WTC2). [27] Additionally, NYC officials responded to the 1993 bombing by establishing The Office of Emergency Management (OEM), over a period of years, "to promote unified operations between and among the various city emergency responder departments." The OEM was controversial, in that it was not appreciated by the NYPD, which already had an emergency center. But ultimately, "on September 11, 2001, the OEM center located at WTC 7 became ineffective as WTC 7 was evacuated." [28] During Rudy Giuliani's run for President, he and his former employee Jerome Hauer traded accusations about who made the choice of putting the OEM in WTC 7. [29]
When interviewed after the attacks, Alan Reiss "compared the energy of the planes' impacts to the detonation of a tactical nuclear weapon. But he said the buildings' construction may have saved some lives." [30] Reiss had the highest level of access to the towers, as would be expected for the Director of the WTC. But what is most interesting about Alan Reiss is the evidence that he was not telling the truth after the attacks. The first part of this evidence has to do with his surprising story of what happened to him on that day, and the visible evidence of his experience.
Many senior managers at the PANYNJ who had knowledge of the buildings died on 9/11 trying to help others escape, [31] but Reiss survived. In his testimony to the 9/11 Commission, Reiss stated -- "We were stunned when 2 WTC was also hit by a plane. The police officers and I rushed to the rear emergency exit and looked up at the tower and realized we were at war...At the Port Authority Police's request, I then returned to the vicinity of 6 World Trade Center to assess the condition of One World Trade Center with then-Captain Whitaker, commander of the PA Police at the WTC, just as the tower began to collapse. We were both enveloped by this churning black debris cloud as we ran north on West Street. It was darker than any burning building I have ever been in as a volunteer fireman, and it was next to impossible to breathe due to the debris in the air."
One problem with Reiss' testimony is that people who had been "enveloped by [the] churning black debris cloud" were completely covered in dust. [32] But Alan Reiss, who is said to have narrowly escaped the 1993 bombing as well, did not appear to have any dust or debris on him despite having been covered by the dust clouds. An interview with Reiss just moments after the destruction of the towers, in which Reiss' police escort turned his back on Reiss and appeared unusually uncomfortable, demonstrated this fact. [33]
A second piece of evidence indicating that Alan Reiss was being less than truthful after the attacks includes this quote -- "Even if someone had told me the threat was a missile, I don't know what I could have done, let alone if someone had told me it was going to be a plane. No one ever thought about a hijacked plane being rammed into a building." [34]
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We heard this same false claim -- that no one had ever thought about a plane being rammed into a building -- from George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. [35] After the public was presented with considerable evidence that many people in the US government had, in fact, thought about and planned for such an event before 9/11, Rice had to correct her comments in her testimony to the 9/11 Commission.
The reasons that Reiss should have been aware of the possibility included the fact that several people Reiss would have known had thought about this very scenario, including the WTC tower's design engineer, John Skilling. In a 1993 interview, Skilling said that, in the event of an airliner crash into one of the towers, "the building structure would still be there." [36] One of Reiss' own staff members, Frank A. DeMartini, the Manager of WTC Construction, was videotaped explaining how the towers could have withstood multiple impacts from aircraft. [37] Another person that Reiss would have worked with closely throughout the security upgrades, Brian Michael Jenkins, had also assessed the possibility of an airplane attack on the WTC. [38]
From 1989 to1998, Jenkins was the deputy chairman of Crisis Management for Kroll Associates. Kroll directed the PANYNJ's response to the 1993 bombing in terms of security upgrades, as stated by Reiss' program manager for WTC security systems, Douglas G. Karpiloff, who died on 9/11. Karpiloff reported -- "After the bombing, we had the top security consultants in the nation, Kroll Associates, do a complete security analysis for us, and we followed their recommendations." [39]
Stanley Brezeneoff, who was executive director of the PANYNJ from 1990 to 1995, emphasized the importance of Kroll's work at the WTC by saying -- "We have such confidence in [Kroll] that I have followed every one of their recommendations." [40] Having taken over the PANYNJ from Stephen Berger (of Dresser Industries), Brezenoff had previously been the First Deputy Mayor under Ed Koch, and before that he was a Program Officer for the Ford Foundation. [41]
Because Kroll's Jenkins led the analysis of future terrorist threats and how they might be addressed after the 1993 bombing, and Alan Reiss was the lead person in the PANYNJ response to the bombing, it seems very unlikely that Reiss was not aware of Jenkins' prediction of "terrorists deliberately crashing a plane into the towers." [42]
Alan Reiss might have wanted to be untruthful about the events of 9/11 because he knew more about the attacks than he let on. But he certainly knew about the involvement of Kroll in creating the security program for the WTC complex after the 1993 bombing. And Kroll's work is very relevant to this analysis.
Kroll leaders and history
Prior to working for Kroll, Jenkins was chairman of the RAND Corporation's Political Science department and he directed RAND's research on political violence. He also had served as a captain in the Green Berets in the Dominican Republic and later in Vietnam
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(1966-1970). Later, in 1999 and 2000, Jenkins also served as an advisor to the National Commission on Terrorism, led by L. Paul Bremer. [43] Jenkins returned to RAND after his stint with Kroll. Other RAND advisors during the times that Jenkins worked there were Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Frank Carlucci of The Carlyle Group, Paul Kaminski of In-Q-Tel, and Project for a New American Century (PNAC) co-founder, Francis Fukuyama. [44]
In 1996, Brian Michael Jenkins was appointed by President Clinton to be a member of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, where he worked with James Abrahamson of Securacom (see below), and John Deutch, then Director of the CIA. Deutch, who was later investigated for possible leaks of classified information, had worked for both Raytheon and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). [45] The White House Commission on Aviation and Security also included Louis Freeh, then Director of the FBI. Freeh, who had led the investigations into many of the terrorist acts attributed to Al Qaeda, stepped down shortly before the 9/11 attacks, and started a business that profited from the new Homeland Security industry. Freeh is now the personal attorney for Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar, often called "Bandar Bush." [46]
In 1997, the Commission represented by Abrahamson, Freeh, Deutch and Jenkins made several recommendations to President Clinton, including the implementation of new Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, from the Department of Defense, into all civilian airliners and the Federal Aviation Administration's Wide Area Augmentation System. [47] Whether or not such GPS devices could have been utilized on 9/11 is not considered in this essay. But similar scenarios have been proposed and some of these appear to be worth consideration. [48] In any case, it is an interesting coincidence that Brian Michael Jenkins helped plan for WTC security by formally assessing the possibility of an airliner attack on the WTC and (along with Securacom's Abrahamson) recommended that guidance devices be installed on commercial aircraft, and he was engaged in these activities in the few years before 9/11.
Despite Kroll's leading role in providing the security plan for the WTC, neither the 9/11 Commission nor the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) mentioned Kroll in their respective reports. But there are a number of reasons why Kroll should have been included in the investigation.
Kroll calls itself "the world's leading risk consulting company," [49]and was founded by Jules B. Kroll in 1972. Mr. Kroll had been admitted to the New York Bar in 1967, and had spent several years as an assistant District Attorney for New York County. [50]
Jules Kroll is a graduate of Cornell University, where he was a member of the secret society Quill and Dagger, as were former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Marsh and McLennan's Stephen Friedman, and National Security Advisors Sandy Berger and Stephen Hadley. [51] Friedman figured prominently in the evaluation of WTC tenants, due to his role at Marsh & McLennan and his later role as George W. Bush's top economic advisor. Friedman was also a member of the Brookings Institution, the Bilderberg group, the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and the board at In-Q-Tel.
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Berger was noted for stealing documents during the 9/11 investigation and for preventing Richard Clarke's response to Al Qaeda, with help from Hadley.
Kroll Inc. has been hired by some of the most powerful governments and organizations in the world. Beyond simply assessing risk, Kroll has operated as a private intelligence agency, and has been called "The CIA of Wall Street". In this role, Kroll traced and recovered the assets of Ferdinand Marcos, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, and Saddam Hussein (for Kuwait). Kroll also worked for the Russian government to recover funds, and for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) during the Savings and Loan scandal.
At times, Kroll worked for corporations that wanted to find fraud or secrets within a given organization. In some cases, when corporations were threatened with hostile takeover, Kroll helped out by finding embarrassing secrets about the takeover company's executives, thereby preventing the takeover. Former CIA spies, FBI agents, and prosecutors were hired by the firm, and made as much as twice the salaries they made in the public sector while investigating corporate and personal misdeeds. One of Kroll's more important cases involved the investigation of derivatives fraud at Daiwa Securities. [52]
Kroll Inc. leaders have included Robert J. McGuire, who was President and COO of the company from 1989 to 1997, and was formerly the NYC Police commissioner. Kroll board member Raymond E. Mabus was Governor of Mississippi from 1988 until 1992, and ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1994 until 1996. James R. Bucknam, Kroll's executive vice president for operations, was senior adviser to (Bandar Bush's attorney) Louis Freeh. Bucknam was also an assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York (AUSA SDNY) from 1987 to 1993, during the same time that Rudy Giuliani was the US District Attorney for SDNY, and was investigating BCCI. [53]
By 1991, due to his experience with international investigations, Jules Kroll had developed an expert knowledge of the terrorist financing bank BCCI and how it moved and hid money all over the world. [54,55] Coincidentally, during the same time that Jules Kroll was gaining this knowledge, WTC tenant L. Paul Bremer was managing director at Kissinger Associates, a firm that had been having meetings with BCCI but would not later reveal any details to the Senate's investigation committee. [56]
In 1993, American International Group (AIG), then led by Maurice Greenburg, bought 23% of Kroll. Greenberg's son Jeffrey, a member of the Brookings Institution and the Trilateral Commission, left AIG two years later for Marsh & McLennan. Jeffrey Greenberg rose to CEO of Marsh in just four years and was still CEO when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the north tower, directly in the area where Marsh occupied the building. By 2001, Kroll was not only partly owned by AIG, but was also working closely with AIG on security issues. [57]
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In August 1996, as a result of the TWA 800 disaster, Kroll began issuing a monthly bulletin "that reviews air travel safety issues worldwide." [58]What access to airline and airport information was provided to Kroll, as part of that responsibility, is not clear.
In January 2001, Jerome Hauer, who had been Mayor Giuliani's director of the OEM from 1996 until February 2000, was hired to run the crisis management group at Kroll. Hauer had left the OEM to become vice president and associate director at SAIC's Center for Counterterrorism Technology and Analysis. [59] It is not clear if he spent only eleven months at SAIC, or if he continued to work there while also working for Kroll. But on 9/11, Hauer was also serving as "a national security advisor with the National Institute of Health." [60] He was replaced as the director of Giuliani's OEM by Richard Sheirer.
Mr. Hauer has been scrutinized due to his positions at the OEM and at Kroll, and for potential links to the anthrax mailings via SAIC. He has also been considered suspect due to the interviews he did on 9/11. In one interview that day, with Peter Jennings of ABC, Hauer calmly said that "things were working as they should", and he acted as an expert as he described the need for continuity of government plans. [61]
Jerome Hauer was one of very few people who seemed to know exactly what happened to the WTC buildings, despite the fact that no skyscraper had ever collapsed for any reason other than demolition. His interview with Dan Rather on 9/11/01 was particularly insightful in this regard, in terms of Hauer's ability to describe the official theory of impact and fire-based failure. In fact, when Rather asked Hauer directly -- "would it have required the prior positioning of explosives," Hauer responded quickly -- "No...the velocity of the plane had an impact on the building...[it was] filled with jet fuel that burned [causing] intense heat [that] probably weakened the structure causing collapse." [62]
Later, in May 2002, Hauer was appointed as Acting Assistant Secretary for the Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness, thereby becoming a member of the Bush Administration. In December 2004, Hauer presented with military and Homeland Security representatives at the National Press Club in something called The BioDefense Briefing Series. Also there was George Lowell, Chief Scientific Officer at ID Biomedical Corporation. ID Biomedical, now a subsidiary of Glaxo Smith Kline, is manufacturing the H1N1 vaccine. [63] Some have reported that the US military is preparing to deploy troops in support of nationwide vaccination for H1N1. [64] A wholly owned subsidiary of Apollo Management, called CEVA Logistics, has been contracted to ship the bulk vaccine to processing facilities under lock and seal. [65] Apollo Management was founded by Leon Black, who is now on the PANYNJ Port Security Task Force, and company principals have included Jeffrey Benjamin of WTC tenants Bankers Trust and Exco Resources, Henry Silverman of Cendant and the PANYNJ, and A.B Krongard's wife, Cheryl Gordon Krongard.
In May of 2004 Kroll was purchased again, this time by the WTC impact zone tenant Marsh & McLennan for $1.9 billion, "more than $100 million of which was pocketed by" Jules Kroll. Kroll Inc's CEO Michael Cherkasky became the CEO of Marsh & McLennan
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after the deal, and he helped persuade his former protégé Eliot Spitzer to drop fraud charges that amounted to "cheat[ing] customers in an elaborate charade of price fixing and bid rigging." The charges that Spitzer had brought against Marsh were the cause of Jeffery's Greenberg's resignation as Marsh CEO. [66]

Electronic Systems Associates and E.J. Electric

The security plan at the WTC complex involved more than changes in infrastructure. Ongoing security also included the use of PANYNJ police (PAPD), as well as contract security personnel. In addition to those managed by the PANYNJ, some tenants had their own security contractors, and several of them died on 9/11. The PANYNJ itself lost a total of 84 employees, including 37 police officers, and its police superintendent.
But in terms of the placement of explosives in the Twin Towers, what is relevant is the facility modifications and construction work that was performed in the years before 9/11. The police were just doing their jobs, and clearly did not benefit from the terrorist attacks. In fact, the great sacrifice made by the PAPD, and other first responders like the FDNY, should be considered even greater because of the deception involved in the attacks.
Implementing the new security plan for the WTC complex after the 1993 bombing required years of work and involved many contractors. But there were four security contractors that led this effort. The contractors responsible for installation of the system throughout much of the towers were Electronic Systems Associates and E.J. Electric Installation, both of New York. For the security of the basement parking garages, a critical area for controlling access to the towers and the one area that failed so badly in 1993, a company called Ensec was hired. Another company, Securacom, was responsible for the overall system integration. [67]
Electronic Systems Associates (ESA) was a division of Syska & Hennessey (S&H). S&H was an engineering firm whose largest projects in the past included serving as structural engineers for the United Nations building, WTC building 7, and King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. S&H had offices in Saudi Arabia, and before the Shah was ousted they had offices in Iran. [68] In 1997, the firm was retained as the prime contractor to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Employees of ESA reported having worked on projects for clients such as The Pentagon, The Union Bank of Switzerland, March & McLennan and Hearst Publishing. [69]
E.J. Electric Installation Company (E.J.) was founded in 1899, and hired Jacques Mann in 1912. Jacques' son J. Robert Mann, a 1951 graduate of Yale, later became chairman and CEO of the company. J. Robert Mann was a winner of the Yale Science and Engineering "Award for Meritorious Service to Yale University." He attended the university with several Bush family and Skull and Bones members, including Jonathan J. Bush, of Riggs National where Norman Augustine is a director, and George Herbert Walker III, the
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chairman of Stifel Financial Corporation who became ambassador to Hungary in 2003. The third generation of Manns, Anthony (Tony) Mann joined E.J. Electric in 1986.
E.J. Electric's biggest jobs in the past included the Rockefeller Center, "the Merrill Lynch primary data center at the World Financial Center, AT&T World Headquarters in Manhattan, and American Airlines, as well as installation and maintenance of all voice, data, audio, video, satellite, security, and fire safety systems for U.N. buildings in New York. New York City's 911 Police Command Center... Delta Airlines, Tower Airlines and British Airways at JFK Airport." [70] It has been reported that the U.N. building in New York has been the site of electronic espionage. [71] E.J. also worked for United Airlines, Silverstein Properties, Saudi Arabian Airlines, and the Federal Reserve Bank. E- J was awarded a maintenance contract at the WTC after doing the security wiring, fire- alarm systems and back-up power.
On September 11th 2001, E.J. Electric had an office in the south tower and had nine electricians on-site, including a man on top of the tower before the first strike. E.J. also had a team in the basement. Tony Mann, who was President of E.J. at that time, said that all of his electricians ran out of the building and kept going. "A lot of them didn't stop until they got to Central Park," Mann said. "They were lucky to get out early enough." E.J. also helped the FBI with its investigation. "We did the whole security system down there and we provided our entire database to the FBI last week," Mann said. "They had 10 FBI agents at our subcontractor's office in California to download the database, which included everyone that worked there including photographs." [72]
Ensec International
Another of the primary companies involved in the 1990s security upgrades for the WTC was Ensec International, originally founded in Brazil in 1983, by Charles N. Finkel. Ensec's Florida subsidiary had an office on the 33rd floor of the north tower (WTC 1). It's not clear how much business Ensec had in the eighties and early nineties. But Charles Finkel was, at the same time, the export sales executive for a company called Engesa, a manufacturer of tanks and other military vehicles for Operation Desert Storm. Engesa was a Saudi-approved supplier. [73,74]
Ensec sold itself as a company that "designs, develops, assembles, sells, installs and services security systems for large commercial or governmental facilities ranging from single function installations to high-end integrated security systems." [75] Ensec's responsibility at the WTC involved setting up a new system for securing the basement levels, particularly in the parking garages. It was reported that the access control system used was manufactured and installed by Ensec. The system included proprietary software, proximity card readers and vehicle identification tags for all registered vehicles. The system also included cameras, located "in critical locations within the complex, such as machine rooms, computer areas, visitor areas and other sensitive locations."
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Another interesting connection to the first essay in this series is that it was Lockheed Martin IMS that first subcontracted the PANYNJ work to Ensec in November of 1996. [76] Lockheed Martin (Lockheed) CEO Norman Augustine worked in one way or another with many of the people mentioned in the review of tenants in the towers, including Toru Hashimoto of Fuji bank, William Clark of the Washington Group, and Stephen Friedman of Marsh & McClennan. Augustine was also a board member of Riggs National, the BCCI-linked banking firm of (J. Robert Mann's fellow Yale alumnus) Jonathan Bush, and he is now a senior advisor for the investment company Frontier Group, where he works with Frank Carlucci of the Carlyle Group. [77]
Throughout the 1990s, Augustine was at the forefront of US policy discussion on the need for changes to defense and space program spending. In 1990, he chaired the Advisory Committee that included Vice President (and PNAC signatory) Dan Quayle on the Future of the U.S. Space Program, known as the Augustine Commission. Also in 1990, Augustine co-wrote "The Defense Revolution", and later, along with WTC 2 impact zone tenant Joseph Kasputys, was thanked for his guidance in the 1996 book "Defense Conversion."
Augustine served as president of Lockheed when that company was formed in 1995, and became CEO later that year. He retired as CEO of Lockheed in August 1997. Therefore Augustine was the CEO of Lockheed when the subcontract was awarded to Ensec. Lockheed went on to benefit greatly from the War on Terror, through enormous increases in defense spending. [78,79]
In late 1998, CIA Director George Tenet and his executive director A.B. Krongard called on Augustine to establish the investment company In-Q-Tel. Augustine later recalled that -- ''We went through a very tough start because it was so different.'' At the time, it was considered, by congressional investigators, that Augustine and others involved in creating In-Q-Tel might be out to make a profit from this CIA-funded organization. Others were also suspicious of the CIA's intentions. Then, when 9/11 happened, those suspicions were forgotten. ''That was the turning point,'' Augustine said. [80,81]
In the press release that announced Lockheed's subcontract, Ensec CEO Charles N. Finkel reported that -- "Lockheed Martin has been actively engaged in the design, integration and implementation of security systems for many high profile installations including highly classified U.S. Department of Defense facilities and Department of Energy [DOE] sites. Consequently, we are very proud that Ensec has been selected as the supplier of a major component of this highly sophisticated system." In late 1997, Ensec signed a software license agreement, filed by SEC, with Lockheed. [82]
Charles Finkel was also the "sole limited partner of Mayfair Limited Partnership," [83] a joint venture between three companies including Apollo Real Estate Advisors. [84] Apollo Real Estate Advisors was formed in April 1993 as the real estate affiliate of the private investment organization Apollo Management. [85]
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In late 1996, just as Lockheed was subcontracting the PANYNJ work to it, Ensec added two new directors. These were Raymond E. List of ICF Kaiser Engineers, an engineering and construction company with DOE contracts, and Terence R. McAullife, who in 2001 would become Chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). [86]
McAullife had been involved in suspicious dealings before. He was linked to Teamster related corruption [87], and when he was DNC national finance chairman, he made a $1.35 million gift to the Clintons in what later became a scandal. [88] McAuliffe was also involved in a lawsuit regarding Loral Space, a company investigated for collaborating, with, and giving secrets to, the Chinese for their satellite and intercontinental ballistic missile programs. In another interesting coincidence, this potential national security breach also involved James Abrahamson's Hughes Aircraft, through its subsidiary Hughes Electronics. Prescott Bush Jr. was working with Hughes to secure satellite deals with China. [89]
The charges against McAuliffe in the Loral Space scandal were that he agreed "to participate in this scheme to sell seats on taxpayer-financed foreign trade missions and other government services in exchange for campaign contributions to the DNC" and "played a central role in selecting trade mission participants and, on information and belief, securing other favorable treatment from the Clinton Administration for Defendant Loral." It was also reported that -- " prominently figured among those selected for participating in the high-profile Commerce Department trade mission to China was Defendant Schwartz, who would go on to become the single largest contributor to the DNC." [90] Bernard L. Schwartz was the billionaire CEO of Loral and Globalstar.
The CEOs of Hughes, Loral, and Lockheed co-wrote a letter to President Clinton in October 1995, asking the president to "transfer all responsibility for commercial satellite export licensing to the Commerce Department." All three companies later paid enormous fines for illegal exports of advanced missile technology to China, and Hughes was charged with 123 counts of national security violations. But in 1996, Clinton did move oversight of the satellite exports to the Department of Commerce and the three CEOs, including Augustine and Schwartz, thanked him publicly. [91]
Lockheed Martin then bought most of Loral, in April 1996, for $9.1 billion. [92] Schwartz, whose company had been close to bankruptcy, was much richer for it, and today, PNAC co-founder Francis Fukuyama is the "Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy" at Johns Hopkins University.
McAuliffe was linked to another company that was mired in scandal -- Global Crossing. It was reported that McAuliffe purchased $100,000 in Global Crossing stock before the company went public and cashed out several years later for $18 million. Richard Perle was a lobbyist for Global Crossing, which was a partner in several deals with the Chinese company Hutchison Whampoa, called an "arm of the PLA [People's Liberation Army]." [93] Li Ka-Shing was the Chinese billionaire owner of Hutchison, as well as Cheung Kong Holdings. Li has invested in firms owned by Winston Partners, and has also employed Winston cofounder Marvin Bush's brother, Neil Bush, as a consultant. [94]
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Between his DNC role and his later job as campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton's Presidential run, McAuliffe worked as Vice-Chairman of Carret investments. McAuliffe was hired at Carret by Alan Quasha, who once "bailed out George W. Bush's failing oil company in 1986, folding Bush into his company, Harken Energy, thus setting him on the path to a lucrative and high-profile position as an owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, and the presidency." [95]
Alan Quasha had owned Carret since 2003. But he was previously known for his leadership of Harken Energy, and thereby, his connection to the many suspicious organizations related to Harken, including BCCI. At Carret and Harken, Quasha had a partner named Hassan Nemazee. An investor in Harken and the founder of the Iranian -- American PAC, Nemazee was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution, and was also associated with RAND.
In any case, Ensec International and its leaders should have been investigated for possible security breaches at the WTC. The management structure at Ensec, including its arms dealer founder, Charles Finkel and its corrupt director Terry McAuliffe, should have led the 9/11 Commission and NIST to consider the problems that might have resulted from this company having rebuilt the access systems for the WTC basement levels. Additionally, the fact that Lockheed Martin had subcontracted the PANYNJ work to Ensec was one indicator that these companies might have benefited from the attacks.

Securacom

Having recently changed its name from Burns & Roe Securacom, in October 1992, Securacom Inc. positioned itself as a firm offering "large-scale security and facility management for businesses and government." The company first began doing work at the WTC in 1993, following the bombing. [96] It won a larger WTC contract in 1996, and a year later was forced to change its name again, to Stratesec, as a result of a lawsuit over trademark infringement. [97] The court "found a deliberate effort by Securacom to financially ‘bury' the plaintiff, Ron Libengood, and ‘take everything he had' by filing a barrage of frivolous arguments...in multiple jurisdictions." [98] This name change incident seems to be clear evidence of corruption, but where possible this essay will use the name Securacom for the sake of simplicity.
Other projects that Securacom was working on in 1997 were for Amtrak, Xerox, and "a joint venture agreement with Ahmad N. AlBinali & Sons Co., a large Saudi Arabian engineering and construction company, to develop and conduct business in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." [99] Securacom also had contracts to provide security services for several facilities, other than the WTC, that were key to the 9/11 attacks, including United Airlines, and Dulles Airport, where American Airlines Flight 77 took off that day. Another client was Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), where scientists were working on the development of nanothermite, a type of explosive material that has since been discovered in the WTC dust. [100] "When Securacom went public on September 11,
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1997, its prospectus for the Initial Public Offering prominently featured photographs of its clients the World Trade Center and Dulles airport, with a client list that included United Airlines and Los Alamos National Laboratories." Perhaps as a result, Marsh & McLennan subsidiary Putnam became one of Securacom's investors. [101]
Securacom had a small board of directors that included James Abrahamson, of the White House Commission on Aviation Security as mentioned above, Marvin Bush, the brother of George W. Bush, and Wirt Walker III, a cousin of the Bush brothers. Other directors included Charles Archer (since 1998), former Assistant Director in charge of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, who had been recently been promoted by FBI Director Louis Freeh. Another Securacom director was Yousef Saud Al Sabah, a member of the Kuwaiti royal family. [102]
It was a member of the Kuwaiti royal family who provided the critical testimony that swayed US public opinion in support of the 1991 invasion of Kuwait. That testimony was given to the House "Human Rights Caucus" by a 15-year old girl named Nayirah, whose family connections were not publicly known at the time. She told the world that she witnessed -- "Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die." It was later discovered that Nayirah's testimony was completely false, and that she had been coached to give that false testimony by the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton. It was also discovered that she was Nayirah Al Sabah, the daughter of Saud Nasir al-Sabah, who was at the time the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US. [103]
Yousef Saud Al Sabah was also chairman of the Kuwait-American Corporation (KuwAm), which, between 1993 and 1999, held a controlling share of Securacom. It was an unusual arrangement, according to experts in the field, in that security services for sensitive US facilities were not typically managed by foreign-owned companies. The fact that Kuwam owned Securacom suggested, according to Wayne Black, the head of a Florida-based security firm, that -- "Somebody knew somebody." Black noted that when a company has a security contract, "you know the inner workings of everything," and if another company is linked to the security company, then "what's on your computer is on their computer." [104]
The other owners of Securacom were Walker and an entity controlled by Walker and Al Sabah, called Special Situation Investment Holdings (SSIH). [105] SSIH was said to form a group with KuwAm, and the group owned several other companies, including Commander Aircraft and Aviation General.
Securacom director and retired Air Force General James Abrahamson was a former NASA administrator, and a former director of Reagan's Space Defense Initiative (SDI). As director of the SDI program from 1984 to 1989, he worked closely with Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney and Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, both of whom were signatories on PNAC documents. As a civilian,
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Abrahamson was President of Hughes Aircraft, and a director of Turkey's Global Group. He became a director of Securacom in December 1997. [106]
Although the availability of explosives was established during the review of WTC tenants, we might note that NASA uses explosives extensively in the launching of spacecraft, and has done so for fifty years. Today, there are "more than 250 strategically placed and precisely timed explosive devices that detonate on the space shuttle each time the vehicle flies." [107] Lockheed Martin is a major NASA supplier in that regard. [108] NASA also uses thermite technology, for space separation explosives and for initiators, and as with the improvised explosive devices that kill our soldiers in the Middle East, there is no need for extensive wiring to detonate them.
Abrahamson was President of Hughes Aircraft from 1989 to 1992, when Prescott Bush Jr. was helping Hughes lobby his brother, the US President, to lift sanctions on the Chinese government. Abrahamson now serves on the board at GeoEye, the people who spy on us from above by way of satellites. [109] He also co-founded a company called Crescent Investment Management (Crescent), with Mansoor Ijaz.
Abrahamson's business partner Mansoor Ijaz is the CEO of Crescent, and the board of advisors includes Maurice Sonnenberg and former CIA Director (and PNAC signatory) James Woolsey. [110] Ijaz is a rare individual in that he claimed to have the ability to persuade several governments to extradite Osama bin Laden. After meetings with President Clinton and Sandy Berger, Ijaz said that he could not convince them to work toward the extradition. [111] Additionally, Ijaz introduced the journalist Daniel Pearl, by way of a personal letter, to those in Pakistan who are believed to have been involved in his death. [112] Ijaz went on to become a Fox News correspondent, and he was a strong promoter of false claims leading up to the Iraq War, including WMDs and ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. [113]
Crescent's Maurice Sonnenberg was the Vice Chairman of L. Paul Bremer's National Commission on Terrorism (where Brian Michael Jenkins was an advisor). Sonnenberg was also a member of President Clinton's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 1993 to 1995, with Stephen Friedman of Marsh and McLennan. At the same time, Sonnenberg was also a member of the U.S. Commission on Reducing and Protecting Government Secrecy, with Lee Hamilton and John Deutch, who replaced James Woolsey as Director of the CIA in 1995.
Marvin Bush was a director of Securacom from 1993 to 2000. [114] Bush was hired as part of a new management team when Securacom separated from Burns and Roe. It was just at that time that the PANYNJ and Kroll began planning for the extensive rebuilding of the security systems at the WTC complex. As his stint with Securacom ended, Marvin Bush became a principal in the company HCC Insurance, one of the insurance carriers for the World Trade Center. Bush was also a director of Kerrco, an oil company in Houston.
Bush was the cofounder of Winston partners in 1993, a company that benefited greatly from the War on Terror. In 2000, Winston Partners invested heavily in a defense
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contractor called AMSEC, that was 55% owned by SAIC. It has been noted that SAIC was not only the largest non-governmental contributor to the NIST WTC report, it was also a company that had expertise in nanothermite technology. [115]
SAIC was also involved in the investigation of the 1993 WTC bombing, boasting that -- "After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, our blast analyses produced tangible results that helped identify those responsible." [116] As a company that sells "expertise about weapons, about homeland security, about surveillance, about computer systems, about ‘information dominance' and ‘information warfare'," and has been "awarded more individual government contracts than any other private company in America," SAIC has been paid huge sums to rebuild the NSA and FBI systems that supposedly failed before 9/11. [117] John Deutch left SAIC to become Deputy Secretary of Defense in 1994.
Michael Braham, who took over as CEO of AMSEC in 2003, was previously Senior Vice President at Marsh Crisis Consulting, [118] where his boss was J Paul Bremer. When Marvin Bush joined its board in 2000, AMSEC's revenues were $100 million. By 2007, its annual revenues had grown to $500 million. [119]
Barry McDaniel became the COO of Securacom beginning in 1998. McDaniel had worked for the US Government from 1970 to 1987, ultimately as Deputy Director of Readiness for the United States Army Materiel Command (AMC). Located at Fort Belvoir, Virgina, AMC is a primary provider of technology and equipment, including explosive ordnance, to US Army personnel. [120] Between 1989 and 1998, he was with BDM International as Vice President of Material Distribution and Management Systems. BDM was a supplier of computer systems to the defense industry, and had developed the electronic filing system for the Securities and Exchange Commission.
After 9/11, Barry McDaniel, who was then CEO of Securacom, was asked whether FBI or other agents had questioned him or others at the company about their security work related to 9/11. His answer was -- "No." [121] The FBI did, however, briefly consider investigating Securacom for possible insider trading related to 9/11, due to an SEC referral of suspicious accounts. But since the people involved were considered to not have any "ties to terrorism or other negative information," the investigation was not pursued. [122]

Silverstein Properties

Larry Silverstein owned WTC building 7, and in May 2001, he also finalized a 99-year lease of the WTC complex and took over operation of WTC buildings 1, 2, 4 and 5 from the PANYNJ. His partners in the deal were retail operator Westfield America and real estate investor Lloyd Goldman. To finance his deal for the WTC, "Silverstein borrowed $726 million from GMAC Commercial Mortgage, a unit of General Motors. GMAC in turn converted the loan into securities, which it sold to investors like pension funds." [123]
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Alan Reiss of the PANYNJ had been working on a three-month transition plan with a team including Silverstein Properties, in the weeks before 9/11. Just before the attacks, the Silverstein group had asked Reiss to let it more fully operate all systems, from safety systems to tenant relations. [124]
Silverstein had hired someone to run the WTC complex for him. This was Geoffrey (Jeff) Wharton, who came to Silverstein Properties from Tishman Speyer, one of the city's biggest office landlords. Wharton was in charge of the buildings when they were destroyed, and stayed with Silverstein for only one year after that. [125]
Wharton had been in the north tower at the Windows on the World restaurant where he had breakfast every day, and was said to be on the last elevator to descend, at 8:44 AM. He greeted and left behind the new PANYNJ executive director, Neil Levin, who was there waiting for someone although he had not been seen there before. [126] Shortly thereafter, it was Jeff Wharton that first told Larry Silverstein about the attacks. But Silverstein watched it all play out on television. Although Silverstein was said to be distressed by the loss of four of his employees, at the same time, "in a display of shrewdness, Silverstein was already delving into complex legal strategies by the next morning." [127]
Wharton was a friend of Jerome Hauer, and through Hauer, Silverstein and Wharton met and hired an FBI agent named John O'Neill to run security. [128] It was reported that O'Neill "started out as an FBI support employee and worked his way up to titles such as assistant special agent in charge and section chief in charge of the counterterrorism division. In his 31-year career with the FBI, John O'Neill investigated nearly every terrorist attack aver attributed to Al Qaeda, many of those under the direction and close supervision of FBI Director Louis Freeh. "O'Neill ... had been a key part of the investigation of the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen last year." [129]
O'Neill was known to dress like a gangster, and to fraternize with gangsters. He was also dating several women at the same time and was lying to all of them. A few weeks before 9/11, O'Neill got serious about returning to his Catholic faith and began going to mass every day. He repeatedly told people that he felt something was going to happen. On his second day at his WTC office, on the 34th floor, O'Neill was killed when the attacks occurred, although not immediately. It was reported that O'Neill escaped the building but returned in an attempt to help others.
In 2007, Larry Silverstein was awarded a $4.55 billion settlement in insurance payouts for the destruction of the WTC, as a result of the largest insurance claim ever made. [130]
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Giuliani, Cherkasky and the BCCI Investigation
The terrorist financing bank BCCI was being investigated by US authorities "as early as 1983, 1984", in an effort that began as an inquiry into drug money laundering. It was shortly thereafter that the British intelligence service MI6 linked BCCI with the funding of terrorism. Despite these facts, BCCI was allowed to gain control of several American financial institutions, and was allowed to continue funding terrorism, without being prosecuted, for many years. [131]
Kroll's executive VP for Operations, James Bucknam, worked for Rudy Giuliani as an AUSA SDNY in the late 1980s. Giuliani was the US attorney for the SDNY, from 1983 to 1989, and was in charge of investigating BCCI. It was reported that Giuliani received documents during this time, about secret bank accounts related to terrorist financing that were held by companies like Citibank, Barclays, Credit Lyonnais, and the Japanese company Nomura. [132] What is less well reported is that, when Giuliani left his job as AUSA SDNY to start a political career, he worked for a law firm called White & Case that actually represented BCCI. [133]
With such detailed knowledge and experience with the terrorist funding bank BCCI, it is remarkable that Giuliani never mentioned terrorism as an issue in his campaign for NYC mayor in 1993. In fact, he barely mentioned the 1993 WTC bombing that occurred earlier that year, referring to it only once publicly. What's more, when he won the election, and began looking for his first police commissioner, he never questioned the candidates about terrorism. For someone who had made a career both before 1993, and after 9/11, as a terrorist fighter, it was inexplicable that Giuliani would never talk about terrorism when running for his first elected office. Some have said that it was his relationship with BCCI, and questions that might arise about it, that kept him quiet at that time. [134]
Actually, it is startling to review those who filled US Justice Department positions in the SDNY, around the same time, in terms of their importance to the official myth of terrorism and the role of Al Qaeda. This included Michael Chertoff, who was an AUSA SDNY and later became Homeland Security Secretary. Also, Michael Mukasey was a US District Judge for SDNY from 1987 until he took over from Alberto Gonzalez as Bush's Attorney General in 2006. Mukasey had presided over the trial of the 1993 WTC bombers.
Louis Freeh (Bandar Bush's attorney) was also an AUSA SDNY, and in 1991 was promoted by George H.W. Bush to be a US District Court Judge for the SDNY. Two years later, Freeh became the Director of the FBI, a position he held until 2001. Additionally, Patrick Fitzgerald, who conducted the official investigation into the vengeful outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame in 2005, was also an AUSA SDNY, starting at the age of 27 years. Fitzgerald appears to have deliberately allowed the terrorist ringleader Ali Mohamed to remain free and un-prosecuted over a period of years. In fact, author Peter Lance has suggested that Fitzgerald had evidence to implicate Mohamed in the 1998 Kenya embassy bombing before it happened, but Fitzgerald deliberately allowed the bombing to occur. [135]
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As early as 1994, FBI headquarters was systematically obstructing investigations into the financial backing of Al Qaeda, according to special agent Robert Wright. This obstruction "allowed foreign-born terrorist operatives, such as the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks, to engage in illegal activities inside the United States." [136] When Louis Freeh stepped down as FBI Director, in June 2001, President Bush nominated Robert Mueller as his successor. Mueller was, therefore, the one who led the early investigation into the 9/11 attacks. But in the early 1990s, he was in charge of the Justice Department's criminal division, and therefore ran the overall investigation into BCCI.
Also involved in the BCCI investigation was assistant DA of New York County, Michael Cherkasky, who worked in the same job that Jules Kroll had worked during the late sixties and early seventies. From 1990 to 1993, Cherkasky was the chief of investigations for that office, and was therefore in charge of the 1993 WTC bombing investigation as well. Cherkasky later became an employee of Kroll during the time the company developed the plan for security at the WTC (1994 to 1997), then he became President and COO of Kroll while that plan was still being implemented (1997 to 2001), and ultimately he was the company's CEO, from 2001 to 2004.
Cherkasky's involvement in the BCCI investigation began in the spring of 1989, when Jack Blum, who had been the chief counsel to the US Senate's subcommittee investigation concerning Drugs, Law Enforcement, and Foreign Policy, went to New York City to meet with staff at the New York County DA's office. At the time, Blum brought information he had about criminal activity involving BCCI. The investigation was originally about laundering drug money, but Blum and his colleagues were discovering the extent of criminality in which BCCI was engaged.
When Jack Blum provided his revelatory information about BCCI, Cherkasky was not only skeptical of Blum, but he expressed it clearly. Cherkasky said that Blum was proposing that -- "the entire Third World was involved and that they had bought and sold entire governments and maybe some United States officials. It was a fascinating tale -- this guy was telling us the world was corrupt!" [137]
Eventually the world found out that Blum was right. By the fall of 1990, the NY County DA's office could not ignore the evidence of massive fraud at BCCI, as described through audits by Price Waterhouse UK. This evidence compelled the DA to investigate formally, and as a result, in July 1991, more than two years after Blum's visit, the New York District Attorney indicted BCCI. The indictment has since been called "warmed-over information from an investigation that had ended nearly two years before." [138] Unfortunately for all of us, although BCCI was closed, the money for terrorist funding got away.
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 33

Conclusions

Several facts are clear from this review of the companies and people responsible for revamping the security systems for the WTC buildings, and securing New York City, on 9/11. One is that many of the people involved were deceptive and/or corrupt, and appeared to have benefited from the attacks. Another is that many of them were connected to each other and to the investigations into previous acts of terrorism and the terrorist financing bank BCCI. Yet another striking similarity among these organizations is that they all did major work for the Saudi Arabian government, or the royal family of Kuwait. Finally, the history of some of those involved, like Terry McAuliffe, shows a level of greed and corruption that overshadowed all preconceptions about US politics.
The PANYNJ occupied a good deal of space in the towers, and contributed to the false WTC report from NIST. Some of its commissioners were linked to BCCI, and its WTC Director appeared to be intentionally deceptive after the attacks. Others like Silverstein Properties' security manager John O'Neill, and FBI Director Louis Freeh, were the leading experts on Al Qaeda.
The management of Kroll created the WTC security plan, created authoritative reports that promoted a fear of terrorism, had expert knowledge of BCCI, and were intimately linked to the impact zone tenant Marsh & McLennan. AIG was one of the owners of Kroll as of 1993 and, along with Marsh, Lockheed Martin and L-3 Communications (the defense contractor successor to Loral Corp), was a company whose stock was flagged by the SEC after 9/11, in relation to insider trading. [139] Less than a month after the attacks, AIG's chairman Greenberg said -- "The opportunities for us are enormous," and "It's not just in the United States, but rates are rising throughout the world. So our business looks quite good going forward.'' [140]
It's clear that some management representatives at the primary WTC security companies also benefited from the War on Terror. Examples include James Abrahamson, Terry McAuliffe and Marvin Bush. Larry Silverstein, whose company had just taken over the security of the complex, reaped a huge windfall in insurance benefits from the destruction of the three buildings.
All four of the primary contractors that were involved in rebuilding the security systems for the WTC had done significant business with the Saudis. Electronic Systems Associates' parent, S&H, designed King Saud University, and E.J. Electric worked for Saudi Arabian Airlines. Ensec was owned by a former arms dealer to the Saudis and Securacom, owned by a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, was in partnership with Ahmad N. AlBinali & Sons Co., the large Saudi Arabian construction company. Of course, fifteen of the nineteen alleged hijackers were from Saudi Arabia as well. [141]
The leaders of NY City and NY County, who also were the primary players on 9/11 and in the ensuing investigations, were the investigators of BCCI and the 1993 WTC bombing, in the late 1980s an early 1990s. All of them seemed to benefit from the 9/11 attacks. Freeh started a homeland security business and began representing the Saudis.
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 34
Cherkasky went on to become CEO of Marsh, after it bought Kroll, and helped it avoid prosecution for fraud. Others, like Giuliani, became national heroes for their "response" to 9/11.
Could those involved in the BCCI investigation in New York, many of whom played a large role in the events leading up to, during, and after the attacks at the WTC, somehow have used the information they learned about BCCI to facilitate the attacks and then benefit from them? If so, they might have had to eliminate certain individuals who knew too much. Could the security firms and certain tenant companies have conspired to prepare the Twin Towers for demolition, well in advance of the attacks?
These possibilities seem quite plausible. In fact, a number of these people, including Giuliani, Cherkasky, Freeh, Mueller, Bremer and Hauer have already been charged and indicted by a citizen's grand jury, for the crimes of 9/11. [142] Further investigation, with subpoena power, is well past due.
The third and final essay in this series will examine the organizations and people who were involved in cleaning up Ground Zero. Those involved in the cover-up investigations will also be evaluated with respect to what has already been learned. It's possible that the old saying -- that criminals always return to the scene of the crime -- will help us learn more about what happened.
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 35

Part Three – Convergence

Careful investigation leads one to notice that a number of intriguing groups of people and organizations converged on the events of September 11th, 2001. An example is the group of men who were members of Cornell University's Quill & Dagger society. This included Paul Wolfowitz, National Security Advisors Sandy Berger and Stephen Hadley, Marsh & McLennan executive Stephen Friedman, and the founder of Kroll Associates, Jules Kroll. Another interconnected group of organizations is linked to these Cornell comrades, and is even more interesting in terms of its members being integral to the events of 9/11, and having benefited from those events.
After the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center (WTC), a company called Stratesec (or Securacom) was responsible for the overall integration of the new security system designed by Kroll Asoociates. Stratesec had a small board of directors that included retired Air Force General James Abrahamson, Marvin Bush (the brother of George W. Bush) and Wirt Walker III, a cousin of the Bush brothers. Other directors included Charles Archer, former Assistant Director in charge of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, and Yousef Saud Al Sabah, a member of the Kuwaiti royal family.[1]
Yousef Saud Al Sabah was also chairman of the Kuwait-American Corporation (KuwAm), which between 1993 and 1999 held a controlling share of Stratesec. The other owners of Stratesec were Walker and an entity controlled by Walker and Al Sabah, called Special Situation Investment Holdings (SSIH).[2] SSIH was said to form a group with KuwAm, and the group owned several other companies, including Commander Aircraft and Aviation General. In any case, the Kuwaiti royal family can be said to have benefited from 9/11 due to "The War on Terror" that removed Saddam Hussein from power. Of course, that was the second consecutive US war that Kuwait benefited from, the first being the 1991 Gulf War led by President George H.W. Bush.
Stratesec director James Abrahamson was President of Hughes Aircraft from 1989 to 1992, when Prescott Bush Jr. was helping Hughes lobby Bush's brother, the US President, to lift sanctions on the Chinese government. Abrahamson became a director of Stratesec in December 1997.[3] He also co-founded a company called Crescent Investment Management (Crescent) with the Pakistani-American, Mansoor Ijaz. Crescent's board of advisors included James Woolsey, the CIA Director for President Clinton who became a PNAC signatory and Booz Allen Hamilton executive.[4]
Mansoor Ijaz is the CEO of Crescent, and is a rare individual in that he claimed to have the ability to persuade several governments to extradite Osama bin Laden. After meetings with Clinton and his National Security Advisor Sandy Berger (who first introduced Woolsey to Clinton), Ijaz said that he could not convince them to work toward the extradition.[5] Additionally, Ijaz introduced the journalist Daniel Pearl, by way of a personal letter, to those in Pakistan who are believed to have been involved in his
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 36
death.[6] Ijaz went on to become a Fox News correspondent, and he was a strong promoter of false claims leading up to the Iraq War, including WMDs and ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.[7]
Stratesec had contracts to provide security services for United Airlines, and Dulles Airport, where American Airlines Flight 77 took off on 9/11. Another client was Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), where scientists were working on the development of nanothermite, a type of explosive material that has since been discovered in the WTC dust.[8,9]

The Carlyle Group

In 1998, Barry McDaniel came to Stratesec to become its Chief Operating Officer. McDaniel was therefore in charge of the security operation at the WTC in terms of what he called a "completion contract," to provide services "up to the day the buildings fell down."[10] McDaniel had previously worked for the United States Army Materiel Command (AMC), located at Fort Belvoir, Virgina. But McDaniel came to Stratesec directly from BDM International, where he had been Vice President for nine years. BDM was a major subsidiary of The Carlyle Group for most of that time. When Barry McDaniel started at BDM, the company began getting a large amount of government business "in an area the Navy called Black Projects," or budgets that were kept secret.[11]
BDM has had an interesting history. In 1990 it was a subsidiary of Loral Corporation, a company owned by Bernard Schwartz that was related to WTC security company Ensec, and Ensec director Terry McAuliffe.[12] Loral sold BDM to The Carlyle Group in 1992, at which time Frank Carlucci became chairman of BDM. Carlucci was a covert operative in his early career, and got his start in national politics through his old college roommate, Donald Rumsfeld, becoming Rumsfeld's assistant at the Office of Economic Opportunity in 1969. Carlucci went on to be named Deputy Director of the CIA and Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Defense.
During his first few years at Carlyle, Carlucci asked his friend Norman Augustine, later CEO of Lockheed Martin, if Carlyle could be included in a deal to buy the defense contractor LTV Corp.[13] That deal did not happen, but LTV was among the companies whose stocks were flagged for insider trading related to 9/11.[14,15] The FBI also briefly considered investigating Stratesec for insider trading related to 9/11, due to an SEC referral of suspicious accounts. But since the people involved were considered to not have any "ties to terrorism or other negative information," an investigation into Stratesec was not pursued.[16] Putnam Investments, a subsidiary of WTC impact zone tenant Marsh & McLennan, was one of Stratesec's investors.
During the time that Stratesec executive McDaniel worked for them, the Caryle Group began to add some very powerful people to their leadership group. One such figure was James Baker, who went to Princeton with Rumsfeld and Carlucci, and who was White
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 37
House Chief of Staff, and Secretary of the Treasury, for Reagan. Baker was also George H.W. Bush's campaign manager and Secretary of State, and Bush's White House Chief of Staff again in his last government position. Baker became a partner at Carlyle just two weeks after the February 1993 bombing of the WTC.
Earlier in his career, Baker had worked in President Ford's department of Commerce, along with WTC impact zone tenant Joseph Kasputys. And Baker was a longtime, close friend of Raymond Hill, an elite Texan who owned the mafia and CIA-connected Mainland Savings. American taxpayers shelled out approximately $500 million when Mainland failed in 1986. Investigators have since discovered that Mainland, like a number of other savings and loans that failed in the late 1980s, was a vehicle for CIA and mafia activities.[17]
Baker is also remembered as the one person most responsible for changing the outcome of the 2000 presidential election, in favor of George W. Bush. As Congressman John Conyers wrote: "Mr. Baker will be forever remembered for his ultimately successful efforts to shut down the counting of votes in the 2000 Florida election."[18]
On September 11, 2001, Baker was at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington DC, for the annual investor conference of the Carlyle Group. Also present with Baker was Carlucci, "representatives of the bin Laden family," and George H. W. Bush.[19] Carlyle had been doing business with the bin Laden family since the early 1990s.
Baker's grandfather started the law firm Baker Botts, which had offices in Saudi Arabia and which, after 9/11, represented the Saudi Arabian government in a lawsuit filed by families of those killed and injured in the attacks. The Saudi connection is interesting considering that Carlyle owned, through BDM International, the Vinnell Corporation, a mercenary operation that had extensive contracts in the Middle East since 1975, training the Saudi Arabian National Guard and also training Turkish security forces.
Vinnell was considered "by some experts to be a CIA front."[20] Of course Frank Carlucci was Deputy Director of the CIA, and George H.W. Bush, who was Baker's boss for many years, was in the CIA for a majority of his career.[21] Perhaps as a result, in 1995 Vinnell was reported to be one of the first targets of al Qaeda, in Saudi Arabia.
BDM, Vinnell's parent company, was sold to TRW in 1997. Directors at BDM at the time included Carlyle Group executives and a former assistant to Henry Kissinger, Philip Odeen, who went on to become the CEO of TRW. Directors at TRW at the same time included Robert M. Gates, former Director of Central Intelligence and current Secretary of Defense. Arden Bement, who was appointed by George W. Bush to lead the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) one month after the 9/11 attacks, had left his position as TRW Vice President in 1992, moving to Purdue University in the interim.
In 1998, at the time that Barry McDaniel moved to Stratesec, TRW merged with Lockheed Martin, the company that sub-contracted the WTC security job to Ensec.[22] Stratesec and Ensec, along with E.J. Electric and Electronic Systems Associates, worked
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 38
to build the security system that was in place at the WTC when the buildings were destroyed. All four of these companies had done significant work in Saudi Arabia before working at the WTC.[23]
Marvin Bush was a director of Stratesec from 1993 to 2000. It was during that time that Kroll and Stratesec planned and executed the extensive rebuilding of the security systems at the WTC complex. As his stint with Stratesec ended, Marvin Bush became a principal in the company HCC Insurance, one of the insurance carriers for the World Trade Center.

SAIC

Marvin Bush was the cofounder of Winston Partners in 1993, a company that benefited greatly from the War on Terror. In 2000, Winston Partners invested heavily in a defense contractor called AMSEC that was 55% owned by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). It has been noted that SAIC was not only a major contributor to the NIST WTC report, it was also a company that had expertise in nanothermites, explosive materials which were found in the WTC dust as mentioned earlier.[24]
Founded by a scientist from Los Alamos National Laboratory, SAIC had a long history at the WTC, having evaluated the basement levels of the buildings as a potential terrorist target in 1986.[25] Interestingly, the company was hired to investigate the 1993 bombing of the WTC, an event that was "remarkably like the one which" they had foreseen in 1986.[26] In fact, SAIC later boasted that -- "After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, our blast analyses produced tangible results that helped identify those responsible."[27]
After 9/11, SAIC supplied the largest contingent of non-governmental investigators to the WTC investigation conducted by NIST. At the same time, "SAIC personnel were instrumental in pressing the case that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and that war was the only way to get rid of them."[28]
SAIC was also a pioneer in the intelligence contracting business, as a founding member of the Security Affairs Support Association in 1979, along with companies like TRW, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed and Hughes Aircraft. A special taskforce of the Defense Science Board, which was led in 1993 by BDM's Philip Odeen, recommended a vast increase in the outsourcing of intelligence, which all these companies ended up benefiting from greatly.
Today a majority of government intelligence work is outsourced, and SAIC is known first and foremost as an intelligence contractor. SAIC sells expertise about weapons, about homeland security, about surveillance, about computer systems, about "information dominance" and "information warfare," and has been awarded more individual government contracts than any other private company in America. In fact, the company was paid huge sums to rebuild the NSA and FBI systems that supposedly failed before 9/11.[29]
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 39
SAIC is integral to the operations of all the major intelligence collection agencies, particularly the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the CIA. In fact, the CIA relies on SAIC to spy in its own workforce.[30] But SAIC has also played an integral role in the "War on Terror", and was even responsible for capturing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It was SAIC staff and technology that "tease[ed] out crucial clues about Mohammed's activities from intercepted text messages that he sent to his al Qaeda operatives using as many as 20 different cell phones."[31]
In an interesting coincidence, while the Carlyle/BDM subsidiary Vinnell Corp was training the Saudi Arabian National Guard, SAIC was training the Saudi Navy and bringing Saudi military personnel to company headquarters in San Diego for further study. Simultaneously, Booz Allen Hamilton was managing the Saudi Marine Corps and running the Saudi Armed Forces Staff College.[32] Vinnell now works with SAIC to train the Iraqi military.[33]
SAIC employees or board members have included Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, former Deputy Director of CIA Bobby Ray Inman, former NYC OEM director Jerome Hauer, anthrax attack suspect Stephen Hatfill, former CIA Director John Deutch, and Lawrence B. Prior, a military intelligence officer and former TRW executive. Also formerly with SAIC, during the time of the planning and implementation of the 9/11 attacks, was Dick Cheney's undersecretary of defense, Duane Andrews.
Duane Andrews considered Dick Cheney to be his personal, lifelong hero.[34] While he worked for Cheney, Andrews supervised Stephen Cambone, who went on to become Donald Rumsfeld's "special assistant." When Andrews left the Pentagon in 1993, he became chief operating officer for SAIC, where he supervised "much of the company's work on secret projects with defense and national security agencies."[35] Andrews and Cambone both later hired on to the British intelligence firm Qinetiq, along with George Tenet. Coincidentally, The Carlyle Group was a major shareholder in Qinetiq as of February 2003.

Halliburton and BCCI

When we examine who had the greatest motive for the attacks of 9/11, we need to look at who most benefited from those events. Certainly SAIC and other companies like Maurice Greenberg's American International Group (AIG) are among those who profited the most after 9/11. But The Carlyle Group and oil companies like Halliburton led the field in terms of profiting from 9/11.
Dick Cheney was hired as CEO of Halliburton in 1995, despite having no practical business leadership experience. He quickly went on to add new directors that shared his political convictions, including Lawrence Eagleburger, the former Secretary of State under the first President George Bush. Eagleburger also served as a director of Kissinger
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 40
Associates, and on the board of Dresser Industries, where George H.W. Bush got his start. Others Cheney added to his team included Ray Hunt, of Dallas-based Hunt Oil, a longtime supporter of the Bush clan.
Cheney named Charles DiBona as one of his first appointees to the board of Halliburton. DiBona had been the Deputy Director of the White House Policy Office and Special Assistant to President Nixon in the early 1970s. DiBona was also an associate of WTC south tower impact zone tenant Joseph Kasputys, at the Logistics Management Institute, and DiBona and Kasputys had previously worked together during the Arab Oil Embargo as representatives of the emerging US Department of Energy (DOE). In fact, DiBona was one of the first US "Energy Czars."
Like DiBona, Joseph Kasputys was in the US Navy for 20 years, and both of them retired as Commanders. They then both worked for the predecessor agencies of the DOE, and Kasputys worked for the Department of Defense as well. In 1975, Kasputys was appointed by President Ford to be Assistant Secretary of Commerce. As stated in the review of tenants in the towers, Kasptuys went on to run a large corporation called Primark that had offices in both towers on 9/11. One of the subsidiaries of Primark, The Analytical Sciences Corporation (TASC), worked with "so-called 'black' or top secret programs." TASC also worked closely with the National Institute of Standards and Technology.[36]
After his government service, DiBona went on to lead the American Petroleum Institute, the petroleum industry's national trade association, in a position he held for nineteen years. During that time, DiBona was also a director of First American Bancshares, the American bank secretly owned by the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
BCCI is significant relative to 9/11 because it was involved in funding terrorists in the late 1980s and was linked to the Pakistani intelligence network, from which several alleged 9/11 conspirators came, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In fact, Time magazine reported, relative to BCCI, that -- "You can't draw a line separating the bank's black operatives and Pakistan's intelligence services."[37]
BCCI was also clearly connected to the mafia. Munther Bilbeisi, a notorious BCCI representative who was finally indicted for tax fraud in 1991, was associated with several mafia families in New Jersey, including the DeCavalcante and Luchese crime families.[38]
More importantly, there were indications that the CIA was involved in the founding of BCCI.[39] There were also connections between George H. W. Bush, who was CIA director during BCCI's heyday, and George W. Bush, through Harken Energy. But other US government representatives helped BCCI too, simply by not doing anything or allowing BCCI to make acquisitions in the US when they should have closed the operation down. For example, at the time that BCCI was first publicly suspected of wrongdoing, in 1988, both the US Department of Justice and the Federal Reserve Bank
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 41
(Fed) were hesitant to investigate or prosecute, despite the fact that there were signs that both of these organizations already knew of BCCI's fraud. When the Fed finally did take its first disciplinary action, it appeared that BCCI had a friend at the top, in that one member abstained from a critical vote. That member was the chairman, Alan Greenspan. Greenspan later explained that he had socialized with BCCI attorney and First American Bancshares President, Robert Altman.[40]

Kissinger and his associates

Henry Kissinger and his associates were also connected to BCCI in several ways, although he refused to share documents with the related Senate investigation. For example, Sergio Correa da Costa, who served as Brazil's Ambassador to the US in the mid-1980s (note that Ensec was a Brazilian company), worked for Kissinger's consulting company, Kissinger Associates, and was also a nominee shareholder for BCCI. And as early as 1971, Kissinger was linked to BCCI through the Pakistanis that arranged for his first visit to China.[41] At the time, Pakistrani agents who later became BCCI representatives were involved in fooling journalists into thinking Kissinger was in Pakistan instead of China. Kissinger returned to China many times and on occasion took very close friends and business associates along with him, most notably Maurice Greenberg of AIG, who traveled extensively with Kissinger.[42]
From 1985 to 1990, a client of Kissinger Associates, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) provided $4 billion in unreported loans to Saddam Hussein and his government in Iraq. Henry Kissinger was on the International Advisory Board of BNL during that same time period. Kissinger and his leading assistants Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger were investigated in this matter by the House Banking Committee just as the first Gulf War was ending.[43]
But the numerous connections between assistants and associates of Kissinger, and the most significant events of 9/11, are astounding. To begin with, Kissinger, who is considered by some to be an international terrorist due to his bombing of Cambodia, his role in the 1973 coup in Chile, and other atrocities, was the Bush Administration's first choice to lead the 9/11 Commission. Although he later resigned from the Commission to avoid exposing his client list, Kissinger's closest friends and aides played significant roles with regard to 9/11.
• L. Paul Bremer, the managing director at Kissinger Associates from 1989 to 2000, left there to take a job with WTC impact zone tenant Marsh & McLennan, and then played a leading role in establishing the official myth of 9/11.
• Peter Rodman, PNAC member and Assistant Secretary of Defense on 9/11, hosted meetings with Pakistani ISI General Ahmed the week before 9/11, and had previously been a Special Assistant to Kissinger for eight years.[44]
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• Joseph Kasputys, south tower impact zone tenant, worked with Kissinger in the Ford Administration (along with Cheney, Greenspan, DiBona, and Rumsfeld).[45]
• Kissinger is also closely associated with several 9/11 Commissioners, including his long-time National Security Council assistant John Lehman, and his fellow Hollinger board member James R. Thompson.
• And Phillip Odeen of BDM, who was Barry McDaniel's boss until McDaniel left to lead WTC security company Stratesec, was a Kissinger assistant for several years.
There was also Renato Ruggiero of Kissinger Associates. Mr. Ruggerio was present on 9/11 in the sense that he was on the International Advisory Board for Salomon Smith Barney (SSB), the company that occupied all but ten of the 47 floors in WTC building 7.[46] SSB even shared the all-important 23rd floor with the New York City OEM. More striking is the fact that Donald Rumsfeld was the chairman of that SSB board, and Dick Cheney was a board member as well. Rumsfeld served as chairman of the SSB International Advisory Board since its inception in 1999, but had to resign in 2001 when he was confirmed as George W. Bush's Secretary of Defense, and Cheney resigned at the same time when he became Vice President.
Another interesting coincidence is that Global Crossing was brought public in 1998 by SSB. Global Crossing was the company that Ensec director McAuliffe made a fortune on, when he purchased $100,000 in stock before the company went public and cashed out several years later for $18 million. Richard Perle was a lobbyist for Global Crossing.
On 9/11/01, Salomon Smith Barney's parent company was Citigroup. Citicorp was the nation's largest bank in 1990, but dropped half of its value from the summer to the winter of that year due to the S&L scandal. The company was saved by Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia, who pumped an initial $590 MM into the company in a deal brokered by The Carlyle Group. It is believed that the money, and more, came from BCCI as it was dissolving.[47]
Therefore, when Salomon Smith Barney was taken over by Citigroup in 1998, it was taken over in part by Saudi owners who were apparently redistributing the funding and networks of BCCI. Rumsfeld and Cheney entered the picture less than a year later, in May 1999. Jules Kroll, the founder of the WTC security design firm, and Rudy Giuliani, who was a former Department of Justice official, were responsible for investigating organized crime and BCCI, and were well aware of the extent of those networks ten years prior to that. Others like them, who brought the late indictments against BCCI, were leaders of the US Department of Justice.
Stratesec was at the WTC, and therefore, through Barry McDaniel and the Bush family, the influence of The Carlyle Group was present as well. In a sense, Rumsfeld and Cheney were also present at the WTC, because both of them were on the advisory board of
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 43
Salomon Smith Barney. And SAIC was at the WTC on 9/11 too, as it was one of the first companies to show up at Ground Zero on that day. That fact will be discussed in the third installment of the essay series entitled Demolition Access to the WTC.
As for Kissinger, within hours of the events of 9/11 he was writing an opinion piece for the Washington Post. In it, he claimed to have thorough knowledge of what would be required to pull off such a coordinated set of attacks. Kissinger went on to inform the American public of what must happen next: "the destruction of the system that is responsible."[48] No one can argue with that sentiment. But to this day, no one can accurately describe the terrorist system that was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, let alone destroy it.
What we can say today, with certainty, is that if we are to believe that al Qaeda orchestrated the events of 9/11 then we do not know much about al Qaeda. Alternatively, there was a far more powerful and highly connected system of intelligence and financial networks, represented by organizations like Carlyle, Kissinger, SAIC and Halliburton, that converged upon the events of 9/11. That other system continues to profit from the 9/11 attacks, and uses the fear and rage generated by al Qaeda-attributed terrorism to its own advantage. Understanding and destroying terrorism might simply be a matter of understanding and destroying the organizations that continue to profit from 9/11.
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 44

Part Four - Cleanup

Who could have placed explosives in the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings? As a society we are faced with this question due to the growing amount of evidence that explosives were used to bring down all three buildings, and due to the enormous implications of that possibility. The evidence includes the unprecedented nature of what happened that day, the eyewitness testimonies of people present at the site, and the physical evidence demonstrated by photographs and videos. 1, 2 Evidence for explosives is also given through proof by contradiction in that seven years of ever-changing government reports could not provide a non-explosive story for destruction of the WTC buildings. 3, 4, 5 More recently, peer-reviewed scientific papers show that energetic materials were present at the WTC, as indicated by the environmental data and the dust from Ground Zero. 6, 7, 8
The forensic investigation of explosions typically aims to determine who had the means, opportunity and motive to accomplish the explosive event. 9 When that approach is taken with the WTC, we can see that those who had the greatest means and opportunity also had the greatest motive. For example, we've seen that certain tenant companies that occupied the WTC towers not only had the opportunity, but they also had the means in terms of access and expertise, to place explosives in the buildings. 10 We also know that the security companies that were responsible for planning and implementing the security plan for the towers, after the 1993 bombing, appeared to have benefited from the attacks. 11 Additionally, the companies reviewed were connected to each other through certain powerful people and organizations, and had all done major work for the Saudi Arabian government.
In addition to the actual placement of explosives, those involved would need to cleanup any evidence of explosives remaining at the site. In this final essay of a multi-part series, it will be seen that certain people had the means, opportunity and motive to destroy such evidence at Ground Zero, and that something was being hidden after the buildings fell. These facts will be reviewed in light of the knowledge that the debris was considered highly sensitive and nearly all the steel evidence was quickly destroyed. 12 Additionally, although security at the site was intense, safety management was lax or nonexistent and human concerns took a back seat to the goal of rapidly disposing of the evidence. Other curious facts include that known criminal entities were hired to accomplish the debris removal, and that evidence was stolen from Fresh Kills landfill with the approval and coordination of FBI agents.
With all of this in mind, we'll look at who was in charge at Ground Zero and Fresh Kills landfill, and therefore who had the opportunity to destroy evidence of explosives. We'll also look at those who benefited from the cleanup, either through profiting from the debris removal or the rebuilding of Manhattan, or through promotions and partnerships after the events.
Kevin Ryan Demolition Access to the WTC Towers 45

Foreknowledge

Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York City at the time, had foreknowledge of the collapse of the WTC buildings and he described this fact in an interview immediately after the attacks. In this same interview Giuliani falsely claimed that no one had ever predicted airliner crashes into the WTC, saying -- "Oh there's no question we were all caught totally off balance. No one, no one, no one could possibly expect, uh, large airplanes to crash into the, you know, the World Trade Center, uh, the way this happened." 13, 14
Giuliani's Office of Emergency Management (OEM) staff also had foreknowledge about the fall of the buildings, and they warned some people. This was reported by Richard Zarrillo, an EMT at the scene, when he said: "OEM says the buildings are going to collapse; we need to get out," and "I was just at OEM. The message I was given was that the buildings are going to collapse; we need to get our people out." 15
Fire department Captain Abdo Nahmod was with Zarrillo, just before they were warned, and both had been told to make the OEM functional in WTC7. But, Nahmod reported: "Moments thereafter we were advised by the staff at OEM that we were to vacate the building [and] that they believed there was another possible plane on its way and [we] proceeded down the stairwell of World Trade [7] all the way down to the ground floor." 16
In the lobby of Building 7, Zarillo and Nahmod apparently met with EMS Division Chief John Peruggia, OEM Deputy Director Richard Rotanz and an unidentified representative from the City's Department of Buildings. Peruggia later said, "..it was brought to my attention, it was believed that the structural damage that was suffered to the towers was quite significant and they were very confident that the building's stability was compromised and they felt that the north tower was in danger of a near imminent collapse." 17
Richard Rotanz was later said to be the one behind the claim that a third plane was heading toward New York. Rotanz reportedly got that information from a Secret Service agent who was with him in WTC 7 at the time, and spread the information to OEM leadership. 18 Therefore Rotanz was actually behind two important claims that morning, the first was that there was a third hijacked plane headed for the area, which was presumably the reason why the OEM emergency center was closed down before either tower fell (before 9:44 AM), and the second claim was that the towers were in danger of imminent collapse.
In any case, this is an incredible statement -- that "they were very confident that the building's stability was compromised" -- considering that no building had ever suffered global collapse from fire. Zarrillo learned just how incredible this information was when he tried to spread the word to the fire chiefs in other areas, none of whom had predicted any such danger. When Zarrillo told Chief Ganci about Peruggia's startling news, Ganci's response was, "who the fuck told you that?" 19
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While Zarrillo was trying to warn people, Giuliani and his Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik were wandering around the WTC site after the planes had hit the towers. Fire Marshal Steven Mosiello stated -- "At that point the Mayor shows up. I was standing away from the command post, and the Mayor showed up.. I remember the Mayor being with Commissioner Kerik and himself and a lot of their aides and escorts or whatever." 20
By the time the south tower did fall, Giuliani and Kerik had already moved away from immediate danger, but were still nearby. As they were walking, they coincidentally happened upon a TV reporter who had, just the year before, published a flattering biography of Giuliani called "Rudy Giuliani: Emperor of the City." This apparent coincidence is what led to Giuliani being portrayed as the heroic leader of the response to 9/11, through a series of "walking press conferences" on that day. 21
Fire Chief Joseph Pfeifer, who was at the command post in the lobby of the North Tower, testified that -- "Right before the South Tower collapsed, I noticed a lot of people just left the lobby, and I heard we had a crew of all different people, high-level people in government, everybody was gone, almost like they had information that we didn't have." 22
Who were these high-level people in government gathering in the lobby of the north tower, that had information others did not have? Reports are that this group included Richard Sheirer, the director of the OEM. It was said that -- "He's the guy Giuliani calls the man behind the curtain." 23 Others suggested: "Since September 11, Sheirer has taken charge of the biggest cleanup effort in American history." Whether or not he helped with the cleanup, Sheirer did have significant responsibility in his role, having at various times "briefed President Bush, Tony Blair, and Henry Kissinger". 24
It was reported that Sheirer and others spent a full hour in the north tower lobby, while the towers were burning. But no one knows what they were doing there. As stated before, the OEM center in WTC 7 was shutdown early, and Sheirer himself never went there. Instead, he and his staff went to the north tower lobby and apparently did nothing but waited. Although Sheirer later claimed to have made some calls, "no steps to coordinate the response were ever discovered."25, 26
To some degree, Sheirer was officially portrayed as incompetent. John Farmer, 9/11 Commission staff member, said of Sheirer:
"We [the 9/11 Commission] tried to get a sense of what Sheirer was really doing. We tried to figure it out from the videos. We couldn't tell. Everybody from OEM was with him, virtually the whole chain of command. Some of them should have been at the command center." Fire Captain Kevin Culley, who worked at OEM, later was asked why most of the OEM's top brass were with him at the scene of the incident, and he said: "I don't know what they were doing. It was Sheirer's decision to go there on his own. The
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command center would normally be the focus of a major event and that would be where I would expect the director to be."27
Sheirer now works at Giuliani's firm, Giuliani Partners, along with Pasquale J. (Pat) D'Amuro, the FBI agent who ran the PENTTBOM investigation and stole evidence from Ground Zero (see below), and Michael D. Hess, who was present in WTC7 with explosive witness Barry Jennings. Bernard Kerik worked at Giuliani Partners as well, from the time he left his Police Commissioner post in December 2001 until resigning from the firm in December 2004. While he worked at Giuiliani's firm, Kerik took a short leave when he was appointed by George W. Bush to be Minister of the Interior for Iraq and Senior Policy Advisor to L. Paul Bremer, then the Iraq Occupation Governor. In Iraq, Kerik was assigned to oversee the training of the Iraqi Police by contractor Dyncorp.
It was claimed that -- "Mr. Kerik brings a wide array of experience to the new job, and a familiarity with the culture and political realities of the Middle East. Beginning in the 1970's, he worked in the region as a security expert, including four years in the employ of the Saudi royal family." 28 During Kerik's time in Saudi Arabia, starting in 1978, he worked in security at a construction site in the desert and learned from a "squad of mercenaries and disillusioned Vietnam War veterans how to carry himself." He also developed "a taste for the spoils of mercenary pay: Gucci shoes, Rolex watches, European suits, according to his memoir." 29
Kerik's work in Iraq was widely recognized as a dismal failure. By the time his remarkably short assignment was over, he had offended the US military and left the newly forming Iraqi police force in shambles. General Ricardo Sanchez, the top military leader in Iraq during that time said that Kerik focused more on "conducting raids and liberating prostitutes" than training the Iraqis. 30
It seemed that only one person was impressed with "The Baghdad Terminator," as Kerik was called during his three months in Iraq, and that one supporter was Donald Rumsfeld. "Since Bernie Kerik left," Rumsfeld complained, "I understand things have slowed down on police training."31 For some reason, Rumsfeld's perspective on Kerik's performance seemed biased.
After returning from Iraq, Kerik went back to Giuliani Partners and remained there until President Bush nominated him to replace Tom Ridge as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. That nomination was shot down quickly, as the public began to understand more about Kerik's background.
Kerik had been appointed NYC Police Commissioner in August 2000, despite the fact that -- "More than half of Giuliani's cabinet opposed Kerik's appointment." 32 Giuliani later remembered having been briefed -- "on some aspects of Bernard B. Kerik's relationship with a company suspected of ties to organized crime before Mr. Kerik's appointment as New York City police commissioner". It seemed odd that Giuliani would need such a briefing, however, considering that Kerik had worked for Mr. Giuliani as a campaign bodyguard and chauffeur as early as 1993. 33
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Kerik's connections to the mob were not a surprise to many people, because he was regularly embroiled in scandal. Bribery, tax fraud and document falsification are only some of the crimes for which Kerik was accused. 34 Finally, in October 2009, Kerik was sent to jail after a judge revoked his $500,000 bail and berated him publicly from the bench. The judge described Kerik as a "toxic combination of self-minded focus and arrogance." 35
But back on 9/11, the group of high-level government officials congregating in the north tower lobby also included John Odematt, the First Deputy Director of the OEM and former Executive Officer of the NYC Police Department's Intelligence Division. Odematt left the OEM in 2003 to work for Citigroup, the parent company for WTC 7 tenant Salomon Smith Barney.
Regardless of who had foreknowledge or what the imminent danger was, over the next few weeks and months there were heroic efforts made to rescue survivors. But those efforts were hampered by Giuliani's drive to cleanup the site rapidly. The commonly held story is that the government wanted to re-open Wall Street, and for that reason didn't care about the health of New Yorkers and first responders or about facilitating the most careful rescue operations. 36 But what if local authorities were actually in a hurry to remove evidence?

An unprecedented destruction of evidence

The US House Committee on Science reported, in March 2002:
"In the month that lapsed between the terrorist attacks and the deployment of the [FEMA] BPAT team, a significant amount of steel debris--including most of the steel from the upper floors--was removed from the rubble pile, cut into smaller sections, and either melted at the recycling plant or shipped out of the U.S. Some of the critical pieces of steel--including the suspension trusses from the top of the towers and the internal support columns--were gone before the first BPAT team member ever reached the site." 37
The steel evidence, "a significant amount" of which was quickly removed before investigators arrived, might have shown evidence of explosive damage, like metal "pedaling." But the steel was not the only evidence that was removed. For example, the black boxes that contain the flight data recorders and cockpit data recorders on every airliner were officially never found for either AA Flight 11 or UA Flight 175. This claim came from the FBI and was supported by the 9/11 Commission report, but was contradicted by a number of people who worked at the site. Two Ground Zero workers claimed that they helped authorities find three of the four black boxes in October of 2001. One of them, New York City firefighter Nicholas DeMasi, described the recovery of the devices in a book. 38 Additionally, a source from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said -- " Off the record, we had the boxes..You'd have to get the official word from the FBI as to where they are, but we worked on them here." 39
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The idea that the indestructible black boxes could not be found also appears to be in contradiction to the official claim that a passport of one of the alleged hijackers was found. On September 12th, 2001, it was reported that the passport of Satam al Suqami, who was said to be aboard American Airlines Flight 11, was recovered. 40 Because Flight 11 crashed directly into the middle of the north face of the north tower, and was buried within the building, this passport would have had to stay intact throughout the crash event and then withstand the blast from the fuel fire and the ensuing fires fed by office furnishings (and thermitic materials). The rest of the spectacularly improbable path of the passport is not entirely clear, as the first reports said that it was found "in the rubble" but later 9/11 Commission staff member Susan Ginsberg testified that -- "A passerby picked it up and gave it to a NYPD detective shortly before the World Trade Center towers collapsed." 41 In other words, the passport was delivered through Bernard Kerik's department.
What other evidence might have been found and eliminated? Explosive initiators, like those sold by 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman's company, Special Devices Inc., would have been an important find. 42 But in Practical Bomb Scene Investigation, author James T. Thurman explains that -- "Regardless of how efficient the initiator is, all the explosives are never entirely used or destroyed." 43 Therefore, one might expect to find the remnants of whatever explosive materials were used to bring the buildings down. This might have included components of a thermite demolition device patented in 1996 by Komatsu, a company for which Marsh & McLennan executive (and Kerik's boss in Iraq) L. Paul Bremer was a board member. 44
Thermite is a chemical mixture of aluminum powder and one or more metal oxides, that releases an enormous amount of energy when the mixture is made to react. Nanothermites, developed by US national laboratories through the Department of Energy, are high-tech energetic materials made by preparing a mixture of ultra fine grain aluminum and metal oxides, intimately mixed on the nanometer scale. The large surface area to volume ratio of the reactants causes the rate of reaction to proceed much faster, and coupled with the addition of organic compounds to produce gases, nanothermites can be made to perform like high explosives. 45
Depending on the other explosive types used at the WTC, there might have been packaging materials remaining, like dynamite wrappers, paper backing for C-4, or plastic and metal clips from slurry and emulsion explosives. 46 According to a June 2000 Department of Justice guide, investigators would also typically look for timing devices. 47 Other clues normally sought include bomb components like external or internal containers, fragmented lengths of wire, batteries, or switches, or fully intact unexploded explosive devices. Due to the fact that nanothermite has been discovered in the WTC dust, any unexploded nanothermite would be important. But to remove such state-of-the- art evidence, one would need the experience to recognize it.
One such experienced organization was Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). As mentioned in an earlier essay, SAIC was "the DOD and Homeland Security
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contractor that supplied the largest contingent of non-governmental investigators to the NIST WTC investigation. SAIC has extensive links to nanothermites, developing and judging nanothermite research proposals for the military and other military contractors, and developing and formulating nano-thermites directly. SAIC's subsidiary Applied Ordnance Technology has done research on the ignition of nanothermites with lasers." 48
SAIC, founded by a scientist from Los Alamos National Laboratory, had a long history at the WTC, having evaluated the basement levels of the buildings as a potential terrorist target in 1986. 49 Interestingly, the company was hired to investigate the 1993 bombing of the WTC, an event that was "remarkably like the one which" they had foreseen in 1986. 50 In fact, SAIC later boasted that -- "After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, our blast analyses produced tangible results that helped identify those responsible." 51
It turns out that SAIC was one of the first organizations to show up at Ground Zero. The company claimed in its 2004 shareholder report that -- "Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, we responded rapidly to assist a number of customers near ground zero in New York City and in Washington, D.C." 52 In one of these instances, "SAIC technicians raced to Ground Zero within hours to install an ad hoc communications network for first responders and local financial companies." 53 Therefore, SAIC was in control of at least some of the communications at Ground Zero.
Perhaps the most interesting SAIC connection to the cleanup was John Blitch, a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army's Special Forces, who was said to have retired from the Army just the day before 9/11. It was reported that Blitch was "filling out the paperwork in an out-processing office of the Pentagon on the morning of September 10, 2001," and that after "three years at the helm of the Defense Department's Tactical Mobile Robots Program," he was "leaving to direct the Center for Intelligent Robotics and Unmanned Systems at the Science Applications International Corporation." 54
Instead of traveling to his new job at SAIC on 9/11, "Blitch scrapped the trip . . . and headed for New York. On the road, Blitch donned his fatigues, dug out his military id, and worked his cell phone, summoning colleagues from Florida to Boston to pack up their finest tactical robots and rendezvous at Ground Zero." And "Over the next 11 days, the group's 17 robots squeezed into spaces too narrow for humans, dug through heaps of scalding rubble, and found seven bodies trapped beneath the mountains of twisted steel and shattered concrete." 55
An award presentation for Blitch stated that -- "Within 15 minutes of the second plane crash into the WTC, Blitch called roboticists and manufacturers with field-ready robots to supplement robots donated by the federal government's Defense Applied Research Projects Agency (DARPA). He drove to New York from Washington, DC, and within six hours was met by teams from nearby companies. Eighteen hours after the attacks, robots were on the rubble pile." 56
Lieutenant Colonel Blitch was experienced at such search missions, and had done "ground-breaking research in robot assisted search and rescue conducted during the
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Oklahoma City Bombing response". 57 Blitch was also the former chief of unmanned systems at the U.S. Special Operations Command (US SOCOM), which conducts covert and clandestine missions.
As an expert on unmanned aircraft, including Predator 2 and other drones, Blitch has stated: "Our airplanes are small and even look like birds -- so much so that other birds attack them and make mating advances on our aircraft". 58 Blitch developed his knowledge when he led the DARPA Tactical Mobile Robots program from 1998 to 2001. During this time, Blitch worked with NIST, the Commerce Department agency that wrote the final report on what happened at the WTC.59
In 1999, a report submitted to Blitch described laser technology being developed by the US Army in partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and TRW. 60 By May 2001, laser technology was being used by Blitch's robot program. It was reported that -- "Robots are performing quite successfully in the field of explosive ordnance disposal (EOD)".. and "EOD units [include] a laser weapon for ordnance neutralization..[used to] burn unexploded ordnance." 61
Therefore, Lieutenant Colonel Blitch of SOCOM and SAIC had the means and opportunity to neutralize any unwanted explosives that might have been buried in the pile at Ground Zero. And his employer had done research on the laser ignition of nanothermites as stated before.
The environmental data generated by EPA and the University of California Davis are supportive of the hypothesis that unexplained explosive and/or incendiary events were occurring at the site during the cleanup efforts. 62 Could it be that SAIC, a company that benefited tremendously from 9/11 through increased defense and intelligence spending, was working to eliminate unexploded nanothermite and/or other energetic materials at Ground Zero?
If that were the case, SAIC might have been helped by experts in such explosive technology who were present at the site. In fact, representatives of the national laboratories run by the US Department of Energy (DOE) were present at Ground Zero. It was reported that -- "facilities providing staff and expertise included Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Savannah River Technology Center [SRTC], and Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory." 63
SRTC personnel assisted "by providing much needed on-the-spot fabrication of unique technologies for use by the search and rescue teams at the World Trade Center." 64 SRTC technical support during the search and rescue efforts was "primarily in the area of custom video systems." 65 What LLNL staff were doing at Ground Zero is not entirely clear. But it is important to note that LLNL was among the first national laboratories to develop nanothermites, working in conjunction with NIST. Other laboratories like Los Alamos also developed nanothermites at about the same time, in the mid to late 1990s.
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Also at Ground Zero, in the early days after 9/11, was Bechtel (Bechtel Environmental Safety & Health). Bechtel is in partnership with SAIC through a venture called Bechtel SAIC Company, LLC. It was said that the City "subcontracted Bechtel Corporation to assess [environmental hazards].. After the first week, Bechtel's involvement at the site was minimized by the City." Bechtel officially left the WTC site in November 2001.

The Cleanup Operation

During the five-month cleanup effort, there were unprecedented measures taken to control access to the site. The site was restricted, and photographs were banned, by order of Rudy Giuliani. 66 Anthony Mann of E.J. Electric, one of the primary security companies for the WTC towers, said that -- "Security is unbelievable. It's really on a need-to-be-down-there basis." 67
Despite the high security, a number of people found their way onto the site, and some of them just happened to find themselves in charge of the cleanup operations. An example of this was David H. Griffin, a demolition contractor from North Carolina. Hearing about the attacks, Griffin set off immediately for Manhattan. Apparently, on Friday the 14th he walked directly into the Ground Zero site with little trouble. "Griffin quickly became known as 'Carolina' to then-Mayor Rudolph Guliani, who let Griffin have complete control of the clean-up of the site despite the fact that Griffin had no ties to New York and had never worked there." 68
It's unclear why Giuliani would have placed an unknown contractor, with no ties to New York City, in charge of demolition at the WTC site. But it's interesting to note that the D.H. Griffin company had worked closely with the US DOE and the Department of Defense, as early as 1994, according to Mr. Griffin. 69
There were several other people who claimed to be in charge of the cleanup operation at Ground Zero. As stated earlier, it was said that OEM was in charge, and that Richard Sheirer was the point person for the cleanup efforts. Others believed that Mike Burton, the executive deputy commissioner of the New York City Department of Design and Construction (DDC), was in charge. But Jim Abadie, who was the leader of one of four companies hired by the City to cleanup the debris, indicated that he didn't believe Burton was in charge. In a formal deposition, Abadie "smiled when [he] said, if you listen to Michael, it was him." 70
Most reports indicated that officials of the City of New York were in charge of the site, primarily through DDC. But the claim that Giuliani specifically put DDC in charge was downplayed by Burton, who said that the DDC just fell into its role as leader at the site.
That DDC would be in charge of the construction response was never an official charge from Coles or Mayor Rudolph Giuliani," Burton remembered, adding that: " In early January, I realized that no one ever asked me to manage the effort at Ground Zero. I just
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did what I thought had to be done, and it just happened." DDC Commissioner Kenneth Holden also said: " We were there, no one said 'no,' so we went ahead." 71
Mike Burton did coordinate the demolition and cleanup operations, but later testified that -- "Everything was coordinated through his boss Holden, deputy mayors and the mayor." 72
After his WTC work was done, DDC's Burton was hired as Senior Vice President of URS Corporation. URS is the same company that bought The Washington Group (Morrison- Knudsen), the south tower tenant that had so many connections to the DOE and that had been hired by the Army Corps of Engineers to demolish over 200 buildings. Today, the Washington Division of URS still helps manage and operate several national laboratories, including LLNL, through a partnership with Battelle. At URS, Burton is responsible for construction projects and is also involved in the company's Security Services Group. 73
At Ground Zero, DDC handed over the most important of its decision-making responsibility to LZA/Thornton-Tomasetti, whose leaders were Charles Thornton, later a member of the advisory board for the NIST WTC investigation, and Richard Tomasetti. The fact that LZA/Thornton-Tomasetti was really in charge became clear when someone needed to take responsibility for the decision to recycle all the steel evidence. It was finally said that Richard Tomasetti made that decision, despite the outrage from the public, fire engineering experts and the victim's family members. When asked why he did it, Tomasetti claimed that -- "had he known the direction that investigations into the collapses would take, he would have taken a different stand." 74
The recycling of the most important steel evidence was done in a hurry, as indicated by the US House Committee on Science report mentioned earlier. It was done so fast, in fact, that the City took much less than market value for the scrap metal. At the time, steel scrap was selling for $150 per ton, but those in charge of the WTC cleanup took just $120 per ton for the WTC steel. 75 It's not difficult to see that the $9 million lost in that transaction would have been useful to the many 9/11 first responders who have since become sick and are dying from their exposure to toxins at Ground Zero.
Tomasetti's extremely unpopular, and probably criminal, decision was supported by the new mayor of NYC, Michael Bloomberg. Using a strange, diversionary excuse, Bloomberg said: "If you want to take a look at the construction methods and the design, that's in this day and age what computers do. Just looking at a piece of metal generally doesn't tell you anything." Bloomberg's claim was not at all true, as forensic investigators will confirm.
Other than the supervisory firm LZA/Thornton-Tomasetti, the City also hired five construction companies to handle the majority of the debris removal, and the site was divided up among them. These five companies were AMEC Construction Management, Bovis Lend Lease, Turner Construction, Tully Construction and Tishman Construction. Charlie Vitchers, who worked for Jim Abadie at Bovis, and was a leader at Ground Zero, said the site was then broken up "into basically five segments. Building 7 debris was
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given to Tishman. The northwest corner of the site was given to AMEC. The northeast section of the site was given to Tully. And the southwest corner of the site and Tower 2 debris removal was given to Bovis." 76 Turner Construction was assigned to a central location between building 5 and building 6.
The five construction companies hired other sub-contractors to complete most of the actual debris removal. Most of the sub-contractors hired were suspected of being associated with organized crime. Some sub-contractors were reportedly linked to the Colombo crime family, including Civetta Cousins, and Yonkers Contracting. Others were associated with the Luchese crime family.
An interesting sidebar to this story is that, in October 1990, Louis DiBono, an associate of the Gambino crime family, was murdered in the basement levels of the WTC. DiBono claimed to have a contract worth millions of dollars to re-fireproof the WTC buildings. Sammy "The Bull" Gravano was charged with the murder but was apparently acting on the orders of John Gotti, the Gambino boss at the time. DiBono's body was found three days after he was murdered, in the parking garage of the WTC near where a bomb-laden van would be set-off three years later. 77
After 9/11, a contractor with one of the biggest presences at Ground Zero was Seasons Contracting Corp., owned by Salvatore Carucci, a reputed Luchese associate. "We were called in by AMEC, one of the team of general contractors managing the cleanup," said Bill Singley, a Seasons project manager. AMEC also hired Big Apple Wrecking, owned by Harold Greenberg, a reputed mob associate whose firm was barred from government work because of his convictions in bid-rigging and bribery conspiracies. Another firm that investigators allege was controlled by Greenberg, Safeway Environmental, also was hired to work at Ground Zero.
One of the first firms on the scene was Mazzocchi Wrecking, brought in by the New York City Housing Preservation Department, but then hired by AMEC. A few months after 9/11, the N.J. Division of Gaming Enforcement "charged that three members of the DeCavalcante crime family worked for Mazzocchi." 78 Other AMEC contractors that were linked to the mob were Peter Scalamandre & Sons, and Breeze National, both linked to the Luchese crime family. AMEC's lead person on the ground was Vice President Leo DiRubbo, a reputed associate of the Luchese crime family.
Rudy Giuliani also had connections to the organized crime, other than just Bernard Kerik. Rudy's father, Harold Giuliani (alias Joseph Starrett), was a convicted hold-up man who served time in Sing Sing prison, and was later employed as an enforcer for a Mafia loan shark operation. Rudy's uncle (his mother's brother), Leo D'Avanzo, ran a loan-sharking and gambling operation with Jimmy Dano, "who was a made man." 79 Additionally, Rudy's cousin Lewis D'Avanzo "was a stone cold gangster who was shot to death in 1977 by FBI agents when he tried to run them down with his car." 80
Of course, the sins of Rudy's father, and his uncle, and his cousin, and his appointed Police Commissioner should not be used to judge Rudy himself. But these facts are worth
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considering in that Rudy and his staff hired mafia--connected companies to cleanup Ground Zero.
These companies all made a lot of money at the WTC site. Of the $458 million in federal 9/11 aid spent on debris removal, AMEC took $65.8 million, Bovis hauled in $277.2 million, Tully got $76 million and Turner got $39 million. Subcontractors Breeze National, Peter Scalamandre & Sons, Civetta Cousins, Safeway Environmental and Yonkers Contracting made millions of dollars from their work at the site. Subcontractors Mazzocchi Wrecking and Seasons Contracting made tens of millions of dollars.
Another company that was "all over ground zero" was Laquila Construction, run by mob boss Dino Tomassetti. 81 It's not clear if Richard Tomasetti is related to Dino Tomassetti or his family, although the surnames are often interchangeable. The name Tomasetti (or Tomassetti) comes from L'Aquila, Italy, hence the company name.
Turner Construction, one of the primary contractors at Ground Zero, occupied the 38th floor of the north tower, and was involved in performing the fireproofing upgrades in the towers. It has been noted that these upgrades were completed, in the three years before 9/11, on floors that match up almost identically to the floors of impact and failure on 9/11. 82 In any case, since 1999 Turner has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Hochtief AG, and its CEO is Thomas C. Leppert, who later became mayor of Dallas. President George W. Bush appointed Mayor Leppert to the President's Commission on White House Fellows, and Bush now lives in Dallas, about a mile away from Leppert. 83
Of the other primary contractors, Tishman Construction Corporation oversaw the construction of the new WTC 7, as well as the "Freedom Tower." Primary contractor Tully Construction retained Controlled Demolition Inc. (CDI), a company that had been involved in the demolition of the bombed Murrah Building in Oklahoma in 1995. CDI was led by Mark Loizeaux, who later became a major defender of the government's story about 9/11. Like some other experts with large government contracts, Loizeaux was at first uncertain about what had happened at the WTC, then changed his story, apparently in order to harmonize with the official story. 84
Once the cleanup was fully coordinated, the operations were consolidated under the control of two of the five primary contractors: AMEC Construction Management and Bovis Lend Lease. These are the two companies that were originally assigned the areas of Ground Zero that included the north tower (AMEC) and the south tower (Bovis).
A truly surprising fact is that, at the time of the attacks on 9/11, AMEC had just completed a $258 million refurbishment of Wedge 1 of the Pentagon, which is exactly where AA Flight 77 impacted that building. 85
At Ground Zero AMEC was led by its Vice Chairman, John Cavanagh, who had previously been the President and COO of Morse Diesel International, the predecessor to AMEC. Morse Diesel had retrofitted WTC building 7 for Salomon Brothers in 1989. In January 2002, Rudy Guiliani issued a Certificate of Recognition to Cavanagh for his
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dedication to the City of New York. Cavanagh had described the Ground Zero worksite as "the longest commercial fire that has ever occurred at a site." What kept the fire burning, he said, was a huge volume of "plastic, carpet and furniture below the rubble," which the New York Fire Department was "constantly wetting down." 86 Cavanagh is now President of American Fire Suppressant Products.
AMEC was a subsidiary of the British conglomerate AMEC, a company that provides "engineering and project management services to the world's energy, power and process industries." 87 The company is a major international player in the oil and gas industry, as well as in other natural resource industries. AMEC had a significant presence in Saudi Arabia dating back to the late 1970s, providing support to the national oil company Saudi Aramco, which is by far the richest company in the world. 88, 89 Executives and board members at AMEC include former directors of NM Rothschild, Kellogg, Brown and Root (now Halliburton), and SG Warburg.
Bovis Lend Lease was another British construction giant, and was founded by Sir Frank Lampl, a Czech holocaust survivor who worked in the Middle East in the 1970s. 90 The company built the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and the Riyadh Olympic stadium in Saudi Arabia. The US operations were led by Luther Cochrane, who was President and Chief Executive Officer of the holding company for the group's US operations, since September 1995. 91
Bovis' representatives in charge of the WTC site were Jim Abadie and his assistant Charlie Vitchers. In a videotaped deposition for a lawsuit related to health issues, Abadie mentioned that the Bovis project managers for the WTC cleanup project were Mike Biliewa and Jack Masagna. No information is readily available for either of these men.
Years later, Abadie was also in charge of the Deutsche Bank demolition and the September 11th memorial before he resigned in the midst of an investigation into billing and payroll practices at five Bovis projects in New York, including the memorial and Deutsche Bank. 92 For the Deutsche Bank demolition, in 2004, Abadie hired a previously non-existent and highly suspect company called John Galt Construction. 93 After the deaths of two firefighters during the demolition project, John Galt was found to be in the middle of a multi-million dollar "check-cashing" scandal led by two characters named Riad Khalil and Neil Goldstein. Apparently Mr. Khalil had bank records indicating that he had $2.4 million in a bank account in Zurich. 94
Also involved in the Deutsche Bank demolition was Charles Schwab, an associate of Harold Greenberg, who "once controlled seven banks, a casino in Reno and a big chunk of Hilton Head Island [and] the largest demolition company in the country." 95 Schwab was also associated with Phoenix Wrecking, a demolition and abatement company. It's not clear if this is the same company as the Phoenix Fireproofing listed in FOIA-obtained documents related to the WTC fireproofing upgrades. 96 But it is clear that mayor Bloomberg's office and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) were aware of the suspicious companies involved in the Deutsche Bank fiasco. 97
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LMDC was mandated to "alleviate existing conditions that pose a serious and immediate threat to the health or welfare of New York City or meet community development needs resulting from Sept. 11, 2001." In practice, this meant that LMDC made a lot of the decisions about what happened at Ground Zero after the cleanup and perhaps even before it was completed. LMDC was created by Governor Pataki and Mayor Giuliani without approval from the state legislature, in November 2001. 98 They appointed as chairman John C. Whitehead, the former Deputy Secretary of State under George Shultz.
Whitehead was formerly chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, an organization that has more recently played an integral role in the bailout of large institutions like AIG and has been referred to as "a black-ops outfit for the nation's central bank." 99 Whitehead was also a member of The Pilgrims Society, a British-American association. Other members of The Pilgrims Society have included some of the most powerful un-elected officials in history, like Shultz, several Rockefellers, James Baker, and Henry Kissinger.
The federal government promised $21.4 billion in aid in order to rebuild Manhattan, and LMDC was in charge of spending a great deal of that money. Unfortunately, much of it was doled out in pork projects that benefited friends of LMDC, including the Alliance for Downtown New York (ADNY), a business interest group whose members were on the LMDC board. Carl B. Weisbrod was President of ADNY as well as a director of LMDC. Weisbrod was also a previous member of Giuliani's staff and a member of the board at the Ford Foundation.
A good friend of George W. Bush was a director of LMDC. This was Roland Betts, who once owned the Texas Rangers with Bush and Bush's relative, Marsh & McClennan's Craig Stapleton. Betts was also a "heavy contributor to the Bush election campaign in 2000." 100 Another LMDC director was Frank G. Zarb, who was one of the first US Energy Czars, appointed by President Ford. 101

Debris removal and theft

The debris removed from Ground Zero was either hauled away on trucks or shipped away on barges. Despite the effort to rapidly dispose of the steel and sell it at a bargain price, the WTC debris was considered highly sensitive. At first the trucks were tracked using a paper-based system, and later GPS devices were fixed to each truck with "antennas to monitor location, cellular wireless antennas to communicate, and multiple I/Os to track vehicle signals from engine systems." 102 Apparently it was important for officials to know not only where the trucks were at any given time, but also the status of the engine. As for the barges, the process was setup "in record time," in order to "transport debris to the city's Fresh Kills landfill and to recycling sites, all scrutinized by the Corps of Engineers." 103
As the debris was received at Fresh Kills landfill, it was sorted carefully. This sorting process was supervised by federal agents, and described in this way: "Teams of officers
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and agents watch as the rubble is sifted down to a fine ashy silt that they then rake through by hand." 104 More than a year later, honest FBI agents reported the theft of some of this debris at the Fresh Kills site. It was then discovered that Evidence Recovery Teams (ERTs) involved in the sorting process stole pieces of debris, and kept or disposed of them. This removal of debris was condoned and encouraged by the FBI agents in charge.
Richard Marx, the FBI Special Agent from Philadelphia who was the site manager for the Fresh Kills site, was the one blamed for encouraging others to take materials from the debris. When the theft was reported to the public, there was an investigation by FBI authorities and a report was generated for director Robert Mueller. It was found that Marx made a number of false statements during investigative interviews, and then failed a polygraph on the issues related to his role. Marx first said that he didn't allow debris to be taken, then he said it was New York FBI agent Kevin Donovan who told him to take things, then he later said it was another FBI agent, Edwin Cogswell, who approved the theft. Marx also admitted that he took things specifically for FBI Assistant Director in Charge, Barry Mawn. Donovan, Mawn and Jerome Hauer were all close associates of John O'Neill, the retired FBI al Qaeda expert and security director for Silverstein Properties who reportedly died at the WTC on his second day in the office. 105
The report on debris theft concluded that -- "many FBI agents took rubble as souvenirs from Fresh Kills." An example given was that one Oklahoma City ERT member took 80 pounds of various debris materials, including things like an "electrical outlet." More commonly, building pieces were taken, including "red granite building facáde." The claim that these were merely souvenirs seemed unlikely considering the volume of materials stolen, and considering that WTC building 7 was the focus of much of the theft. In fact, pieces of the building "were stacked in a designated location of the Building 7 inspection area" in order for Secret Service agents to retrieve. 106 Pat D'Amuro, who was mentioned earlier as an employee of Giuliani Partners, was also involved in the theft of WTC debris materials from the Fresh Kills site. D'Amuro had specifically requested that certain kinds of items be kept for his retrieval, ostensibly so that he could give them away as mementos to various dignitaries. What is odd about that is that D'Amuro was not in charge of the Fresh Kills operation, but he had been the counterterrorism chief in the FBI's New York City office since 1997, which meant that his responsibilities included oversight of the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
As the FBI's lead person in terms of investigating and preventing terrorist acts before 9/11, D'Amuro had also been appointed to lead the investigations of the 1993 WTC bombing and other al Qaeda-attributed crimes. The 1993 bombing investigation was claimed to be fraudulent by one of FBI's own employees, in a then famous incident of whistle blowing. Frederick Whitehurst, of the FBI crime laboratory that was analyzing the evidence from the bombing, claimed that "attempts had been made to alter his lab reports to exclude scientific interpretations other than" the official explantion. Whitehurst went on to claim that FBI leadership had been altering evidence and test results for a number of years, in order to support pre-determined conclusions. 107
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Despite failing to follow-up on any of the leads that could have prevented the attacks of 9/11, D'Amuro was placed in charge of the miraculous PENTTBOM investigation just after those attacks. 108 PENTTBOM was miraculous not only for its name, which stood for Pentagon/Twin Towers Bombing (yes, bombing), but also for the rapidity in which the case was solved. That is, although US authorities claimed to have had no knowledge of or ability to stop the 9/11 attacks, the FBI was able to identify all nineteen alleged hijackers within 72 hours. 109
To date, no connections have been established between the nineteen alleged hijackers and people who had the means and opportunity to place explosives in the WTC buildings. However, there are some interesting links between the alleged conspirators and those who were involved in the cover-up investigations. For example, the Joint House and Senate Inquiry into 9/11 was led by Representative Porter Goss and Senator Bob Graham, both of whom were among those who met with Pakistani ISI General Mahmoud Ahmed in the week before 9/11. 110 That Ahmed had ordered the wiring of $100,000 to Mohamed Atta, and had numerous contacts with alleged "9/11 paymaster" Saeed Sheikh in the weeks before 9/11, did not appear to warrant mention in Goss and Graham's report. 111
Other surprising links have been identified between those who ran the security companies, those who were tenants in the three buildings, those who financed of terrorism, and those who had the power to control an operation such as the destruction of the WTC. 112

Conclusiona

During the cleanup of Ground Zero there were many indications that the public was being deceived. These included the discovery of foreknowledge about the destruction that originated with Rudy Giuliani, his OEM staff, and perhaps the US Secret Service. Additionally, the steel was destroyed in an unprecedented manner and the black boxes were officially reported as not being found when it was clear that they had been. The restrictions on FEMA investigators and on photographers, and the extensive site security are all indications that something was being hidden. Not the least of the indications of deception was the fact that the health of the people working at the site was not considered a major concern, but expedited removal of the debris was of paramount importance.
Therefore we have additional reasons to suspect that explosive materials were being hidden or destroyed during the cleanup. Those who were in control of Ground Zero did have the means and opportunity to dispose of any evidence of explosives. The opportunity came in the form of access to the highly secure site, as well as the authority to hire suspected crime syndicate companies to perform the actual cleanup. Theft of evidence by FBI agents at Fresh Kills landfill provides yet more suspicion that remnants of explosive devices were being removed.
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In addition to removal of evidence-containing debris, evidence could have been eliminated by neutralization of explosives within the pile, through the use of the robotic equipment operated at the site by people like John Blitch of SAIC. These same robotic devices had previously been used with lasers for the purpose of eliminating unexploded ordnance, and SAIC had done research in the ignition of nanothermite via lasers. Additional expertise might have been provided by the DOE, which had developed nanothermite materials similar to those found in WTC dust and whose staff were present at Ground Zero. DOE contractors like David H. Griffin, who just showed up and yet was placed in charge of the demolition operations at Ground Zero, might have also played a role in recognizing or eliminating explosive evidence.
As for motive, it's not difficult to understand that the War on Terror has been focused on areas within the Middle East where the last remaining vast petroleum reserves are located. The US departments of Energy and Defense have vital long-term interests in those regions, as do the many people mentioned in relation to those departments in this essay series. Those who were involved in Ground Zero activities appear to have gone on to profitable partnerships with each other, with WTC tenant company representatives, and in the Middle East. Examples included Giuliani Partners like Bernard Kerik, who was promoted to work with L. Paul Bremer in Iraq, and also Mike Burton, who was hired as a Vice President at URS (Washington Group). URS and its Washington Group division are among the companies that have been awarded major contracts in Iraq and that depend largely on military contracts in general. 113
Perhaps not surprisingly, those involved with the cleanup had strong links to Saudi Arabia. This included Kerik, SAIC, and the British construction companies AMEC and Bovis. Kerik worked for the Saudi royal family for four years and SAIC, AMEC and Bovis had all done significant work for the Kingdom. SAIC later profited handsomely from the War on Terror, and AMEC also went on to win enormous contracts in Iraq to renovate buildings, rebuild water and sewage networks, restore power, "and improve operations and security at military bases for the new Iraqi Armed Forces." 114
The companies that designed and built the security systems for the WTC complex had strong connections to Saudi Arabia too. For example, Kroll Associates board member Raymond Mabus was the US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and all four of the WTC security implementation companies had completed major projects in Saudi Arabia. Former FBI director Louis Freeh, whose agency investigated al Qaeda-attributed terrorism from 1993 to 2001, is now the personal attorney for Saudi ambassador "Bandar Bush." 115 The Saudi government has been sued by thousands of 9/11 victim's family members due to the suspicion that Saudi Arabia helped to finance al Qaeda. 116 The Saudis hired the law firm of Bush Administration insider James Baker to defend them in that lawsuit.
In conclusion, this essay series has presented an idea of what organizations and individuals had the needed access to place explosives in the WTC buildings, and a picture of who had the ability to destroy evidence related to those explosive materials. It has also provided more information about who profited from the attacks of 9/11, and therefore
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who might have been motivated to destroy the buildings and induce the trauma that led to the War on Terror. With this information, a more plausible explanation for what happened at the WTC can be considered, one that better fits the known facts than does the current official explanation. By necessity, any explanation will involve a conspiracy. But perhaps we can now propose a conspiracy "we can believe in."

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

So you don't think one of the thousands of workers in Building 7 or the WTC wouldn't see people installing explosives on every level then?

Yeah right.

You 're the stupidest dumbfwk mofo ever on the 9/11 web links.

Of course the riggers were seen, sh*t-head!

Did ya think they'd carry a BIG SIGN saying;

"We're the guys who're rigging the place for a big homicide!" or something?

What sort of a total fool are ya harry?

You and I and everyone else on this godforsaken planet wander around casually noticing little bits of all sorts, but none of us know WTF is actually happening under the hands of a scummy overall clad bunch of workers surrounding a hole in the wall or a manhole.

All anyone thinks is,"Oh, a bunch of maintenance guys" or somesuch, ya daft blinkered idiot!

Man, you gotta be insane to think anyone would figure it all out JUST IN PASSING!

Originally Posted by terry57

Would it be unreasonable or reasonable to concider that all the people involved in a conspirocy of this size would be able to actually keep it quiet for so long.

I mean one would expect that maybe one of the lads would let it slip when he was on the piss with his mates that he was involved in rigging WTC 7 or rigging the Twin Towers or whatever.

Then that guy would go to the media and say, Hey, I know this guy who recons he was involved with rigging up WTC 7.

Happens every day of the week with other important stuff so why not this story ?


I mean, thats all I'm saying. This has never happenned. Why not ????

Cause it did'nt happen that way.

Here's another piece of deliberate IGNOR-ance.

You assume that a rumour of a gigantic conspiracy would spread as fast as if it was spread among a bunch of dipshit unionists and pleb workers on the ground, like you, Mr Union Man.

You're wrong.

Military and covert ops don't happen unless there's total (or at least 99.99999% total secrecy), you total pea-brained Ocker moron!

If what you're trying to propound is that there's no such thing as effective secrecy, then all I can surmise is that you are part of a world of gossipy little power hungry wannabes as do in fact exist in the trades unions and in your social milieu, or that your a stooge, a paid shill.

In the real world, dingo brains, people look after their own much better than in your tiny little clique.

So Bush et al, the whole shooting box, were tight knit, no-one could step out of line, even Cheney was literally picked up off the ground and manhandled at running speed ("You must come with us sir" is what the SS said to him) by US secret service, from his office, to the secure bunker next to the Whitehouse when the first explosions started on 9/11.

Terry, you're so out of touch with what really is going on or no more than an ageing fat semi-crippled stooge, now past his use by date, PERF'd, blowing himself out in Lumpini Park Bangkok, a sight that I wish to behold myself next week when I arrive to observe you.

Have a good evening. Ocker, ya deserve the shit ya get.

So we are supposed to believe that they wired explosives throughout all floors of the building without ANYONE ever questioning why they were there and who they were working for? And given the amount of work it would require, over (what your paranoid essayist seems to think is) years?

Did you ever go into the World Trade Center ENT? Or you Shaggy?

^^ lovely stuff harry, but for one thing, those 10 Arabs with boxcutter hi-jackers didn't even exist, except in the minds of fools like you.