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NEWSLETTER #69D
June 10, 2005
September 11, 2001 Revisited
ACT
III, ADDENDUM 2
Earlier in this series, I speculated that the World Trade Center towers had very likely outlived their usefulness, if in fact they ever had any. As it turns out, Business Week Online covered that same ground shortly after the attacks, on October 5, 2001, when the editors ran an excerpt from a 1999 book by Eric Darton (Divided We Stand, Basic Books):
Is
it possible
to imagine the World Trade Center as a ruin? ...
A structure begins to fall into a state of ruin when it is no longer
supported
by the productive relations that created it. But its transformation is
complete
when it is no longer physically viable and the social imagination that
gave it
purpose has fled or been banished. Once a building is abandoned at the
level of
meaning, it is only a matter of time before physical decay upholds its
end of
the bargain.
In this sense, the World Trade Center came prepackaged as a ruin ...
From an
economic standpoint, the trade center -- subsidized since its inception
-- has
never functioned, nor was it intended to function, unprotected in the
rough-and-tumble real estate marketplace. And in the thirty years since
it was
built, the social forces of which it remains so highly visible an
artifact have
definitively realigned.
Relationships among banks and developers, public corporations, the city
government, the statehouses of New York and New Jersey, and even the
federal
government have all been transformed to a point where it is
inconceivable that
the World Trade Center could be built today -- or even for a moment
considered
a workable or desirable project ... Viewed as a crowning ruin, the
towers take
on a new symbolic power -- they become eloquent in transmitting the
drama of
their own vanished moment.
[...]
When the World Trade Center was bombed in February, 1993, at the age of
twenty,
it had finally begun generating profits to offset the chronic losses
the PA
[Port Authority] sustained running the PATH commuter line. But it was
already
passing its prime as office space, overtaken by a generation of more
recent,
cybernetically "smart" buildings with higher ceilings and greater
built-in electrical capacity. To maintain the trade center as class-A
office
space commanding top rents, the PA would have had to spend $800 million
rebuilding its electrical, electronic communications, and cooling
systems.
[...]
The adversary faced by the PA was not a cabal of terrorists. The threat
originated in a realignment of social powers represented by a
triumvirate of
officials elected in the early 1990s: George Pataki, Christie Todd
Whitman, and
Rudolph Giuliani [Editor's note: if that's not "a cabal of
terrorists," then I don't know what is], respectively the governors
of
New York and New Jersey and the mayor of New York City. Although
differing on
many issues, all three vigorously pursued policies of cutting social
services while
consolidating and privatizing public agencies. At its most
ideologically
distilled, their shared doctrine -- popularly associated with
Republican
conservatives but espoused by many Democrats -- sought to re-create the
public
sector as a function of the marketplace ...
Viewed from this perspective, the Port Authority ceases to exist as a
public
institution created to address the New York region's economic and
social needs
and becomes instead an assemblage of assets, to be broken up according
to the
dictates of the market. But "capturing" the value of such assets, of
course, is predicated upon the dismemberment of the whole.
(BW Online | October 5, 2001 | "The Process of Creating a Ruin")
As will be recalled, a major "dismemberment of the whole" just happened to occur - purely by chance, I'm sure - in July 2001, when ownership of the World Trade Center transferred from the Port Authority to Silverstein Properties and Westfield America, as reported by the Financial Times (September 14, 2001):
The owners of the demolished World Trade Center in lower Manhattan acquired the buildings just two months ago under a 99-year lease allowing them to walk away from their investment in the event of "an act of terrorism." The owners, Silverstein Properties and Westfield America - a shopping mall specialist - purchased the buildings from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for $3.2bn in July and completed the financing just two weeks ago ... It is understood that the buildings are insured for more than $3bn, enough to cover rebuilding costs.
Apparently the best way to capture the value of these particular assets, after separating them from the whole, was to destroy them.
While revisiting Darton's book, Business Week Online also posted a short Q&A session with the author. Some of the more intriguing dialogue from that interview is reproduced here:
Q:
Why is
this terrible attack so hard to comprehend?
A: Whoever did this thing really got us where we live: [The World Trade Center] was a tremendous psychic landmark, as well as a physical landmark. [The attack] really undermined our sense of even what Newtonian physics is. It's hard for most of us to imagine that something so solid could be pulverized so quickly and so completely. I think it's spooky for people, on a deep level.
Q: Why did the World Trade Center become so important to us?
A: When I was looking around for its emblematic content, I realized by itself it didn't have emblematic content. It was, in a sense, empty. The Trade Center really appeared, if anything, to be a gateway, a gateway through which we passed as a culture from an Industrial Age into the Information Age, this New World we live in.
So I came to see it as a gateway, for New York specifically because it
coincided with the eclipse of New York's port. New York, prior to the
WTC
moment, was a city that could finance, make, and transport things. Now,
it's
largely a symbolic economy, based on real estate and finance. My
feeling is
that, now that [the towers] are physically gone...we have crossed
another
threshold.
Q: Do you think there will be a move toward the suburbs and less
densely
populated areas? Or do you think Manhattan and other cities will remain
vibrant?
A: There has been, for years, pressure from different sources to decentralize the major cites. There was kind of a war going on between the various factions of the ruling class in this country over whether to get out of cities or to concentrate in cities ... There has been a large-scale movement to decentralize, and I can't but imagine that [the terrorist attacks] won't help but fuel that somehow.
(BW Online | October 5, 2001 | What the Twin Towers Stood For)
Two years before Darton published his book,
and four years before the events of September 11, 2001, Scientific
American pondered whether all skyscrapers had become
obsolete (William
Mitchell "Do We Still Need Skyscrapers?," December 1997). The
magazine’s expressed opinion was that the need for centralization of
the
workforce was quickly becoming a thing of the past: "The
burgeoning
Digital Revolution has been reducing the need to bring office workers
together,
face-to-face, in expensive downtown locations," wrote Mitchell.
"Efficient
telecommunications have diminished the importance of centrality and
correspondingly increased the attractiveness of less expensive suburban
sites
that are more convenient to the labor force."
Not to mention the even more attractive option (from the point of view of our corporate masters) of bypassing the suburbs in favor of 'outsourcing' office work to 'Third World' labor markets ...
Could the
era of
towering downtown skylines be headed the way of the horse-and-buggy?
And if so,
could hastening the decentralization of major cities be yet another
hidden
motive for carrying out the attacks of September 11? As has been
frequently
noted on this website, one of the overriding goals of our fearless
leaders is
the complete atomization of society -- the shredding of all social,
cultural
and familial bonds. The reason for that, of course, is that a
population set
adrift, each individual in his or her own little cybersphere of
existence, is
much easier to deceive, much easier to control, and, lest we forget,
much
easier to thin. It certainly makes
sense then
that there would be, at this time, a covert push to decentralize large
population centers.
By the way, I should probably add here that decentralization seems to be – coincidentally, I’m sure - the very same agenda that the 'Peak Oil' crowd is pitching. Hmmm …
* * * * * * * * * *
If we are now bearing witness to the early stages of the death of the modern era of centralization, then it seems only fitting that we pause here to take a fond look back at the events surrounding the birth of that era.
It all began, as is so frequently the case with major re-weavings of the social fabric, with an unnatural disaster that traumatized the nation. On the night of October 8, 1871, a fire began to sweep through the very heart of Chicago's financial district. By the time it burned out, on the morning of October 10, it had blazed a path some 4 miles long and 3/4 of a mile wide through the city.
Fully 1/3 of
Chicago's
buildings were destroyed in the blaze, including virtually all of those
in the
city's financial district. Hundreds of businesses were reduced to
smoldering
heaps, including some of the Windy City's top hotels, restaurants,
stores,
banks, museums, and theaters. There was a human cost as well; three
hundred
people lost their lives and tens of thousands more were left homeless.
In the
aftermath, amid wildly exaggerated reports of violence and looting,
martial law
was declared; quicker than you can say "USA PATRIOT Act," federal
troops were dispatched.
To the American people, it was a national tragedy roughly on par with the World Trade Center disaster. But to the ruling elite, it was, by any honest analysis, a very conveniently timed gift.
Chicago, you see, had a bit of a problem. Due to it's central location and its rail and waterway connections, it was a natural hub of commerce for the North American continent. As such, it was one of America's fastest growing cities, and all indications were that it was going to continue its rapid growth. Indeed, it would ultimately grow up to become the nation's third largest city. But before that could happen, Chicago needed a fresh start.
It was a young city - incorporated just 34 years before the Great Fire - and it had, by necessity, grown up quickly. Much of the city was, therefore, quite shabbily constructed. Even the city's most prestigious buildings were in need of constant maintenance and renovation; some had been deemed unsafe by the local press. And space for new buildings was quickly running out.
Virtually all buildings in those days were, at most, four or five stories tall, owing both to the limitations of brick, mortar and wood construction, and to the reluctance of most people to climb endless flights of stairs. But by the time of the Great Fire in 1871, all of that was about to change, thanks in no small part to the development and refinement of the elevator by various members of the Otis family. The invention of the elevator, combined with a revolutionary new steel-framed building design that would be dubbed the "Chicago Skeleton," was about to render all of Chicago's business district obsolete. And all of those obsolete buildings were sitting on prime real estate.
The problem, in a nutshell, was that the only direction to build in Chicago was straight up. And the only way to do that was to clear away all the shoddily constructed brick-and-mortar buildings standing in the way. But that, of course, was going to be a tough-sell with the people of Chicago, just as demolishing a section of Lower Manhattan would have been a tough-sell with the people of New York.
Luckily then, the Great Chicago Fire roared through town at just about the right time. Just as a forest can be cleansed and rejuvenated through fire, so too was the city of Chicago. Soon, great buildings began to grow from the ashes of what had come before. The first was the ten-story Home Insurance Building, considered to be the world's first "skyscraper." It was soon eclipsed by much taller edifices, including the imposing, 302-foot-tall Masonic Temple that stood, for a time, as the world's tallest building.
By the early 1990s, Chicago's downtown was littered with skyscrapers. From 1880 to 1890, the city's population had more than doubled and land value had increased by some 700%. Like a Phoenix, Chicago had risen from the ashes, and it would continue to rise, although its skyscrapers would soon be eclipsed by the even more ostentatious monoliths that began to grow in New York City.
As with the
September 11
attacks, the primary beneficiaries of the Chicago Fire were the moneyed
elite.
But who were the perpetrators? Who was to blame for the cost paid by
the
American people?
According to the authoritative sources that I have consulted, the fire was started by ... (uhmm, wait a minute here, this doesn't sound quite right ... let me just check my notes real quickly and ... yeah, that's what I have down here, so I'll guess I'll go with it) ... so, like I was saying, the Great Chicago Fire was started by, uhh, Mrs. O' Leary's cow.
Whew! I can't believe I got through that one with a straight face.
So, what
have we learned
here today? Perhaps it is that the lies sold to the American people
became
more sophisticated in the 130 years between the Great Chicago Fire and
the 9-11
attacks. Or maybe not. It may be tempting to conclude that only a less
sophisticated generation of Americans could be sold an absurd tale
about a cow
and a lantern. But could that earlier generation have been sold a story
about
some guy named Osama sending his merry band of terr'ists into town to
start the fire by using themselves as human torches -- after, of
course, killing some time in one of Chicago's finest tittie bars, and
after thoughtfully leaving behind a passport, a copy of the Koran, and
a gas can?
* * * * * * * * * *
And now it is time once again to dip into the mailbag to see what is on the minds of readers. This first query comes from Dylan:
The one question I have from my initial quick read is this: Doesn't it seem incongruous that the perpetrators would be concerned about minimizing the loss of life from the towers' collapse, as you suggest they may have taken steps to do? Wouldn't the nation as a whole be more traumatized if more people had been killed?
While a higher death toll would obviously be more traumatizing for the American people, I think that part of the answer to Dylan's question, in the immortal words of the real estate industry, is "location, location, location." If this operation had been carried out in, say, Harlem, or South-Central Los Angeles, then minimizing loss of life would probably not have been a high priority. But this operation was aimed specifically at bringing down the World Trade Center towers, which resided in the very heart of the corporate beast.
The other part of the answer is that, in the days immediately following the attacks, the actual casualty figures were irrelevant, since the American people were initially sold much higher figures. In those early days of wall-to-wall coverage, when maximum trauma was being inflicted, our trusted media mouthpieces spoke in hushed tones of tens of thousands of yet-to-be recovered bodies. We probably all remember Rudy Giuliani, suddenly revered as "America's Mayor," ominously ordering up enough body bags to accommodate those bloated estimates. It took time for those early estimates to slowly creep down to the currently accepted figures, and by then the damage had been done to the American psyche.
And what was the nature of that damage? I recently stumbled across the writings of some guy named Tim Boucher, who has penned an accurate and concise appraisal of the nature and purpose of the trauma inflicted upon the American people:
Do you remember watching it all unfold on television and feeling somehow like it “wasn’t real”? That’s a crucial symptom of traumatic dissociation. Your mind splits, blinks off for a moment, creating a critical space which can be filled with a new story, a new mythos. Before that, almost none of us gave a shit about terrorism or national security. But as a result of this trauma-based rite of passage, we were suddenly conditioned to a completely new value system – one in which everything we held dear before was turned upside-down: personal freedom, the Bill of Rights, etc. It’s virtually identical to what happens to a child in a traditional culture who is re-aligned to adulthood through ritual circumcision and the supporting transformative mythos. Maybe the World Trade Center tumbling down was the ritual circumcision of the American psyche. We are now adults. We are now warriors.
I don’t think I have much to add to that.
* * * * * * * * * *
Next
is a question from an anonymous reader:
Now let me say here that I have never been
satisfied with
the official story, and that my opinion has always been that this is an
inside
job. However, there is something that I don't understand... maybe you
can
comment on this. If the towers were
detonated
from within, then why would the bombers detonate the explosives
according to a
standard demolition procedure? If the bombers had wanted it to appear
that the
buildings had collapsed due to the impact of planes, then why not set
up the
explosives in a more random fashion? ... Of course, it's probably a
moot point given
that the official story was swallowed by the public so easily.
As far as I know, there wasn’t any other option. For the handful of companies specializing in the controlled implosion of tall structures, building demolition is a relatively exact science. The goal is to bring the building down with a minimum of collateral damage, and accomplishing that requires that the explosive charges be very precisely placed and then detonated in a very specific sequence. There is no way to do that and make it look random.
It is certainly
possible
that, on a subconscious level at least, the perpetrators wanted
the
public to know that the towers were not brought down by airplane
crashes. That
sort of cloaked revelation seems to be, in many cases, a component of
the traumatization process. What
better way, after all, to disempower and demoralize the American people
than
through an unspoken acknowledgment that the enemy is within, and can
act with
impunity?
My hunch is that the official story of the collapse of the towers wasn’t necessarily swallowed all that easily. I suspect that what was sold to the public was, as Eric Darton suggested, “spooky for people, on a deep level.”
* * * * * * * * * *
Next up is some feedback from researcher Jeff Strahl:
Just a
couple of things re the generally excellent Newsletter 69. In a couple of sections, the text is mangled by
graphics when I
print it, esp. the part about WTC 7
next to the
map of the area, and the part with two adjacent graphics about the core. And
the last couple of paragraphs seem confused, a strange way to end the
thing, just seems to trail off. I don't
understand your contention about
the South Tower being damaged more
significantly when
just a corner was damaged, it was
much much
easier for the load to be transferred given the core was pretty intact and fewer perimeter
columns were
damaged, in addition to which most
of the fuel
was consumed in the external fireball, the fires were much less intense. The lower elevation is
made up for
by thicker beams, as the beams were
tapered.
As for the
problems when
printing the post, the only response I really have is to suggest that
it is
probably best not to try to print it. That should alleviate the
problem. The
other option would be for me to attempt to fix it, but that would
probably
require that I actually be able to read and edit HTML, or possess some
other
rudimentary level of computer expertise – which might be the case in a
perfect
world, but this isn’t a perfect world, as evidenced by the fact that
George
Bush is still my illegitimate president, Arnold Schwarzenegger is still
my illegitimate
governor, and “Dr. Phil” is still on the air.
As for the
lame ending
to the series, that was primarily due to the fact that it was actually
a fake
ending to buy me some time until I finished all the Addenda. When I get
to the
real ending, it’s going to be a really good one. You’ll see. I’m
thinking of
calling it, “Act IV: Revenge of the Sith.” I probably shouldn’t mention
it yet
though because now someone will likely steal that title. If that should
happen,
remember that you read it here first.
As for my
contention
about the damage to the South Tower, I think it is pretty obvious that
I was
talking out of my ass when I wrote that, but I still think it is a
little rude of you
to bring it up. Yes, the core suffered less damage in the South Tower
strike;
and yes, fewer perimeter columns were damaged; and yes, the fires were
indeed
less intense; and yes, the columns were tapered, with the bases being
absolutely massive and the tops being considerably less so. But even
so, I
still contend that, with all the strife in the world today, it is an
inappropriate
time to dwell on the flaws in my work.
As near as I can tell, my comments indicating that the South Tower suffered more damage and was therefore brought down first, before the upper stories could topple over, were a holdover from my previous post on the collapse of the towers, and they really should have been edited out.
My initial belief was that the beginnings of an actual partial collapse of the South Tower necessitated the instigation of the planned controlled collapse. But after discovering a photograph of the same phenomenon occurring immediately before the collapse of the North Tower, and after realizing that if the South Tower were to have suffered a partial collapse due to the initial impact damage, it would have occurred almost immediately after the impact, I came to a different conclusion.
I now believe that the initial toppling of the upper floors of the towers was not a condition that dictated the sequence of the collapses, but was rather an indication that the controlled demolitions had already begun. Even as those massive blocks began to topple above the impact points, as depicted in photos, their structural integrity had already been thoroughly undermined from within, and they were beginning to come apart even as they appeared to topple.
The only reasonable explanation for this phenomenon, visible in the collapse of both towers, is that all of the central core columns of both towers were instantaneously dropped and cut into sections, thus pulling the floors and the outer shells of the buildings down towards the center of each tower’s footprint. And the only way that that could happen is through the elaborately choreographed detonation of very carefully placed explosive charges.
My belief now is that the South Tower was brought down first not to preempt a potentially disastrous partial collapse, but because it was the tower that was cleared of occupants first (as much as was possible). I hope this clears up any confusion.
* * * * * * * * * *
Of the feedback that I have received on Act III, the most popular topic (or perhaps I should say the most unpopular topic) is my commentary on the infamous quote from Larry Silverstein. "Why would you let Silverstein off the hook for his incriminating comment?" ask incredulous readers. According to some readers, I may have gone so far as to have "provided him with an alibi." Some respondents have even noted my obvious affiliation with the MOSSAD (an organization within which, as we all know, I head the secretive and powerful Irish Catholic division).
*Sigh* I
guess I’m going
to have to run through this again.
When
confronted with any
new piece of evidence, no matter how tempting it may appear to be, it
is
essential that that evidence be rigorously examined to determine
whether it
does indeed have merit. In fact, the more tempting the evidence is -
the more
it is touted as a 'smoking gun' - the more skeptical one should be. The
danger,
you see, is that if you let that piece of evidence become the
centerpiece of
your case, and then the bottom unexpectedly falls out of that
centerpiece, then
your case no longer has any credibility, no matter how strong your
other
evidence may be.
With that in
mind, let's
take another look now at the Silverstein quote (view the video clip here):
I remember getting a call from the, uhh, Fire Department Commander, telling me that they were not sure they were going to be able to contain the fire. I said, "You know, we've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is, is pull it." Uhh, and they made that decision to pull, and then we watched the building collapse.
As a disembodied quote, stripped of context, Silverstein’s words could
very
easily be interpreted as a candid admission that the building was
deliberately
brought down. It is, to be sure, a rather ambiguously worded statement.
Context,
therefore, is all important.
The
first
thing that must be considered is the context in which Silverstein made
the
statement. Overlooked by many 9-11 skeptics is that this was
not a spontaneous, off-the-cuff remark by the WTC's new leaseholder. It
was not
uttered during a live press conference or during a live appearance on a
cable ‘news’
shout-a-thon. It was not, in other words, an unscripted response to an
unexpected question, nor was it a statement that, once uttered, could
not be
expunged from the public record.
To
the
contrary, the Silverstein quote comes from a
friendly
interview that was taped and edited for inclusion in a documentary film
that
was later aired on the public airwaves, for all the world to see, just
over a
year after the events of September 11, 2001. The purpose of the film,
as with
all televised documentaries concerning the events of that day, was to
further
sell the American people on the sanctity of the official 9-11 story. It
was, in
essence, a state-sponsored propaganda film.
Larry Silverstein certainly had ample time to
consider his
statement both before and after making it. If he had inadvertently
incriminated
himself, he would surely have immediately recognized that fact, as
would the
filmmakers, whose goal doesn’t seem to have been to bring the truth
about 9-11
to the American people. Why then would a supposed 'smoking gun'
admission have
made it into the final version of the film? Was everyone involved with
this
production asleep at the wheel during the editing process? Or has PBS
suddenly
become the voice of truth – but only in this one specific instance?
Also
to be
considered is the context in which Silverstein’s notorious segment
appears in
the film. Here is the narration that
immediately
precedes Silverstein's statement: "[WTC] Seven had been cleared faster
than the rest of the site, and there had been no bodies to recover.
Pelted by
debris when the North Tower collapsed, Seven burned until late
afternoon,
allowing occupants to evacuate to safety.”
I doubt that PBS has set any records
here, but that's
a fairly impressive pack of lies they managed to bundle into that
second
sentence. WTC7 was not, in reality, "pelted by debris" from the North
Tower, but was in fact quite intact right up until the moment that it
spontaneously collapsed. It also did not burn all day, at least not
with fires
of any significance. And the building's occupants, including the
helpful folks
staffing the emergency command center, were evacuated very early in the
day -- long before “late
afternoon.”
There is a more important issue here, however,
than the fact
that the statement is a series of outright lies. Take another look at
how those
lies have been strung together: "Seven burned until late afternoon,
allowing occupants to evacuate to safety." The PBS gang is
not
telling us that in spite of the fact that the building was
allegedly
ablaze all day, occupants were nevertheless able to evacuate to safety.
No,
they are saying that it is precisely because the building
burned all day
that all the occupants were able to evacuate.
I think most readers will agree that it is not
often that
you hear someone say: "You know what? It's a damned good thing that
that
building burned all day like that so that all those people could get
out of
there." But September 11, as we all know, was a day like no other.
Employing the peculiar logic and physics of September 11, we can easily
determine that the message that the narrator wished to convey was that
it was
fortunate for all concerned that WTC7 didn't collapse fairly quickly,
as was
the case with the Pentagon and both WTC towers, but rather held out for
most of
the day before its inevitable collapse. Because that is, as we all
know, what
buildings did on that particular day – even buildings that were not
directly
involved in the attacks.
Having planted in the viewer's mind the absurd
notion that
the collapse of WTC7 was not a matter of "if," but "when,"
the filmmakers then segue directly into Silverstein's statement, which,
in case
anyone has forgotten, goes something like this:
I remember getting a call from the, uhh, Fire Department Commander, telling me that they were not sure they were going to be able to contain the fire. I said, "You know, we've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is, is pull it." Uhh, and they made that decision to pull, and then we watched the building collapse.
There are at least two possible
interpretations of
that statement. The first one, offered on numerous 9-11 skeptics’
websites, is
that the phrase "pull it" refers to performing a controlled
demolition. The problem with that interpretation, however, is that the
statement then makes no sense. As we have already seen, the "terrible
loss of
life" in Manhattan that day was directly attributable to the collapse
of
the Twin Towers. If Silverstein was feigning concern for the loss of
life that
day, and expressing an interest in avoiding any further loss of life,
then why
would he recommend instigating the collapse of yet another building?
Another possible interpretation of Silverstein’s
statement,
as I noted previously, is that the phrase "pull it" refers to
suspending firefighting operations – ‘pulling’ firefighters out of the
supposedly
burning building. Using that interpretation, Silverstein's statement
begins to
make sense, because the best way to avoid the further loss of life -
particularly among firefighters, who took heavy casualties in both
tower
collapses – would have been to cease firefighting operations in WTC7
(if it had
actually been ablaze and in danger of collapse, and if there had been
any actual firefighting operations in progress). And it makes perfect
sense
that Silverstein, as the leaseholder, would make such a recommendation
to a
Fire Department Commander, thus relieving the FDNY of liability for
failing to
work diligently to save his building. It makes no sense, on the other
hand,
that Silverstein would recommend to a representative of the Fire
Department
that his building be immediately brought down in a controlled manner.
As far as
I know, the FDNY is not qualified to stage such a spectacle.
If we look at Silverstein's statement in
conjunction with
the narration that immediately precedes it, there doesn't appear to be
any great mystery about
what was said. The narrator first informs us that there were no bodies
to recover in
the rubble of WTC7, and then he begins to explain why: all the
building's
occupants had been able to safely evacuate before the collapse.
Silverstein
then jumps in to add that there were also no firefighters in the
building at
the time of the collapse because he and a Fire Department official had
made a
timely decision to pull them out.
There are, unfortunately, a couple of problems
with the
benign interpretation of Silverstein’s statement. The first is that the
peculiar wording of Silverstein’s final comment is difficult to explain
away,
since he seems to be saying that the building collapsed as a direct
result of
the decision to “pull it”: “they made that decision to pull, and
then we
watched the building collapse.” It is possible, however, though
perhaps not
plausible to many, that Silverstein was saying something entirely
different. It
is possible that he intended his comment to be interpreted as having a
silent “and
it’s a damned good thing they did” inserted into it, as in “they made
that decision to
pull and it’s a damned good thing they did, because those men barely
had time to get
out of there before we watched the building collapse.”
It is possible, in fact, that the qualifying
clause wasn’t
actually silent at all. It occurred to me, after repeated viewings of
the video
clip, that Silverstein is no longer on camera when he makes that final
comment,
but is instead speaking in voiceover. There is therefore no way to
determine if
his statement has been edited. It seems to me that it is entirely
possible that
Silverstein’s words were carefully scripted and edited to deliberately
create
ambiguity.
The other problem with a benign interpretation is
that the
word “pull” is clearly used elsewhere in the
film to refer to the controlled
demolition of WTC6. (As will be recalled, I previously stated that such
a
reference couldn’t be to a controlled collapse since WTC6 didn’t
collapse on
September 11. However, after viewing the clip, it is clear that the
collapse
referred to was part of the clean-up operation, not the events of
9-11-01, and
the word “pull” clearly is used to refer to a controlled demolition.
Oops. My bad.)
The chances of a relatively obscure phrase like
“pull it”
appearing twice in the same documentary film, with entirely different
meanings
for each occurrence, would seem to be pretty slim, to say the least.
And yet,
in the case of WTC6, the phrase clearly refers to a controlled
demolition,
while in the case of WTC7, such an interpretation renders Silverstein’s
statement incomprehensible.
So what are we to make of all this? It seems that
there are
at least three possible interpretations of Silverstein’s statement: the
benign
one, in which Silverstein was essentially giving his consent to suspend
firefighting activities; the nefarious one, in which Silverstein was
ordering
the (impossible to spontaneously engineer) controlled demolition of one
of
his buildings; and the possibly even more nefarious one, in which
Silverstein
was essentially planting a red herring in the 9-11 skeptics movement by
delivering a very carefully crafted bit of deliberate ambiguity.
I previously subscribed to the first
interpretation, but
after reconsidering the issue, I am now leaning heavily towards the
third
possibility. It wouldn’t surprise me, in fact, if the original
interview tapes were
to reveal that Silverstein actually made a much less ambiguous
statement. But what
do I know? After all, I obviously draw my paycheck from the MOSSAD. And
as we
all know, the MOSSAD, and Israeli Zionists in general, control the
weak, pathetic little
country that we call America.
There is one thing about that that puzzles me,
however – one
thing that I can’t seem to get a handle on. I’ve given this some
thought, you
see, and this is what I have deduced: if the nation of Israel were to
suddenly
cease to exist (and this is just a hypothetical situation to make a
point, not
an endorsement of the destruction of the nation of Israel, so calm the
fuck
down already), the United States would suffer at least a temporary loss
of
influence in the oil-soaked Middle East, but would otherwise carry on
with
business as usual, forcibly exerting its influence over much of the
rest of the world;
but if the United States were to suddenly cease to exist, then Israel
would, I
would think, either quickly learn to live peacefully with its neighbors
or
quickly find itself living on borrowed time.
It has always been my understanding that it is
the puppet
that is dependent upon the puppeteer. But maybe like everything else
since
September 11, that has changed as well.