Demolition Access To The WTC Towers: Part Two Security
By
Kevin Ryan -
August 13, 2009 466
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Part One provided a picture of connections to organizations that had demolition access to explosive materials and to the expertise required to use explosives.
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.
[SUP][1][/SUP] 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."
[SUP][2][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][3][/SUP] It is clear, therefore, that Al Qaeda is typically described as a "vast conspiracy". ,
[SUP][4,5][/SUP]
Given the considerable evidence in support of the WTC demolition theory
[SUP][6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13][/SUP], 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 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."
[SUP][14][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][15][/SUP]
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. ,
[SUP][16,17][/SUP] Mr. Levin died in the towers during the attacks, after having been in the position less than six months.
[SUP][18][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][19][/SUP]
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."
[SUP][20][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][21][/SUP]
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. ,
[SUP][22,23][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][24][/SUP] 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."
[SUP][25][/SUP] 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."
[SUP][26][/SUP]
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).
[SUP][27][/SUP] 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."
[SUP][28][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][29][/SUP]
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."
[SUP][30][/SUP] 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,
[SUP][31][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][32][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][33][/SUP]
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."
[SUP][34][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][35][/SUP] 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."
[SUP][36][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][37][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][38][/SUP]
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."
[SUP][39][/SUP]
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."
[SUP][40][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][41][/SUP]
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."
[SUP][42][/SUP]
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 (1966-1970). Later, in 1999 and 2000, Jenkins also served as an advisor to the National Commission on Terrorism, led by L. Paul Bremer.
[SUP][43][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][44][/SUP]
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).
[SUP][45][/SUP] 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."
[SUP][46][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][47][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][48][/SUP] 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,"
[SUP][49][/SUP]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.
[SUP][50][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][51][/SUP] 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. 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.
[SUP][52][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][53][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][54,55][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][56][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][57][/SUP]
In August 1996, as a result of the TWA 800 disaster, Kroll began issuing a monthly bulletin "that reviews air travel safety issues worldwide."
[SUP][58][/SUP]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.
[SUP][59][/SUP] 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."
[SUP][60][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][61][/SUP]
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."
[SUP][62][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][63][/SUP] Some have reported that the US military is preparing to deploy troops in support of nationwide vaccination for H1N1.
[SUP][64][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][65][/SUP] 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 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.
[SUP][66][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][67][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][68][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][69][/SUP]
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 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."
[SUP][70][/SUP] It has been reported that the U.N. building in New York has been the site of electronic espionage.
[SUP][71][/SUP] 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."
[SUP][72][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][73,74][/SUP]
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."
[SUP][75][/SUP] 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."
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.
[SUP][76][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][77][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][78,79][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][80,81][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][82][/SUP]
Charles Finkel was also the "sole limited partner of Mayfair Limited Partnership,"
[SUP][83][/SUP] a joint venture between three companies including Apollo Real Estate Advisors.
[SUP][84][/SUP] Apollo Real Estate Advisors was formed in April 1993 as the real estate affiliate of the private investment organization Apollo Management.
[SUP][85][/SUP]
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).
[SUP][86][/SUP]
McAullife had been involved in suspicious dealings before. He was linked to Teamster related corruption
[SUP][87][/SUP], and when he was DNC national finance chairman, he made a $1.35 million gift to the Clintons in what later became a scandal.
[SUP][88][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][89][/SUP]
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."
[SUP][90][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][91][/SUP]
Lockheed Martin then bought most of Loral, in April 1996, for $9.1 billion.
[SUP][92][/SUP] 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]."
[SUP][93][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][94][/SUP]
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."
[SUP][95][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][96][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][97][/SUP] 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."
[SUP][98][/SUP] 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."
[SUP][99][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][100][/SUP] "When Securacom went public on September 11, 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.
[SUP][101][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][102][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][103][/SUP]
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."
[SUP][104][/SUP]
The other owners of Securacom were Walker and an entity controlled by Walker and Al Sabah, called Special Situation Investment Holdings (SSIH).
[SUP][105][/SUP] 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, Abrahamson was President of Hughes Aircraft, and a director of Turkey's Global Group. He became a director of Securacom in December 1997.
[SUP][106][/SUP]
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."
[SUP][107][/SUP] Lockheed Martin is a major NASA supplier in that regard.
[SUP][108][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][109][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][110][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][111][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][112][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][113][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][114][/SUP] 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 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.
[SUP][115][/SUP]
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."
[SUP][116][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][117][/SUP] 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,
[SUP][118][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][119][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][120][/SUP] 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."
[SUP][121][/SUP] 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.
[SUP][122][/SUP]
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."
[SUP][123][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][124][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][125][/SUP]
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.
[SUP][126][/SUP] 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."
[SUP][127][/SUP]
Wharton was a friend of Jerome Hauer, and through Hauer, Silverstein and Wharto
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass