Bombshell: Silverstein Wanted To Demolish Building 7 On 9/11

[DrVolin]

I'm no longer a grad student. And I do have a job.

[thatsmystory]

LOL. If Silverstein was on the phone negotiating with his insurance company to get the go ahead for CD hours before the building imploded in a CD-like fashion, I'd say this newly disclosed information is highly relevant to the investigation. Why are so many people performing such grotesque mental contortions to find ways to dismiss this issue out of hand?

Why wasn't fire damage insurance sufficient? If the building remained standing wouldn't Silverstein have received enough insurance money to repair the building? What am I missing? Is Silverstein obsessed with CD?

What contortion? There is a good chance that Shapiro is full of shit. For one thing he claims he thoroughly investigated 9/11 and found nothing suspicious. Yeah. That is very convincing.

[82_28]

Think of when you knock down some of your biggest buildings in SimCity. The land and properties around it go up in overall value, esp if you have a nice commerce ratio. Think of what it took to run those two buildings. The pipes, the elevators, just the perpetual upkeep.

Yet, these two buildings also happened to be monuments as well -- every single movie in the world had the twin towers fit in somehow during the 80s. Expensive monuments, whose quick destruction, would bring in hundreds of billions, trillions of profits. It's probably a "no-brainer" for people who do this kind of thing for a living.

[smiths]

i think you are mising the asbestos problem, but who knows, maybe that was bullshit as well

[stickdog99]

Why wasn't fire damage insurance sufficient? If the building remained standing wouldn't Silverstein have received enough insurance money to repair the building?

What contortion? There is a good chance that Shapiro is full of shit. For one thing he claims he thoroughly investigated 9/11 and found nothing suspicious. Yeah. That is very convincing.

I really don't give a fuck about Silverstein's supposed motivations. Something doesn't add up here and I want some obvious questions answered once and for all. Sure, Shapiro may be full of shit. But why publish an article that's 100% bs on this? Who demanded a 100% bs "hit piece" on Jesse Ventura to float the theory that the CD of WTC-7 was an openly and explicitly considered option on 9/11? Why?

What's wrong with taking this crap at face value and trying to get some questions answered about it? Why is almost everybody so quick with the knee jerk confirmation bias snap judgments and recriminations? This is at minimum a new and interesting development. Why take such pains to immediately dismiss it out of hand?

[thatsmystory]

Why wasn't fire damage insurance sufficient? If the building remained standing wouldn't Silverstein have received enough insurance money to repair the building?

What contortion? There is a good chance that Shapiro is full of shit. For one thing he claims he thoroughly investigated 9/11 and found nothing suspicious. Yeah. That is very convincing.

I really don't give a fuck about Silverstein's supposed motivations. Something doesn't add up here and I want some obvious questions answered once and for all. Sure, Shapiro may be full of shit. But why publish an article that's 100% bs on this? Who demanded a 100% bs "hit piece" on Jesse Ventura to float the theory that the CD of WTC-7 was an openly and explicitly considered option on 9/11? Why?

What's wrong with taking this crap at face value and trying to get some questions answered about it? Why is almost everybody so quick with the knee jerk confirmation bias snap judgments and recriminations? This is at minimum a new and interesting development. Why take such pains to immediately dismiss it out of hand?

Questioning isn't the same thing as dismissal. Hopefully Shapiro will follow up on his article.

Shortly before the building collapsed, several NYPD officers and Con-Edison workers told me that Larry Silverstein, the property developer of One World Financial Center was on the phone with his insurance carrier to see if they would authorize the controlled demolition of the building – since its foundation was already unstable and expected to fall.

This doesn't say much for Shapiro's reporting efforts. Why would the insurance carrier make a judgment on CD on the telephone? Silverstein expected a green light on the very day of 9/11? If the foundation was already unstable and expected to fall then why was Silverstein worried about CD?

[thatsmystory]

This appears to be the same guy:

Jeffrey Scott Shapiro talks about George W. Bush the way Buddhists talk about the Dalai Lama. "He stands for truth, compassion and freedom," he says. "Bush instinctively sees the global picture that every living person has the right to be free." It's hardly surprising, then, that Shapiro founded Honor Freedom, an organization devoted to restoring Bush's reputation. And Shapiro may actually succeed—especially since Bush, too, will be working on the same project, if not the same organization.

On its Web site, Honor Freedom proclaims its three-part mission: "UNITE BUSH SUPPORTERS by building a national network" of supporters; "CORRECT THE HISTORICAL RECORD by dispelling fallacies about President Bush"; and "TEACH AMERICA the truth about the Bush foreign policy doctrine" (all capitalization in original). Through a nationwide public education program consisting of op-eds, media appearances, and free public seminars, the nonprofit group intends to teach Americans that George W. Bush was actually a great president and an even better man.

The Bush Restoration Project

Hard to believe he found nothing suspicious in his 9/11 investigation.

[nathan28]

What's wrong with taking this crap at face value and trying to get some questions answered about it? Why is almost everybody so quick with the knee jerk confirmation bias snap judgments and recriminations? This is at minimum a new and interesting development. Why take such pains to immediately dismiss it out of hand?

From page two:

However, obviously aware of how it would impact his insurance claim, Larry Silverstein has consistently denied that there was ever a plan to intentionally demolish Building 7. However, the most damning aspect of the article is Shapiro’s inadvertent revelation that Larry Silverstein was on the phone to his insurance company pushing for the building to be demolished, which is precisely what happened later in the day, and as innumerable eyewitnesses as well as video footage and physical evidence prove, the collapse of WTC 7 could have been nothing else than a controlled demolition, which would place Silverstein’s $500 million insurance payout in severe jeopardy if ever acknowledged.

Please, please resolve this apparent contradiction for me. Silverstein called his ins. co. to ask for authorization to demolish the building. Then the building falls. So did he have authorization? Because it sounds like he already talked to them about it, then it happened. Why would you do something for which permission was denied? Is the point that Silverstein got permission, or that he was denied it and did it anyway? Or that he called with 'safety concerns' & the collapse verified his concerns? What exactly is going on here?

And then, assuming it was a controlled demolition, who would have handled that? How could Silverstein ask for CD and then by what visual accounts I see go ahead and do it if the building was on fire? Did police and firefighters enter the building? An engineering team?

Assuming permission was granted for destruction--what does that show, and how would that have jeopardized his claim, if he had permission? That for safety reasons a building was demolished in response to an event? That it was planned ahead of time? That bombs were planted ahead of time?

These are all honest questions. I simply don't "get" what this story is about.

But this was on page one, so it was rotten already:

Nitwit.

[nathan28]

This doesn't say much for Shapiro's reporting efforts. Why would the insurance carrier make a judgment on CD on the telephone?

No, and it doesn't say much about Fox's editorial policies, either. I still don't know WTF the ins. co. replied, which is what the story was about! And let me just kindly suggest that when a billionaire calls an ins. co., he gets a hold of someone who can make decisions. And I'll likewise suggest that if you are going to get your ins. co. to authorize a half-billion dollar demolition, you sure as shit make sure they fax something over to you--and if there's subsequent insurance litigation, you sure as shit file that fax with the court, although stamped "extremely fucking confidential".

That is, unless there's a secret courtroom somewhere in the SDNY courthouse where they accept hearsay, etc., which seems... unlikely. Who knows, maybe they hold sessions at the Bohemian Grove and require all parties to cross-dress, or something, or it's the court from the last episode of the Prisoner. etc.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. What shows up is that Shapiro and his editors at Fox almost certainly intend to express something else--probably "oh but see it was going to fall anyway so Silverstein was a good boy scout and called his insurer", but that's me just trying to sort out an incomplete and likely inaccurate story. Background witnesses, bah.

[Nordic]

This appears to be the same guy:

Jeffrey Scott Shapiro talks about George W. Bush the way Buddhists talk about the Dalai Lama. "He stands for truth, compassion and freedom," he says. "Bush instinctively sees the global picture that every living person has the right to be free." It's hardly surprising, then, that Shapiro founded Honor Freedom, an organization devoted to restoring Bush's reputation. And Shapiro may actually succeed—especially since Bush, too, will be working on the same project, if not the same organization.

On its Web site, Honor Freedom proclaims its three-part mission: "UNITE BUSH SUPPORTERS by building a national network" of supporters; "CORRECT THE HISTORICAL RECORD by dispelling fallacies about President Bush"; and "TEACH AMERICA the truth about the Bush foreign policy doctrine" (all capitalization in original). Through a nationwide public education program consisting of op-eds, media appearances, and free public seminars, the nonprofit group intends to teach Americans that George W. Bush was actually a great president and an even better man.

The Bush Restoration Project

Hard to believe he found nothing suspicious in his 9/11 investigation.

Yeah, so why are we even wasting time discussing anything this liar and fascist said??

[psynapz]

[Yeah, so why are we even wasting time discussing anything this liar and fascist said??

Probably because, like Rummie, he may have slipped and gave away the punchline.

"...shot down over Pennsylvania."

[nathan28]

[Yeah, so why are we even wasting time discussing anything this liar and fascist said??

Probably because, like Rummie, he may have slipped and gave away the punchline.

"...shot down over Pennsylvania."

Something tells me a buffoon like Shapiro isn't cleared for that sort of access, but then again, the best place to hide something is in plain sight, preferably the hands of a useful idiot.

[Hammer of Los]

I do rather like Jesse Ventura. The original article was about him, after all, yet hardly anyone's mentioned him. He has a high profile. People like him. Folk will believe him. He does'nt appear to be peddling rubbish, as far as I can see, only forbidden truths.

I'm going to look at Shapiro and the Fox piece again, a little more closely this time. First, thanks for that Slate article, thatsmystory. Highly informative. Shapiro was a reporter on the Jon Benet and Chandra Levy cases?! And now he's a one man Dubya cheerleading squad?! The Slate article doesn't mention 911 though, except for this quote from Shapiro;

"He dealt with the first major attack on the continental United States since 1812 and responded brilliantly. He was a great leader."

There was also this article by Shapiro, more of the same pro Bush apologetics;

SHAPIRO: To dispel Bush clouds

Who demanded a 100% bs "hit piece" on Jesse Ventura to float the theory that the CD of WTC-7 was an openly and explicitly considered option on 9/11?

We don't know, but we might guess it's some folk working on the continuing cover up of 911. Its my guess that they are concerned about democracy being undermined by psyche shattering revelations of American (deep) state sponsored terrorism on 911. Or maybe they are just worried about Dubya's reputation. Who knows?

Perhaps what Ventura is missing is that there is probably more incontrovertible evidence and more witnesses who have already established what happened on Sept. 11, 2001 than most major historical events. To dispute the conventional historical account is intellectually dishonest and nonsensical.

Yes, its nonsensical to dispute the conventional historical account that planes known to be hijacked and presenting a threat of being used as missiles were allowed to fly unhindered across the continental United States for several hours, one even being allowed to fly straight into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, in Arlington, Virginia. The orders still stood, didn't they, right until whatever-it-was hit the Pentagon. Or that the 911 commission was given contradictory evidence, and that its members believed they were lied to by Myers on this very matter. Or that tapes of air traffic control that day were destroyed, and that no black box recorders were recovered, nor any of the numerous legally mandated investigations that would be required under the circumstances even begun. If they had, they would have had a very tough job actually, considering the amount of evidence that was transparently and willfully destroyed. I could go on. Failure of air defense, and the subsequent cover, up reveal more than incompetence. And then there all the other matters that are part of conventional history which also clearly indicate an inside job. Shapiro probably knows all this. He is a journalist who has investigated the historical account of 911, after all.

I know this because I was working as a journalist for Gannett News at Ground Zero that day, and I remember very clearly what I saw and heard.

Great place to be for a scoop, lucky fellow. Of course, whenever news agencies are mentioned, I feel I have to take a look at them. So, who are "Gannett News?" I popped that very term into my favourite apophenia inducing machine, and look what popped out as the sixth hit;

How to Sell America to People who hate us by Gannett News Centre.

I'll give you a snippet;

"How is it that the country that invented Hollywood and Madison Avenue has such trouble promoting a positive image of itself overseas?" asked Rep. Henry Hyde, the House International Relations Committee chairman, at a recent hearing on the State Department's public relations efforts. "The question facing us is, what can we do to correct this problem?"

Gannett News Service put the question to public relations, advertising and marketing experts. What kind of campaign would they create to convince the parts of the Islamic world that hate the United States that this nation is not the Great Satan, but good and generous?(!)

"This is a branding issue, plain and simple," said Rob Frankel, a Los Angeles-based consultant and author of "The Revenge of Brand X."

"Countries are no different than soap flakes or automobiles," he said. Both countries and companies have brand images, deserved or not, that evoke emotions, memories, connections, perhaps fondness or revulsion.

In branding terms, Frankel said, "we should be the gentle giant, not the menacing ogre. Or in corporate terms, we should be Federal Express, not Microsoft."

There's some real rib-tickling material in that article.

And yes, the link is from Phil Taylor's website. I've found myself there before. So have you, Hugh. Phil tells us his site is a "One Stop Shop for matters relating to international communications & 'strategic communications,' covering such themes as propaganda, military-media relations, public diplomacy, information warfare & information operations, psychological operations, war reporting and "what was briefly termed 'Perception Management' (now 'Strategic Communications' and this may be supplanted by 'Global Engagement' in the Obama administration) & the global 'war' on Terror (rebranded 'The Long War' and now the 'Struggle against Violent Extremism')"

Phew, did you get all that?

So, Shapiro covering up 911, to Gannet News, to Psyop. No surprise there.

But why tell the world Larry Silverstein was discussing demolition of WTC7 with his insurers on 911?

The only thing I can think of is that they are going to admit it was demolished. But in that case, it seems curious that Shapiro lies about the "silent" collapse, and consistently denies that controlled demolition was even a possibility. Perhaps when you are just floating memes, minor inconsistencies like that aren't important. It floats the meme, and continues the chorus of denial. For now.

I'll just quote myself, from way back on page 7 in case you missed it the first time;

I agree that one day soon they may admit to controlled demolition. But sadly, it proves nothing about the provenance of that attacks themselves of course. I can see that. It's an admission they can get away with, a very valuable admission if it takes the steam out of a "key cornerstone" of 911 conspiracy theories.

Maybe. Probably not though. Apologies for rambling. Maybe they just wanted to give us all something to talk about. Or fall out about.

Thanks for the link Elfy!

[Nordic]

Carl Weiser wrote:
"How is it that the country that invented Hollywood and Madison Avenue has such trouble promoting a positive image of itself overseas?" asked Rep. Henry Hyde, the House International Relations Committee chairman, at a recent hearing on the State Department's public relations efforts. "The question facing us is, what can we do to correct this problem?"

Gannett News Service put the question to public relations, advertising and marketing experts. What kind of campaign would they create to convince the parts of the Islamic world that hate the United States that this nation is not the Great Satan, but good and generous?(!)

"This is a branding issue, plain and simple," said Rob Frankel, a Los Angeles-based consultant and author of "The Revenge of Brand X."

"Countries are no different than soap flakes or automobiles," he said. Both countries and companies have brand images, deserved or not, that evoke emotions, memories, connections, perhaps fondness or revulsion.

In branding terms, Frankel said, "we should be the gentle giant, not the menacing ogre. Or in corporate terms, we should be Federal Express, not Microsoft."

Damn that is most definitely worthy of its own thread.

I don't think they can go ahead and admit that WTC7 was demolished. That throws everything into question, including why the NST then had to do all sorts of mental gymnastics to "explain" how it went down. That takes them down a road they don't want to go down.

Hell, they still stick to the magic bullet theory about JFK even though all the evidence to the contrary has dogpiled over their story.

As far as Jesse Venture, he's kind of a knucklehead but you gotta like him. I remember seeing him on Minnesota public TV back before he was governor, and he was running, and I realized WOW he was gonna do it. People loved him. He came across as a real populist, and a shrewd no-bullshit kind of guy. I figured he could go as far as he wanted, but apparently the job of governor wasn't that enjoyable for him, so he got out of politics. I have family in Minnesota so I heard more about all of this probably than most people (except those who actually live there). I think politics annoyed him.

[jingofever]

See also Elias Davidsson's study [PDF] of the Nineteen Deathloving Superstudents yarn:

There are a number of errors in this about the DNA evidence.

Unidentified officials spoken to by The Times (U.K.) in October 2001 expected that the bodies of the 9/11 suspects would be identified 'by a process of elimination'. They did not explain why they did not expect a positive identification of these bodies.

Their priority was identifying remains of victims (whose families had provided DNA samples). Later they turned to the FBI:

In New York, efforts to identify the terrorists were more difficult. There were still too many victims who had not been identified by their DNA, making it impossible to flag the terrorists by a process of elimination. The scientists needed the DNA profiles from the hijackers. Shaler's office turned to the FBI for help.

They were trying to 'identify' the terrorists (that is, get their DNA profiles) so they could seperate terrorist remains from victim remains.

Chris Kelly, spokesman of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), where the identification of the victims' remains from flights AA77 and UA93 took place, said that the authorities were reluctant to consider releasing the hijackers' bodies: 'We are not quite sure what will happen to them, we doubt very much we are going to be making an effort to reach family members over there.' He did neither explain why no efforts would be made to locate the families of the alleged hijackers...

It seems that the standard procedure is to wait for the remains to be claimed, not to seek out the families:

In cases where badly damaged bodies cannot be identified, or when no one steps forward to claim a body, state or local laws usually dictate what will be done with them.

... nor why AFIP could not use comparison DNA samples from known locations in the United States where the alleged hijackers had lived. While the AFIP announced to have positively identified the human remains of all 'innocent' passengers and crew from the flights, they did not identify the remains of any of the alleged hijackers.

As I quoted above, they went to the FBI for help in identifying terrorist remains, and the FBI went to the known locations where the alleged hijackers had lived:

Working with a team of specialists on the third floor of the J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington, D.C., Giusti was in fact already creating DNA profiles of the New York terrorists from scraps of evidence left behind in hotel rooms and rental cars in the days before the attacks. A large basement room in the FBI building was filled with boxes of evidence, each piece stored in a brown paper bag. "It looks low tech," says Giusti, but the bags keep out humidity or dryness-"the two demons of DNA analysis." For DNA sleuths used to working with tiny scraps of genetic material, it was the mother lode: "fingernail clippings, chewing gum, hairbrushes, anything we could get dead skin off of," he says. When they swabbed the "friction areas" along the inside collars of shirts, the DNA came back mixed, an indication that the hijackers may have shared clothes. A few pieces of used tissue, tossed into a hotel room wastebasket, yielded clues, as did saliva from cigarette butts. Giusti mixed them with enzymes to release DNA-"like cracking the nut of a shell to get the meat out," he says. The "amplified" product-a few drops of clear, viscous liquid-was then put into a large machine that spits out lists of numbers, a genetic map unique to each individual.

It took more than a year for Giusti's lab to get back to New York with the results-a single page with 10 genetic codes. It was February 2003, and Shaler and his crew got to work on the numbers immediately.

And from a much earlier article:

Forensic experts in New York say they have identified body parts of two of the 10 hijackers who flew planes into the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001.

Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the New York Medical Examiner's Office, said the identifications had been made using DNA samples provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The FBI had collected the DNA from tiny traces of skin on the steering wheels of vehicles hired by the hijackers and from hair samples recovered from their hotel rooms.

Earlier this month, the FBI provided profiles of all 10 hijackers, including alleged ringleader Mohammad Atta, so their remains could be separated from those of victims.

And, DNA of One 9/11 Hijacker Positively Identified:

The Budeskriminalamt (BKA - German Federal police) provided DNA profiles obtained from search warrants conducted on Ziad Jarrah's girlfriend (Aysel Sengun) residence. The FBI Laboratory compared the DNA profiles provided by the BKA, with DNA profiles from the four sets of unknown human remains recovered at the crash site of UAL Flight 93.

The DNA profiles provided by the BKA matched the sample of one of the sets of unknown human remains, (ACS 315N-NY-280350-OUT, Serial 4417.)