The Freedom Tower

Sept. 11 victims’ families will be allowed to return to the site of the World Trade Center to mourn their loved ones on the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks, officials told the AP and other media.

The AP said decision was a relief for family members who had been told last year they could not go back to the site while rebuilding continued. Many tearfully touched the ground at the base of the destroyed towers last Sept. 11, believing it would be their last chance for years to visit the ground where their loved ones died.

But officials with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, told victims’ relatives at a meeting Friday that they could pay their respects at the site this September. The Port Authority said last month that every construction project at the site was behind schedule, and the agency is revising rebuilding estimates.

“They are going to open it to bedrock, which is great,” said Monica Iken, whose husband, Michael, was killed at the trade center. “We need a place to go. People need to grieve.”

The city, which organizes the anniversary ceremony, confirmed it would allow family members to go back to the site. Once again, the main ceremony will be held at a park just southeast of ground zero.

“Like last year, we’ll lead the nation in a day of remembrance that includes a ceremony at Zuccotti Park and access to the lower level for family members,” said Stu Loeser, spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Midwest Airlines pilot Gerald Earwood was flying about 100 miles west of New York when he first noticed what seemed like wisps of smoke coming off the World Trade Center, according to a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal.
“Roughly 15 minutes later, Earwood and co-pilot Eric Fjelstad were frantically maneuvering their DC-9 jet to avoid colliding with United Airlines Flight 175, the second airplane to hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Their work, following orders from air traffic controllers, saved the lives of about 30 passengers and five crew members of Midwest Flight 7.

A minute or so later, United 175 - which also came close to colliding with other planes that morning - struck the south tower of the World Trade Center.

A collision between United 175, flying out of Boston, and the Midwest jet, flying from Milwaukee to New York’s LaGuardia Airport, “would have changed history,” Earwood said in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, his first newspaper interview about the incident.

“Yeah, I’ve thought about it numerous times,” Earwood said. “But I never knew, and to this day I still don’t know, how close we came.”

The near collision is among several stories told in the new book, “Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama that Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11,” by Lynn Spencer. The book, published by Simon & Schuster, tells how airline pilots, air traffic controllers and military pilots reacted to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Spencer, a commercial pilot and Milwaukee-area native, interviewed controllers, Federal Aviation Administration officials, military pilots and civilian pilots, including Earwood.

The story of Midwest Flight 7 is among the most compelling in the book, which also features one other story of a Midwest jet that was diverted from Newark, N.J., to Pittsburgh during the chaos of that morning.”

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It still seems like yesterday. I worked the Local Desk for United Press International when the police wire announced there was a man walking across a wire between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. It was a bulletin that was heard around the world. The man was Philippe Petit, a tight rope walker. A new film called ‘Man on Wire” about those days in the 1970s when Petit made his now famous walk is out and the New York Sun calls the film an “upside-down documentary. But, the newspaper says the film is so riveting in its setup and exposition that the climax arrives almost as an afterthought. The man of the title — the famed French tightrope walker Philippe Petit — is ultimately less interesting than the drama surrounding his wire, a tightrope strung between the newly completed World Trade Center towers in August 1974. And rather than tease the audience through to a rousing finale, the director, James Marsh (”Wisconsin Death Trip”), seems to embrace the pure drama of the concept — the methodical, grueling, and illegal preparations that went into making Mr. Petit’s artistic daydream a reality.

NO TURNING BACK Philippe Petit halfway between Tower I and Tower II on August 7, 1974.
Much like the documentary “The Gates,” which made its premiere at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival and captured not only the magic of an orange-clad Central Park but the daunting year-by-year fight that pitted artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude against their critics in a very public political brawl, “Man on Wire” matches the spectacle with the behind-the-scenes struggle. Just as New York City was initially hesitant to put up all those orange panels, so was the security at the World Trade Center unlikely to grant Mr. Petit approval to ascend the structures and walk between them without a safety net. So he tackled that problem in inspired fashion: He didn’t bother asking for permission.”
Those were the days. Petit was fined by a New York judge with a sense of humor and he sentenced the Frenchman to come back to the city a few months later and entertain New Yorkers with his dare-devil antics… so he walked his tightrope once again in Central Park to the thrill of thousands of cheering New Yorkers who, like me, had become Petit.

While there has been much ballyhooing over delays in the reconstruction of the World Trade Center, The Downtown Express says there has been progress.
“Far below street level, towering white arches form a tunnel that will one day shepherd commuters beneath the World Trade Center site,” the website says.

The arches mark a passage that will connect Santiago Calatrava’s W.T.C. PATH station to the World Financial Center. They are the first piece of his design to take shape inside the World Trade Center site, and they recall the white wings he designed to rise above the PATH station.

The steady progression of arches crossing the site from West St. toward Church St. is just one project of many on the 16-acres of construction. Nearly a month after the Port Authority announced that the new World Trade Center is millions over budget and years behind schedule, work pushes forward on many, but not all of the layered and interconnected projects that will eventually deliver five skyscrapers, a train station,a memorial, a museum and a performing arts center.

On Monday, the bathtub for Towers 3 and 4 was filled with Silverstein’s construction equipment, but while some work was going on at Tower 4, very little was happening at Tower 3. An official said he had seen almost no progress at Tower 3 over the past several months. Silverstein received a six-month extension on Tower 3 to redesign it for Merrill Lynch, but those talks reportedly fell through earlier this month. A Silverstein spokesperson declined to comment.

The biggest rush is in the northeast corner of the site, where Tower 2 will rise. The Port Authority is excavating that site and was supposed to turn it over to Silverstein Properties by July 1, but the Port missed the deadline. For 16 to 20 hours a day, giant jackhammers called “hoe rams” pound into the bedrock, breaking it into smaller chunks that bulldozers cart away, clearing space for the foundation of the tower.

The Port is paying Silverstein $300,000 for each day the site is late. By the end of July, the Port will owe Silverstein Properties $9.3 million. If the delay stretches to the end of August, that number will double to $18.6 million.”

A headline brought a bit of good news today on a long-awaited project: “Freedom Tower’s future finally bright.” But it was published in a newspaper in Miami, where an 83-year-old building has been fighting for survival, and not The Freedom Tower in New York where the New York Times has chronicled “significant delays and cost overruns” for the 1,776-foot-tall Freedom Tower and other office towers at ground zero earlier this month.

Quoting from the pages of the Times, the newspaper says even name of the building has been fading from the New York tower. As David Dunlap, a metropolitan reporter for The New York Times, wrote on City Room on July 9:

The chance of anyone in government publicly jettisoning a “Freedom” sobriquet is less than remote. But since the departure of Gov. George E. Pataki, a quiet shift has been discernible in formal usage. The Port Authority now speaks of “1 World Trade Center, the Freedom Tower.” Though Mr. Pataki remains attached to the name, I think you can expect to find it growing more and more vestigial. Just don’t hold your breath for an official announcement.

The World Socialist Website says another blow to has been struck to “the terminally crippled rebuilding of the World Trade Center site by the New York Port Authority and billionaire developer Larry Silverstein. Merrill Lynch announced last week that it would not be moving its headquarters to one of the office towers planned, but not yet built, at ground zero.

The announcement came the day before Merrill—the nation’s largest brokerage firm and rumored to be on the short list of potential bank defaults—unveiled a fourth consecutive quarterly loss of $4.65 billion. This brings its losses for the year to $19 billion.

The economic crisis that has gripped Wall Street as the housing bubble collapses has already necessitated a government-organized buyout of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase in March, followed by the federal assumption of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s debts, and the default of IndyMac Bank in July.

Chase was potentially another anchor tenant at the redeveloped World Trade Center, but with its new $30 billion acquisition, it too is unlikely to put up money for new offices.

As hundreds of billions of fictitious capital vanishes overnight, the gleaming glass towers envisioned in the architectural renderings for the World Trade Center site likewise threaten to dissolve, bringing to mind Marx’s description of capitalism in the Communist Manifesto—“all that is solid, melts into air.”

Yet a grim reality remains on the ground. As the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center fast approaches, the 16-acre site remains surrounded by chain-link fence, a huge construction zone humming with heavy machinery on which no permanent structure has been completed.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Port Authority Thursday announced that the New York City and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have agreed on a plan to jointly police and secure the World Trade Center site.

Empire State News.net says the agreement marks a milestone in the rebuilding effort, under which the NYPD, working with the Port Authority, will develop and implement a comprehensive security plan for the site and the surrounding area, official said.

To ensure that security operations at the site are seamless, NYPD will have access to all Port Authority facilities within the area, and the NYPD and the Port Authority will develop a plan that addresses both the public streets and transportation facilities, as well as the private office towers and other public facilities at the site, including the World Trade Center Memorial.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey will consider selling a small lot near Ground Zero, reports Newsday, the Long Island newspaper reports.
Leaders of a church destroyed on Sept. 11 have surrendered land needed to rebuild the World Trade Center site in a $20 million deal with the government.

The congregation at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church will use the cash to build a new church a few blocks away from where it stood in lower Manhattan. The church’s 1,200-square-foot lot was listed in a report last month as one of more than a dozen obstacles slowing long-stalled rebuilding at ground zero.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey owns ground zero, and its leadership has agreed to the $20 million price. The agency expects $10 million to come from JPMorgan Chase & Co., which has a tentative deal to build one of five office towers planned at the site.
The Port Authority’s board is to consider approving the sale at its Thursday meeting.

America was changed forever by September 11. John McEnroe, who wrote about the attacks for this newspaper a year ago, now hopes that his countrymen will learn that sometimes winning isn’t everything, the tennis player writes at www.telegraph.co.uk/education, a British website.

September 11 is close at hand, but for most New Yorkers it has never been far away. Every time you see a fireman or a policeman you cannot help but reflect upon the enormity of what happened to our city. And I, personally, am still mystified by the thought that somehow someone justified all of that.
The Civil War apart, we Americans have never felt the full horror of war so close to home; Pearl Harbour was too far away to have much impact upon the population. 9/11 was our reality check.
For many countries in the world and for thousands of people, war is something they have to live daily; we thought we didn’t have to. In a weird way while at first it may have distanced us from the rest of the world I think - or at least I hope - in time it will bring us closer.
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As a boy I grew up believing everything was black and white. It came as a shock to discover that most things in life were grey and the most horrific example of that was the attacks on New York and Washington. You think to yourself, “How could someone justify that?” But they did.
To read more, go to www.telegraph.co.uk/education/