The Freedom Tower

The Chicago Tribune says “In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, vice presidential candidate Joe Biden offered an inconvenient prediction: “It will not be six months,” he said, “before the world tests Barack Obama. We’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

History is on Biden’s side. In the first year of each of the last two presidents’ terms, Osama bin Laden has claimed the mantle of “tester in chief,” his Al Qaeda operatives conducting lethal strikes on the American homeland. On Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush and his national security team were caught unaware. This despite a clear trend from the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, bin Laden’s official declaration of war on the U.S. in 1998, the bombings of U.S. Embassies in Africa and an attack on a U.S. warship in 2000. Holdovers from the previous administration were sounding the alarm. Counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke argued repeatedly: “We urgently need a principals [Cabinet] level review of the Al Qaeda threat.” But as the bipartisan commission investigating Sept. 11 found: “No principals committee meeting on Al Qaeda was held until Sept. 4, 2001.”

Similarities between Sept. 11 and the terrorist attack in the first months of President Bill Clinton’s administration are not coincidental. Thirty-seven days after he took office, Al Qaeda operative Ramzi Yousef parked a van filled with explosives in the basement of the World Trade Center. Yousef was the nephew of the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attack, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. His plan was designed to kill 40,000 people by toppling one tower of the center into a second. Fortunately, the driver failed to park the van at a location that would have had maximum effect. Six people were killed and 1,000 injured.
The newly elected president and vice president are acutely conscious of the threat posed by bin Laden. They know that bin Laden has challenged the Al Qaeda movement to trump Sept. 11. During the campaign, Obama recognized that “the single most important national security threat that we face is nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists.” He criticized the Bush administration for taking its eye off the perps who attacked us on Sept. 11 and vowed that he would “find, disrupt and destroy Al Qaeda.”

The Globe and Mail.com says “More than any other place, Mumbai is the centre of the New India: open, dynamic, cosmopolitan - the capital of frothy films, capitalist finance, champagne lifestyles and everything else that extremists despise. In that sense, Wednesday’s attacks recalled the 9/11 attacks on New York, a deliberate assault on the capital of U.S. finance in a city renowned for its go-go pace and relentless materialism.

As such, it was an irresistible target for the attackers who burst into gilded hotel lobbies with guns blazing on Wednesday, killing more than 100 people.

No one can say for sure yet who was responsible for the highly organized attacks, but the choice of Mumbai and the targets there - first-class hotels, a café popular with Western tourists, a Jewish centre - appeared to be a deliberate assault on all that Mumbai represents.

“Mumbai is a symbol of wealthy, modernized, Westernized India; an India that, in the mind of radicalized Muslim youth, has lost it way,” said University of Toronto intelligence expert Wesley Wark.

Prof. Wark said homegrown extremist groups such as the Indian Mujahedeen have been trying to court disadvantaged Muslims who are being left behind in the country’s rush to riches. If those groups are responsible, the attacks “could be the start of a war of poor against the rich, or country against the cities,” he said. “In that respect, Mumbai is a perfect target.”

Mumbai is the Manhattan, Chicago and Hollywood of India rolled into one. Bollywood, India’s film industry, is centred in the city. Almost all the big business dynasties, from the Ambanis to the Birlas, make their homes there. The owner of the glorious Taj Mahal Palace hotel, invaded by the attackers and set ablaze in the fighting, is the Tata Group, headed by India’s best known business mogul, Ratan Tata.

Mumbai’s stature has grown as India has emerged from its inward-looking, protectionist shell in the past two decades, opening up to trade and investment and embracing the free market with a distinctly Indian verve. It is a mandatory stop for any executive hoping to drum up business with booming India and a magnet for tourists keen to see “Indian shining,” the phrase a former government used to tag the country’s rise.

By hitting it, the attackers could achieve several objectives at once. First, they could kill or seize Westerners, who congregate conveniently in the city’s big hotels and night spots with little or no protection.

Second, they could guarantee themselves around-the-world coverage. A string of deadly attacks over the past year in lesser cities such as Ahmedabad and Surat got little coverage internationally, even though they killed more than 200 people.

Third, they could wound India’s $1.2-trillion (U.S.) economy, already faltering from the global economic slowdown. As India’s biggest city, with a population of up to 20 million, Mumbai accounts for 40 per cent of the country’s foreign trade, 40 per cent of its income tax revenue and 10 per cent of its factory employment.”

the Reuters News Agency says “New York City police acted swiftly to guard against attacks of the sort that ravaged Mumbai, another financial center halfway across the world, a deputy New York police commissioner said on Friday.

New York police used Critical Response Vehicles — batteries of up to 75 police cars deployed to potential hot spots with sirens blaring — to boost security near possible targets, Deputy Commissioner of Public Affairs Paul Browne said.

“Those CRVs may be deployed at certain traffic stops and in the vicinity of hotels,” Browne told Reuters in a phone interview.

As it happened, reports of “plausible but uncorroborated information” about a possible al Qaeda attack on New York’s transit system had led police to deploy additional officers at subway stations and on commuter rails.

“That has to do with intelligence unrelated to Mumbai but coincidentally our staffing-up happened at the time of the Mumbai incidents,” Browne said.

The city has one of the world’s most elaborate counterterrorism operations with 1,000 officers, including a unit to deal with hostage-takings, supplemented by envoys in 11 foreign cities to gather and share intelligence.”

“As symbolic as the felling of the twin towers in New York, that’s how one expert has described the string of co-ordinated and bloody attacks that have struck India’s financial capital, Mumbai.

Emblems of India’s western orientation .. the Edwardian period Taj Hotel and what was previously known as the Victoria Jubilee Terminus, now the Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus were hit, as well as other key locations, all at the heart of India’s booming capitalist economy. It was a guaranteed way to catch the massive media attention of India’s more than fifty 24-hour news channels …

LINDA MOTTRAM: If the attackers had a message, the clues seemed to be in the targets .. the most prominent and oldest structures at Mumbai’s heart, particularly the Taj Hotel and the train terminus that stand as reminders of India’s long western orientation.

Professor Robin Jeffrey specialises in the modern history, politics and media of India.

ROBIN JEFFREY: The hotel was opened I think in 1903 and the railway station was Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 so they’ve been these funny old Indo-Cyrecenic buildings that have been iconic in Mumbai, as much I guess as the twin towers would have been in New York, only older.

LINDA MOTTRAM: With its long history of links with India, Australia joined the world in emphatic condemnation of the events. Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in the Australian Parliament.

KEVIN RUDD: This cowardly attack on India’s peace and democracy reminds us all that international terrorism is far from defeated and that we must all maintain our vigilance.

LINDA MOTTRAM: And the country’s Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull.

MALCOLM TURNBALL: Let us spare a thought of admiration for India, that vast country of over a Billion people which maintains a rich and vibrant democracy and which is now facing these murderous cowards.

LINDA MOTTRAM: As Australia pledged all relevant assistance to India, particularly with forensics and counter-terrorism the national security cabinet met in Canberra, as did similar security bodies the world over. Evidence of a broadly anti-western attack, but perhaps focussed on those at war against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, came with news that British and American passport holders were singled out by some of the attackers. There were clues but no certain answers though to the questions of who and why. The group claiming responsibility for the series of co-ordinated and ongoing attacks using guns and handgrenades had never been heard of — Deccan Mujahideen. But there are other groups that could have provided the manpower for the onslaught. One of Australia’s pre-eminent terrorism experts, who’s been speaking to other experts in South Asia is Professor Clive Williams.

CLIVE WILLIAMS: It probably includes people from the Students Islamic Movement of India and it may well include elements from Lashkar e Toiba in India as well.

LINDA MOTTRAM: Professor Williams says its possible Deccan Mujahideen may never be heard of again .. though there is another recent arrival among militant groups that appears more persistent.

CLIVE WILLIAMS: The Indian Mujahideen which has come on the field in the lsat 12 months is a more sustained group I think because it does include radical elements from the Students Islamic Movement of India and it also includes people who’ve come back from training in Pakistan so I think the Indian Mujahideen we’ll certainly hear more about, I suspect we probably won’t hear much more about this particular one but clearly I would think its a Muslim group and what its doing is probably related more to external events than necessarily events in India.

LINDA MOTTRAM: And there’s another possible strand to the attacks .. the criminal thread. Professor Robin Jeffrey again.

ROBIN JEFFREY: The Mumbai underworld is almost certainly involved in some ways simply because its easy to I think rent a criminal in Mumbai if you need one or to cut into gangs who will do terrible things on your behalf if you pay them sufficiently so there’s the fact that some of the leading policemen have been murdered in the course of this suggests at least that it could be payback for some of the Bombay underworld to get at some of the top coppers who have made life hard for them.

LINDA MOTTRAM: For 400 years, Mumbai’s Gateway to India has stood as the country’s western access from the Arabian Sea, testament to the city’s cosmopolitan character. This violence, observers seem to agree, is broadly an attack on that identity, and probably also a strike against those fighting against Afghanistan’s militant forces.”

Despite a daily dish of sour news that paint the picture of a city in economic contraction, Globest.com reports, “a group of developers say excavation had begun and marketing is underway, for a new 60-floor, glass and steel tower that will rise over-looking the Jacob Javitts Center. The 1.5-million-square-foot complex–scheduled to be complete by 2013–will bring an international multi-purpose trade center for medical professionals and vendors to Manhattan’s far west side.
Called, ‘World Product Centre’, the 977-foot tower, being built at 555 W. 33rd St., is a joint effort between the Greater New York Hospital Association and Extell Development Corp. Plans say it will serve an array of commercial and educational needs for healthcare suppliers and providers within that $336-billion dollar industry.

“You’re going to have 600 different companies dedicated to healthcare who now have a physical presence in New York City,” Lee Perlman, president of GNYHA Ventures, tells GlobeSt.com.

The new ‘side-corp’ building on the site of the former CopaCabana nightclub will be minimum LEED-certified and in addition to serving as a trade mart, will contain two floors dedicated as a consumer health pavilion, where educational companies or organizations can interact with the public.

Interestingly, spokespeople say what has healthcare industry players most excited is that the complex will offer an environment that encourages transparency for that industry’s business transactions–a craft that has come under increasing scrutiny over the past few years, resulting in congressional hearings and stiff penalties. The project, originally set to be built at the World Trade Center site downtown, has been in planning stages for years.

According to WPC spokesperson Michael Resnick, the idea’s genesis was the result of the personal experiences of Israel Green, WPC visionary and president. Resnick says that around ten years ago, Green’s wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer. “He was told she had six months to live,” says Resnick.

Green used his resources to travel the world and seek help for his wife’s condition. But, at some point, just days before what Resnick called a serious operation, the surgeon revealed surprising news to Green. “The surgeon came in and told him that his wife in fact, did not have cancer,” says Resnick.

According to Resnick’s accounts, there had been plenty of evidence all along showing that Green’s wife was cancer free. But, in the end, Green left the experience feeling that the health care system, from the perspectives of doctors, providers, innovation providers and procedures was seriously disconnected.”

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released its final report on the Sept. 11, 2001, collapse of the 47-story World Trade Center building 7 (WTC 7) in New York City.

The final report is strengthened, according to internet sources “by clarifications and supplemental text suggested by organizations and individuals worldwide in response to the draft WTC 7 report, released for public comment on Aug. 21, but the revisions did not alter the investigation team’s major findings and recommendations, which include identification of fire as the primary cause for the building’s failure.

The extensive three-year scientific and technical building and fire safety investigation found that the fires on multiple floors in WTC 7, which were uncontrolled but otherwise similar to fires experienced in other tall buildings, caused an extraordinary event. Heating of floor beams and girders caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a fire-induced progressive collapse that brought the building down.

In response to comments from the building community, NIST conducted an additional computer analysis. The goal was to see if the loss of WTC 7’s Column 79—the structural component identified as the one whose failure on 9/11 started the progressive collapse—would still have led to a complete loss of the building if fire or damage from the falling debris of the nearby WTC 1 tower were not factors. The investigation team concluded that the column’s failure under any circumstance would have initiated the destructive sequence of events.

Other revisions to the final WTC 7 report included:

Expanding the discussion of firestopping, the material placed between floors to prevent floor-to-floor fire spread;
Clarifying the description of thermal expansion as it related to WTC 7’s shear studs and floor beams; and
Explaining in greater detail the computer modeling approach used to define where and when the fire in WTC 7 started and the extent of window breakage as a result of fire.
With the release of the final WTC 7 report, NIST has completed its federal building and fire safety investigation of the WTC disaster that began in August 2002. A three-year study of the collapses of the WTC towers (WTC 1 and 2) was completed in October 2005. More than 20 changes in the U.S. model building and fire codes have already been adopted based on the findings and recommendations from the investigation.

NIST will now work with various public and private groups toward implementing additional changes to the U.S. model building and fire codes including those based on the 13 recommendations from the WTC 7 report (one new and 12 reiterated from the towers investigation).

The complete text of the final WTC 7 report, a video describing the WTC 7 investigation findings, a of all comments received on the draft WTC 7 report, a chart tracking the progress toward implementing all of the NIST WTC recommendations, and other materials may be accessed at http://wtc.nist.gov.”

Fidel Castro suggested Sunday that the U.S. government has promoted Americans’ fears about al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups to justify its plans for world domination, the Associated Press reports.
“In an essay published on a government website, the 82-year-old former Cuban president wrote that al-Qaeda “was born from the empire’s own entrails,” using “the empire” to refer to the United States, but failing to elaborate.

He said the terrorist group was “a typical example of an enemy that the hegemonic power dangles in a place of its choosing where it needs to justify its actions, as it has done throughout its history, fabricating enemies and attacks destined to strengthen its plans of domination.”

The U.S. has used al-Qaeda as a pretext to carry out plans “outlined long before the attacks that brought down the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001,” Castro wrote.

Castro has previously accused the U.S. government of misleading the public about the Sept. 11 attacks, and his close friend and ally Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says it is plausible that Washington was somehow involved in planning the attacks.”

The Centre for Research on Globalization reports that “A source connected to the previously unreleased footage of the collapse of WTC1 and WTC7 which suddenly appeared on internet video-sharing site Veoh.com last weekend has revealed details about the footage to The Corbett Report.

According to the source, the videos available on the internet come from a DVD that was compiled from raw footage taken in New York on September 11. The video on the internet has not been edited or manipulated in any way from the footage on the DVD, although the ‘replay’ of each collapse has been slowed down by 50 percent. The source indicated, however, that the raw footage had been edited before it was put on the DVD, thus explaining the sudden cut from a close-up of the North Tower to a long shot of the entire building with the collapse already underway.

This source also dismisses internet speculation that the person who took the footage was connected in any way to the collapses themselves. A number of posters on internet discussion boards and forums have claimed that the WTC7 video is suspicious as it zooms out just moments before the collapse, as if the person taking the footage knew what was about to happen. The source notes that the footage starts with a close-up of the windows breaking out on the north side of the building, which would have been a visual cue to anyone watching the building at that moment that something was taking place in the building.

As The Corbett Report previously reported, the videos were released anonymously on the internet on November 1, 2008 with no further information.
The video shows perhaps the clearest view yet of World Trade Center 7 as it collapses directly into its own footprint at freefall gravitational speed in the late afternoon on September 11, 2001. This collapse has long interested 9/11 researchers as the building was not struck by a plane and only had two isolated office fires burning in it that afternoon before its sudden and complete collapse, an unprecedented event in the history of modern steel-framed skyscrapers. The video of the North Tower also shows an extremely detailed view of the bottom half of the building as the collapse reaches the lower levels, including a brief, clear glimpse of the ’spire’ of interior columns before they disappear into the pyroclastic dust cloud at the base of the building, a feature not found in ordinary office collapses and also seen in the wake of the WTC7 collapse. Both videos also show clear views of the blast squibs preceding the collapses, another sign of controlled demolition.

There is still no word from prominent researchers of the collapses regarding the new footage. Richard Gage was contacted for comment on this story but has not yet replied to the request for comment.

Related works from The Corbett Report:

Crain’s New York Business reports “An arbitration panel on Monday will begin hearing a dispute between the developer and the owner of the World Trade Center site involving issues that could lead to the delay of completing at least one of the towers set to rise by 2012.

WTC developer Larry Silverstein contends that site owner, the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, failed to deliver to him a construction-ready plot for one of his towers last month, claiming a wall on the parcel interferes with his ability to complete the building’s foundation. The Port counters that the parcel meets the specifications laid out in the original lease agreement between the two parties.

A three-person arbitration panel will hear testimony for three days in a closed-door session. A binding agreement on the issue is expected in early December.

The two parties decided on arbitration earlier this month when they could not reach an agreement on the state of the site. In early October, the Port told Mr. Silverstein it had delivered a construction site on Oct. 5, effectively ending the $30,000 a day in fines it was paying him for missing the original June 30 deadline. To date, the Port has paid Mr. Silverstein $43.5 million in fines for missing deadlines.

Mr. Silverstein says the site is not sufficiently clear for him to continue laying the foundation and wants the wall removed. He also wants the fines to resume.

But the larger issue will be if the Port can really tear down the wall. That’s because the structure is playing a crucial role propping up the box that surrounds the tracks for the No. 1 train that runs through the site. It was unclear how much longer the box will need to surround the train.

The panel, which includes a retired judge and a construction executive, will also hear a dispute about the parcel for what is called Tower 2. However, those issues were unclear.

Spokesmen for Mr. Silverstein and the Port each reiterated a Nov. 12 joint statement between the parties which said that arbitration is the most practical way to resolve their differences.”

Last month, as the result of Governor Paterson’s call for a more transparent and accountable process, the Downtown Express presented “a roadmap to get the World Trade Center rebuilding on track — one that outlined aggressive yet realistic timelines for all of the major projects, as well as interim milestones so the public can track the Port Authority’s progress and hold us accountable.

The Port Authority is now hard at work on our next challenge: the need not only to rebuild the World Trade Center as quickly as possible, but to improve the quality of life for residents and businesses located around this very active construction site.

It’s easy to understand the anxiety and frustration that Lower Manhattan residents and businesses have experienced since Sept. 11. In the five months since becoming executive director of the Port Authority, you have shared with me stories of sleepless nights due to late-night construction, dirty and congested streets, and difficulties navigating around an ever-expanding construction zone.

As the level of construction activity ramps up, we will ramp up our efforts to be better neighbors. This starts with a basic premise: the construction on the site has to move forward, but at the same time we must listen to those most affected by the site’s construction, and find ways to improve their quality of life.

To facilitate this effort, we recently created an Office of Program Logistics, which is now the focal point for mitigating the byproducts of a massive construction site. This office will provide regular updates to residents and businesses and will be the point of contact for anyone who believes we can do things better.
To staff that office, we hired renowned traffic expert Sam Schwartz, who will help us develop creative solutions that will improve the movement of people, vehicles and equipment around the site.
Workers lift steel for the Freedom Tower, right next to the east-west underground passageway from the train station, just two pieces to the new World Trade Center site plan.”