The Freedom Tower

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.

A furious debate over terrorism, security and the rule of law broke out on Tuesday as the presidential campaigns of Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama exchanged pointed salvos over who could best keep the nation safe, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

“The latest eruption began when John McCain’s top foreign policy and national security adviser, Randy Scheunemann, said in a conference call with reporters that Obama was displaying a “Sept. 10 mindset” about how best to fight terrorism - a comment that echoed President Bush’s attacks on Sen. John Kerry during the 2004 campaign.

Obama brushed off the criticism aboard his campaign plane, and questioned the McCain campaign’s standing to debate anti-terrorism policy.

“These are the same guys who helped to engineer the distraction of the war in Iraq at a time when we could’ve pinned down the people who actually committed 9/11,” he said.

It was the most heated back-and-forth yet in a debate that began last week when the Supreme Court ruled that the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to challenge their detention in federal court. Obama praised the court’s decision as a return to the rule of law, while McCain excoriated it, saying that it could make America less safe, although the Republican candidate’s comments were a reminder of the complexities of his own past positioning on Guantanamo detainees,” the newspaper reported.

The New York Daily News called him Limbo-loving con man Mario Mastellone.
The News reports that Mastellone “walked out of court Friday after getting 2-1/2 years in jail for stealing $1.1 million from a fund for 9/11 victims and defiantly announced: “I am a victim.”

Asked if he had any regrets about ripping off a fund designed to help those hurt in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack - or the families of the dead - the illiterate, unemployed painter replied: “None.”

Mastellone, 41, escaped the collapse of the north tower of the World Trade Center where he was a contract painter for the Port Authority.

He told officials of the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund he was permanently disabled with a back injury and was incapable of performing even menial chores like mowing the lawn.

A month later, surveillance cameras caught him toting gallons of paint and hoisting them into the back of his minivan.

At a 2002 wedding reception, he was caught on tape ducking under a limbo pole and dancing to ’70s hits like “Stayin’ Alive.”

A video camera attached to a utility pole across from his East Windsor, N.J., home caught Mastellone shoveling snow off his silver Mercedes and red Mini Cooper after a 2005 snowstorm.”
His new home will be the joint where it takes a con to get inside.

The Tribute WTC Visitor Center in Lower Manhattan welcomed its
500,000th visitor last month.  LT Jeremy E. Vellón, USN, 31,
is an Assistant Air Officer on the USS Kearsarge.  Stationed in Virginia
but originally from Brooklyn, Vellón along with five of his family
members came to the Tribute center to pay their respects.

“I have no words to properly describe what this opportunity to visit meant
for me and my family,” said LT Vellón.  “From losing my friend and
classmate Darin Pontell at the Pentagon to deploying that week onboard
USS BATAAN for Operation Enduring Freedom to leaving my
wife Jeanie behind to wait patiently, I was affected.  Thankfully, I was
able to participate last November in Operation Sea Angel II
providing humanitarian assistance to the Bangladeshi victims of Cyclone
Sidr along with the ‘Mighty Kearsarge.’  Thanks for this honor on behalf
of the sailors, marines and coastguardsmen visiting for Fleet Week 2008.
I hope to serve my country as long as she’ll let me.”

From the blog: SadInAmerica:

Here We Go Again… U.S. Terror Attack Seen Likely After Election
Submitted by SadInAmerica on 2008, May 27 - 4:13am.

When the next president takes office in January, he or she will likely receive an intelligence brief warning that Islamic terrorists will attempt to exploit the transition in power by planning an attack on America, intelligence experts say.

After all, that is what happened to Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush at a time when their national security teams and their counterterrorism plans were in flux.

Islamic terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in February 1993, in Mr. Clinton’s second month as president. Al CIAda’s Sept. 11 attacks came in the Bush presidency’s first year. The strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon happened as the White House national security director was formulating a comprehensive plan for combating Osama bin Laden’s terror network, which had declared war on the United States.

The pattern is clear to some national security experts. Terrorists pay particular attention to a government in transition as the most opportune window to launch an attack.

“If I were asked by the newly elected president, I would strongly encourage him to be extremely vigilant during the transition period and within the first six months of his administration against an attack by Al CIAda on American interests at home or abroad,” said Bart Bechtel, a retired CIA operations officer and assistant chief academic officer at Henley-Putnam University.

Mr. Bechtel said he thinks Al CIAda operatives will debate a future course based on who is elected.

Both Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain, a former Navy fighter pilot, have had extensive exposure to military security issues.

Both have attacked first-term Sen. Barack Obama’s ability to handle national security.

Mr. McCain, Arizona Republican, has focused on Mr. Obama’s stated willingness to meet with any world leader, including Iran’s, without preconditions. Mrs. Clinton, New York Democrat, ran TV ads implying Mr. Obama is not qualified to manage an international crisis.

“I could see Al CIAda waiting to determine who was going to be the president and depending on which it is, taking an initial measure,” Mr. Bechtel said. “For instance, Obama may be viewed as someone who will accomplish what Al CIAda would like him to do, which is get out of the Middle East, and give him an opportunity to move in that direction. Failing that, they may decide to test him with a substantial attack on America or some American interest and see how he reacts.”

A U.S. intelligence official declined to comment on how the next president will be briefed.

Mr. Obama, Illinois Democrat, has vowed to remove all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months. He regularly has referred to the war against terror as centered in Afghanistan, while the Bush administration takes a broader view and sees Iraq as an opportunity to inflict a battlefield loss on ‘Al Qaeda’. The White House has trumpeted the fact that the county has suffered no homeland terror strikes since Sept. 11, 2001.

Retired Gen. Merrill McPeak, a former Air Force chief of staff and an Obama campaign co-chairman, told The Washington Times that Mr. Obama’s rivals are underestimating his ability to meet a challenge. Gen. McPeak likened him to Abraham Lincoln.

“I think people are only now beginning to realize that Barack is not your run-of-the-mill, ordinary Illinois politician,” he said. “He’s more like another Illinois politician who everybody underestimated.”

Gen. McPeak added, “I feel bad about giving Barack advice because every time I do, I know that he’s thought about it already. So I would draw him aside and say, ‘The minute you’re inaugurated, you will be tested.’ He’ll say, ‘Oh, you mean like Kennedy was with the Bay of Pigs?’ He’ll show me some way that he’s thought about that some time ago. The guy is absolutely scary smart. The real mistake Al CIAda can make is the one everybody else makes of underestimating the man.”

Mr. Bechtel said bin Laden and other Al CIAda leaders are likely weighing their next step right now.

“They are in a wait-and-see situation right now,” he said. “They run the risk, if they attack before the election, of really influencing the way the election goes, to their detriment. If there’s an attack, I really believe McCain is going to run away with the election, and I don’t think they want that. I think they really would like Obama as their first choice and Clinton as their second.”

Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism specialist at the Congressional Research Service, said “Al CIAda has a pattern of testing new American leaders.”

“Even now, Al CIAda is probably trying to plan something for after the U.S. inauguration,” he said. “I think to a certain extent, Al CIAda tested President Clinton’s administration several times. The response was ineffective. I think Al CIAda concluded it could attempt something as ambitious as 9/11, but concluded the time was better after a new president, who would not have time to review his strategy on Al CIAda. The time settled on was the summer or early fall, after a new president was inaugurated. They chose September because they wanted all the officials to be back at their desks from summer vacations.”

A Congressional Research Service report last month noted that January will mark the first change in administrations since the 2001 Al CIAda attacks.

“Whether an incident of national security significance occurs just before or soon after the presidential transition, the actions or inactions of the outgoing administration may have a long-lasting effect on the new president’s ability to effectively safeguard U.S. interests and may affect the legacy of the outgoing president,” the report states.

The report urges the Bush administration to deliver extensive threat briefings to the president-elect’s national security team.

Congress foresaw such a need when it wrote the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. The law allows for presidential candidates to obtain pre-election security clearances for its chosen transition officials so they can immediately be briefed on security threats by the outgoing administration.

On Al CIAda’s ability to attack America again, Mr. Bechtel said, “I think they are still somewhat fractured. If you want to look at it as a piece of window glass, it’s broken, but there are lots of sharp pieces out there. I think within the tribal areas of Pakistan, they feel pretty darn comfortable.”

There are calls Monday for the NYPD to get involved in protecting the new Freedom Tower buildings in lower Manhattan, according to press reports. The demands for action come after two separate plans for the new buildings were found in a garbage can.

Eyewitness News reporter Nina Pineda of New York station WABC and others have reported this story.

Pineda says the incident has the families of firefighters and 9/11 victims calling for the NYPD to take over the security during construction and as the complex opens. In the meantime, Port Authority officials say they are conducting an investigation to determine who put the plans out with the trash.

Stamped “confidential” and “secure,” two separate sets of Freedom Tower blueprints were trashed in a SoHo trash can on Houston Street and in discarded boxes behind the Port Authority office at Ground Zero.
A homeless man, who found one set, alerted the New York Post about the blueprint bungle. It is an outrage for families of 9/11 victims, who are pushing for the NYPD to oversee security. They also want greater accountability for the Port Authority, which is currently in charge of safety and security protocols at the World Trade Center site. Since it is immune and exempt from New York City building and fire codes, skyscraper safety advocates see repeat vulnerabilities in the future structure.

“If a terrorist is to get down there, or any other kind of emergency down below, we’re going to have to move large numbers of people out of that sub-terrain area,” said Glenn Corbett, of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign.

“It’s tremendously ironic that an area as important as Ground Zero is legally immune to those requirements,” architect J.C. Calderon said.

As a former FDNY fire chief, whose firefighter son died in the attacks, Frank Riches worries for his remaining sons’ lives, should they have to run in again to try and save lives.

“We know they’re gonna come back,” he said. “They’ve promised to come back again. It’s the biggest security place in the country. Let’s get it done right. Let’s inspect these buildings and make sure they do them right.”

The Port Authority responded by saying that the plans will meet and exceed all New York City building codes. Critics say the problem is that the promises are not binding.

A drifter living in New York city says he found a blueprint set for the new World Trade Center’s ‘Freedom Tower’. According to press reports, Mike Fleming says he found the plans discarded in a public trash can earlier this month, according to a story in the New York Post.
The plans were supposedly kept under lock and key and were the confidential building plans for the main tower of the new World Trade Center. They were found in a trash can in New York’s SoHo district. Fleming discovered two different sets of the 150-page blueprints in the trash can while he was searching for cardboard, the newspaper reported on Friday.  “
Experts said they contained detailed floor-by-floor schematics of the new Freedom Tower — a 1,776-foot skyscraper that will be the centerpiece of the new World Trade Center.

On the front of each set of blueprints are the words, “Secure document - confidential” — and a warning to destroy the architectural plans if they are discarded.

The plans’ discovery raised serious alarm among the security community, with many experts concerned that particularly vital information was carelessly and literally thrown out.

“Any time a sensitive document is unintentionally left behind, it’s a treasure trove for a potential adversary,” security expert Robert Strang told the Post.  “It enables them to look for vulnerabilities in design that they can target — an age-old military tactic.”

Perhaps even more alarming is the fact that one of the trashed blueprint sets was missing its first 14-pages.

Though the plans are several versions old — they were dated Oct. 5, 2007 — authorities worry that they still carry enough information for a terrorist to exploit.  For instance, the blueprints included the plans for each floor, the thickness of the concrete-core wall and the location of air ducts and elevators.
The 1,776-foot Freedom Tower is part of the new World Trade Center complex in downtown New York City. It is expected to open in 2012. (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill)
The 1,776-foot Freedom Tower is part of the new World Trade Center complex in downtown New York City. It is expected to open in 2012. (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill)

Even the transient who found the plans in the trash was concerned about his discovery.

“They were right on top, and the garbage truck came along ten minutes later,” Mike Fleming told the Post.  “I was outraged because this is priceless and it could get into the wrong hands.”

Authorities are trying to determine how the blueprints ended up in the trash, but are nearly certain they were put there by an insider.  Those particular plans were only distributed to Port Authority officials, architects and contractors — and were never intended to be made public.

“We don’t tolerate carelessness and stupidity,” Port Authority spokesperson Candace McAdams said.

Construction on the Freedom Tower began about two years ago and is expected to open in 2012.  The new complex will feature the Freedom Tower and several smaller buildings, in addition to a permanent memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

The new World Trade Center is supposed to include far more built-in security than the old complex, which was bombed in 1993 and then toppled by terrorists eight years later.  But even some relatives of 9/11 victims say this security lapse doesn’t come as a surprise.

“This whole thing is kind of frightening, but at the same time totally expected,” Bill Doyle told the Post, whose son died in the old World Trade Center.

“I would certainly be pretty leary going to work in [the Freedom Tower] knowing that security on the plans was so lax that even a vagabond could find them,” he added.

February 26, 2008

Amanda Farinacci of NY1 Remembers:

In the shadow of September 11th, 2001, February 26th, 1993 is not a date that immediately registers with most. But it was 15 years ago today that the World Trade Center first came under attack, and as NY1’s Amanda Farinacci explains in the following report, it is a day that has not been forgotten.

It’s been 15 years since terrorists detonated about 1,500 pounds of explosives in a rental car parked in the garage of the World Trade Center. Six people were killed, more than a thousand were hurt in the bombing.

Tuesday morning a memorial service was held to remember those lost.

“Days like today are always about loss and about hope and remembering, as today we did,” said Port Authority Director Anthony Shorris.

A moment of silence at 12:18 p.m. marked the exact time of the bombing. And while the memorial service was relatively low-key, mostly family and friends of the six victims, Shorris says the intimacy of the event has nothing to do with the anniversary being forgotten.

“Sure, time changes our perspective on things, and certainly 9/11 cast a shadow, and we’re all still living here, so we understand that,” said Shorris. “But nothing takes away from what the six people who lost their families, whose families lost somebody that day felt, and that’s why every day, every year, around this day, we gather, and try to remember.”

Six men were later convicted in connection with the bombing, including Islamic Cleric Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and Ramzi Yousef who are serving life sentences.

For those who survived the bombing, the anniversary is a day of quiet reflection. Michael Hurley was working for the Port Authority back in 1993 on the 107th-floor observation deck of the South Tower.

“I can remember some of the details like it was yesterday, I really can,” said Hurley. “In fact, today, when you look outside, it’s the same kind of day. It’s not quite as cold today, but it’s that overcast kind of grey skies, very similar to how it was then.”

Hurley also survived the 9/11 attacks, working as the Trade Center fire safety director at the time. He’s now the World Trade Center site manager, a job he says he’s embraced because he feels lucky to have survived two times.

“I look at it besides an interesting and huge project to be involved with,” he said. “There’s sort of a personal aspect of it, as something was taken away from us, and it’s nice to be a part of putting it back together.”

A plan the would have allowed greater access to health care for those suffering from World Trade Center Illness was stopped by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), according to Paul Napoli, an attorney familiar with the problem.
The proposed program would have reimbursed doctors for treating patients that live outside of the New York City area. Many rescuers traveled from across the country and are now feeling the effects of the toxic fumes and materials that filled the air following September 11th.

The contract had aimed to organize and improve various Sept. 11 health programs and provide pharmacy benefits. Health officials feared the work could cost up to $165 million, far more than the $52 million Congress had provided.

“Obviously, we had a big gap that made the contract unreasonable,” Alan Kotch, the CDC’s director of procurement and grants, told The Associated Press. He said federal officials would go back to the drawing board to make sure they get “the best possible product” that is realistic.

Delegates from New York to Congress have been working on securing funding and creating a plan to help this portion of those affected by World Trade Center Illness. The called the decision to halt the project unfair to those that do not live near New York City.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said December 3 they will investigate why a $1 billion 9/11 insurance fund, the WTC Captive Insurance Co., created by Congress to cover claims of sick Ground Zero workers, is fighting the cases in court rather than distributing money. Roughly 8,000 claims await judgment in the federal court system. The DHS inspector general’s review also will determine “what procedures have been established to receive, review and pay medical, hospital, surgical and disability benefits to injured persons,” as well as benefits to the victims’ relatives.

Read the December 3 article:
www.examiner.com/a-1083784~Feds_Probe_Sept__11_Insurance_Fund.html