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 BY:
lifeforce@rockymountains.net
Date Published: 2006-09-06
You’ve got to be lucky to make $4 Billion killing on a
6-month investment of $124 Million
Larry Silverstein is the New York property tycoon who
purchased the entire WTC complex just 6 months prior to the
9/11 attacks. That was the first time in its 33-year history
the complex had EVER changed ownership.
Mr. Silverstein’s first order of business as the new owner
was to change the company responsible for the security of
the complex. The new security company he hired was Securacom
(now Stratasec). George W. Bush's brother, Marvin Bush, was
on its board of directors, and Marvin’s cousin, Wirt Walker
III, was its CEO. According to public records, not only did
Securacom provide electronic security for the World Trade
Center, it also covered Dulles International Airport and
United Airlines — two key players in the 9/11 attacks.
The company was backed by an investment firm, the
Kuwait-American Corp., also linked for many years to the
Bush family. KuwAm has been linked to the Bush family
financially since the Gulf War. One of its principals and a
member of the Kuwaiti royal family, Mishal Yousef Saud al
Sabah, served on the board of Stratesec.
Now, consider: The members of a small cabal owned the WTC
complex, controlled its electronic security, and also
controlled the security not only for one of the airlines
whose aircraft were hijacked on 9/11, but the airport from
which they originated.
Another little “coincidence” -- Mr. Silversten, who made a
down-payment of $124 million on this $3.2 billion complex,
promptly insured it for $7 Billion. Not only that, he
covered the complex against “terrorist attacks”.
Following the attacks, Silverstein filed TWO insurance
claims for the maximum amount of the policy ($7B), based on
the two -- in Silverstein's view -- separate attacks. The
insurance company, Swiss Re, paid Mr. Silverstein $4.6
Billion — a princely return on a relatively paltry
investment of $124 million.
There’s more. You see, the World Trade Towers were not the
real estate plum we are led to believe. From an economic
standpoint, the trade center -- subsidized since its
inception by the NY Port Authority -- has never functioned,
nor was it intended to function, unprotected in the
rough-and-tumble real estate marketplace. How could
Silverstein Group have been ignorant of this?
The towers required some $200 million in renovations and
improvements, most of which related to removal and
replacement of building materials declared to be health
hazards in the years since the towers were built. It was
well-known by the city of New York that the WTC was an
asbestos bombshell. For years, the Port Authority treated
the building like an aging dinosaur, attempting on several
occasions to get permits to demolish the building for
liability reasons, but being turned down due the known
asbestos problem. Further, it was well-known the only reason
the building was still standing until 9/11 was because it
was too costly to disassemble the twin towers floor by floor
since the Port Authority was prohibited legally from
demolishing the buildings.
The projected cost to disassemble the towers: $15 Billion.
Just the scaffolding for the operation was estimated at $2.4
Billion!
In other words, the Twin Towers were condemned structures.
How convenient that an unexpected “terrorist” attack
demolished the buildings completely.
WTC Building 7 was a part of the WTC complex, and covered
under the same insurance policy. This 47-storey steel-framed
structure, which was NOT struck by an aircraft, mysteriously
collapsed 8 hours later that same day into its own footprint
at freefall speed — exactly in the manner of the Twin
Towers.
How could this have happened? Mr. Silverstein gave the world
the answer when he slipped up during a PBS television
interview a year later, on 9/11/2002:
"I remember getting a call from the...er...fire department
commander, telling me that they were not sure they were
gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'We've had
such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do
is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and we
watched the building collapse."
As anyone who knows anything about construction can tell
you, “Pull” is common industry jargon for a controlled
demolition.
One thing is for sure, the decision to 'pull' WTC 7 would
have delighted many people. Especially because it has been
reported that thousands of sensitive files relating to some
of the biggest financial scams in history — including Enron
and WorldCom -- were stored in the offices of some of the
building’s tenants:
US Secret Service
NSA
CIA
IRS
BATF
SEC
NAIC Securities
Salomon Smith Barney
American Express Bank International
Standard Chartered Bank
Provident Financial Management
ITT Hartford Insurance Group
Federal Home Loan Bank
The Securities and Exchange Commission has not quantified
the number of active cases in which substantial files were
destroyed by the collapse of WTC 7. Reuters news service and
the Los Angeles Times published reports estimating them at
3,000 to 4,000. They include the agency's major inquiry into
the manner in which investment banks divvied up hot shares
of initial public offerings during the high-tech boom.
..."Ongoing investigations at the New York SEC will be
dramatically affected because so much of their work is
paper-intensive," said Max Berger of New York's Bernstein
Litowitz Berger & Grossmann. "This is a disaster for these
cases."
Citigroup says some information that the committee is
seeking [about WorldCom] was destroyed in the Sept. 11
terror attack on the World Trade Center. Salomon had offices
in 7 World Trade Center. The bank says that back-up tapes of
corporate emails from September 1998 through December 2000
were stored at the building and destroyed in the attack.
Inside WTC 7 was the US Secret Service's largest field
office with more than 200 employees. "All the evidence that
we stored at 7 World Trade, in all our cases, went down with
the building," according to US Secret Service Special Agent
David Curran.
What a neat, complete, and fortuitous turn of events was
9/11.
Incidentally, it’s worth noting that one of Lucky Larry’s
closest friends — a person with whom it’s said he speaks
almost daily by phone — is none other than former Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
More on that cozy little relationship later...
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