Work under way at Nanuet Sept. 11 memorial
By ALICE GOMSTYN
THE JOURNAL NEWS
How to help

Anyone interested in donating services for the construction of the Nanuet school district's Sept. 11 memorial should call Wiliam Devine at 845-206-7411.

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NANUET — Work on the Sept. 11 memorial planned for Nanuet's A. MacArthur Barr Middle School could be completed by early March, weather permitting.

"It's going very well," said William Devine, the superintendent of Long Island-based Triton Construction, the company managing the project. "A lot of work has been done so far."

Devine said that since the project started late last month, the site had been cleared and levelled, and workers have installed a concrete foundation, a concrete floor pad and wiring.

Planning for the memorial began shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, but plans were put on hold to accommodate a districtwide construction project, which was completed earlier this year.

The memorial is to consist of a circular stone plaza with benches, trees, bushes, lighting and a five-segment monument in natural red, white and blue marble. The center stone will bear a carving of the names of nine victims of the attacks who had ties to the Nanuet school district.

Most recently, Devine said, workers began installing a winding stone-paved path that will connect the plaza with a nearby school parking lot.

"We're very happy that they're getting it done," said Grace Lum, whose son, William Jr., 45, was a 1974 graduate of Nanuet High School. A senior claims specialist at Marsh & McLennan, William Lum Jr. died when the towers collapsed.

"We appreciate anything they do," his mother said. "They didn't forget."

The New York City architectural firm Perkins Eastman PC designed the memorial. Both the firm and William Harris and Sons of Pearl River, which cleared the site, donated their services.

A fundraiser held in September by the civic group Friends and Neighbors of Nanuet generated more than $30,000 for costs not covered by service donations. Labor and materials for the project are estimated to be worth between $75,000 and $80,000.

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dl...2250346/1019/NEWS03

A beautiful year for art museums
Scientific buildings also were among the major additions

The top trend in 2005 was, unquestionably, the explosion of art museums all over the world. You could say that about almost any recent year, but 2005 topped them all.

 Opening were: the vast new de Young Museum in San Francisco, by Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron; a major addition to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, by the same architects; the Chichu Art Museum in Japan, by Tadao Ando; the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum near Jerusalem, by Moshe Safdie, whose office is in Somerville; the Paul Klee Center in Bern, Switzerland, by Italian architect Renzo Piano; and an addition to the High Museum in Atlanta by Piano. Piano is also working on an addition to Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

...


Not all of the list's entries are winners. The Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site in Manhattan, as currently proposed, is a wretched failure. It's more concerned with fending off terrorists than providing life to Manhattan. The first 200 feet of its 1,776-foot height is to be solid concrete, a sort of tower castle meant to fend off possible truck bombers, with a few slot-like windows that look as if they're intended to be used by defending archers. This is to be our new national symbol?

http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/arti...ar_for_art_museums/

A single victim from last year's tsunami still touches family, friends
 
By COLLEEN SLEVIN
Associated Press Writer

DENVER -- To her father, Nicole Weissberg will always be the Eloise of the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York _ ordering PB&Js in the dining room or playing on luggage carts in the halls with her younger brother. In her 20s, she returned to drink scotch at the bar of the hotel owned by her grandfather and, when it was sold after his death, she dreamed of someday buying it back.

"She was the legacy. She was the one who had the drive and ambition to carry on the business," Robert Weissberg says of his 27-year-old daughter.

 But Nicole Weissberg has been gone for a year. A business student at the University of Denver, she was one of at least 216,000 people killed by the tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean.

A year later, her remains have been buried in a quiet New Jersey ceremony. But she continues to touch the lives of her family, her boyfriend and the volunteer who found her identification near a grief-filled beach in Thailand.

Weissberg, of New York City, comes alive when telling stories about his daughter _ how she traveled the world but still thought to call him when an ATM machine didn't work during a backpacking trip in the Andes. He told her to try another one.

Or how, in the middle of political arguments with her boyfriend, Morgan Browning, she would take a break and then e-mail her father, a former political science professor at the University of Illinois-Champaign. Then she would pick up the argument again with more ammunition. Browning eventually caught on.

But Robert Weissberg is more reserved when he recalls her funeral in March, not long after her body was identified and returned to the United States.

"It's over. It's finished. I'm trying to forget, the grief at least," he says.

Nicole had traveled extensively in Europe and had visited Australia, Fiji, Israel and South America. On her final trip, she had traveled alone in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos before arriving in Thailand. She talked to Browning on Dec. 25 after a diving trip in Khao Lak and planned to spend the following day on the beach before a reunion with her boyfriend.

Browning was planning to meet Nicole last Dec. 27 in Phuket, a popular Thai beach resort. The waves hit just as he was boarding a plane in Denver and the devastation was just becoming known as he landed the next day. He spent a week searching for her, looking in morgues set up at Buddhist temples and bribing cabbies to get him around.

Learning nothing, Browning returned to Denver and talked to reporters about his search and appeared on TV talk shows, hoping it would somehow lead him to Nicole. In January, he decided to return for another search and Nicole's former bosses helped him buy the plane ticket. The second trip was less chaotic, but no more fruitful.

"By the time that those 10 days were over, I was convinced I had done all I could do," he says.

Then a sign of Nicole surfaced through something Browning calls "kind of cosmic."

Rachael Miller, a 24-year-old volunteer, was documenting Western identification cards found in the debris. It was Miller _ the only member of the recovery team from Denver _ who came across Nicole's student ID card and her driver's license. She told the recovery coordinators that she, too, was from Denver and she wanted to return the documents to Nicole's family. They agreed.

For two weeks, Miller and her colleagues dined and prayed with Nicole's IDs on their table. When she returned to Denver at the end of January, she contacted university officials who put her in touch with Browning and through him, her parents.

By this time, Browning knew Nicole was probably dead.

"In a way, I found it very sad," he says. "I was also somewhat grateful that this person really cared and took the time to come back and tell us what she found and made sure that they were returned to us."

Miller's group had originally planned to take a mission trip to Nepal, stopping in Bangkok on the way to work in the city's slums. But political problems in Nepal caused them to rethink their plans and the tsunami prompted them to help. They contacted an international Christian group, Youth with a Mission, and went to Khao Lak, Thailand.

"I know that for me, I know that God had his hand on all of this," says Miller, who attended Nicole's memorial service, where she met the young woman's parents and friends. She and Browning have become friends and she says her experience in Thailand gave her "a heart" for mission work.

"I think this person was supposed to find this for some reason," Browning said. "I can't logically explain it _ except there was a reason."

Robert Weissberg has established a scholarship at the university to help students study abroad. Finding his daughter's body hasn't helped him much or brought what people refer to as closure. He lives a few blocks from the World Trade Center site and thinks about how many relatives of the Sept. 11 victims never found a trace of their loved ones.

"To me, there's nothing physical about this," he says. "It's all memories. It's all experience."

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/new...ny-region-apnewyork

Honoring disaster victims one by one
Toothpick art recalls tsunami, 9-11 attacks

Just reading about the devastation and the death toll caused by the massive tsunami that struck southwestern Asia a year ago wasn’t enough for Nancy Lawson.

“I remember thinking that these people are going to become statistics, and I just felt I needed to see something other than a number in a newspaper article,” the 56-year-old Lawrence resident said.

Lawson then set out on what became a yearlong project to make her own memorial to the many thousands of victims. She glued together 300,000 toothpicks, mixed them with tree bark, shells and strands of wild weeds and shaped it all into a rippling, wavelike form.

The toothpicks were glued in a variety of ways, some in pairs to represent couples, and some in threes to represent families. She started making the toothpick memorial immediately after the tsunami struck on Dec. 26, 2004.

“I was making it because it was for me,” she said. “I wanted to be able to understand it, to wrap my mind and my heart around it. Every time I put one in place I’d say a prayer.”

One piece she made is from 6,000 toothpicks to remember people killed in the 9-11 attacks. After the tsunami struck southwest Asia a year ago, Lawson set out on what became a yearlong project to make her own memorial. She glued together 300,000 toothpicks and other items into a rippling, wavelike form, which is displayed behind her.
Lawson worked at her own pace, sitting on her living room floor, going through the boxes of toothpicks her husband, Lewis, purchased at stores.

“They (store employees) thought we owned a restaurant,” Lawson said with a chuckle.

She just finished her memorial about a week ago. It now sits displayed on top of a cabinet.

It is not the first memorial to disaster victims Lawson has made. On Sept. 12, 2001, the day after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Lawson first struck upon the idea of using toothpicks to represent the victims of the trade center. Toothpicks were the most economical and sensible items, she said.

Lawson used 6,000 toothpicks (a figure taken from an early death toll estimate) and built them up into a pointed tower shape. She called her creation “Ascension,” because the toothpicks rise from an ashtray base as smoke would rise through a building.

Just recently Lawson began making a third memorial. This one is in honor of the victims of hurricanes Rita and Katrina. It has a cardboard base covered by felt, to represent the water. Some felt pieces are shaped like massive waves about to engulf toothpick structures representing houses. There are red “Xs” painted on the sides of the structures, the way houses with the dead were marked in New Orleans.

 
Asia marks one year since tsunami swept away 216,000 lives
Lawson is disabled by a fibromyalgia, a crippling affliction of bones and muscles and which causes chronic fatigue. The disease struck her about seven years ago. In 1973 she was seriously injured when a car she was riding in was struck by a train. The driver, a man she was dating, was killed.

Lawson thinks her experience with disease and memories of the tragic wreck are behind her desire to pay recognition to victims of disasters.

“I think I know a little bit about what they went through,” she said.

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/dec/26/h...one_one/?city_local

Edited by author 12-27-2005 03:33 PM
/m1969
The Spitzer-Whitehead battle is more interesting than the articles convey.

Maurice R. ("Hank") Greenberg controls the Starr Foundation which is one of the only big donors ($25 million) to the WTC Foundaation. I would be interested in the sequence of events as I suspect that Whitehead defended Greenberg in April and then got the donation from the Starr Foundation (a non-profit organization that normally contributes only to college efforts).

And for what it's worth Spitzer is going after Greenberg for his stewardship of the Starr Foundation saying he looted it of nearly $6 billion.

I have some more info and links at:
http://911memorials.org/?p=330

After I posted this I see there were indeed articles today pointing out the Starr Foundation connection.

LIBERTY STREET: ALIVE AT GROUND ZERO
 
2006, Un-rated, 118 minutes, Lost Medallion Productions


Peter Josyph’s documentary “Liberty Street: Alive at Ground Zero” should be required viewing by all Americans. The emphasis is on the word “required” – this is a brilliant work of art and a crucially important film which serves as a chilling elegy to the most horrendous crime committed on the American mainland – and, as we know, it is a crime which remains unpunished to this day.

“Liberty Street: Alive at Ground Zero” is anchored at 114 Liberty Street, an apartment building located across the street from the World Trade Center. The film does not recycle the well-known news footage of the 9/11 attacks, but instead incorporates never-before-seen video footage shot by one of the building’s residents and new footage of Ground Zero and the surrounding neighborhoods in the weeks following the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Much of the film is difficult to endure: the sigh of demolition crews crushing the bent metal frames of the destroyed Twin Towers and plopping them into dump trucks to be shipped away is still heartbreaking. The remains of the 110-story buildings are literally twisted and crushed like giant soda cans, when they are scooped up and hauled off – out of sight and, perhaps, out of mind. Out of sight is a ruling element here, as Josyph bravely ignored a “No Cameras, No Photo” policy surrounding Ground Zero to capture the clearing of the site. It is also a testament to his talents that he not only filmed in the area but framed the demolition within startling artistry (this is one of the best-looking DV features I’ve seen).

Also featured here are interviews with those who were on the scene at 9/11 and in the days after. Tenants of 114 Liberty Street talk about the surrealism of witnessing the disaster from the relative safety of their apartments across the street. A contractor goes through the building’s apartments to see repairs will be needed (one tenant was at his desk when a radiator came flying through the air, through his window, and smack on the desk just inches from where he was seated). A paramedic who discovered a severed hand lying on the street muses on where it came from and compares it (in a curious lapse of taste) to the Sistine Chapel’s depiction of God’s hand animating Adam to life.

Beyond the wreckage, “Liberty Street: Alive at Ground Zero” also documents how life slowly came back to the ruined neighborhood. Neon signs in bars and sex toy emporiums light up the evening streets. Chinese restaurants and parking lots open for business. Buses and ferries resume normal traffic. Even the subways are running, and in an attempt to force normalcy someone took black paint to the words “World Trade Center” at the station that fed into the lost buildings. Out of sight, out of mind.

For the record, as of this writing no person has ever been apprehended, arrested or punished for the 9/11 attacks. Not the architects of the attacks, nor anyone in the federal government for permitting the lapses in intelligence and for ignoring of repeated pre-9/11 warnings that an attack was imminent. “Liberty Street: Alive at Ground Zero” reminds us of a tragedy that many people in power would prefer to forget – and only a buffoon would imagine the sight of Iraqis stuffing ballot boxes is the solution to what transpired at the World Trade Center.

Thank you, Peter Josyph, for “Liberty Street: Alive at Ground Zero.” This is an extraordinary achievement.

http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=reviews&Id=8312

'Cheerleading' for troops

After the Pentagon and World Trade Center were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, Peggy Baker’s son joined the U.S. Army.
In a sense, Peggy did too.

“I’m just his cheerleader while he’s playing Army,” said Baker, who sees herself as similar to other moms who cheer their kids on the football field.

Baker’s “cheerleading” evolved into Operation First Response, an all-volunteer nonprofit foundation that acts as a first-responder for wounded service members and their families.

From her basement this year, Baker has packed 1,300 backpacks full of hygiene kits, clothes and quilts for wounded soldiers at combat support hospitals in Iraq, at Landstuhl Army Medical Hospital in Germany and at other locations.

She recently met with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for recognition of the work that OFR does with America Supports You, a program that connects troops with community supporters around the country.

Rumsfeld “loves our boys so much,” said Baker, who was presented with a challenge coin, which is traditionally exchanged between officers and senior non-commissioned officers as a symbol of recognition.

Baker, OFR president, and three other women - vice president Carolyn Crossley, secretary Elizabeth Fuentes and treasurer Cheri Tavenner - operate from Baker’s Culpeper home. They act as liaisons for families that want to visit their wounded soldier but do not have the resources. Families who find out their service member is wounded and have little information call Baker 24 hours a day.

Though she can’t always find out details about each soldier’s injuries, Baker does what she can. There have been times when she’s called Crossley, a nurse at Landstuhl, to hold the phone up to the ear of a comatose soldier. She tries to meet whatever the families and wounded heroes need during their times of crisis.

“I can’t tell you how many miracles I’ve seen happen,” Baker said.

Every Sunday, OFR goes to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., to visit with the wounded soldiers, delivering backpacks and giving monetary assistance to families for unforeseen expenses.

“It changes your whole perspective on a bad day,” said Baker said, who is humbled and honored by the sacrifices from wounded heroes and their families.

“Until you’re really presented with it,” she said, “you just don’t know what’s done for you every day.”

http://www.starexponent.com/servlet/Satell...e&cid=1128768938902

GOP pushes alleged threat by Spitzer

ALBANY, N.Y. -- The state Republican Party is asking for an investigation into a claim by a former Wall Street executive that Attorney General Eliot Spitzer threatened him in a private conversation, an accusation Spitzer has denied.

...

Spitzer has earned a national reputation for forcing reforms on Wall Street.

"We have not received a letter and there is no investigation," said Sherry Hunter, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.

State GOP Executive Director Ryan Moses said Whitehead's accusation is part of a pattern. He cited cases in which a reporter and a spokesman for a Republican congresswoman said Spitzer tried to intimidate them.

Whitehead has refused to respond to requests for interviews.

Whitehead is a supporter of Greenberg. Greenberg's nonprofit Starr Foundation has given the single largest donation _ $25 million _ to the foundation in charge of building the World Trade Center memorial, a pledge made months earlier. The foundation has raised just over $100 million. Greenberg is on the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and Whitehead is chairman of that board.

Spitzer and others have questioned the effectiveness of the development board. This month, Spitzer called for the Starr Foundation to investigate questionable stock sales 30 years ago that benefited Greenberg and other insiders.

"Mr. Minerik and his friends always criticize the Attorney General's efforts to combat corporate fraud," Dopp said. "They always stick up for their corporate pals. This is just another example of that."

"We're just going to see more of this _ friends of Mr. Greenberg taking on Eliot," Dopp added. "Mr. Greenberg is on a mission to return some manner of criticism toward Eliot as the person responsible for his downfall. They are free to say what they want to say, we only take exception to some of the characterizations, which were inaccurate."

 
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/new...ny-region-apnewyork

WTC foundation hires executive to oversee memorial construction

NEW YORK (AP) _ A man who helped rebuild the damaged World Trade Center after it was bombed in 1993 was appointed Tuesday to oversee construction of the trade center memorial.

William H. Goldstein will be the executive vice president of construction for the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, the nonprofit charged with fundraising for the $490 million memorial and with building and operating it.
 
 Groundbreaking on the memorial to the trade center, destroyed by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, is scheduled to begin this spring.

The memorial, to open in 2009, will include two reflecting pools framed by the names of the victims, an outdoor plaza and oak trees.

Goldstein also will oversee the building of other cultural projects controlled by the foundation, including a cultural/visitors' center and performing arts complex.

Goldstein was president and CEO of the city's School Construction Authority for the past three years, overseeing a $13 billion capital plan. Before that, he was deputy executive director for capital programs of the trade center's owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

He played a major role in the restoration of the parking garage and other damaged parts of the trade center after the 1993 truck bombing, which killed six people and injured 1,000.


http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/new...ny-region-apnewyork

Dear Harvey,

We need your help today to build the World Trade Center Memorial.

We must raise $40,000 online by Friday!

It's a way to show the world that no one has forgotten the importance of the Memorial for all those who sacrificed so much.

www.buildthememorial.org/donate1

Without your financial support, there will be no Memorial. During this holiday season it is especially important to remember. Please donate today.

I urge you to contribute $20, $40 or more, to help us build the Memorial that will forever stand as a permanent tribute. Every donation is important.

We can build it together.

www.buildthememorial.org/donate1

Thank you and Happy New Year,

Gretchen Dykstra
President & CEO
World Trade Center Memorial Foundation

P.S. Your donation will go a long way to helping us remember, respect and honor the sacrifices made on 9/11. With a gift of $100 or more, you will receive a WTC Memorial lapel pin.

http://www.buildthememorial.org/donate1

U.S. Visit: New Level Of Airport Security At JFK
Security Measure Founded After '93 WTC Bombing Implemented
  
(CBS) NEW YORK After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Congress mandated a passenger screening process to keep criminals and imposters from entering the United States. But that program did not come about for 11 years, and a full 27 months after 9/11.

One passenger undergoing the screening process, known as U.S. Visit, is Rituwanti Naipaul, who often visits family in New York. Before she can enter the country, she'll undergo a criminal background check.

Naipaul's index fingers are scanned, her photograph taken. The data are instantly compared with what she provided when she applied for a visa. Her prints are run through an FBI database to see whether she's a convict. Her name is checked against a terrorist watch-list.

“I think it's very good,” Naipaul says. “You know, it's safe for the country and for the people. It's so simple, so fast.”

The process is swift. A U.S Visit check adds an average six seconds to inspections. But for thousands of visitors, those six seconds can reveal a lifetime of trouble.

“We have many people that have been traveling back and forth under their true identities,” says Dean Dimotsis, Deputy Chief Passenger Operations, Counter Terrorism Division. “We also find out that a lot of these people have criminal histories and aliases.

Since U.S. Visit began in January 2004, 40 million travelers have been processed and 5,500 would-be visitors were held for further investigation. Of those, 885 were turned away or arrested.

At JFK, 701 travelers were detained, with 218 people being denied entry or getting arrested.

Visitors who arouse suspicion are separated from other travelers. An image of the dubious travel document is sent to a forensic lab in the Washington, D.C. area.

Authorities say U.S Visit has already helped reduce the vexing problem of imposters entering or leaving the country with authentic passports.

“We have many people that check in for a flight for a relative or a friend, then give them the boarding card. That person will then, in turn, depart. . . This will close that loop,” Dimotsis says.

U.S. Visit would not have prevented the 9/11 hijackers from entering the country. But fewer criminals are coming in the front door.

“Initially we were getting many hits in the first few months of US Visit," Dimotsis says. "As word spread that it was really infallible as far as identifying people and confirming identity, fewer people have attempted to enter by fraud. So, a lot of criminals actually don't try to come in.”

U.S. Visit is about to extend its reach. By year's end, it will be in place at our land borders with Mexico and Canada. U.S. citizens are exempt from the program. But soon other countries will require fingerprints of visiting Americans.

http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_361210809.html

Naperville hopes camera will help deter vandalism

NAPERVILLE — The city of Naperville has installed a security camera at the Commander Dan Shanower/Sept. 11 Memorial in an effort to stop further vandalism of the site.

The camera will monitor the site 24 hours a day.

"It's unfortunate that we had to do this," said Craig Blomquist, assistant city manager.

Blomquist said there have been as many as five incidents of vandalism at the monument, including two this year. On Aug. 19 or 20, someone scrawled letters, symbols and a heart design on the monument's Wall of Faces. The wall contains more than 140 faces symbolizing the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The most recent vandalism occurred between 3 and 4 p.m. Sept. 5, according to Naperville Crime Stoppers. Someone pried open heavy-duty plastic casing and took one of the "memorial stones," a piece of limestone from the Pentagon.
The stones are part of the monument's centerpiece, a sculpture that contains a steel beam from the World Trade Center and granite from the Pennsylvania region where Flight 93 crashed.

The limestone has been replaced with other pieces and the wall has been cleaned since the crimes occurred.

Charles Johanns, who served as chairman of the memorial's committee, said the other incidents include damage to the sculpture and spray-painting on the wall in 2004.

"It was pretty deplorable that someone would do something like that," he said.

The security system cost $12,000 and was paid for using money from the memorial's maintenance fund, according to the city's Web site. Blomquist said an estimated $285,000 has been spent or reserved for future maintenance.

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/beaconn..._AU28_CAMERA_S1.htm

New “Ergonomic” Restaurant Opening Soon in NYC
   
The New York Sun recently reported that former workers at the Windows of the World will open a new restaurant next month that they say will be a tribute to their 73 colleagues who perished in the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and much more.

Those organizing the launch of the restaurant, called Colors, are members of the nonprofit Restaurant Opportunity Center of New York. They want to create a new type of restaurant, where workers are owners, stress is kept at a minimum, and all possible measures are taken to prevent work-related injuries.

The focus on the restaurant's ergonomics is "something we believe is workers' rights," a former Windows on the World waiter who is an ROC-NY director, Fekkak Mamdouh, said. "We want to make an atmosphere that makes their lives easier, their work easier."

According to a study issued this year by the group, burns and cuts - often the source of nasty tales of blood or even fingertips falling into soup - are frequent in the high-stress restaurant work environment. Back pain - caused by chopping food while slouched over, washing dishes, and hoisting heavy loads on trays - is widespread. Despite the health hazards, 90% of workers do not have health insurance, meaning many decide against treating such injuries.

Colors could be the first restaurant designed specifically with the ergonomic needs of workers in mind, thanks to a three-year grant from the National Institutes of Health.

The clinical ergonomist working on the restaurant, Jonathan Dropkin of Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, made a number of recommendations to the architect, including raising the working spaces and bars by between six and eight inches, shifting flow plans so workers are less likely to bump into each other, keeping knives "super, super" sharp, and placing cushiony anti-fatigue mats at the bar and in the kitchen.

After the restaurant opens, he will continue to monitor the workers periodically for three years and make modifications in response to their needs.
 
...

http://www.ergoweb.com/news/detail.cfm?id=1244

The Magic Man

When William Rodriguez was a young man, the Amazing Randi hired him as an assistant--but not for help with his magic act. Randi enlisted Roudy, the aspiring magician's stage name in his native Puerto Rico, in his cause: exposing faith healers and psychics. Rodriguez, as Benjamin Smith explained in a New York Sun article, proved adroit at insinuating himself into the good graces of Randi's targets and eliciting incriminating information.

Two decades later Rodriguez's life has come full circle and once again he's taken on the task of unmasking what he sees as the truth behind a spectacle. This time it's the grand opera that was 9/11--along with its libretto, the 9/11 Commission Report. Yes, Rodriguez is among the legions that question its conclusions. But before attempting to transform himself into a truthteller, Rodriguez had established his credentials with a fearsome display of physical courage.

We're a nation that can no longer agree on who qualifies as a hero. Because of our questionable motives for undertaking recent wars, progressives won't countenance those who shine in combat. Conservatives, meanwhile, disdain do-gooders for enabling neediness in the needy. However, while 9/11 may have deprived us of our innocence, it at least provided us with consensus heroes, such as the first responders.

Less likely to be lionized, either because he survived or because he's Latino stands William Rodriguez. A custodian at the World Trade Center, Rodriguez shepherded a number of those who worked there out of the basement. Also, accompanying firefighters up the stairs, he unlocked doors for them until they turned him back. He may, in fact, have been the last man out of the North Tower.

However, not content to bask in his 9/11 hero status, he had to go and muddle matters by morphing into a gadfly. Still, whether in spite of or because of the twin sets of tracks on which his courage travels, Rodriguez stands poised to break out in 2006.

An eloquent man with an outsized personality, he recently completely a European tour of speaking engagements in Europe. Back home, Emmy-winning Irish documentary maker Pat O'Mahony ("Reporters at War") has pitched HBO about making a documentary about him. Another film, entitled "The Keymaster," by Mario Diaz, is slated for a fall 2006 release by Brooklyn's Cinemar Films. Also, already his de facto biographer, Greg Szymanksi of The American Free Press is writing a book about him.

After emigrating from Puerto Rico, where he'd been featured on TV escaping from a chained straight jacket while hanging from a burning rope, Rodriguez found himself a small fish in the big pond of New York magicians. While struggling to catch on, he took a day job as a custodian at the World Trade Center.

But when his responsibilities expanded to not only caring for the office Governor Cuomo kept at WTC, but organizing his press conferences, his show biz aspirations fell by the wayside. After Cuomo left office, keeping the staircases of the North Tower clean became Rodriguez's new assignment. While a less-challenging job, in retrospect, it paved the way for what life had in store for him next.

Szymanski describes how Rodriguez usually clocked in at eight a.m. and rode an elevator to the 106th floor, where Latino employees of Windows on the World fed him a free breakfast. On 9/11, however, he was a half hour late. While checking in at an office on sub-level one, he heard and felt, along with 20 others, a massive explosion--from below. Seconds later, he heard another--from above (Flight 11).

While Rodriguez was wondering if the first explosion was an electrical generator, a co-worker burst into the office covered with third-degree burns he suffered when flames burst from an elevator shaft. After helping him out of the building, Rodriguez returned and pulled out two men trapped in an elevator shaft filling with water from the sprinkler system. He led them and others to safety.

Then, wielding a master key, he ascended the stairs with the struggling firemen and unlocked doors (every fourth floor) that were equipped with locks. As he climbed from the twentieth to the thirtieth floors, he heard yet more explosive sounds. They also resounded from the South Tower when, turned back at the thirty-ninth floor, he descended and, for the last time, exited the North Tower.

When it began to collapse, Rodriguez took refuge under a car. Once safe, he was interviewed by CNN and became the designated Spanish-speaking eyewitness for Spanish TV like Telemundo and Univision and newspapers like Hoy and El Diario. When the families of Spanish victims who'd seen him on TV later reached out to him, he was driven by frustration over his inability to reach his Windows of the World friends to help.

Rodriguez soon established the Hispanic Victims Group and helped secure an amnesty for undocumented Hispanic workers who perished. Their families were thus able to apply for the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund--with Rodriguez translating and helping them fill out the intimidating forms.

Confident the explosions he'd heard on 9/11 would get their day in court, Rodriguez had no qualms about being honored at the White House and posed for a picture with Bush. What then made him later do an about-face and step forward with concerns that the administration's negligence in dealing with terrorists may have crossed the line to enabling them?

First Rodriguez watched as his interviews edited by the English-speaking (but not the Spanish-) media. After all, since he'd been one of those pushing for the creation of the 9/11 Commission along with the Jersey Girls, he looked forward to his appearance at a closed-door hearing. "Up to that moment," Rodriguez told us, "I was thinking that they were going to do the right thing."

But when the commission didn't answer his questions and avoided the issues he was presenting, "it raised flags." Then, when he realized the administration was using 9/11 as one of the pretexts for invading Iraq, he felt "manipulated and used."

Rodriguez also sought out the National Institute of Safety and Technology, which was investigating the collapse of the WTC, but was rebuffed. Neither was the FBI interested in his contention that he'd encountered one of the hijackers casing out the buildings several months before 9/11.

"You have two options," Rodriguez declares. "Stand for the truth or be part of the game. I didn't want to be part of the game."

Not only wasn't Rodriguez playing the game, but, like 9/11 widow Ellen Mariani, he signed on with lawyer Phil Berg to file a suit against the entire administration. The government normally uses the RICO Act to nail organized crime as a conspiracy. However, in a daring display of turnabout-is-fair-play, Berg accused the government of conspiring against the people.

Then, when the government filed a motion to dismiss, or at least transfer, the case on grounds of national security, Berg filed an affidavit that goes beyond the usual aggressive legalese, races past bold, and flies off into the realm of courting disaster.

It alleges that the defendants "had knowledge that the attacks were impending. . . but they failed to [take countermeasures], not by reason of mere negligence, confusion, or ineptitude, but because they affirmatively desired such attacks to occur [author's italics]." The progress of the case, which awaits discovery and depositions, can be followed at 911fortheTruth.com. Rodriguez, meanwhile, is spokesman for Reopen911.org.

When asked if he ever dreamt he'd become what some might call a conspiracy theorist, Rodriguez replied, "I never expected to be in the middle of this whole thing." In his travels he's heard what he calls, "really far-out theories, crazy." He explains that some become involved "just because of the theory." He's content to present his experience "exactly like I presented it to the 9/11 Commission and let the people draw their own conclusions."

Nevertheless, we tried to lure him into theorizing about his description of loud sounds he heard from the floor above while on the thirty-third floor. They sounded to him "like a dumpster with steel wheels scratching a bare cement floor."

"I was like," Rodriguez says, "'Oh my God, that's an empty floor, what's going on?'" No construction had been underway and, in fact, a special access key was needed to make an elevator stop at that floor. Fearing "somebody was there with a gun or something," he bypassed the floor.

But he stands by his vow: "I won't speculate because I'm not a theorist." However, it's surprising that the more, uh, creative minds of the 9/11 Truth Movement haven't latched onto the thirty-fourth floor. It could be positioned as both controlled-demolition-central and a munitions dump, where the largest bombs awaited detonation by a suicide crew manning the floor.

Still, in a picturesque analogy, Rodriguez concedes that the administration and 9/11 Commission "are giving you a whole recipe and soup, but in reality the stock inside is totally different from what you expected."

The media-savvy Rodriguez is careful to avoid being lumped in with those who believe passengers were spirited away pre-flight, the planes guided to their destinations by remote control. It's apparent, however, that he and Berg tacitly support the controlled demolition scenario. On April 5, 2005, the National Institute of Safety and Technology finally issued its report, "NIST Response to the World Trade Center Disaster." To summarize, it concluded that the impact of the jets and intense fire weakened structural components, damaging fireproofing materials. The buckling that ensued allowed the upper floors to pancake onto the floors below.

The NIST report, of course, has taken some mighty salvos. Former Bush administration Department of Labor economist Morgan Reynolds's famous article for LewRockwell.com--"Why Did the Trade Center Skyscrapers Collapse?"--is chock full of rebuttals. It's as comprehensive, in fact, as an oft-cited March 2005 Popular Mechanics article debunking alternate theories is sketchy.

Reynolds calls the government’s collapse "theory," as he termed it, "highly vulnerable [in] its blinkered narrowness and lack of breadth [compared to] its principal scientific rival--controlled demolition."

Even more devastating to the empirical-minded is the paper recently presented by Steven E. Jones, a physics professor at Brigham Young University. Regarding the collapse of the three WTC buildings, he writes that, "as upper-falling floors strike lower floors--and intact steel support columns--the fall must be significantly impeded by the impacted mass." In other words, not only was the collapse "in-their-footprints," but way too fast.

Between Reynolds and the experts he cites and Jones, it's as if scientists and engineers are putting their foot down. "If you wanted us to remain quiet for the nation's well-being," they seem to be saying, "you should have seen to it that whoever pulled this off resisted the expert's natural impulse to make it look like a piece of cake."

Meanwhile, reporters and commentators, concerned Rodriguez antagonized people in high places, advised him to back off. As if to lend credence to them, his apartment was broken into and, among other things, his laptop was stolen. It failed to scare Rodriguez, however, because he feels that by all rights he should have died on 9/11 and is now living on borrowed time.

"I'm alive because of the miracle," he says. "This is a second chance. The William Rodriguez who was here before 9/11 has disappeared completely. Gone, gone."

As for his future, Rodriguez declares that "my mission is to help as many people as possible. I have a big sign on the wall in front of my bed that I wrote on 9/11. It's been there ever since and it says, 'Who did you help today?' It just gives me the motivation. . . to pick up the phone and call someone." He maintains that he's become addicted to helping. "It's an addiction. It really is."

Rodriguez has also assisted victims, and their families, of the Madrid bombings, as well as the Paraguay supermarket fire, in which 399 died. In the latter instance, he appointed a contact person and helped raise funds and set up rallies. "Once [they're] organized I gave them the tools so they become activists to change the laws in terms of building construction, fire regulations, prosecution of the people who locked the [supermarket] doors. All the pressure points."

At times, Rodriguez seems too good to be true. Losing himself in service, he neglected his own needs and, briefly homeless, actually lived out of his car. Most telling though was his refusal to submit an application to the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund.

A cynic might maintain that he was reserving the right to the lawsuit Berg subsequently filed on his behalf. But Rodriguez had to know, as Kenneth Feinberg, special master of the 9/11 Victims Fund, made clear in his book, What is Life Worth? (Public Affairs, 2005), that those who opted out of the fund to file suit on their own had little chance of a substantial financial settlement.

To indulge in armchair psychoanalysis, Rodriguez's self-denial makes him look like a martyr who's thrown himself on the funeral pyre of survivor guilt. Of course, this does nothing to diminish what he's done.

It's more apparent than ever how much the public, consciously or unconsciously, fears being smeared with the dreaded conspiracy-theorist label. Even a glancing acknowledgment that the administration not only nonchalanted warnings about 9/11, but actually turned a blind eye to incipient terrorism, is out of the question. However, our reluctance to conceive of the inconceivable only reveals our ignorance of history.

In writing Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor (Free Press, 2001), Robert Stinnett used the Freedom of Information Act to dredge up documents from World War II that go a long way toward proving a thesis long suspected. You know--the one in which Franklin Roosevelt, to galvanize an isolationist nation behind an undeniable threat, both provoked the Japanese and refrained from mobilizing defenses despite knowledge of the attack.

Should there be any truth to the charge the administration greased the wheels for 9/11, it would be ironic. The Neocons, of course, profess to despise Roosevelt and everything he stood for. But according to this scenario, they used a page out of his playbook.

Their repudiation of him would then be but a smokescreen. But one with a spot threadbare enough to glimpse the Project for a New Century's famous statement that what was needed to rally the nation around their program was a "new Pearl Harbor."

Culpable or not, if this is what 9/11 represented to the administration, how, we asked Rodriguez, would he describe 9/11 to a child? He responded without hesitating.

"I was a magician for thirty years. . . It is very easy to do misdirection, to make you look into one place while you're doing the magic with the other hand." He's obviously inferring that in plain sight, the planes struck; out of sight, bombs exploded. "It's just a big magic trick," Rodriguez concludes. "It's an illusion."

Guess it would take an illusionist to know one.

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