Why was Paul Bremer silent on 9/11 about the fact that the first airplane went right into his company's office in the North Tower?
"The nose of the first plane went into our offices. For us the World Trade Center and 9/11 was about as bad as it could get."
- Robert Wilkerson, senior vice president of Marsh Crisis Consulting, "9/11 shows need for crisis planning," Deseret News, March 15, 2002
Lewis Paul Bremer was chairman and CEO of Marsh Crisis Consulting, a risk and insurance services firm which is a subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies (MMC). Bremer and 1,700 of the employees of Marsh & McLennan had offices in the World Trade Center. Bremer's office was in the North Tower.
The plane that hit the North Tower went right into the computer center and offices of Bremer's company. As Robert Wilkerson, senior vice president of Marsh Crisis Consulting, told the press: "The nose of the first plane went into our offices. For us the World Trade Center and 9/11 was about as bad as it could get."
When the first plane hit the North Tower, 294 employees of Marsh & McLennan were working in offices on the upper floors. Not one of them survived.
So, doesn't it seem odd that on September 11, when Bremer was interviewed in Washington on WRC-TV (NBC) at 12:30 pm in the studio that he did not even mention the fact that the first plane had gone into his company's offices and killed hundreds of his employees?
Bremer is quite cool, maybe too cool, in the interview and shows no sign of emotion, which seems very odd for a person whose office was just hit by a plane. Why was he silent about this important fact? Bremer, who was the chairman of the National Committee on Terrorism, was instead rather keen on blaming Osama bin Laden, and perhaps Iran and Iraq for the terror attacks that had just wiped out his company's offices.
Three days later, in an interview on CNN, Bremer stated that their office was located "above where the second aircraft hit." This statement, however, is contradicted by Wikipedia (See: Paul Bremer) and the statement by the company's VP Wilkerson, although MMC reportedly did have offices in both towers.
Then, at 4 minutes and 45 seconds of the interview video, Bremer is answering a question about how the terror attacks will change our lives. Bremer says, "It is a day that will change our lives. It's a day when the war... (pause) ...the terrorists declared on the United States..."
What was Bremer going to say when he stopped himself? Was he going to say, "It's a day when the war on terrorism began? It seems like that was what he was going to say when he checked himself. He clearly had to re-think what he was planning to say.
