Demolition Access To The WTC Towers: Part Two - Security - 911Truth.Org %
Larry Silverstein owned WTC building 7, and in May 2001, he also finalized a 99-year lease of the WTC complex and took over operation of WTC buildings 1, 2, 4 and 5 from the PANYNJ. His partners in the deal were retail operator Westfield America and real estate investor Lloyd Goldman. To finance his deal for the WTC, “Silverstein borrowed $726 million from GMAC Commercial Mortgage, a unit of General Motors. GMAC in turn converted the loan into securities, which it sold to investors like pension funds.”
[123]
Alan Reiss of the PANYNJ had been working on a three-month transition plan with a team including Silverstein Properties, in the weeks before 9/11. Just before the attacks, the Silverstein group had asked Reiss to let it more fully operate all systems, from safety systems to tenant relations.
[124]
Silverstein had hired someone to run the WTC complex for him. This was Geoffrey (Jeff) Wharton, who came to Silverstein Properties from Tishman Speyer, one of the city’s biggest office landlords. Wharton was in charge of the buildings when they were destroyed, and stayed with Silverstein for only one year after that.
[125]
Wharton had been in the north tower at the Windows on the World restaurant where he had breakfast every day, and was said to be on the last elevator to descend, at 8:44 AM. He greeted and left behind the new PANYNJ executive director, Neil Levin, who was there waiting for someone although he had not been seen there before.
[126] Shortly thereafter, it was Jeff Wharton that first told Larry Silverstein about the attacks. But Silverstein watched it all play out on television. Although Silverstein was said to be distressed by the loss of four of his employees, at the same time, “in a display of shrewdness, Silverstein was already delving into complex legal strategies by the next morning.”
[127]
Wharton was a friend of Jerome Hauer, and through Hauer, Silverstein and Wharton met and hired an FBI agent named John O’Neill to run security.
[128] It was reported that O’Neill “started out as an FBI support employee and worked his way up to titles such as assistant special agent in charge and section chief in charge of the counterterrorism division. In his 31-year career with the FBI, John O’Neill investigated nearly every terrorist attack aver attributed to Al Qaeda, many of those under the direction and close supervision of FBI Director Louis Freeh. “O’Neill … had been a key part of the investigation of the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen last year.”
[129]
O’Neill was known to dress like a gangster, and to fraternize with gangsters. He was also dating several women at the same time and was lying to all of them. A few weeks before 9/11, O’Neill got serious about returning to his Catholic faith and began going to mass every day. He repeatedly told people that he felt something was going to happen. On his second day at his WTC office, on the 34th floor, O’Neill was killed when the attacks occurred, although not immediately. It was reported that O’Neill escaped the building but returned in an attempt to help others.
In 2007, Larry Silverstein was awarded a $4.55 billion settlement in insurance payouts for the destruction of the WTC, as a result of the largest insurance claim ever made.
