How many ‘secret agents’ did it take to screw up 9/11?
April 22, 2010
Were ‘hundreds, maybe thousands’ of covert operatives really required to successfully execute the attacks of September 11th?
Jeremy Baker
How many actual individuals were in fact really needed to carry out a black operation as complex and audacious as 9/11? Moreover, how could this alleged small army of covert operatives ever be relied upon to keep their mouths shut?
It’s a good question, one well worth addressing. But you certainly can’t answer the ‘hundreds, maybe thousands’ question thoroughly in a five minute interview on Morning Joe or The Ed Show. Brief references and sound bites in regard to 9/11 often leave the neophyte more confused than illuminated. After all, getting to the bottom of what really happened on 9/11 can be a complicated and time consuming challenge, one that requires commitment and a thorough examination of the evidence.
So, as dramatic and complex as the attacks may have been, could it instead have been only a relatively scant force of ‘agents’ in key positions that were able to control and execute every aspect of the attacks? Let’s take a good look at this question and give it the time and attention it deserves.
“…to successfully execute.”
First things first; just exactly how successful were the attacks of September 11th? The assertion that 9/11 was a well oiled plan that came off without a hitch may itself be erroneous and could spin the ‘hundreds, maybe thousands’ question in ways that it was not likely intended.
Several theories about the purpose and ultimate destination of hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 have been debated over the years. We still don’t know exactly where it was headed and for what purpose, but was it really part of the original scheme to hijack the plane, fly it over rural Pennsylvania and then blow it up in midair? Compared to how the other hijacked flights were put to use that day, it seems unlikely. Flight 93 must have been a botched part of the plan, but it probably had nothing to do with patriotic passengers storming the cockpit.
The video record of the suspicious collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 has essentially become the Zapruder film of 9/11. But could the belated implosion of WTC 7 actually have been one monumental blunder? Compelling evidence compiled since 9/11appears to indicate that the conspirators originally pushed the button on WTC 7 shortly after the collapse of the North Tower when Building 7’s obvious demolition would be well hidden under a rising cloud of debris. But when the smoke cleared, Building 7 was still standing intact; the demolition system had failed.
The idea that 9/11 may well have been at least partly a bust should be a heartening prospect to activists. When hubris outweighs competence at the highest levels, “cock-ups” of all kinds are certainly to be expected. And nothing attracts more attention than well publicized blunders. On the other hand, 9/11 did generate just enough public support to effectively squelch any crippling resistance from the anti-war faction to the U.S.’s forays into Iraq and Afghanistan.
Whether 9/11 was a success or a failure for the conspirators has yet to be determined and will have much to do with the ultimate success or failure of the 9/11 movement.
The Quality of the Question(er)
I had a nightmare a few weeks ago. I was a guest on The View.
Elizabeth Hasselbeck: “Mr. Baker, it would have taken hundreds, maybe even thousands of secret agents to plan and then execute a conspiracy as big as 9/11. And yet none of them have blown the whistle. That is, like, totally not possible.”
But I was ready for her:
“Elizabeth, the answer to this one question alone would take the rest of the program to thoroughly examine, but let me start by asking you a question. What convincing evidence can you cite that proves that the basic premise of your question is valid; that it would have indeed, as you say, taken ‘hundreds, maybe thousands’ of ‘secret agents’ to ‘do’ 9/11?”
Since the beginning, 9/11 truth advocates have been required to prove their extremely controversial views with meticulous research and carefully presented evidence, but our detractors often shoot from the hip at will. And when these people confront us with erroneous assertions folded into booby trapped questions, they must be called out. The assumption that 9/11 required hundreds of operatives is erroneous at best and to flippantly cite it as fact is irresponsible.
Recently (amazingly) Geraldo Rivera interviewed Alex Jones on Fox News. Geraldo was surprisingly cordial and Alex was quite good, but when a Fox News spokes-model was brought in to the discussion and claimed that there is “absolutely no evidence” that 9/11 was an inside job, I wish that Alex had responded by saying something like:
“Excuse me but who are you and why are you here? Usually when an ‘expert commentator’ is brought in, they are just that, an expert in the field being discussed. What work have you done on this vast subject that makes your insights so indispensable to the discussion? The ‘no evidence’ claim has always been bogus and no amount of repetition on your part will make it any less so.”
The Pre-game
When you want to put as much control as possible into the hands of the fewest number of people, much can be accomplished by simply rearranging the deck of cards before you deal. In the case of 9/11, the deck was clearly stacked high.
When Manhattan developer Larry Silverstein took control of the entire World Trade Center complex just weeks before 9/11, the number one terrorist target in the western hemisphere was suddenly taken out of the control of the Port Authority—the city agency that had always run the facility since it was built thirty years before—and, for the first time, put in the hands of a private consortium of business men. The ninety-nine year lease deal that Silverstein made with the city of New York would presumably put every operational aspect of the WTC into the hands of a board of directors (or an even smaller cadre within the board) who could more effectively keep every part of the plot well within the family.
In June of 2001, fifty years of tried and true Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) regarding the interception of hijacked domestic aircraft were abruptly taken out of the hands of the FAA and rerouted to the Pentagon—specifically, to the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. When Rumsfeld later claimed that he had no idea that Flight 77 was headed toward the Pentagon until it was hit (at 9:37AM, almost an hour and a half after the first reported hijacking) it would appear that either the new procedures set in place three months before 9/11 had failed miserably (even within the world’s most secure airspace) or that Rumsfeld simply had something else in mind for that morning.
For decades, clandestine agencies have been installing operatives in key positions all throughout the media, educational institutions, the corporate world, wherever their time and energy can best be spent to maximize control and, generally speaking, keep an eye on things. September of 2001 may well have represented the culmination of this effort, a time when all the necessary mechanisms were finally in place to usher in the ‘New American Century.’
High Tech-tonics
In the final analysis, what is it really that technology allows us to? Is it inappropriate to define technology as “any device or tool that puts the capacity to perform the tasks of the many into the hands of the few”? How many times have we heard social critics condemn a new technology because of how many people it would put out of work?
Whether or not 9/11 required any particularly exotic hardware is a good question. There’s nothing exotic about the devices required to remotely commandeer aircraft mid-flight and pilot them to any location on the planet, a tactic that may have simplified the pseudo-hijackings considerably. Such technology, ironically intended for use originally as anti-hijacking tools, has been with us for decades.
Technology also allows the control of many disparate activities to be routed to one (or very few) locations where covert conductors can manipulate and orchestrate ‘bold symphonies of intrigue.’ The Office of Emergency Management (OEM) bunker on the 23rd floor of WTC 7 and the command center in the basement of the Whitehouse where Dick Cheney spent the morning are just two locations cited by researchers as possible conspiratorial control centers on 9/11.
Certainly the use of applied technology in an ‘op’ like 9/11 would drastically reduce the number of actual flesh and blood participants in the game, any of whom could, at any time, betray the plot unintentionally, become subject to blackmail or, worse yet, grow a conscience and speak out about some of the horrendous things they took part in that day.
Psychological testing
During an interview with Charlie Rose, Valerie Plame described the intense psychological training she endured when she first joined the CIA. Imagine the implications. Using the latest in sophisticated psychological analysis, how hard would it be to pick and choose, among thousands of new recruits, the workers, the soldiers, the “Oswalds” and the “Osamas?”
First, you could cull out the dim bulbs for desk jobs and menial tasks. Next, you could weed out the true-blues and the do-gooders and make sure they are kept well away from any particularly shady ‘ops.’ But you could also pick out the psychopaths, or “asteroids,” those well suited for the down and dirty work—the super patriots and automatons, who do what they’re told and never ask questions. It’s just not in their nature.
In 1961, Yale professor Stanley Milgram recruited participants for an ‘obedience study.’ He instructed them to administer electric shocks of increasing intensity to a man restrained in the next room. Though some of the participants protested, all of them, more or less, did what they were told, even as the man’s screams became more and more desperate. The ‘victim’ was an actor and his screams were not real, but the lessons Milgram taught us about the human tendency to acquiesce to authority are timeless.
“Does Barbara Walters believe the conclusions of the
Warren Commission Report because she is a famous, successful newswoman or is Barbara Walters a famous, successful newswoman because she believes in the conclusions
of the Warren Commission Report?”
From the first moment soldiers enter basic training, they have hammered into them the strict dictate to ‘go where we say, do what you’re told and don’t ask questions.’ Similar climates are cultivated in government, corporations and the clandestine agencies. How many of those who took part in the operational aspects of 9/11 were specifically chosen because they learned this lesson particularly well?
How many of those who have risen to positions of power all throughout government, the military and the media are truly people of exceptional character, vision and talent and how many were chosen simply because they could be relied upon to not disrupt the status quo? Does Barbara Walters believe the conclusions of the Warren Commission Report because she is a famous, successful newswoman or is Barbara Walters a famous, successful newswoman because she believes in the conclusions of the Warren Commission Report?
Overhead Compartmentalization
I wonder if the modeling agency where Geraldo found his 9/11 “expert” taught her that covert operations—“psy-ops,” “black-ops,” ”false flag” operations, etc.—quite often involve many people without their knowledge? If you didn’t know that you were playing a role in a covert operation, how could you ever spill the beans?
Bob Baer, the very real CIA agent who was loosely portrayed in the movie Syriana and once told radio show host Thom Hartmann that “the evidence points [to 9/11 being an inside job],” is also on record saying that most of his career was spent traveling the world doing what he was told and that he was often not given a glimpse of the big picture. The idea that every engineer, physicist, aerodynamics expert, plant supervisor or line worker who was involved in the design and construction of the stealth bomber were told what they were working on is highly unlikely.
Is it so hard to imagine that small teams of specially chosen workers, being carefully “handled” by covert agents, may have installed explosive devices at key structural points in the Twin Towers and Building 7 as part of an “elevator modernization” project—an effort that was actually undertaken nine months before 9/11—and never pieced together what they were really doing or did know but simply kept it quiet? Or that a Boeing worker may have been instructed to install a new ‘computer relay box’ in the cockpit of a passenger liner that he was told would ‘help stabilize turbulence displacement at high altitudes’ when, instead, the box was really an upgrade to existing anti-hijacking technology that would allow the plane to be more efficiently commandeered?
But there are also those who have claimed that explosive systems are secretly built into mega-high rises so that, in case of an emergency, the buildings can be brought down without toppling onto neighboring structures. In the case of highly secure government or military buildings, demolition systems could keep vital secrets out of the hands of terrorists who have taken over a building. And, as mentioned above, anti-hijacking, or ‘home run,’ technology has been built into (some) commercial aircraft since the ‘70s.
Whether we’re talking about the CIA, Mossad, NSA, MI-6, FBI or whoever, just think of the resources, talent, technology and access of the modern clandestine agency. Gaining access to restricted sites and dealing expertly with all manner of gadgets and gizmos is what these people are specifically trained for and would, as a rule, likely involve as few of them as possible.
Intimidation
The ways that ‘higher ups’ can bully and intimidate ‘lower downs’ before, during and after an event, are, of course, myriad. And they run the gamut from subtle to severe.
From the outset, we’re all subject to a certain inertia in human nature. Like cars on a highway in dense traffic, we are ‘encouraged’ to simply move forward in our lane and make no deviations. If we do, tires squeal, fenders crunch and mayhem ensues. Those who seek to manipulate and control the masses learned long ago that, to a large extent, the people can be relied upon to monitor themselves; only a minimal application of sloganeering and indoctrination are required. This technique is so effective that even harsh conservative agendas are often supported most by those who most stand to lose if such agendas are enacted.
Interestingly, much of what we see driving people in adulthood can be traced to what we observe in children in grade school. Cliques, clubs and cadres of all kinds are a fascination to us from an early age and are reinforced in us as adults (i.e. fraternities and sororities, private clubs, secret societies, even reality TV programming). The only people who love the exclusivity of membership or the thrill of being in on a good, juicy secret more than kids are adults. After all, adult’s secrets are usually much more intriguing.
Imagine being ‘in on’ the great secret of 9/11? Imagine the sense of entitlement such insider knowledge might provide to an ambitious, career minded ladder-climber wanting nothing more from life than to be admitted into the innermost of inner sanctums and smoky backrooms?
The few who rule the many are, generally speaking, cut from the same cloth. Whether we’re talking about soldiers, politicians, corporatists, media magnates, ‘spooks,’ even the mob, the basic rules are the same. A soldier seeks to take the next hill with the same single-minded intensity (and discretion) as a businessman pursuing his most recent profit projection or a mobster planning his next heist; collateral damage and a host of grim ‘externalities’ are all just factored in and forgotten. The thoughtful and philosophical need not apply.
Chief among these rules is, of course, anti-authority or omertà; a strict adherence to obedience, loyalty and secrecy, and the greater the stakes the higher the price paid for infractions. And when a secret as big as 9/11 is in danger of being compromised it’s a safe bet that the gloves fly off faster than in a hockey fight.
Like fingers clenched in a fist, the politicians, the media, the clandestine agencies, the military and the mob have become virtually indistinguishable from one another in our globalist age and are working hand in hand like never before. Certainly not all of those who run in these circles openly condone rampant criminality or had foreknowledge of the attacks—probably only a small minority fit this description—but those who do represent some of the most ruthless and mercenary individuals on the planet; people who wouldn’t blink at the prospect of solving problems Tony Soprano style (or, worse yet, Dick Cheney style). Remember, even devout conservative republicans, some of the most blinkered and intractable people in the world, referred to the neo-cons early on as “the crazies.”
The long list of techniques that such craven power mongers use to wield their power and enforce their will hardly need to be recounted here. Like an Egyptian pharaoh sealing workers in a tomb rather that risk having them divulge it’s location, those who would first plan and then execute an act as monstrous as 9/11 are certainly capable of anything, a lesson that many people who strolled Dealey Plaza on the morning of November 22nd, 1963—and possibly the 9/11 truth movement’s good friend Barry Jennings—have learned at bitter cost to them and their loved ones.
Ultra Mind Control
Despite how bizarre this subject may sound to some, we ignore it at our peril. The fact is that mind control—specifically trauma based dissociative disorder; i.e. multiple personalities artificially created within a single individual—has been a reality at least since the end of World War Two and possibly even as far back as the inquisition. And you don’t have to be a brain surgeon to realize just how useful such brutalized and manipulated people might be as players in a host of ‘special’ operations.
Related fairly realistically in such Hollywood movies as The Manchurian Candidate, such people are tortured to the point where their minds split into parts, or ‘altars’, that absorb the trauma that the individual cannot. These split personalities or ‘multiples’ can be controlled with trigger words (and other stimulus) and are then exploited for use in secure information transference, assassinations, even sexual services.
Highly classified information can be given to a specific altar within a multiple who is then sent to meet with their contact in person. The contact triggers the ‘altar’ that is carrying the information, the subject relays the information and then the contact switches the multiple back. No wires to tap, no signals to intercept, no codes to break. The subject has no idea what’s going on and therefore couldn’t spill the beans even if they wanted to.
Quite a few conspiracy researchers have claimed that Sirhan Sirhan, the alleged lone assassin of Robert Kennedy, fits the profile perfectly, but we don’t have to take their word for it. Dr. Herbert Siegel, one of the worlds leading experts on hypnosis—another tidier, more ubiquitous mind control technique—is the inventor of a test used to determine an individual’s “hypnotizability.” When he examined Sirhan’s case, especially his “total and complete amnesia” regarding his actions, Dr. Siegel determined that Sirhan was quite literally an “hypnosis virtuoso.” This personality type falls within the very highest percentile of those most susceptible to hypnosis.
Certainly the ‘psych’ testing CIA recruits undergo would do much to determine their “virtuosity” in many areas, not the least of which their “hypnotizability.” But the most disturbing thing about mind control is that the techniques mentioned above are just the ones we know about. Who can say what ‘new science’ is being explored in the scores of secret CIA prisons scattered throughout the planet. To a culture whose ‘virtuosity’ in making enemies is legendary, we do well to consider this question.
Numbers
So, how does one actually tally the number of actual individuals who were operationally involved in a scheme of the magnitude of 9/11 since its inception? Is it even possible to do so? Probably not.
But did it really take ‘hundreds, maybe thousands’ of ‘agents’—all in the know and willing to go to their graves with their secrets—to set in place the ‘pre-game’ measures mentioned above, or was it just a strident conservative agenda, meticulously installed over time, that held within it the seeds of madness?
Did it really take ‘hundreds, maybe thousands’ of ‘agents’ to install a demolition system in the Twin Towers and WTC 7, or was it a relatively small contingent of technicians who did the work, possibly in increments, possibly over the course of years, possibly all the while being kept in the dark as to what they were really doing and why?
Did it really take ‘hundreds, maybe thousands’ of ‘agents’ to install state of the art aircraft commandeering hardware in the ‘hijacked’ jets? Was it even necessary to do so when this kind of technology may have come standard in Boeings built since the ‘70s?
Did it really take ‘hundreds, maybe thousands’ of ‘agents’ to let Mohammed Atta and his buddies pass through security and board the planes that day or was it just a simple order handed down to boarding personnel from a supervisor? Did the alleged hijackers ever really board the planes at all (their names never appeared on passenger manifests)?
Did it really take ‘hundreds, maybe thousands’ of ‘agents’ to direct traffic and man the communication channels that day, or had things been set up so that very few people were manning just a handful of secret control rooms?
Did it really take ‘hundreds, maybe thousands’ of ‘agents’ to orchestrate and manipulate the information that reached the members of the 9/11 Commission and force them to play their parts in the cover up of the millennium, or was it just one man at the top, 9/11 Commission Executive Director and Bush administration insider Phillip Zelikow, who kept a strict vigil at the gates?
Would the plotters ever have even considered an operation as ambitious as 9/11 if it did involve large numbers of participants, any of whom might carelessly compromise the plan at any time? Wouldn’t step one in the planning stage have been to minimize the number of ‘agents’ in the loop and on the ground for a host of obvious reasons?
We may never be able to prove how many people took part in the planning and execution of the attacks of September 11th, but the assumption that a small army of conspirators was required to ‘do’ 9/11 is unprovable at best and, for many good reasons, highly unlikely. At a time when erroneous conjecture and uneducated opinionating have lost all meaning in a criminal investigation of literally stunning magnitude, the quality of the answers—but also the quality of the questions—must be responsibly evaluated.
Copyright Darkprints, 2010
Thanks to Canadian media critic and long time 9/11 truth activist Barrie Zwicker.
“WTC 7’s OEM Bunker Unmanned on 9/11”
August 16, 2008
Why was Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management bunker in WTC 7 empty and “deactivated” as the 9/11 spectacle unfolded?
Jeremy Baker
In 1999, NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani constructed a $13 million emergency command retreat on the 23rd floor of World Trade Center Building 7—an armored, self-contained facility designed to provide a safe haven for leadership in the event of a natural disaster or terrorist attack. But several first responders interviewed after 9/11 claim that the Office of Emergency Management’s Emergency Operations Center (OEMEOC) was empty and “deactivated” as early as 9AM on the morning of September 11th, a time when just such an emergency was in full swing.
As early as 8:24 AM, Air Traffic Controllers had become aware that American Airlines Flight 11 was in trouble and had possibly been hijacked. Any doubts were soon dispelled when, at 8:46, the enormous passenger jet slammed into the upper floors of the North Tower, the 110 storey skyscraper that stood one block south of WTC 7. It seems reasonable to assume (and has been stated as fact) that, as the spectacle unfolded, throngs of government officials and high ranking rescue personnel were flocking to the OEM bunker in WTC 7 to man their stations.
Jennings and Hess
But testimonies recorded after the attacks from rescue workers and OEM personnel tell a very different story. Barry Jennings, Deputy Director of the NYC Housing Authority’s Emergency Services Department, reported to the OEM bunker with a colleague, NYC’s corporation counsel Michael Hess, just before the second plane, Flight 175, hit the South Tower at 9:03. Unbelievably, they weren’t able to access the OEM: “We got up to the [OEMEOC], we couldn’t get in, we had to go back down.”[1] Police then escorted them to a freight elevator and they were finally able to return to the 23rd floor and enter the facility.
“To my amazement nobody’s there. I saw coffee that was still hot, still smoldering. They had screens all over the place, the screens were blank. So I didn’t know what was going on.” How the OEM bunker could be empty at a time when the brand new facility—built for just such a contingency—should have instead been bustling with activity is incomprehensible.
The fact that Jennings and Hess were only able to access the OEM after returning to the lobby and taking a freight elevator back up appears to indicate that the elevator door for the 23rd floor was locked, not the OEM bunker itself. It would seem that the entire floor was inaccessible, even to personnel with the proper clearances.
Any thought that Jennings and Hess might have arrived early, before other personnel had had a chance to appear, is countered by Jennings’ next statement that, shortly after his arrival, he was called by a “higher up” who seemed amazed that anyone was there. The man urged Jennings to “Get out of there. Get out of there now.” This command seems bizarre when, at that point in time, the only threat to the armored OEM bunker were the fires in the Twin Towers, the kind of threat it was designed to withstand. Since there had not been a single case in history of a high-rise fire resulting in a collapse, it’s hard to imagine that OEM personnel considered themselves vulnerable. The FDNY were busy setting up command posts in the lobbies of the Twin Towers—standard operating procedure for firefighters who know that steel framed skyscrapers don’t collapse when they burn. It’s also strange that the “higher up” that Jennings spoke with apparently didn’t elaborate as to why he and Hess were in danger.
The Explosion
But the reason why was made very clear moments later when, as they were leaving the building, a huge explosion occurred beneath them. The explosion was so strong that the landing they were on collapsed and they had to retreat back up to the eighth floor. Jennings recounts that he and Hess were trapped in darkness for “an hour and a half” and feared for their lives before finally being rescued by firefighters.
The fact that the OEM bunker was empty during the onset of the attacks is shocking enough but how OEM people could possibly have had foreknowledge of the explosion that Jennings and Hess experienced as they fled WTC 7, an event that has been recounted in none of the official reports into the collapse of WTC buildings that day, is shocking beyond all comprehension.
At the time that Jennings and Hess were attempting to flee the building (just after 9 AM), WTC 7 was undoubtedly filling with people who had just arrived for work. But Jennings recounts seeing no one else as he and Hess were leaving. Not a single other individual has stepped forth with stories of an explosion or a precarious escape at that time. Could the general emptiness of WTC 7 indicate that the building itself, not just the OEM, was somehow quarantined earlier that morning?
When Jennings was finally rescued (after the collapse of the North Tower) he stated that “The firefighter who took us down kept saying ‘do not look down.’ And I kept saying ‘why?’…and we’re stepping over people. And you know you can feel when you’re stepping over people.” Though officials have always maintained that no one died in WTC 7 on 9/11, this comment from a respected city worker appears to dramatically refute this claim.
Zarillo and Nahmod
Two other first responders interviewed after the attacks also testified that the OEM bunker had to be “activated” upon their arrival. According to EMT Richard Zarillo, the second plane hit about the time he and a colleague, Captain Abdo Nahmod, were crossing the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. This puts them in the city just after 9:03 AM. Their time of arrival at the WTC was estimated by Nahmod at about twenty minutes before the South Tower collapsed, or roughly 9:35, a half hour after Jennings and Hess left the OEM.
“Abdo and I went into No. 7, activated OEM, placed calls to EMS Citywide, RCC, to tell them we were there and we were activated.”[2] Nahmod confirms Zarillo’s account: “…[we] began to log onto the terminals, as well as inform the citywide dispatch supervisor that we were activating OEM at this time, and operations were to begin.”[3] Apparently Zarillo and Nahmod were “beginning” operations almost a full hour after the first plane hit the North Tower.
Zarrillo’s next statement adds a new twist: “Maybe five, ten minutes [after “activating OEM”] a rep from OEM came into the main room and said we need to evacuate the building; there’s a third plane inbound.” If the OEM bunker had been purged of personnel, what was an “OEM rep” still doing there an hour after the first plane hit? Where did the report of a “third plane inbound” originate and when was it first disseminated to rescue personnel?
The Third Plane
Presumably, as the spectacle at the WTC unfolded, well planned and rehearsed OEM emergency protocols would have gone into effect and, for the first time in its short history, the OEMEOC in Building 7 would have become fully “activated.” Personnel from all pertinent departments would scramble to the facility, assume their various positions and take charge.
As they assessed the shocking situation—a process that may have taken quite some time in the confusion of the moment—a second plane hit the South Tower and it was clear that a full scale terrorist attack was underway.
Any reports that a “third” plane was headed toward the area would obviously have had to come after the second plane hit and, therefore, certainly no earlier than shortly after 9:03. The decision to abandon the OEM would have pushed the clock forward five or ten minutes at minimum and the evacuation itself would have taken even longer. It’s hard, therefore, to imagine that the OEM bunker could have been emptied of personnel any earlier than 9:15 – 9:30. The fact that Jennings and Hess found themselves locked out of the facility shortly before 9AM is remarkable and, under the circumstances, hard to comprehend.
During a BBC interview[4], OEM Deputy Director Richard Rotanz claimed that the decision to evacuate the OEM bunker and WTC 7 came after they heard that the Pentagon was hit. “They were telling us that we had a plane hit us in the Pentagon and we now realized…we were under attack…[WTC 7] could have been a target…it could have been a serious target.”
This ridiculous comment from, of all people, the second in command at the OEM implies that it took his people until after two planes hit the WTC and another had hit the Pentagon (9:38 AM, almost 40 minutes after the first impact) to realize that the country was under attack. It’s also strange that what was apparently an unconfirmed report of a possible third plane (a report ultimately proven to be false) could have trumped the training and protocols of a large team of emergency personnel and shut down the entire 23rd floor of WTC 7.
The OEM Facility
Many of those who have come to believe that the attacks of 9/11 were an inside job—a classic “false-flag” deception designed to provoke war with the Islamic states—have raised suspicions about what was really going on at the OEM bunker that morning. Some have made the shocking claim that the OEM was actually an operations and control center for the conspirators, manned by a small cadre of insiders working covertly to orchestrate and execute every aspect of the attacks.
Though many people might find this theory to be “beyond the pale,” a long list of peculiarities surrounding the OEM facility’s planning and construction have generated disbelief and suspicion so strong that even those who loyally support the official version of the attacks have expressed concerns. And it can’t be argued that WTC 7 was virtually a nexus for many of the government, financial and intel agencies that 9/11 truth theorists have suggested were involved with the attacks.
Dark Origins
The completion of Mayor Giuliani’s OEM bunker in 1999, just a year and a half before 9/11, seems like uncanny timing in retrospect. The facility had its own air and water supply, emergency generators and was reportedly reinforced with blast resistant glass and other features designed to protect personnel who were to take charge should a catastrophic emergency arise.
But controversy dogged the new facility from the start. A New York Daily News article described the bunker as “the first-ever aerie-style bunker,” the vast majority (or, according to the Daily News, all) of similar facilities in the past having been built underground and well removed from potential high-risk areas. An emergency command retreat located high in a building would be vulnerable to a host of dangers that an underground facility would be immune to.
But questions about the wisdom of locating such a facility in the very midst of the number one terrorist target in the western hemisphere created the most controversy, especially when the WTC had already been attacked once in 1993. Having a large, well staffed, high-tech emergency command post destroyed by the very catastrophe it was designed to cope with (just as WTC 7 and the OEMEOC were on 9/11) would be inconvenient to say the least.
As if all this weren’t enough, several bizarre directives originating within the OEM have also fueled suspicion and attracted attention from rescue workers and 9/11 skeptics alike. The order to evacuate Building 7 and the area around the base of the Twin Towers because of an unconfirmed and ultimately false report that a possible third plane might be bearing down on the WTC complex allegedly originated with the Secret Service, but it was certainly disseminated by the OEM.
Oddly, the OEM ordered a similar evacuation of the Twin Towers at about the same time (approx. 9:30 AM) citing their certainty that the Twin Towers were about to collapse. In a world that has never seen the collapse of steel framed buildings before, this order was met with disbelief, especially from firefighters. But, later in the day, the OEM ordered the evacuation of the area around WTC 7 for much the same reason—OEM clairvoyance had somehow determined that Building 7 would be the third high-rise that day (and in history) to collapse due to fire.
These and other facts about the OEM bunker have raised enough suspicion among 9/11 skeptics in the years since the attacks, but the truly bizarre and relatively recent revelation that, after all the controversy and expense, after all the years of doubt and speculation, the facility was apparently shut down on, of all days, September 11th 2001, is certainly the most shocking.
Purging the OEM
If, as theorists speculate, the OEM facility was not what it claimed to be, it’s almost certain that only a tiny fraction of the OEM’s total staff were in on the conspiracy. The need to rid the sizable facility of the majority of its personnel would, therefore, be an essential part of the plan. Barring access to the floor on which the OEM bunker was located was a crude start, as Jennings and Hess can attest, but the facts seem to suggest that OEM personnel were contacted early and told not to report to the bunker altogether.
A small cadre of key, “in the know” people remaining in the bunker to preside over every last detail of the complex conspiracy (trajectories of the airplanes, demolition strategies for the Twin Towers, etc.) would have had no trouble keeping out of sight. The OEM bunker, the sole tenant of floor 23, was a vast facility with apparently one “main” room. Certainly there were many small, secure rooms where a tiny band of conspirators could do their work unmolested.
The fact that Zarillo and Nahmod were interrupted in their efforts to “activate OEM” in the empty facility by an “OEM rep” almost an hour after the first plane hit seems to fit the scenario perfectly. The “OEM rep,” busy preparing the demolition of the Twin Towers with his cohorts in an adjacent room, becomes aware that they have unwanted guests in the OEM offices. He then enters the “main room,” confronts Zarillo and Nahmod, tells them about the third plane coming in fast and orders them to leave immediately.
No Third Plane
Once Zarillo and Nahmod had been effectively purged from the scene, they were immediately told by rescue personnel in the lobby that there was no third plane after all but that a new evacuation order was in place, this time because the Twin Towers were about to collapse. When Zarillo relayed this bizarre order to a firefighter, it was met with surprise: “With a very confused look he said ‘who told you that?’ I said…‘OEM says the buildings are going to collapse; we need to get out.’” When Zarillo relayed the same message to the fire chief on the scene, he got much the same response: “[I found] Chief Ganci…we got a message that the buildings are going to collapse. His reply was ‘who the fuck told you that?’”
A similar scenario confronted Jennings and Hess, but with one big difference. Just after arriving at the bunker, Jennings is called by an unidentified superior who tells him to leave immediately. Whether the call originated from several blocks away or the next room over is anyone’s guess, but not a word is mentioned about a third plane. It would appear that Zarillo and Nahmod were the only ones to be booted from the OEM because of the third plane threat, and that was about 45 minutes later.
Professor Graeme MacQueen of McMaster University in Ontario sifted through hundreds of interviews made after 9/11 of rescue workers and firefighters. Almost all the individuals that mentioned the third plane threat in their interviews said that they first heard about it at approximately 9:30. Only a hand full of these accounts said that the order came earlier, but never any earlier than 9:15 or so. Any claim that the OEM shelter was abandoned early because of the third plane threat would, therefore, appear to be utterly implausible.
Questions
So, what was going on at WTC 7 and the OEM just as flight 11 hit the North Tower and the attacks of 9/11 got under way? What happened to all the people who had just arrived for work in WTC 7? Did all pertinent OEM and rescue personnel get an early message to not show up for work? If they did, what was the reason for this abrupt alteration of emergency protocols at a time when it hadn’t even been determined that anything other than an air emergency had occurred?
Not one person in an enormous building at least partly filled with CIA, DoD, SEC, IRS and Secret Service people—not to mention the employees of about a dozen banks and financial institutions—arriving for work that morning told tales of being caught in an enormous explosion as they fled WTC 7? Did these people as well get an order not to show up that morning? Why would they flee the building to begin with? They certainly weren’t in any immediate danger.
These and other questions about what was happening in WTC 7 that morning have yet to be answered. But the bizarre fact that the OEM bunker was empty when it should have been a bee’s hive of activity is only the latest revelation in the dark legacy of Building 7 and the shady emergency “ops” center the mayor built on its 23rd floor.
Copyright Darkprints, August, 2008
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“The BBC’s Demolition of 9/11 Truth”
July 16, 2008
by Jeremy Baker
Jeremy Baker, a.k.a., Darkprints 