9/11 Mysteries Viewer's Guide

1:07:00 Not long after the disaster, Lower Manhattan saw banners like this one:

1:07:07 Although they were idolized as cathedral-like symbols of power and triumph that pierced the New York skyline, the Twin Towers were big money-losers for the Port Authority of New York. They cost millions a year to equip with the basics – electricity, water, heat, air-conditioning, sewage and even oxygen – being airtight. As modern communications connected traders from all corners of the globe, tenancy in the Twin Towers continued to drop.

Text: “... a financial misfit, unsuited to fiber-optic and Internet technologies ... an albatross” – John Perkins Author, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

9/11 Mysteries claims that the “Twin Towers were big money-losers for the Port Authority of New York”. However, the film does not provide a source for its claims. All it would have taken to provide a huge credibility leap for the film was to include sources for the claims presented. The reason 9/11 Mysteries does not present a source for this claim is the simple fact that the claim is false.

In May, 1998, The New York Times published an article titled “Commercial Property/Downtown; At the World Trade Center, Things are Looking Up”. The article title is fairly self-explanatory, but the following should be noted:

In January 1997 we had about an 80 percent occupancy rate,'' said Cherrie Nanninga, director of real estate for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the complex. Twenty percent of 10.5 million square feet of space is 2.1 million, which would be a substantial building by itself.

But as a result of the last year's work, Ms. Nanninga, said the complex is over 90 percent occupied and expects to it reach the 95 percent mark by the end of the year. That, she said, would be about as full as the center is likely to get, since there is almost always someone moving in or out. ''Ninety-seven percent occupancy would be full,'' said Ms. Nanninga, whose name is pronounced NAN-in-gay.

True, that article is from 1998, but further research leads us to a Port Authority press release from February 2001. The tenancy problems at the World Trade Center did not return. In fact, things had only improved since May 1998.

As Real Estate Director, a position Mrs. Nanninga has held since 1996, the occupancy rate at the trade center has risen from 78 percent to a healthy 98 percent, retail soared in the trade center's mall, and available office space in the Newark Legal Center has nearly been filled.

Today, only about 250,000 of the 10.4 million square feet of office space in the trade center remains vacant. And the legal center has an occupancy rate of over 99 percent.

As you may have noted, there are no signs of tenancy problems contained in the Port Authority press release. In fact, the Port Authority document outlines several distinct improvements.

Sales at the trade center's retail mall also have risen dramatically. In 1996, the mall's retail establishments averaged approximately $500 per square foot. Today, sales have doubled, and are expected to reach $900 per square foot by the end of this year, which is expected to make the trade center mall the third most profitable in the country. And major national retailers, such as Banana Republic, Coach and Godiva have opened stores in the trade center mall to cater to a daily audience of 40,000 employees and thousands of visitors. Many of these retailers indicate that their trade center stores are among their top sales producers in the country.

Another claim made by 9/11 Mysteries is that the Twin Towers were “big money-losers for the Port Authority of New York”. Again, we are not provided with a source. The only evidence offered to back this claim up relates to expenditures. 9/11 Mysteries states that because the World Trade Center needed to be provided with “electricity, water, heat, air-conditioning, sewage and even oxygen”, the towers were losing millions of dollars for the Port Authority. This is not a valid investigation and is certainly not suitable in any documentary.

The point is that all buildings need to be equipped with these basics. Just because they cost millions of dollars to provide, does not mean that the building is losing money. This is why tenants pay rent. If the Twin Towers were losing money at 98% capacity, the Port Authority would have raised the cost of rent for tenants. It is safe to assume that financial analysts would be more than capable of setting tenancy rates high enough to cover the buildings costs, especially when the buildings were almost full.

9/11 Mysteries makes the unusual claim that the Twin Towers were “airtight”. In truth, any building that has windows that open and doors that allow people to enter the building is not airtight at all. The unsubstantiated claim that the Twin Towers were “airtight” fails even the most basic scrutiny.

Finally, we are given a quote in text format by John Perkins, author of “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”. What 9/11 Mysteries fails to explain to their viewers is that Perkins’ comment is based on his own opinion, and not on factual data or analysis.

1:07:42 The towers presented another problem. Decades ago, their steel beams had been sprayed with fireproof asbestos -- a cancer-causing material banned from use in building in the mid-1980s. Although the World Trade Center complex was given several waivers, it was expected to “clean up its act.”

1:08:02 But to remove the asbestos from every supporting beam in the Twin Towers would have been almost undoable. Quotes for this clean-up ran over a billion, and no insurance company was willing to bear the cost. (pause) An urban renewal project of ,b>unfathomable proportions.

Again, 9/11 Mysteries makes an unsourced claim. This time, 9/11 Mysteries claims that quotes for a clean-up of the asbestos in the towers would have cost more than a billion dollars. This is highly incorrect.

U.S. District Judge John W. Bissell in early February threw out the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey's final claims in a longstanding suit against dozens of insurers over coverage of more than $600 million in asbestos abatement costs at the World Trade Center, New York's three major airports and other Port Authority properties.

The suit sought recovery of the Port Authority's huge expenses of removing asbestos from hundreds of properties ranging from the enormous World Trade Center complex-which represented more than $200 million of the abatement costs-to bridge and tunnel toll booths.

The best data that shows the cost of removing all the asbestos contained within the World Trade Center complex was “more than $200 million”, clearly not “over a billion” like 9/11 Mysteries told us.

There is no reason to believe that the asbestos issues in the World Trade Center were unmanageable.

1:08:21 Given the towers’ issues and problems, September 11th proved an unexpected bonanza. The Trade Center was built in the 1960s to revive a rundown area of New York, and 40 years later urban renewal could again take place.

1:08:40 Two white elephants were removed, and a brand-new complex is in the works. The full height of the new “Freedom Tower” will soar to 1776 feet.

Text: “It is going to be a symbol of our freedom and independence” – New York Governor George Pataki

For more information on the serious amounts of money that was lost on 9/11, please see the section of this guide that deals with the “Who Knew?” section of 9/11 Mysteries (section 2.17).

The Freedom Tower will cost extremely large amounts of money to build. Much more than the $200 million that would have been required to remove the asbestos in the World Trade Center.

In conclusion, we have shown that the World Trade Center did not have tenancy problems; they did not have money problems; and there is no reason to believe that asbestos problems were not manageable. There was no motive for the Port Authority of New York to destroy the World Trade Center as 9/11 Mysteries suggests.

1:08:58 The suffocating dust that engulfed Manhattan was much more than dust. It was pulverized concrete, glass, metals, containing lead, mercury, dioxins, benzene – and, of course, asbestos. None of that was healthy for any living thing.

1:09:15 Today, thousands of rescue workers have developed lung cancer and serious, permanent health conditions. And the rescue dogs continue to die.

1:09:31 Text: “What you had was a ground-level municipal incinerator that smoldered for months ... burning up the most heavily computerized building in the world.” --Thomas Cahill, Ph.D., Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Sciences, University of California at Davis

1:09:43 “Patients have had black paste coming out of their pores ... They have reported bowel movements that are blue or green, and have smelled like smoke – despite the fact that they have not been at a fire scene for months.” – Jim Woodworth, President, New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project

1:09:57 Only three days after September 11th, Washington instructed the EPA to declare Manhattan safe and re-open Wall Street, though the air remained toxic.

1:10:18 Reporter: “A federal judge is blasting former head of the Environmental Protection Agency for telling New Yorkers it was safe to return to their homes and offices near Ground Zero soon after the 9/11 attacks. The judge called Christine Todd Whitman’s actions quote, ‘conscious shocking’ and refuse to grant her immunity…”

We agree that the decision to send NYC workers back to their jobs so soon after 9/11 was a poor decision. However, we do not believe it was done to cause harm.

New York City is the hub of the US economy. The economic fallout from 9/11 itself was severe, and keeping people away from Wall Street for any longer than three days would have only made it worse. Unlike 9/11 Mysteries, we do not believe that workers were sent back to work so early due to some kind of inside job. Due to the nature of the film, 9/11 Mysteries’ motivation for bringing this issue up in its film is questionable. In a film that accuses hundreds of people, both in and out of the government, of murder, raising this point implies that 9/11 Mysteries claims that workers were sent back early to die. We certainly got that impression – one of yet another unfounded accusation of murder with no supporting evidence.

1:10:35 “It was documented that the White House ordered EPA to tell these lies, to downplay the seriousness of the environmental hazards.” – Hugh Kaufman, EPA Senior Policy Analyst

In addition, 911 first responders who have fallen ill and applied for aid, have been denied.

Yet another false claim by 9/11 Mysteries. The first responders who were denied aid were denied extra aid, and not the original aid that 9/11 Mysteries claims they were denied. The reason that these heroic first responders were denied aid is contained in this article’s first paragraph.

Local lawmakers say the federal money used to pay the medical bills for September 11th first responders is running out.

This is the kind of 9/11 related issue that should be getting attention. Fantasist conspiracy theories of thermite, pyroclastic surges, controlled demolitions, free-fall and Larry Silverstein’s “pull it”, are only distracting people from real issues.