Nine! One! One! The Musical!

"I'm going to wash that man right out of my hair, I'm going to wash that man right out of my hair."

Howard Lutnick at Horace Mann: That September Mourn

Give this video a click and listen to "the greatest Jewish entertainer after Billy Joel," to quote a recent comment posted there. The music will provide a soothing background to this blog, and I think you're going to need it. What---you want Barbra? If Cantor Fitzgerald's CEO, Howard Lutnick, was tasked with the synthetic simulation cover role of "taking his child to his first day of kindergarten" --conceived as a sort of symmetrical mini-me moment to George Bush's My Pet Goat---then he was under rehearsed or the script got rewritten. Either that or the state of American journalism is so poor it is difficult to reconcile the intention behind the "truth" anymore. Some bits of information are single-source, and found only in the foreign media. An article in The Spectator, Mar 15, 2003, by Inigo Thomas, for instance, provides the satisfying knowledge of a scheduled start time for school, when the locked gates are opened

"Howard Lutnick, like 11 employees who were sacked by Cantor the previous day, was lucky. On the morning of the 11th, he took his son Kyle to school; it was the first day of the fall term, and the gates of Horace Mann on the Upper East Side Manhattan's 'Gold Coast' - didn't open until 8.45. There's a photograph in this book of father and son just before Kyle goes to class: the caption beneath it begins, 'The last good day of my life.'"

This lucky fact saved Lutnick's life, and Meryl Gordon, writing in New York Magazine, expands upon this luck factor in Howard Lutnick's Second Life,

"The luckiest people in New York? The twenty Cantor Fitzgerald staff members let go on Monday, September 10, most of whom have loyally returned to the firm."

Lucky Lutnick has now been combined with loyalty, whatever the count. Is Thomas trying to pin things down here? Out of scores of media articles, nobody has clarified the usual start time to the work day at Cantor Fitzgerald. Was it 7:00am or 7:30 a.m.? Are the principles exempt? Why does Gordon report that 75 Cantor Fitzgerald technical-support-staff members were "alive only by luck; their workday at 1 World Trade Center started at 9 a.m." That wouldn't be luck at all, which implies divine chance, but rather, a schedule or routine implies fate at man's hands. Lutnick's first foray on Larry King Live on September 19th was an emotional and linguistic crap shoot

KING: ...Howard Lutnick. We began by asking Howard how many people he lost. HOWARD LUTNICK, CHAIRMAN & CEO, CANTOR FITZGERALD: It's over 17,000. I just can't -- actually can't look at the number. I can't get an exact number because I don't want to. KING: Now, tell us, you were supposed to be at work, but what happened? LUTNICK: It was my -- my 5-year-old had his first day of kindergarten, so I had dropped him off at (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Kindergarten, and it was his first day of big-boy school. And then I went -- so I was a little late getting down to the office. KING: Where were you when all this hit? LUTNICK: Just leaving the -- just leaving the school. And... KING: How did you hear about it? LUTNICK: Just my phone rang, and they said, you know, the building was hit by a plane, and I was thinking it was sort of like a -- a small, like a Piper Cub or something like that. So I got in the car and started driving down the left side trying to get there as fast as I could. And I could see the smoke from downtown, and I was --I just had to get there. CNN.com - Transcripts

I can see how saying 700 could be misheard for 1,700, but 17 thousand must be a transcription error. I can't check it since the actual interview tape can't be found anywhere on the web, which is odd in the age of YouTube. Lutnick's second go around on Larry King Live on February 22, 2002, was still drifty, but a bit more composed. He almost forgets the point of the question until he's prompted by King.

"First, for just a little recap, Howard, where were you that morning? HOWARD LUTNICK, CEO, CANTOR FITZGERALD: I took my son to his first day of kindergarten. It was his first day of school, so I took him up to school and dropped him off, and then was heading down to the office. KING: How did you hear about it? LUTNICK: Well, I had a call in the school that someone was looking for me, and then I -- and then someone said a plane had hit the Trade Center, so I went running downstairs and jumped in the car and started going downtown to the Trade Center. And then when I was in the car I could see the smoke coming out of the building on the way down. CNN.com - Transcripts

His third appearance on Larry King, exactly one year later to the day, was a book tour interview of Lutnick and a hired hagiographer, his college tennis teammate, Tom Barbash. Larry King stays on message, repeating three times in one question. "first day of school."

KING: There is an incredible photo in the book, taken at 8:45 a.m. 9/11. Howard has just taken his son, Kyle, to his first day at kindergarten at Horace Mann. The first day of school. At 8:46, American Flight 11 bound for L.A. from Boston tore into the north side of the WTC Tower. The picture was just a memento of his first day, Howard? LUTNICK: Sure. The classic first-day photo, my son with his, you know, wet hair around his ears, standing on his backpack right in front of the school. And I kneeled down next to him to take that picture, and basically that was the moment that saved my life, and my boys know that they saved my life by taking them to school. KING: And refresh our memory. How did you learn of the tragedy? LUTNICK: Well, as I walked him upstairs to his first day of kindergarten, my phone beeped, and you know, I couldn't get a signal. And then, the school administrator said, "Mr. Lutnick, there's a call for you." And I picked up the phone, and it was Jimmy Mayo, my driver who features in the book quite a bit. And he said, "A plane has hit the building." And I'm thinking Piper Cub. And so, I run down the stairs and get in the car, and we drive right to the building. And I get to stand in the door [?] of the building, grabbing people as they come out, and of course, then Tower Two falls. If Tower One falls, I'm not on this program, but because Tower Two fell, and I ran from that tornado of smoke and I was maybe 20 yards from it, and it engulfed me. And then, you know, all of this is in the book, but also everybody else's views of exactly what happened are in the book as well. CNN.com - Transcripts

With Lutnick variously a trustee or on the board of directors of the Horace Mann school, these private conversations with higher level administrators sound entre nous and strictly sotto voce---and really suspicious to me. From one news article, I had pictured him with a earnest and well-born Princess Di from Armonk type perhaps---with all the parents sitting around a circle clapping hands, trying not to get sticky. Back in December 2001, in a New York Magazine article by Meryl Gordon, Howard Lutnick's Second Life, (which is strangely undated on either of its links; see the little dot? And the word "published?" That's where the date goes. Where is it?)

"Howard and Allison were perched on child-size chairs in their son's classroom when both their cell phones rang and then died. Howard was summoned by a school staff member to the lobby, where he learned from his driver, Maio, that a plane had hit the Trade Center. "I ran upstairs to Allison---'I got to go, I got to go.' "She ran with him to the car, saying, "Should I go with you?" "No," he insisted. "You stay."

Stay? How about "go home?" But I can't tell what's propelling this sequence forward. Is he afraid his cell-phone bill might be subpoenaed? It never bothered Ted Olsen! Lutnick forgets that he has photographed this moment, calling it "the last good day of my life," after which everything changes into horror and hysteria. We should be able to see the demarcation line then--with his voice quickening, as he recollects with ease, clarity and relief the moments to one side of the line, with his descent into pain and confusion when he moves over to the other side. As it is, he just sounds like daffy old George W. Bush all day long---and daffy never earned a dime his whole life. With Lutnick's 2007 compensation being $16,503,118.00, he could purchase quite a few trusteeships and board positions around town. Horace Mann Fundraising Campaign Update Then in an AP article, Cantor Fitzgerald Chief: Five Agonizing Years, from September 12, 2006, we can see Lutnick get another chance.

"This Sept. 11 happened to be the first day of kindergarten for his daughter, Casey."

Has Horace Mann made September 11th into a national holiday for launching the educations of scions and heirs? Well then---how appropriate. September 11 fell on a Monday in 2006, and on a Friday this year. Is there a standard start to the school year? Could somebody do an analysis, going back at least two decades, to see if the start dates and times haven't been altered or manipulated for some---unknown---reason. September 11 always falls after the Labor Day at least---anywhere from four to ten days afterward, if that spread is relevant. A very relevant fact is that Cantor Fitzgerald was in the process of downsizing its bond trading staff by 800 before 9-11 hit, as its proprietary digital technology was advanced. 500 bond traders had already been let go, with another 300 or so to go after the switchover to fully electronic trading took place, which happened on September 13, 2001. Coincidentally, the 800 figure was almost exactly the number who "died" on 9-11.

"Although much is made of the family-like nature of Cantor Fitzgerald, it was, and still is, a hard-nosed business. Nearly 500 people had lost their jobs before Sept. 11, and 300 more were about to be axed, made obsolete by the success of their electronic bond-trading network, said Peter DaPuzzo, co-president of equities." Knight Ridder

But were they laying off just bond traders in the restructuring before 9-11?

Heidi Olson, now chief administrative officer for equities, had left Cantor when the firm downsized just before the attacks; she came back to work the next day. Barbash

Although Tom Barbash doesn't specify, I believe the high-level Olson was let go on the Monday, and rehired on the Wednesday. Business Wire reported on Nov. 6, 2001, that 'Cantor Continues to Appoint New Senior Management,' naming Stephen M. Bliss as a co-head of the NASDAQ/ OTC stock trading business. Informing readers, without apparent self- consciousness, that

"Mr. Bliss rejoins Cantor's equities business after leaving in May 2001...Steve's rejoining the firm gave the team a sense of continuity in Cantor's relationships and way of doing business," said Philip Marber, head of Cantor's U.S. equities business.

Did he quit in May, or was he laid off? What did Bliss do for those three summer months between May and September? In a November 12, 2001 USAToday article, Cantor battles back from tragedy, by Noelle Knox, Lutnick plays his new hand, telling us God dealt it to him

"Bond trading had been shifting to electronic trading even before the attacks, and Lutnick says it is "unlikely" he will replace his bond brokers. "We are not going to try to get back to who we were," he says. "We are going to take the cards that have been dealt to us. Take the assets we still have, which are incredible, and just play a different way."

It was fortuitous that since the future pointed to eSpeed, Cantor's electronic trading program, the right people were spared

"Six of eSpeed's top technology executives, including [Matthew] Claus, [chief technology officer] had planned to go on an annual, 1-day fishing trip that day. The trip was canceled because of bad conditions on the Atlantic — but not until 8 a.m. All six were on their way to the office when the planes hit the towers, killing President Frederick Varacchi and 125 other eSpeed employees. "The six executives headed straight to the firm's New Jersey location and started rerouting the trading network. They worked around the clock, napping on the floor. One slept with his head propped on an upside-down coffee cup. When the bond markets reopened Sept. 13, eSpeed was up and running."

It was also lucky that Richard Breeden, the former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, served on the board of eSpeed, lest the government bond market, vital to national security, be disrupted.

"To the awe of Wall Street and government regulators, Cantor was able to get the company's U.S. eSpeed operations---a crucial link in the Treasury markets---up and running two days after the attack. "eSpeed---the publicly traded division of the privately held Cantor---is actually expected to be profitable in the fourth quarter [of 2001.] That day, eSpeed stock soars more than 20 percent, almost reaching its pre-September 11 level." Gordon

Writing on September 30, 2001, less than a month after the attacks, Maureen Fan of the Knight Ridder Tribune chain, proves she has a good ear for business dynamics:

"It's a funny group of people in the sense that they're hardened," said Peter Ryan, a managing director at Credit Lyonnais Securities. "It's a tough business and you have to have a thick veneer to survive in that environment." "The company's backup system in Rochelle Park, N.J., kicked in almost immediately after the attack and would have continued to hum if bond trading had not been suspended. Two days later, Cantor's electronic-broker system was up and running an hour before the bond market cranked up again, thanks to the all-night efforts of the company's surviving technology whizzes. "Cantor Fitzgerald was not the only hard-hit firm, but few were as tightly knit. A private partnership, the firm often hired the friends and family of existing employees. "This is such a close-knit firm, the salesmen usually knew the color of their client's houses," DaPuzzo said. "We have many sons of standing members of the Security Traders Association working for us," he added. "Nepotism makes our industry work because we know that if the father or mother is good, you know the son or daughter is good in this business." "Former employees have returned to help out." 'Victimized company tries to get on with business,'

To give other names to this power phenomena: mafia family [the Department of Defense comes to mind,] band of brothers, [firemen,] closed-shop construction companies [Pentagon contractors, Tully et al,] secret societies [Skull and Bones, Trogdor] affinity groups [BCO, VLV, Williamsboard] fraternal initiation orders, [Freemasonry, spoonies,] Clansmen, Amalgamated or Benefit Association, Oddfellows, [politicians] or Order of Mutual Protection League [I'll dump federal workers in here.] All of these centers of power are based on the keeping of the immoral immortal secrets, thus are diametrically at odds with the general application of the Golden Rule. I'd like to see them deconstructed since they corrupt and spoil our society's future. [I haven't yet mentioned "the Jews," who also have tribal loyalties down to a art form.] We have no more journalism left today. Let a decent enough interval go past and you can just get the original CIA guy they brought in to write the official insider-version of the truth, write for the business magazine: A Tale Of Renewal 9/11 FIVE YEARS LATER Tom Barbash, Howard Lutnick's college buddy and tennis teammate, doesn't have much of a literary resume, but he sure can land good academic jobs. He only published his first novel in 2002, as he neared 40. He was free to start work on the Cantor story as soon as the airspace reopened and allowed him to come to New York. The reviews for both books were often similar---in three words: rushed and ill-edited. But like the Gordon profile in New York Magazine, which comes with a particularly Jewish appreciation, which alternately protects and reveals Lutnick the subject, the narrative duties Barbash is tasked with come with a particular point of view. [See other blog] Gordon quotes Lutnick as saying his credibility is based on

"Two things allow me to communicate with my employees," he says. "I was there, and I lost my brother."

But there is no proof Lutnick was where he says he was, covered in white dust after the first tower's collapse. The two talking points that are repeated in every interview---"I lost my brother," and, "I was taking my son to his first day of school," are here joined by a third credential---"I was there." In an interview Lutnick gave the New York Times on September 15, 2001, is the most in-depth, first-person reporting of his experience at the base of the towers that morning. Lutnick says he "was standing by the door as people were streaming out," but he doesn't say which door. Then as the south tower started to crumble, he was running past Trinity Church graveyard. The climactic moment, when what he calls the "smoke" cloud catches up with him, seems marred by something beyond just Jewish self-consciousness:

"I crawl under a truck---no, it's smaller than a truck---it's like an S.U.V. I don't crawl all the way underneath because I'm afraid that something will fall and crush me under the truck. Of course, I don't think that if something falls and I'm not under the truck I'll get crushed anyway. This is not like a clever thing. So I'm halfway under the S.U.V."

This is poor story telling and bad lying and it's not off-the-cuff at that. In a Feb. 2, 2003, review by Rob Walker in the New York Times of the Lutnick/Barbash Cantor history, On Top Of the World, this all seems anticipated, as we are told Lutnick walks uptown to the Upper West Side apartment of the newly widowed wife of his best friend Doug---Jennifer Gardner

Lutnick understood, Tom Barbash writes in "On Top of the World," "that the fact that he wasn't in the building, even if it was to bring his son to his first day of kindergarten, will be a complicated thing for some people to accept." Lutnick is still covered with dust, and "he needs for her [Jennifer Gardner] to see him this way---not when he's cleaned up, and not when his mind is occupied with saving the company."

Walker points out the oddity of this attitude

"It's worth pausing, then, over the presence of mind that Barbash attributes to his college friend -- just hours after the disaster, Lutnick is thinking about how he "needs" people to see him, and about the business."

"Presence of mind" is a fair euphemism for foreknowledge. But in any case, this narrative is in conflict with the story Lutnick told in different New York Times article on September 15, 2001, 'Flinty Bond Trader Leads His Firm Out of the Rubble,' by Diana B. Henriques, and Jennifer 8. Lee

"Armed with that news, Mr. Lutnick walked on---44 blocks in all---to Mr. Merkel's home on Jane Street, a quiet old lane just south of 14th Street near the Hudson River. Another survivor was found, David Kravette, 40, who had gone to the lobby just before the attack to escort a visitor. Together, they walked more than two miles to Mr. Lutnick's apartment on the Upper East Side and immediately began making and receiving calls to try to trace missing workers."

So, no side trip to the West Side? There isn't much room for plausible deniability when you're yoked to your fellow Musketeers. For the official history to have failed to reconcile the plot with this early, primary-source storytelling is a gaff of gargantuan proportion. Gordon's December 9, 2001 New York Magazine article tells us pointblank the reason why Lutnick cut off the widow's paychecks on September 15: it was "to assure the bankers of his sangfroid."

"I needed my bankers to know that I was in control," Lutnick says. "That I wasn't sentimental and that I was no less motivated or driven to make my business survive."

It was a shock-and-awe war plan, but Lutnick got sentimental real quick when the negative publicity threatened to sink his, and his banker's, newly restructured enterprise. But even in advance of December, 2001, one banker seem happy

"He schmoozes on the phone with a pleased major investor, then takes a call from an Orthodox Jewish family distraught over their son's missing remains. "I know, I know, I'm just like you," he says, his voice cracking. He is still waiting for DNA tests to tell him that his brother, Gary, is really gone."

An article titled "47 Hours," in Baseline Magazine December 2001, tells an in-depth story of Cantor's rush to return their online business to service within two days, working out of their Rochelle Park, New Jersey backup facility. A problem presents itself here however, inasmuch as one of the authors of the piece is Edward Cone, who was one of the Four Musketeers from Lutnick's Haverford College days, the other two being the recently deceased Cantor colleagues Calvin Gooding and Douglas Gardner, and so Cone was an even closer friend of Lutnick's than Tom Barbash. In a piece apparently written up for the Greensboro NC News & Record, and now found on his personal radio weblog EdCone.com 'Word Up', Cone writes

But Howard Lutnick, Cantor's chairman and chief executive, was alive. He had taken his son to kindergarten and was running behind his usual schedule. Being a good dad saved his life on a morning when 658 of his employees died, including his brother, Gary, and his close friends Calvin and Doug. Calvin and Doug and Howard and I went to Haverford College. Doug became a vice-chair, Calvin a partner. A former colleague of mine at Forbes, who wrote a scathing article about Cantor a few years ago, appeared on "20/20" this fall to question Howard's integrity. Before he went on the air he called me to ask if I thought Howard was faking his tears. This about a man fresh from his brother's funeral, who stood up to eulogize his best friend, Doug, just five days after the attack. I shared the lectern with him in front of 1,100 mourners at Calvin's funeral, and I felt the genuine emotion in his words. People don't read about the time he spends with Doug's 5-year-old son, and the comfort he and his family provide for Calvin's widow. It seems absurd to have to defend the notion that this man who had lost his partners and his staff and the fairy-tale life he had willed into being is sincere in his grief.

It's funny to read that you don't read about something as you're reading about it. It would be easier to trust Cone's veracity if he didn't work so hard at defending Lutnick---especially when the facts are difficult to digest. Like the jaw-dropping altruism on display by eSpeed's competitors, in the Baseline Magazine article:

"The second problem, of fulfilling trades, was more difficult to resolve. Although Noviello's team was able to restore some of the applications that handle the financial back-office functions of the trading system, it was unable to reproduce the settlement system for all of eSpeed's products at the Rochelle Park site. Without being able to clear or settle transactions, eSpeed would be unable to open for business. "Here, help arrived in the form of one of eSpeed's competitors, ICI/ADP, [Automatic Data Processing, Inc./Information Catalysts Incorporated,] another electronic trading company, offered to take care of eSpeed’s clearing and settling of transactions through its own connection to banks. By Wednesday night, the eSpeed team had mapped its financial back-office system to ADP’s system, and had successfully sent test transactions to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and other banks. "ADP got the back-office component hooked up overnight, Compaq delivered 100 desktop computers at 2 a.m. on Wednesday and Verizon expedited the installation of voice lines and the transfer of some of eSpeed’s digital circuits."

I think this scenario is illogical in the extreme, not only in that ADP would do it, but that they could effect such a maneuver without advanced knowledge and planning. From the Gordon (December 10, 2001) New York magazine article:

"They are furiously fighting off competitors who would feed on the firm's misfortune." "The business of bond traders is people fighting for one hundredth of a penny," Breeden says."

The reference above to Forbes Magazine may refer to an article by Paul Maidment, 'Electronic Future Of Cantor Fitzgerald' from October 5, 2001, which has a few scathing things to say about Lutnick:

"Howard Lutnick, who is eSpeed's chief executive officer and Cantor Fitzgerald's chairman, confirmed to analysts on Oct. 4 that the group's electronic technology platform was "completely intact," but that most of its telephone brokers did not survive the devastation. "As a result, Cantor Fitzgerald, which operates the leading interbroker-dealer exchange for U.S. Treasuries, has halted its traditional voice trading of bonds and is conducting its business for now through its electronic arms: eSpeed for fixed income products and TradeSpark, which deals in energy products. "While the Cantor Fitzgerald voice brokerage operation has ceased, eSpeed's fully electronic market for U.S. Treasuries has been virtually unimpaired," Lutnick said. "ESpeed, which was spun off from Cantor Fitzgerald in December 1999--six months after being set up--and lost $3.3 million in revenue of $66 million in the six months to June 30, will also not replace its lost World Trade Center data center, but operate instead from its other existing centers in London and Rochelle Park, New Jersey."

The truth scathes if you let it. Like when you have an over-abundancy of redundancy with three data centers. Then when one is lost, and you still stick with just the two, to me, by not replacing the third center, it implies foreknowledge of the upcoming loss of one of them. I don't know how much more evidence the American public will require in order to be able to face the ugly truth here. The 300 bond traders who disappeared on 9-11 were facing a zero-sum future, as technology made their roles obsolete, at the same time a very big player with an extreme need was making them a covert offer they couldn't refuse. Surely the dividing line between these 300 workers and the 500 who were previously "downsized," was the demarcation between those who chose to forge new careers with minimal severance, and those who accepted a buy-out agreement---an early retirement package, if you will, surely more robust then anything they could have hoped to achieve on the outside---but one that came with a stiff personal cost---oblivion. Rendered into anonymity, their pained families half-knowing, briefed perhaps about some far-off date in the future, part of the tough-skinned Cantor family, trusted to keep a secret. Cone's co-author of the Baseline Magazine article, Sean Gallagher, was the magazine's technology editor. More recently, he has worked as the editor of Defense Systems, a monthly print publication and an internet news site for members of the Defense Department community involved in information technology and net-centric warfare, particularly C4ISR. Writing in-depth features on topics ranging from software-defined radio to cyberwarfare, and maintained a weblog on defense issues. It is surprising what survives in this world and what disappears. A CBS News piece about the Lutnick and Barbash history, 9/11 Book Follows Hard-Hit Firm, from Feb. 6, 2003, the interview background is described as:

"Lutnick and Barbash spoke at Cantor's temporary headquarters in midtown, where Lutnick's office decor includes fragments of Rodin sculptures salvaged from the trade center ruins, relics of the collection amassed by the firm's founder, Bernie Cantor."

In a disaster leaving no bodies, or body parts even, where not a single file cabinet was to be found afterward, collectible fragments of bronze art works could be salvaged and put on display. Even more incredible, the New York Times tells us a nearly complete work of art was located. In Born of Hell, Lost After Inferno; Rodin Work From Trade Center, a 28"-cast of Rodin's "Dante's: The Thinker," was found

"There's extraordinary symbolism, isn't there," said John L. Tancock, a vice president at Sotheby's auction house and the former curator of the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia. "They have survived in this state, and it can be viewed as an inspirational story."

But the Times' reports that city investigators believe the sculpture may have been stolen, after having been recovered by a firefighter at the disaster site late last year. But since

"the Cantor Fitzgerald bond trading firm and its chairman, Howard W. Lutnick, have refused to discuss in any depth the loss of its art collection."

it is difficult to pin down whether this is a case of a firemen looting, or of art collectors indulging in insurance fraud (and double-dipping in the bargain, if the art had been rescued in advance of September 11th, which would be my theory.) This would be a good place to end the story for now. Cantor's city survivors are temporarily housed on a floor in a Warburg building on Park Avenue

"Practically twice a day for weeks, the building has been evacuated because of bomb scares phoned in by some apparent wacko targeting Warburg. It's not helping Cantor's traumatized employees, though it has produced some darkly funny moments."

Somebody's got a hard on for Howard---not Warburg. If you think my analysis is too far out to be true, let me say---you haven't seen anything yet. Be prepared for when the face of evil shows itself. It is far worse than anything you can imagine. That's why we were willing to sleepwalk for so long, and like little children, pull the covers over our heads and cry. More 9/11 Cantor Fitzgerald, Goldman Sachs, Federal Reserve, UST, Bush et al 'Financial Terrorism,' By: V.K. Durham Mark Carter posting on the Let's Roll forums, 'The Cantor Fitzgerald mystery?' November 18, 2008, has a truly ambitious conspiracy---the parameters of evil are quite grand! Give it a shot. The Federal Reserve system, the takeover of the Banking system, and the Rothschilds. USAToday ______________________________________________________________________________

Gary Lutnick and the Mysterious Ann de Sollar

Poor little Howard Lutnick. Such a heavy PR load he has to carry. I thought I'd Google his brother Gary's name in quotation marks to see if he was picking up any of the slack.

Howard couldn't give an interview for months without mentioning at least two talking points: 1) he took his son to his first day of school, and 2) he lost his brother Gary in the Towers that morning. If there was time he would mention Cuba, pardon me, Calvin Gooding, and his "best friend," Doug Gardner. The basketball court and the Integrated Athletic Center.

We hear the name Gary Lutnick mentioned hundreds of times, but we never learn anything about the young martyr. Other than a brief New York Times profile of Gary, which isn't developed much beyond toys, video games and jet skis, it's almost as if Gary Lutnick didn't really exist---as though he were a phantom.

But look---he had a girlfriend. On October 29, 2001, she's interviewed on Larry King Live, where she plays his last telephone message to her, left as he's supposedly roasting to death on the 105th floor of the North tower. She's the last of eleven guests on that evening's show. Oh my. She does have a haughty tone. Works for the Duchess of York's personal charity, we are told. Would that be Weight Watchers by any chance dear?

One blind date, "and it was, I think, fate, because there was a horrible snowstorm and Gary got snowed in for three days. So we had a long first date, and it got very serious very quickly. .." Nice. Very nice.
Snow storm in New England. But then Larry King goes and spoils the archetype with a non sequitur

KING: "So serious that you were converting to Judaism, right?"

What, Larry! Was Gary whacked with a shofar?

But the young lady, Ann de Sollar, flies off to Hawaii for some in-depth work on her inner shiksa, to attend a Tony Robbins seminar, "and Tony said something to the whole audience [oh! I was so embarrassed!] -- it wasn't just to me. But he said, "you cannot dance in the present if you're carrying around a ball and chain from the past." And it clicked.

Wow. An eureka moment for sure.
But you lying, thieving lizard-livered, malicious misfits: Ann de Sollar has only six Google Entries! NOTHING BEYOND THE LARRY KING INTERVIEW! SHE IS A MADE_UP CODE: ANN OF THE DOLLARS!

Ann of the dollars. There. I hope you're happy. Whore ass man.

And we can know where the Duchess of York connection comes from. Did Sarah provide the bona fides to pass muster with the CNN producers? Larry King was obviously briefed. So who's going to take the fall for this one? The Media or the Duchess, I wonder?

SARAH FERGUSON ATTENDS CANCER RESEARCH BENEFIT HONORING HOWARD LUTNICK- New York Post 74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:c6IGnw9CzOoJ:www.n...

October 24, 2008 --WHEN ever-loyal Sarah Ferguson heard Denise Rich was honoring Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick at her cancer research fund-raiser, the former Duchess of York jetted over from London. It seems Lutnick and his wife, Allison, once gave office space to the frisky redhead when her marriage to Prince Andrew went bad, helping her back on her feet. Lutnick has raised $180 million for survivors of Cantor employers killed on 9/11. Actor Evan Handler - who says he's best known as "the bald-headed Jewish lawyer on 'Sex and the City' " - told the crowd about his bone narrow transplant after a leukemia diagnosis in 1985. "What doesn't kill you," he joked, "screws you up for a really long time." Helping raise $1.7 million for Gabrielle's Angel Foundation were jeweler Lorraine Schwartz, Eric and Kimberly Guilfoyle Villency, plus Patti LaBelle and Gladys Knight, who rattled the rafters at Cipriani Wall Street.

A Previously Undisclosed Jason Ingersoll Image From the Pentagon on 9/11

Was it a narrative dud? Do bears shit in the woods?

Its caption reads:

"A firefighter places an American flag on his firetruck. The flag was found undamaged inside the Pentagon after a hijacked airliner crashed into the building, Sept. 11, 2001. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Jason Ingersoll" Link

["Defend America: U.S. Department of Defense News About the War on Terrorism Photo Essays Remembering 9/11]

Um, excuse me, but why is this fireman stealing government property? Next thing you know it'll be stacks of Levi's jeans. And who is Rudi Williams?

"A National Guard military policeman stands guard in a Pentagon hallway to prevent people from entering the darkened area behind him that leads to the site where a hijacked airliner crashed into the building, Sept. 11, 2001. Defense Dept. photo by Rudi Williams" Link

Why is the National Guard serving this duty? Don't they have to be officially called out?

'The Falling Man'

The Esquire Magazine article from September 2003, by Tom Junod that was the basis of this 2006 documentary video of the same name, is further evidence that all who participated in the narrative of 9/11 are co-conspirators to the central crime of the Big Lie. Tasked with the production, simulation, and dissemination of a fearful product, upon which their lizard masters sup and feast, it is now coming into focus that there are no elements outside the paradigm---no light for any contrast or highlighting. It is time we form ranks in opposition to this inhuman agenda of ritualistic and sacrificial murder, and shine the light of truth on these abysmal scenes.
*

*
No other rational begins to make sense of the depravity afoot in the 9/11 drama, and in its aftermath--with a million dead in the illegal and immoral wars that stemmed from it, when two of the western world's religions ganged up on an innocent third shoot of Abraham. Fear and torture are now leading us into the threat of famine and pestilence---all of it in the name of a politics not of this planet.

There are many names associated with this film, a list ripe for the tumbrels, for the dockets, and for the tribunals---so let them be warned. Are they NSA or CIA, FEMA, or maybe Mossad? We know them as merely good enough for government work; soft in the belly. It is a center that will not hold.

Unbelievable for me personally is Eric Lipton from the New York Times revealing his shadow government allegiances, and his bias for the official story, a version which any third-grader could easily debunk at this stage. He attempts to lend his company's stature to the story, much like Popular Mechanics did some time ago. He and the Times can expect to be brought down low by this. Is Lipton Jewish? Is his heart really in Zion? Listen to the tone of his voice as he explicates some of "the physics" from that day

"The plane hit the North tower in a very central way, resulting in the fuel from the wings pouring into the building itself. The fuel, and the fire that was created in the instant that it hit, spread so far that the people standing in the lobby were burned from the fireball that came out of the elevator shaft. And you can see the smoke coming out from all the way up above Windows on the World within minutes of the impact."

"The fire continued to spread, burning up the furniture, and office papers and the combustible materials throughout the buildings and, and, the tower itself became like a chimney, sending the smoke up towards the top of the tower. And as time passed the, the situation became desperate."

"There was a long period of time when people were, you know, just hanging out by the windows, waving things. You saw one man just, you know, waving a long white---is it a tablecloth?---it's not clear."

Every bit of it is synthetic nonsense: the magical properties of fuel-filled jet wings slicing like a hot knife through the butter of the trade tower's heavy structural steel exterior facades, then pouring down non-continuous shafts, to puddle explosively at the base.

This story began with Richard Drew of the Associated Press, part of the corrupt crew of image makers found over at The Digital Journalist, where Nemesis, the goddess of divine retribution is soon to stalk. Drew took what is truly an iconic shot of a man serving as a missile. For all the grave talk of symbolism in this film, nobody grasps what the image really is representing---that our world was being turned upside down that morning.

I tried to keep an open, if skeptical, mind as I watched the video, but late in the show I felt an epiphany--- as the manipulation of watching the entire descent of the Falling Man---27 seconds worth of twisting and turning, from the 1:06:58 mark, where we first see him make his appearance somewhere from within the level of charred floors, to the 1:07:25 mark, when his landing is hidden behind the screen that dissolves into white light. What the good-looking researcher, Andrew Chaikivsky, has are contacts in high places with their hands on the film. The necrophiliacs will have their prurient interests indulged with this one.

I still can't get the horse before the cart though, and it was probably designed that way. Were these jumpers planned and anticipated? Did anyone actually jump from the buildings that day, or did they use video trickery for that purpose too? The families are clearly on board, sold out to the God of Seven Figures. Were their qualifying victims rendered, or double-crossed and murdered elsewhere? Were they voluntary suicides perhaps, like the Hasidim dressed up like Palestinians dressed up like Hasidim acting as suicide bombers?

Meeting many of these players here for the first time, like Michael Lomonaco, Executive Chef of Widows on the World, who "would have been there, but he was running late because he stopped at an opticians," or Melissa Trumbull, restaurant director, and Glenn Vogt, general manager of Windows on the World, defines the parameters of those overtly chosen and spared. Listening to their artificial and false sentiment, the cost of participation is clear, it's dear---lost shades wandering morbidly in the vale from here on.

The narrator's voice-over, by the professional English actor, Steven Mackintosh, is eminently suited for the lugubrious pace of the work. Throw in some piano and a solitary violin and you could have a holocaust documentary. But hearing the first words out of his mouth be the tired canard, "it was the most photographed and videotaped day in history," did not endear him to me or the truth. If so Mr. Mackintosh, since we're on the subject of the jumpers, show me a single image depicting jumping from the south tower. The narrow slice of reality we were given is made suspect by your guile and deceit.

The filmmakers invent a plot hook, "someone who provided justification for his mission [Junod's explication of the jumper's identities.] Someone who had found comfort and peace by accepting that his loved one may have jumped"---Richard Pecorella. His story in his own words

"It had to be so intense up there and there was no other way out, that it was either burn alive, or go quickly. I envisioned that it had to be The Towering Inferno, and from the photos I saw, it obviously was. Who knows how much smoke was in there---do you suffocate to death, or do you jump? I think it was brave to do that. When the media started posting photographs then I started searching to see if Karen was one of those jumpers. After awhile it just became an obsession with me. I was so intense on just finding something. I found some photos in my search that I think was Karen jumping. I know it's her because of the clothes, the shape---I would know her from her shadow. She had a blue sweater-top on, sleeveless, and cream-colored pants. If you look at the pictures that I have, I mean, that's what I see. It wasn't painful for some reason. It really wasn't. I finally have, you know, something to hold to you. This is where she was and this is how she died---she jumped. She didn't burn up, she didn't become dust. Nothing is more painful than losing her, but not knowing how I lost her was even more painful. So now, that I believe, that's what took place, it's not painful for me to talk about it. And if she jumped, she jumped."

"Karen Pecorella" is not listed in any of the many list's of victims of that day, so if she went by a different last name, Richard is being remiss, if not outright deceitful here. But my real problem with Pecorella's story is that the woman he identifies as his wife, is a central figure, whom we see in the most common photographs showing workers gathered in the windows in the north face of the north tower. A large woman standing fully in and partly outside of a window, wearing white pants and a dark blue sleeveless top, she occupies the fourth position from the right in the top row. It would not take an obsessive search to find her in the public record by any stretch of the imagination, Details like this matter a great deal in my book.

Another protagonist in the film is Jack Gentul, whose wife was found in the street outside of the south tower. If that is a trustworthy statement (and the forensic evidence, on average, is NOT to be trusted,) it may mean the Gentul's are legitimate victims of that day. Everyone seems so "media ready," and "on" that it's hard to take them seriously. It doesn't help to determine what the status is of Richard and Karen Pecorella, we can just know that his story is not the truth.

Jack Gentul's story has more of a ring of truth to it, mainly because it doesn't serve to push a narrative agenda along. Apparently, his wife thought there had been an explosion underneath her floor in the south tower, a detail Jack offers up apologetically, which helps build a case that no one inside the building saw a plane approach, and they had the best seats in the house.

The phone rang and it was my friend Bill, and he said, um, do you know what's going on at the World Trade Center, and I said no. He knew that Elaine worked there---we'd been friends for many years. He said, well, a plane hit the north tower, and I knew Elaine worked in the south tower, so I said, well, you know, that's horrible, but let me see what I can find out. My secretary came in and told me that Elaine was on the phone. The first thing I said was, "well, thank God you're OK," and she said, "well, not really." And she told me that smoke was coming into the room, it was coming through the vents, and that, um, there had been an explosion beneath them---she didn't know a plane had hit.

I know that Elaine was found on the street. in front of the building across from hers. So, whether she jumped or fell, I don't know. I believe she was alive when it happened because of that phone call. I hoped that she had succumbed to the smoke but it doesn't seem likely. It's something I can't know. In some ways it might just be the last element of control that you have. Everything around you is happening and you can't stop it. But this is something that you can do. And to be out of the smoke and the heat, and to be out in the air---it must have felt like, fine.

The main body of the video consists of identifying the Falling Man from within the crew of restaurant workers working that morning at Windows on the World. We are told that 170 people died there on 9/11---79 of those were employees.

A long false lead introduces us to the Hernandez family, the head of which, Norberto, had worked for 14 years as a pastry chef at Windows, alongside executive chef, Michael Lomonaco. This fact alone makes me believe Norberto is a rendered survivor, whether his family knows this or not---they definitely know something is up.

The widow and three daughters of Norberto Hernandez greet news of the search for the identity of the man in the famous image with disdain. Apparently, they hold strongly felt religious beliefs that would relegate any hint of a "suicide" into eternal damnation.

"It was more than grief that fueled the Hernandez's denial. It was something more fundamental." The editorial use of the word "fundamental" leads me to believe this is all playing to the gallery.

Why the producers didn't hire a psychologist to consult with the family as to what constitutes suiciding in these situations --- which does not include the forced exit from inside a burning building---is easy to understand, since it would spoil what passes for a plot. We are told that jumping "flew in the face of their family motto "together forever"---and their faith." Are they suggesting they should join him on the 107th floor?

The thought that her father could have jumped had a profound [negative] psychological effect on Norberto's youngest daughter, Tatiana, 13 years old at the time.

Norborto's widow doesn't bother with logic

"We were together for nearly 30 years and I can put myself in his situation. There's a fire. I'm on the 107 floor. I'm not going to jump through the window, because I'm thinking, and I know what he was thinking. He was thinking of me, his daughters, his grandchildren, and his mother. I'm not going to jump. I'm going to try to escape anyway possible. Down the staircase---anyway. But the last thing I would do is jump out of the window."

While his daughter, Catherine's position is equally script written rather than heartfelt,

"He would never put us aside for anybody, I mean, he was, he was our main guy---my father."

"I'll say it like this: once a person has committed suicide their soul automatically goes to hell, no questioning. We weren't the most religious family, but we had our beliefs and we went to church, and so, by your calling him the jumper, you're kind of saying his soul is damned. You're telling me he's in hell. I think that's mostly what got to my mom. That's what got to me too."

This is all for naught as, as soon as the family agrees to actually look at the images they determine categorically that the man depicted falling in them could not be Norberto. So much for plot development.

In keeping with the secret organizational structure of many of those participating in the events of 9/11, even the restaurant worker's union was special. The narrator tells us

"Many of them had worked there for years, which created an unusual camaraderie. That family had been devastated on September 11th when 79 of its members had perished."

The narrator, Steven Mackintosh, heightens the drama, telling us that after five years of refusing to participate, the executive chef relents.

"Then---a breakthrough. The chef, Michael Lomonaco agreed to look at the photos. A few days later, over lunch, he met with the researcher who had with him the pictures, and the names that refused to go away."

The researcher, Andrew Chaikivsky, is CIA handsome, and he doesn't take Lomonaco to a dump for lunch. Lomonaco looks at the pictures, with Chaikivsky saying

"No, it can't be Charlie Moore; it can't be Wilber; ah, what about junior---no, it can't be junior; um, what about Jonathan? And he stopped. Michael took a real close look---it took awhile for him to be ready for him to speak with me about that."

Jonathan Briley, was a sound engineer who looked after conferences and functions at the restaurant. Lomonaco, the chef says

"Jonathan fit the body type, the size, coloration, of the person in that photograph, and it left the door open for me that there was a possibility that it really was Jonathan. Which having known Jonathan, and really admired and liked him, and I just thought he was a terrific person---a good, a good guy. A hardworking, dedicated, good guy, with a great sense of humor and a person who embodied...an individual that I, I could call a friend and respect---offered me no comfort to think, "oh, that's Jonathan.

Lomonaco's sentiments sound disembodied. He can sound even more like a fraudster

"If it is Jonathan, I can only feel so bad, for him having to have suffered the way he did, and um, you know, I...I miss him. He, he was somebody that I would have liked to have known forever."

Well, you can feel bad if he suffered, but you would know if he suffered or not.

Likewise, "Deacon" Jonathan Eric Briley, born March 5, 1958--may have died on September 11, 2001, or not. His father, the Reverend Briley, did not want to appear on camera, but he "suggested that Junod talk with Jonathan's older sister, Gwendolyn. She'd been especially close to Jonathan." Strange that the filmmakers didn't speak with his widow instead, but Gwendolyn said

"When I first looked at it, [the photographs] it was almost like touching a hot stove...you just...your mind just co..ah...I looked at the figure, and I saw that it was a man, tall, slim. Wow. I looked at it and said, if I didn't know any better---that could be Jonathan."

We never learn Gwendolyn's last name in the film, but the Internet Movie Database helpfully tells us she is Gwendolyn Briley-Strand, and she can be subconsciously in very poor taste

"Jonathan---Jonathan Eric Briley was this person that just loved life, and it was contagious, so that when you were around him you couldn't help but smiling
and laughing. Every time that Jonathan comes to mind, he's walking and he's talking, and he's smiling, and he had this bounce in his step. He was one of these special people who could spread himself around the whole family, and we all got, our piece of Jonathan.

Is this another freakish religious cult-family who ritualistically handled a family member. Was Jonathan wayward I wonder?

Narrator Steven Mackintosh:

"In the days after the attack, the Briley's waited for his return. A phone call, anything. As the days past, their hopes of finding him alive faded. Reverend Briley gathered the family together in prayer."

Gwendolyn Briley-Strand, talking about her father, the reverend

"He talked to God like someone who absolutely knew that he existed, he said, I believe you can create a miracle. I want my miracle. I have loved you, I do love you, I believe you, I have served you, I want to know where my son is. The next day we got a phone call from the coroner, said to come down---they found Jonathan. We knew where he was. That was a gift. That was a gift from God.

But then the narrator spoils everything with an errant detail:

"The coroner's office identified Jonathan through DNA and dental analysis. Jonathan's younger brother Timothy had the painful experience of confirming the identification."

How any visual identification could be made of the remains is a gross misreading of evnts. Gwendolyn Briley-Strand elaborates

"Timothy recognized his shoes and his hands, he said, he said, 'I would know my brothers hands and his feet.' He took one of his shoes and he kept it. They were black tennis shoes, lace up and then they had that Velcro thing around the ankle. I didn't remember anything about an orange tee-shirt, but when I talked with Timothy, he did. He talked about how Jonathan had this orange tee-shirt and they would tease him because he wore it all the time."

But again, a major detail is at odds in the narrative. In Tom Junod's September 2003, Esquire article, "Falling Man," we are told it was the FBI who called with news--not the coroner's office. Put yourself in their shoes---wouldn't you remember it was the FBI who called?

"Jonathan Briley's father is a preacher, a man who has devoted his whole life to serving the Lord. After September 11, he gathered his family together to ask God to tell him where his son was. No: He demanded it. He used these words: "Lord, I demand to know where my son is." For three hours straight, he prayed in his deep voice, until he spent the grace he had accumulated over a lifetime in the insistence of his appeal.

"The next day, the FBI called. They'd found his son's body. It was, miraculously, intact.

"The preacher's youngest son, Timothy, went to identify his brother. He recognized him by his shoes: He was wearing black high-tops. Timothy removed one of them and took it home and put it in his garage, as a kind of memorial."

It is highly doubtful that Jonathan's body would survive intact an 100-story fall. Nor could it, I should think, be identified by DNA testing in so short a time frame. Maybe Timothy can make an identification based a snickers, if he stays current with his married brother's footwear, but it seems odd for him to be so assured.

Gwendolyn Briley-Strand waxes philosophic

"I never thought of the Falling Man as Jonathan. I thought of him as a man who just took his life in his hands for just that second. Did that person have so much faith that he knew that God would catch him, or was he so afraid to experience the end up there? That's something I'll never know because that happened to him. I hope we're not trying to figure out who he is, and figure out more who we are through watching that."

The narrator's summation is about knowing what you don't know

"Tom Junod could never be certain that Jonathan Briley was the Falling Man, but he'd learned something far more important from Gwendolyn. The man's identity didn't matter. The power of the image came not because the man could be identified, but because he couldn't."

This is a terrible thing to say about "the most photographed and videotaped day in history." An event with an almost complete dearth of captions identifying victims and rescuers, which is the normal job of action photo-journalism. So wwhy wasn't 9/11 normal?

If the images of jumpers represents "the only visible fatalities in a day that claimed thousands," could that not mean that the claim of thousands might be false?

If the film's point was that the images of jumpers were somehow suppressed, so that "the images that came to symbolize the day were of the heroic rescuers working in the rubble," might I point out that there are no images of anyone doing any real work at ground zero. They are all of fraudulent, stage managed "bucket brigades"and other poses of a featherbedding kind.
Part of the endless lies of 9/11.

In a September 2001 interview in the highly credible Fire Engineering magazine, New York City Fire Department Chief Daniel Nigro said that no one jumped from the South Tower.

9/11: The Falling Man is a 2006 documentary film.
It was made by American filmmaker Henry Singer,
and filmed by Richard Numeroff, a New York-based director of photography.
The film is loosely based on Tom Junod's September 2003, Esquire story.
It also drew its material from photographer Lyle Owerko's pictures of falling people.
It debuted on March 16, 2006, on the British television channel Channel 4.
It later made its North American premiere on Canada's CBC Newsworld on September 6, 2006,
The U.S. premiere was September 10, 2007, on the Discovery Times Channel.
Plays a part in the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.
Lyle Owerko shot the cover photograph of Time on September 11, 2001.
Howe, Peter (2001). "Richard Drew". The Digital Journalist
Cauchon, Dennis and Martha Moore (September 2, 2002). "Desperation forced a horrific decision". USATODAY.
Junod, Tom (September 2003). "Falling Man". Esquire.
Interview with Esquire magazine writer Tom Junod by NPR's Melissa Block, August 21, 2003
Esquire article on search for the identity of the Falling Man
The Falling Man at the Internet Movie Database [very helpful]



Archive
Richard Drew
Andrea Booher/FEMA News Photo
APTN
Bergen County Record
CNN ImageSource
David Model
Dennis Van Ire
Edward Hillel
EMPICS/AP
FEMA
GETTY IMAGES
*
ITN Archive
Kitchen Sisters Production
Lyle Owerko
NYPD
Reuters/ Jeff Christiansen
The Camera Planet Archive
Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
U.S. National Archives
1010 WINS Radio

Darlow Smithson Productions
Associate Producer Andrew Chaikivsky
Produced by Sue Bourne executive producer
Co-producer Lisa Guidetti
Producer Henry Singer
Executive producer John Smithson
Julian Ware
Camera and Electrical Department
Still photographer Lyle Owerko
Visual Effects Coordinator Rosanna Jon
Location Coordinator Katie Doering
Production Coordinator Grisha Nikolsky
Production Manager Jenny Mauthe
Film Editors
Alan Mackay
Ben Stark
Other crew
Katie Doering location coordinator
Paul Gardner archive researcher
Margaret Beckett
Director of Photography Richard Numeroff
Music Dario Marianelli
Sound Sean O'Neil
Post Production at Envy
Jonathan Leib
Adam Grant
Matt Skilton
Tom O'Pray
Head of Operations
Ulla Streib
Production Accountant
Tim Antill
with thanks to
William Pitts, NIST
Thomas Dallal
Andrew Blackman

Edward A. "Ted" Brennan

Soon to be out of a job. Technology doing you in. Another job isn't going to be easy to find when you're an anachronism in a corrupt field---especially one as corrupted as government bonds. You're 37---not young, but not old enough to die yet either.

How many of these victims went to conservative Catholic colleges? 'College of the Holy Cross' in this case. It can't be an accident of geography---or upper-middle-class Long Island/New Jersey ethnic striving---so if it's a nexus it must be the Jesuits. I guess then, it goes without saying that the 'abbey' part of Portsmouth Abbey School is not vestigial.

And how many of these nearing-middle-aged men appear to have never wed or fathered children? In those cases, they also seem often to be fit and trim too. [And I know a beard when I see one. Look at the interesting sentence construction behind, "tradition of life at his family home in Sea Girt," Did somebody say "traditional family values?"]

I just remembered! I have a first cousin from the Chicago area who I wasn't very close to growing up, who, as a paper boy for the Tribune, won a scholarship to go to prep school in Connecticut (Pomfret, I think,) and then went to work for Cantor in the 80's, but left before 2001. His was a very Catholic background.

I invited him to my 25th birthday party in 1982 when he first started living in Brooklyn, which was his first exposure to my "life style," and he avoided me like the plague ever afterward. His father subsequently didn't snub me so much as run away terrified whenever he saw me. Cousin, interestingly, never married, got fat, and joined AA---but at least he had the moral guts to quit Cantor, if not live out any of his other truths.

None of this feels organic any longer. (Contest?! Prep school?! Chicago Tribune?!) If you succeeded at a place like Cantor, you did so at the expense of your soul, be it Jewish or Catholic. Case closed. The exciting ferment in the environment that everybody stresses as I read the obituary pages is the tumult of evil. Not necessarily apparent when first starting out in a career, but universally the whole point of the exercise by their end: it is a test. Will we corrupt or not, and to what degree,

I had my test at age 22, and for all these years I thought I'd failed it. I can see now that I passed with flying colors. My mom passed hers too, around 1982.


Ed Brennan

Date of Birth: April 28, 1964
Department: Government Bonds
Position: Vice President

Edward A. "Ted" Brennan, III was born on April 28, 1964 in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The oldest of four children, he grew up in Sea Girt, New Jersey at the Jersey Shore, a place Ted loved, was so proud of, and where his parents still reside.

Ted graduated from Portsmouth Abbey School in 1982 and the College of the Holy Cross in 1986. Following graduation he began his career on Wall Street at Drexel Burnham Lambert, and for the last eleven years was a Vice President, Institutional Broker and Salesman at Cantor Fitzgerald. Like so many others at Cantor, Ted survived the 1993 WTC bombing by running down 105 floors to safety. He formed very close bonds with his co-workers, and thoroughly enjoyed life in New York City where he kept an apartment on the East Side. Almost every day after work he and John Farrell were off to the gym to work out.

What he cherished most though was the comfort and tradition of life at his family home in Sea Girt, New Jersey. Ted took great joy in the things that filled his days - time spent with his family, friends, and his fiancee Meghan Daly, several rounds on the golf course, and working out at the gym. Ted was fully committed to all of it, from the countless hours spent perfecting his golf game to his unwavering devotion to those he loved.

Ted embraced life and people recognized that. His sharp mind and quick wit made him magnetic, people just liked being around Ted. We will remember and love him forever.

High Jack This Fags

Is not the message---if even spelled properly. The real message is behind the scrim message. Look behind to see it.

Action from principle -- the perception and the performance of right -- changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.

Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

Lynn Spencer's Big Beautiful Breasts - Touching History in All the Right Places

For the hottest in Lynn Spencer girl-on-girl action, visit Equus. "You'll never go back."
Equus: The Outing of Margaret Falk

Hey! Lynn Spencer Got Married and Moved to Michigan!
Where they know her as Rollo--the One-Eyed Truck-Stop Momma. She'll Wear Your Shit Out!

For the sheerest experience in the "alternate" scene---be careful when she straps on that big
Retouching History: Running the Alternate Lynn Spencer Persona
um...persona!

Over 18, Our little Lolita will slur her Ssssss's all over your Author's Plots.
Lynn Spencer: Authoress and Pilotess

XXXX Meet Lynn Spencer in your hometown tonight! XXXX

Always Round-the-Clock Free Entry Via Statcounter and Amazing Counter.

Howard Lutnick at Horace Mann: That September Morn

**
Give this video a click and listen to "the greatest Jewish entertainer after Billy Joel," to quote a recent comment posted there. The music will provide a soothing background to this blog, and I think you're going to need it. What---you want Barbra?

If Cantor Fitzgerald's CEO, Howard Lutnick, was tasked with the synthetic simulation cover role of "taking his child to his first day of kindergarten"---conceived as a sort of symmetrical mini-me moment to George Bush's My Pet Goat---then he was under rehearsed or the script got rewritten. Either that or the state of American journalism is so poor it is difficult to reconcile the intention behind the "truth" anymore.

Some bits of information are single-source, and found only in the foreign media. An article in The Spectator, by Inigo Thomas, for instance, provides the satisfying knowledge of a scheduled start time for school, when the locked gates are opened

"Howard Lutnick, like 11 employees who were sacked by Cantor the previous day, was lucky. On the morning of the 11th, he took his son Kyle to school; it was the first day of the fall term, and the gates of Horace Mann on the Upper East Side Manhattan's `Gold Coast' - didn't open until 8.45. There's a photograph in this book of father and son just before Kyle goes to class: the caption beneath it begins, `The last good day of my life.'"

This lucky fact saved Lutnick's life, and Meryl Gordon, writing in New York Magazine, expands upon this luck factor in Howard Lutnick's Second Life,

"The luckiest people in New York? The twenty Cantor Fitzgerald staff members let go on Monday, September 10, most of whom have loyally returned to the firm."

Luck has now been combined with loyalty, whatever the count. Is Thomas trying to pin things down here? Out of scores of media articles, nobody has clarified the usual start time to the work day at Cantor Fitzgerald. Was it 7:00am or 7:30am? Are the principles exempt? Why does Gordon report that 75 Cantor Fitzgerald technical-support-staff members were "alive only by luck; their workday at 1 World Trade Center started at 9 a.m." That wouldn't be luck at all, which implies divine chance, but rather, a schedule or routine implies fate at man's hands.

Lutnick's first foray on Larry King Live on September 19th was an emotional and linguistic crap shoot

KING: ...Howard Lutnick. We began by asking Howard how many people he lost.

HOWARD LUTNICK, CHAIRMAN & CEO, CANTOR FITZGERALD: It's over 17,000. I just can't -- actually can't look at the number. I can't get an exact number because I don't want to.

KING: Now, tell us, you were supposed to be at work, but what happened?

LUTNICK: It was my -- my 5-year-old had his first day of kindergarten, so I had dropped him off at (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Kindergarten, and it was his first day of big-boy school. And then I went -- so I was a little late getting down to the office.

KING: Where were you when all this hit?

LUTNICK: Just leaving the -- just leaving the school. And...

KING: How did you hear about it?

LUTNICK: Just my phone rang, and they said, you know, the building was hit by a plane, and I was thinking it was sort of like a -- a small, like a Piper Cub or something like that. So I got in the car and started driving down the left side trying to get there as fast as I could. And I could see the smoke from downtown, and I was --I just had to get there. CNN.com - Transcripts

I can see how saying 700 could be misheard for 1,700, but 17 thousand must be a transcription error. I can't check it since the actual interview tape can't be found anywhere on the web, which is odd in the age of YouTube.

Lutnick's second go around on Larry King Live on February 22, 2002, was still drifty, but more composed. He almost forgets the point of the question until he's prompted by King.

"First, for just a little recap, Howard, where were you that morning?

HOWARD LUTNICK, CEO, CANTOR FITZGERALD: I took my son to his first day of kindergarten. It was his first day of school, so I took him up to school and dropped him off, and then was heading down to the office.

KING: How did you hear about it?

LUTNICK: Well, I had a call in the school that someone was looking for me, and then I -- and then someone said a plane had hit the Trade Center, so I went running downstairs and jumped in the car and started going downtown to the Trade Center. And then when I was in the car I could see the smoke coming out of the building on the way down. CNN.com - Transcripts

His third appearance on Larry King, exactly one year later to the day, was a book tour interview of Lutnick and his hired hagiographer, his college tennis teammate, Tom Barbash. Larry King stays on message, repeating three times in one question. "first day of school."

KING: There is an incredible photo in the book, taken at 8:45 a.m. 9/11. Howard has just taken his son, Kyle, to his first day at kindergarten at Horace Mann. The first day of school. At 8:46, American Flight 11 bound for L.A. from Boston tore into the north side of the WTC Tower. The picture was just a memento of his first day, Howard?

LUTNICK: Sure. The classic first-day photo, my son with his, you know, wet hair around his ears, standing on his backpack right in front of the school. And I kneeled down next to him to take that picture, and basically that was the moment that saved my life, and my boys know that they saved my life by taking them to school.

KING: And refresh our memory. How did you learn of the tragedy?

LUTNICK: Well, as I walked him upstairs to his first day of kindergarten, my phone beeped, and you know, I couldn't get a signal. And then, the school administrator said, "Mr. Lutnick, there's a call for you." And I picked up the phone, and it was Jimmy Mayo, my driver who features in the book quite a bit. And he said, "A plane has hit the building." And I'm thinking Piper Cub.

And so, I run down the stairs and get in the car, and we drive right to the building. And I get to stand in the door [???] of the building, grabbing people as they come out, and of course, then Tower Two falls. If Tower One falls, I'm not on this program, but because Tower Two fell, and I ran from that tornado of smoke and I was maybe 20 yards from it, and it engulfed me. And then, you know, all of this is in the book, but also everybody else's views of exactly what happened are in the book as well. CNN.com - Transcripts

With Lutnick a trustee, or on the board of directors of the Horace Mann school, these private conversations with higher level administrators sound entre nous and sotto voci---and really suspicious. From one news article, I had pictured him with a Miss Beasley-type, well-born and earnest, a Princess Di from Armonk perhaps, with all the parents sitting around a circle clapping hands, trying not to get sticky.

Back in December 2001, in a New York Magazine article by Meryl Gordon, Howard Lutnick's Second Life, (which is strangely undated on either of its links; clickability.com, see the little dot, and the word "published?" That's where the date goes. What happened to it?)

"Howard and Allison were perched on child-size chairs in their son's classroom when both their cell phones rang and then died. Howard was summoned by a school staff member to the lobby, where he learned from his driver, Maio, that a plane had hit the Trade Center. "I ran upstairs to Allison -- 'I got to go, I got to go.' " She ran with him to the car, saying, "Should I go with you?" "No," he insisted. "You stay."

Stay? How about "go home?" But I can't tell what's propelling this sequence forward. Is he afraid his cell-phone bill might be subpoenaed? It never bothered Ted Olsen!

Lutnick forgets that he has photographed this moment, calling it "the last good day of my life," after which everything changes into horror and hysteria. We should be able to see the demarcation line then--with his voice quickening, as he recollects with ease, clarity and relief the moments to one side of the line, with his descent into pain and confusion when he move over to the other side. As it is, he just sounds like daffy old George W. Bush all day long---and daffy never earned a dime his whole life.

With Lutnick's 2007 compensation being $16,503,118.00, he could purchase quite a few trusteeships and board positions around town. Horace Mann Fundraising Campaign Update

Then in an AP article, Cantor Fitzgerald Chief: Five Agonizing Years, from September 12, 2006, we can see Lutnick get another chance.

"This Sept. 11 happened to be the first day of kindergarten for his daughter, Casey."

Has Horace Mann made September 11th into a national holiday for launching the educations of scions and heirs? Well then---how appropriate. September 11 fell on a Monday in 2006, and on a Friday this year. Is there a standard start to the school year? Could somebody do an analysis, going back at least two decades, to see if the start dates and times haven't been altered or manipulated for some---unknown---reason. September 11 always falls after the Labor Day at least---anywhere from four to ten days afterward, if that spread is relevant. A very relevant fact is that Cantor Fitzgerald was in the process of downsizing its bond trading staff by 800 before 9-11 hit, as its proprietorial digital technology was advanced. 500 bond traders had already been let go, with another 300 or so to go after the switchover to fully electronic trading took place, which happened on September 13, 2001. Coincidentally, the 800 figure was almost exactly the number who "died" on 9-11.

"Although much is made of the family-like nature of Cantor Fitzgerald, it was, and still is, a hard-nosed business. Nearly 500 people had lost their jobs before Sept. 11, and 300 more were about to be axed, made obsolete by the success of their electronic bond-trading network, said Peter DaPuzzo, co-president of equities." Knight Ridder

But were they laying off just bond traders in the restructuring before 9-11?

Heidi Olson, now chief administrative officer for equities, had left Cantor when the firm downsized just before the attacks; she came back to work the next day. Barbash

Although Tom Barbash doesn't specify, I believe the high-level Olson was let go on the Monday, and rehired on the Wednesday. Business Wire reported on Nov. 6, 2001, that 'Cantor Continues to Appoint New Senior Management,' naming Stephen M. Bliss as a co-head of the NASDAQ/ OTC stock trading business. Informing readers, without apparent self-consciousness, that

"Mr. Bliss rejoins Cantor's equities business after leaving in May 2001...Steve's rejoining the firm gave the team a sense of continuity in Cantor's relationships and way of doing business," said Philip Marber, head of Cantor's U.S. equities business.

Did he quit in May, or was he laid off? What did Bliss do for those three summer months between May and September? In a November 12, 2001 USAToday article, Cantor battles back from tragedy, by Noelle Knox, Lutnick plays his new hand, telling us God dealt it to him

"Bond trading had been shifting to electronic trading even before the attacks, and Lutnick says it is "unlikely" he will replace his bond brokers. "We are not going to try to get back to who we were," he says. "We are going to take the cards that have been dealt to us. Take the assets we still have, which are incredible, and just play a different way."

It was fortuitous that since the future pointed to eSpeed, Cantor's electronic trading program, the right people were spared

"Six of eSpeed's top technology executives, including [Matthew] Claus, [chief technology officer] had planned to go on an annual, 1-day fishing trip that day. The trip was canceled because of bad conditions on the Atlantic — but not until 8 a.m. All six were on their way to the office when the planes hit the towers, killing President Frederick Varacchi and 125 other eSpeed employees.

"The six executives headed straight to the firm's New Jersey location and started rerouting the trading network. They worked around the clock, napping on the floor. One slept with his head propped on an upside-down coffee cup. When the bond markets reopened Sept. 13, eSpeed was up and running."

It was also lucky that Richard Breeden, the former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, served on the board of eSpeed, lest the government bond market, vital to national security, be disrupted.

"To the awe of Wall Street and government regulators, Cantor was able to get the company's U.S. eSpeed operations -- a crucial link in the Treasury markets -- up and running two days after the attack.

"eSpeed -- the publicly traded division of the privately held Cantor -- is actually expected to be profitable in the fourth quarter. [of 2001] That day, eSpeed stock soars more than 20 percent, almost reaching its pre-September 11 level." Gordon

Writing on September 30, 2001, less than a month after the attacks, Maureen Fan of the Knight Ridder Tribune chain, proves she has a good ear for business dynamics

"It's a funny group of people in the sense that they're hardened," said Peter Ryan, a managing director at Credit Lyonnais Securities. "It's a tough business and you have to have a thick veneer to survive in that environment."

"The company's backup system in Rochelle Park, N.J., kicked in almost immediately after the attack and would have continued to hum if bond trading had not been suspended. Two days later, Cantor's electronic-broker system was up and running an hour before the bond market cranked up again, thanks to the all-night efforts of the company's surviving technology whizzes."

"Cantor Fitzgerald was not the only hard-hit firm, but few were as tightly knit. A private partnership, the firm often hired the friends and family of existing employees. "This is such a close-knit firm, the salesmen usually knew the color of their client's houses," DaPuzzo said. "We have many sons of standing members of the Security Traders Association working for us," he added. "Nepotism makes our industry work because we know that if the father or mother is good, you know the son or daughter is good in this business." "Former employees have returned to help out." Victimized company tries to get on with business

To give other names to this power phenomena: mafia family [the Department of Defense comes to mind,] band of brothers, [firemen,] closed-shop construction companies [Pentagon contractors, Tully et al,] secret societies [Skull and Bones, Trogdor] affinity groups [BCO, VLV, Williamsboard] fraternal initiation orders, [Freemasonry, spoonies,] Clansmen, Amalgamated or Benefit Association, Oddfellows, [politicians] or Order of Mutual Protection League [I'll dump federal workers in here.] All of these centers of power are based on the keeping of the immoral immortal secrets, thus are diametrically at odds with the general application of the Golden Rule. I'd like to see them deconstructed since they corrupt and spoil our society's future. [I haven't yet mentioned "the Jews," who also have tribal loyalties down to a art form.]

We have no more journalism left today. Let a decent enough interval go past and you can just get the original CIA guy they brought in to write the official insider version of the truth, to write for BusinessWeek magazine. (Look at the bottom of the printer-friendly version to find Tom Barbash's name: A Tale Of Renewal 9/11 FIVE YEARS LATER

Tom Barbash, Howard Lutnick's college buddy and tennis teammate, doesn't have much of a literary resume, but he sure can land good academic jobs. He only published his first novel in 2002, as he neared 40. He was free to start work on the Cantor story as soon as the airspace reopened, allowing him to come to New York. The reviews for both of his books were often similar---in three words: rushed and ill-edited.

But like the Gordon profile in New York Magazine, which comes from a particularly Jewish appreciation, which alternately protects and reveals Lutnick the subject, the narrative duties Barbash is tasked with come with a particular point of view. [See other blog]

Gordon quotes Lutnick as saying his credibility is based on

"Two things allow me to communicate with my employees," he says. "I was there, and I lost my brother."

But there is no proof Lutnick was where he says he was, covered in white dust after the first tower's collapse. The two talking points that are repeated in every interview---"I lost my brother," and, "I was taking my son to his first day of school," are here joined by a third credential---"I was there."

In an interview Lutnick gave the New York Times on September 15, 2001, is the most in-depth, first-person reporting of his experience at the base of the towers that morning. Lutnick says he "was standing by the door as people were streaming out," but he doesn't say which door. Then as the south tower started to crumble, he was running past Trinity Church graveyard. The climactic moment, when what he calls the "smoke" cloud catches up with him, seems marred by something beyond just neurotic Jewish self-consciousness:

"I crawl under a truck -- no, it's smaller than a truck -- it's like an S.U.V. I don't crawl all the way underneath because I'm afraid that something will fall and crush me under the truck. Of course, I don't think that if something falls and I'm not under the truck I'll get crushed anyway. This is not like a clever thing. So I'm halfway under the S.U.V."

This is poor story telling and bad lying and it's not off-the-cuff at that. In a Feb. 2, 2003, review by Rob Walker in the New York Times of the Lutnick/Barbash Cantor history, On Top Of the World, this all seems anticipated, as we are told Lutnick walks uptown to the Upper West Side apartment of the newly widowed wife of his best friend Doug---Jennifer Gardner

Lutnick understood, Tom Barbash writes in "On Top of the World," "that the fact that he wasn't in the building, even if it was to bring his son to his first day of kindergarten, will be a complicated thing for some people to accept." Lutnick is still covered with dust, and "he needs for her [Jennifer Gardner] to see him this way---not when he's cleaned up, and not when his mind is occupied with saving the company."

Walker points out the oddity of this attitude

It's worth pausing, then, over the presence of mind that Barbash attributes to his college friend -- just hours after the disaster, Lutnick is thinking about how he "needs" people to see him, and about the business

"Presence of mind" is a fair euphemism for foreknowledge. But in any case, this narrative is in conflict with the story Lutnick told in different New York Times article on September 15, 2001, Flinty Bond Trader Leads His Firm Out of the Rubble, by Diana B. Henriques, and Jennifer 8. Lee

"Armed with that news, Mr. Lutnick walked on -- 44 blocks in all -- to Mr. Merkel's home on Jane Street, a quiet old lane just south of 14th Street near the Hudson River. Another survivor was found, David Kravette, 40, who had gone to the lobby just before the attack to escort a visitor. Together, they walked more than two miles to Mr. Lutnick's apartment on the Upper East Side and immediately began making and receiving calls to try to trace missing workers."

There isn't much room for plausible deniability when you're yoked to your fellow Musketeer. For the official history to have failed to reconcile the plot with this early, primary-source storytelling is a gaff of gargantuan proportion.

Gordon's New York Magazine article tells us pointblank the reason why Lutnick cut off the widow's paychecks on September 15: it was "to assure the bankers of his sangfroid."

"I needed my bankers to know that I was in control," Lutnick says. "That I wasn't sentimental and that I was no less motivated or driven to make my business survive."

It was a shock-and-awe war plan, but Lutnick got sentimental real quick when the negative publicity threatened to sink his, and his banker's, newly restructured enterprise. But even in advance of December, 2001, one banker seem happy

"He schmoozes on the phone with a pleased major investor, then takes a call from an Orthodox Jewish family distraught over their son's missing remains. "I know, I know, I'm just like you," he says, his voice cracking. He is still waiting for DNA tests to tell him that his brother, Gary, is really gone."

An article titled "47 Hours," in Baseline Magazine's December, 2001 issue, tells an in-depth story of Cantor's rush to return their online business to service within two days, working out of their Rochelle Park, New Jersey backup facility. A problem presents itself here however, inasmuch as one of the authors of the piece is Edward Cone, who was one of the Four Musketeers from Lutnick's Haverford College days, the other two being the recently deceased Cantor colleagues Calvin Gooding and Douglas Gardner, and so Cone was an even closer friend of Lutnick's than Tom Barbash.

In a piece apparently written up for the Greensboro NC News & Record, and now found on his personal radio weblog EdCone.com 'Word Up', Cone writes

But Howard Lutnick, Cantor's chairman and chief executive, was alive. He had taken his son to kindergarten and was running behind his usual schedule. Being a good dad saved his life on a morning when 658 of his employees died, including his brother, Gary, and his close friends Calvin and Doug. Calvin and Doug and Howard and I went to Haverford College. Doug became a vice-chair, Calvin a partner.

A former colleague of mine at Forbes, who wrote a scathing article about Cantor a few years ago, appeared on "20/20" this fall to question Howard's integrity. Before he went on the air he called me to ask if I thought Howard was faking his tears.

This about a man fresh from his brother's funeral, who stood up to eulogize his best friend, Doug, just five days after the attack. I shared the lectern with him in front of 1,100 mourners at Calvin's funeral, and I felt the genuine emotion in his words. People don't read about the time he spends with Doug's 5-year-old son, and the comfort he and his family provide for Calvin's widow. It seems absurd to have to defend the notion that this man who had lost his partners and his staff and the fairy-tale life he had willed into being is sincere in his grief.

It's funny to read that you don't read about something as you're reading about it. It would be easier to trust Cone's veracity if he didn't work so hard at defending Lutnick--especially when the facts are difficult to digest. Like the jaw-dropping altruism on display by eSpeed's competitors, in the Baseline Magazine article:

"The second problem, of fulfilling trades, was more difficult to resolve. Although Noviello's team was able to restore some of the applications that handle the financial back-office functions of the trading system, it was unable to reproduce the settlement system for all of eSpeed’s products at the Rochelle Park site. Without being able to clear or settle transactions, eSpeed would be unable to open for business.

"Here, help arrived in the form of one of eSpeed's competitors, ICI/ADP, [Automatic Data Processing, Inc./Information Catalysts Incorporated,] another electronic trading company, offered to take care of eSpeed’s clearing and settling of transactions through its own connection to banks. By Wednesday night, the eSpeed team had mapped its financial back-office system to ADP’s system, and had successfully sent test transactions to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and other banks.

"ADP got the back-office component hooked up overnight, Compaq delivered 100 desktop computers at 2 a.m. on Wednesday and Verizon expedited the installation of voice lines and the transfer of some of eSpeed’s digital circuits."

I think this scenario is illogical in the extreme, not only in that ADP would do it, but that they could effect such a maneuver without advanced knowledge and planning. From the Gordon New York magazine article:

"They are furiously fighting off competitors who would feed on the firm's misfortune."

"The business of bond traders is people fighting for one hundredth of a penny," Breeden says."

The reference above to Forbes Magazine may refer to an article by Paul Maidment, 'Electronic Future Of Cantor Fitzgerald' from October 5, 2001, which has a few scathing things to say about Lutnick

"Howard Lutnick, who is eSpeed's chief executive officer and Cantor Fitzgerald's chairman, confirmed to analysts on Oct. 4 that the group's electronic technology platform was "completely intact," but that most of its telephone brokers did not survive the devastation.

As a result, Cantor Fitzgerald, which operates the leading interbroker-dealer exchange for U.S. Treasuries, has halted its traditional voice trading of bonds and is conducting its business for now through its electronic arms: eSpeed for fixed income products and TradeSpark, which deals in energy products.

"While the Cantor Fitzgerald voice brokerage operation has ceased, eSpeed's fully electronic market for U.S. Treasuries has been virtually unimpaired," Lutnick
said.

ESpeed, which was spun off from Cantor Fitzgerald in December 1999--six months after being set up--and lost $3.3 million in revenue of $66 million in the six months to June 30, will also not replace its lost World Trade Center data center, but operate instead from its other existing centers in London and Rochelle Park, New Jersey."

The truth will scathe if you let it, (And actually, the really juicy dirt on Cantor was in an October 20, 1997, Forbes article, Getting Between the Wall and the Wallpaper, by Thomas Jaffe,] like when you have an overabundance of redundancy with three data centers. Then when one is lost, you can stick with just the two, which to me implies foreknowledge of an upcoming loss by not replacing what was superfluous.

I don't know how much more evidence the American public will require in order to be able to face the ugly truth here. The 300 bond traders who disappeared on 9-11 were facing a zero-sum future, as technology made their roles obsolete, at the same time a very big player with an extreme need was making them a covert offer they couldn't refuse.
Surely the dividing line between these 300 workers and the 500 who were previously "downsized," was the demarcation between those who chose to forge new careers with minimal severance, and those who accepted a buy-out agreement---an early retirement package, if you will, surely more robust then anything they could have hoped to achieve on the outside---but one that came with a stiff personal cost---oblivion. Rendered into anonymity, their pained families half-knowing, briefed perhaps about some far-off date in the future, part of the tough-skinned Cantor family, trusted to keep a secret.

Cones' co-author of the Baseline Magazine article, Sean Gallagher, was the magazine's technology editor. More recently, Gallagher has worked as the editor of Defense Systems, a monthly print publication and an internet news site for members of the Defense Department community involved in information technology and net-centric warfare, particularly C4ISR. Writing in-depth features on topics ranging from software-defined radio to cyberwarfare, and he maintains a weblog on defense issues.
It is surprising what survives this world and what disappears. In a CBS News piece about the Lutnick and Barbash history, 9/11 Book Follows Hard-Hit Firm, on Feb. 6, 2003, the interview background is described as:

"Lutnick and Barbash spoke at Cantor's temporary headquarters in midtown, where Lutnick's office decor includes fragments of Rodin sculptures salvaged from the trade center ruins, relics of the collection amassed by the firm's founder, Bernie Cantor."

In a disaster leaving no bodies, or body parts even, where not a single file cabinet was to be found afterward, collectible fragments of bronze art works could be salvaged and put on display. Even more incredible, the New York Times tells us a nearly complete work of art was located. In Born of Hell, Lost After Inferno; Rodin Work From Trade Center, a 28"cast of Rodin's "Dante's: The Thinker," was found, but then "lost" again, by a FDNY member.

"There's extraordinary symbolism, isn't there," said John L. Tancock, a vice president at Sotheby's auction house and the former curator of the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia. "They have survived in this state, and it can be viewed as an inspirational story."

But the Times' reports that city investigators believe the sculpture may have been stolen, but since

"the Cantor Fitzgerald bond trading firm and its chairman, Howard W. Lutnick, have refused to discuss in any depth the loss of its art collection."

it is difficult to pin down whether this is a case of firemen looting, or of art collectors indulging in insurance fraud (and double-dipping in the bargain--if the art had been rescued in advance of September 11th, which would be my theory.)

This would be a good place to end the story for now. Cantor's city survivors are temporarily housed on a floor in a Warburg building on Park Avenue

"Practically twice a day for weeks, the building has been evacuated because of bomb scares phoned in by some apparent wacko targeting Warburg. It's not helping Cantor's traumatized employees, though it has produced some darkly funny moments."

Somebody's got a real hard-on for Howard and not Warburg. If you think my analysis is too far out to be true, let me say---you haven't seen anything yet! Be prepared for when the face of true evil shows itself. It promises to be far worse than anything you can imagine. That's why we are willing to sleepwalk for so long, like little children, we pull the covers over our heads and whimper.


December 19, 2006, The Anti-Chamber, More 9/11 Cantor Fitzgerald, Goldman Sachs, Federal Reserve, UST, Bush et al 'Financial Terrorism' by V.K. Durham

Someone named Mark Carter posting on the Let's Roll forums, 'The Cantor Fitzgerald mystery?' November 18, 2008, has a truly ambitious conspiracy---the parameters of evil are quite grand! Give it a shot.

The Federal Reserve system, the takeover of the Banking system, and the Rothschilds.

November 12, 2001, USA Today, Cantor battles back from tragedy, by Noelle Knox,