Robert Segal & Masayuki Nagare

The photographer and the artist. Segal, the shutterbug, has an image gallery posted online at the semi-professional web hosting service photo.net, called simply Robert Segal Photography. It contains only a single portfolio, named "WTC Ground Zero, 9/14 - 9/16/2001," which holds 92 extraordinary images---that we are to believe were authored then and there by him.

archive.org dates sightings of this page from Dec. 24, 2002 through Jan. 01, 2008. The photo.net community member page for Robert Segal says "This page has been visited 1323 times since January 05, 2006," and I can't imagine why they'd say that if it wasn't when Segal uploaded his images to the web.

I say all this because, as 9/11 research materials go, these important images are in a league all of their own. They are new to me, an inveterate web surfer in related searches---although this may only be due to my defining as "rare" anything I've never seen before. However, to my knowledge, no other of the thousands of committed researchers who profess to seek the truth of the attacks of 9/11 has noted, commented upon, or referenced these images.

Segal's photo.net member page lists a personal home page that contains a possible clue within the web address as to his background: http://members.bellatlantic.net, however that link is dead. But the indispensable archive.org maintains copies of the page, which he dates as October 2, 2001, with only minimal updates twice thereafter---in March and June of 2002. This is all in keeping with the standard efforts made by the army of supporters who created the official 9/11 narrative. At archive.org is evidence his personal web page was up online from Dec. 11, 2004 through May 27, 2007.

Trying to establish Segal's background and credibility is pretty straightforward, if the intent, and effect, of his photo efforts may not be so clear. His web page came in consequence to 9/11 he tells us, and it transparently has a link to his resume: R-Segal-Resume.pdf

He is a highly educated IT specialist, beginning with time spent at the Naval Nuclear Power/Electronics School. From 1997 through 1999, he single-handedly created the electronic "mission-critical display of precious metals and energy markets," for the New York Mercantile Exchange, housed in Building 4 of the World Trade Center. He brags that

"As the only qualified person in nation, became wholly responsible for Opening Day set-up at new headquarters building. Was for two years almost single-handedly and without supervision responsible."

This established an important fact for the general public's understanding---that the Mercantile Exchange was moved to the trade center sometime in the spring of 1997, at a time when the 9/11 conspiracy was in full gear, and all such lease signings, certainly from that period onward, were strategically planned with the coming false-flag attack in mind.

Although Segal had apparently moved on after May of 1999, the free range and unfettered access in his movements over the weekend following September 11th, as evidenced by the images, prove he remained centrally tapped in to the Ground Zero undertaking.

The 92 images Segal took there are unique in several regards. For one, he carefully captions what is being depicted, always giving us the cardinal directions of his point of view. He is positively cheeky, as he captures irrelevant moments at odds with the grim official story. In a fearless gesture, he even identifies himself in several of the images, apparently taken by a second pair of hands.

Notably, in several shots, Segal shows unique scenes that stand in opposition to the standard narrative. And in one important matter, which has remained oddly unaddressed since 9/11, Segal provides a pointed single-source reference, but it is one that only adds to the mystery instead of clarifying it.

This has to do with the disposition of a major work of art by Masayuki Nagare that before 9/11 stood in the Church Street entrance to the World Trade Center plaza. Named "Cloud Fortress," the black granite-clad, sculpture was of monumental size. Variously described as being either 5 tons, or 250 tons, it survived the destruction of the towers intact, but was entirely lost in the subsequent cleanup efforts. No trace of it was ever found at the Fresh Kills landfill, where all the debris was taken, supposedly to undergo examination with a fine-toothed comb.

The loss of art works in the World Trade Center disaster was a recognizable component in a planned narrative of loss and victimization rolled out in the aftermath. An article about art losses appeared as soon as September 15, when most of the focus, and all the good taste, was still concerned with human casualties. But the public relation effort was in full swing before the month was out, as dozens of newspapers began publicizing the loss of art works, which were quickly estimated as totaling $100 million.

This theme is clear evidence of an incidental sidebar of art market insurance fraud---as the attacks themselves, which consisted of a larger real estate insurance fraud, paled in comparison to the overriding macrocosm of religious vilification and intent on war. Unfortunately, the insurance industry itself was part and parcel of the corrupt deception, and this becomes clear when studying the art angle.

This is an enormous area for investigation, and I am not prepared to begin the work here. Suffice it to say that one company, Cantor Fitzgerald, was reported by scores of national and international media outlets as having lost between 350 and 450 bronze sculptures designed after Rodin, while in truth, Cantor's offices contained only four modern casts on 9/11---and even these were likely pilfered during the building's final moments by responders bent on looting the premises for valuables.

The disappearance of the surviving Nagare work during the clean-up effort following 9/11, probably wasn't an example of this kind of financial art fraud in any case, but I think it may be evidence of a different and more troubling kind of fraud---proof that the images of devastation fed to the public by the media were doctored lies, manufactured, like the so-called human loss, to pump up our sense of communal wounding, and with it, a desire for retaliation, and revenge for the atrocity.

Only one site plan illustration clearly depicts the placement of the Nagare work on the plaza in relation to the buildings and other outdoor art work, such as the much-photographed globe-shaped fountain designed by Fritz Koenig, which stood in the center of the plaza, and which survived in damaged condition. Photographs taken by FEMA officials depict the plaza area as being a Dante-esque landscape of utter destruction, with only the smoking remains of steel beams cast about.

It's interesting that the bronze Koenig fountain survived with only scratches and dents, while the massive rectangular Nagare piece, situated much further away from the towers, facing Church Street in a square made up of two short flights of steps between raised planting beds situated between Buildings Four and Five, was destroyed without a trace.

I believe this was done to visually expand the area of destruction. This necessity developed as an afterthought by those tasked with the plot's public relations, in much the same way that Ground Zero was originally referred to anecdotally as "the Pit," since so much debris fell into the sub-stories below the plaza level. Then a calculated effort went into effect in the media, whereby these same remains were suddenly known as "the Pile."

Official control of the media is an inexact science, with insiders working alongside patsies and useful idiots. However, inconvenient facts which can surface in honest journalism have been proven to be vulnerable to a methodical suppression before they can gain a toehold in the public consciousness---at least that was the case before the advent of the internet changed the rules of the game.

That the Nagare work survived the collapses of the towers was a fact that had been previously established with a photograph published in New York Magazine's October 1, 2001 issue, which showed a staged vignette of a fireman walking in front of the intact sculpture. (I believe it's the same image maintained in a pdf document prepared by Nagare's New York dealer, Jason McCoy, Inc.---since you certainly won't find it maintained online in a New York Magazine resource.)

I only know of that publishing history through a September 2002, article in Art in America, by Janet Koplos, titled, "WTC sculpture: lost or destroyed?" which tells us that

"Masayuki Nagare's large public sculpture Cloud Fortress (1975)survived the collapse of the World Trade Center but was lost in the rescue and recovery efforts. When a photograph of the smoking ruins appeared in New York magazine's Oct. 1, 2001, report on the attack, the black stone sculpture stood, intact, in the foreground. It may have been precisely its position that was fatal: the sculpture was set at the Church Street entrance to the central plaza. According to sources at Jason McCoy Gallery, which represents Nagare [see review on p. 136], as well as Mark Wagner of Voorsanger Architects, who is involved in the archiving of art fragments recovered from the site, the sculpture was bulldozed and removed, probably within the first 24 hours, to allow heavy machinery to facilitate the rescues anticipated in those early hours. No trace of it has come to light at the landfill on Staten Island or elsewhere. The sculpture seems to have endured like a fortress and then vanished like a cloud."

What Robert Segal's images and captioning add is an actual time frame for the sculpture's destruction, which came three or four days after the Tuesday collapses---and not in the immediacy of that fearful first day, as Jason McCoy, Mark Wagner or Bart Voorsanger must have sourced it for the Janet Koplos' article. Segal has no bones to pick. He was honestly, openly, and intelligently confused by the proceedings, as his caption for one picture reads "A shame this one didn't survive recovery efforts. Was this thing just too heavy to move?"

Search Team Inbound Briefing, view to southwest, 4WTC at left, tower 2 at rear.

A shame this one didn't survive recovery efforts. Was this thing just too heavy to move?

Demolishing Masayuki Nagare's Granite Sculpture, East of the Plaza, view to west, from left 4WTC,

On a recent, December 5, 2010, exchange at forum.skyscraperpage.com, on a thread called "NEW YORK | Twin Towers of the WTC | 1368/1362 feet | 110 FLOORS | 1972/1973-2001," someone named STR, posted an interesting tidbit of information about the following photograph

"The "Peace on Earth" sculpture was put up during the holiday season every year after the 1993 bombing. Presumably, the sign was stored on-site from January-November and destroyed in the collapse, but I don't have any concrete info. The mountain-like sculpture (Cloud Fortress by Masayuki Nagare) behind it did survive the collapse, but was torn down during the recovery because there was extra structural support built into the plaza in order to hold up the 5-ton steel and stone art piece, which made it a good place to site a crane."

This would make sense, since the site of the sculpture lies directly over a BMT subway hub. STR is the only source in the record for the sculpture's weighing 5 tons, which is more plausible than an alternate weight of 250 tons published elsewhere. Unfortunately for this opinion, in Segal's image showing the work while it was undergoing its destruction, apparently a crane has already assumed a position on the plaza behind it. The photograph's field of depth is distorted by a special lens, as is every other photograph taken of the events in New York City and Arlington, Virginia, and to be made public---so it appears that the sculpture sits behind Buildings 4 and 5, while the site plan makes it clear they were all in alignment.

Several other Segal images taken in the vicinity---on either Friday, Saturday or the Sunday following the Tuesday attacks---show a scene that's clean and orderly, if a bit too obvious, as stage-managed by the FBI

Aircraft Parts Bin, view to southwest, 5WTC at right, 4WTC at rear.

The Borders Bookstore in Building 5, at the corner of Church and Vesey Streets, looks like it could reopen for business without much ado.

  Resting Outside Five World Trade, View to southwest.

I might even think that the Customer Services sign inside the bookstore was art directed by a hack to hang as it does, since none of the ceiling tiles or fixtures were effected. Even the lights are working! Not bad for a building that had been consumed by fire, with giant holes crushed through it from top to bottom!

Another shot, westerly across the plaza to the American Express Building at the World Financial Center, showing the crane as positioned. The firemen even set up a formal "rest" camp in the area between Buildings 4 and 5, so it's unlikely much heavy debris was removed through this point.

              Firefighters at Camp, view to south, 4WTC at right center, top of tower 2 at left Liberty St.

Since we can't trust any of the images taken anywhere on 9/11 or thereafter, we should even doubt whether such central visual reference points as the standing tridents of structural steel from the WTC facades, which somehow managed to impound themselves in the centers of both Church Street to the north, and West Street to the south. These focal points are too obvious to be real in my opinion, and it's likely that every camera was directly hooked up to central command computers where objects like these sentinels could be inserted as seen from any vantage point. It's an awfully long distance for the remains to have traveled, only to arrive standing vertically, a feature which wasn't found anywhere closer to its source.

       Church Street at Dawn; view to southwest, from right 5WTC, 4WTC crushed, top of 2 tower impaled...

We can thank the New York Historical Society for their exhibit, "Here is New York: Remembering 9/11," where they acknowledge 790 photographers by name, whose images appeared in the exhibition, which makes for easy work by any researcher, or prospective prosecutor. I can't claim that 100 percent of the names on the list were insiders to the plot, whose work products were directly controlled by master authorities at higher levels than agency or employer, but I'd bet it's in the 98th percentile.

                  Standing Portion of Four World Trade, View to southwest, Bankers' Trust bldg. at rear.

      Shift Change at Ground Zero, View to south; from right 5WTC, 4WTC, top of 2 tower impaled into
     Church Street.

According to an article in the National Underwriter Property & Casualty-Risk & Benefits Management newsletter by Caroline McDonald, titled, "WTC fine art losses undervalued," the "World Trade Center Plaza Sculpture" by Masayuki Nagare, was valued at $1 million. Even a small 1975 maquette, or model of the "Cloud Fortress" piece, which was housed and then lost in the Port Authority's offices in Tower 1, was valued at $150,000, according to the Bergen County Record, "The price of lost art-- PA nears settlement for pieces destroyed on 9/11," by Pat R. Gilbert.

So what was the logic in destroying the art work, if the stated purpose was it obstructed an effort to bring in heavy moving equipment? Couldn't they have started with its removal without obliterating it?

Artists and their patrons take their world very seriously. Endless ink was utilized, for instance, in discussing the effort by the grandson of Alexander Calder to recover pieces of the master's damaged stabile, which stood outside Building 7. Experts had never considered it to be an important example of Calder sculpture, while the Nagare work was widely regarded as a crowning masterpiece in his oeuvre.

Much like the fundamental Christians who were chosen to serve roles in the invasion of Iraq, the people whose jobs were to attend to these important matters of art sound more like empty figureheads, chosen for attributes, like loyalty to a secret cause, instead of meaningful artistic credentials. Architect Bart Voorsanger, from the firm Voorsanger & Mills,

"was appointed to archive debris from the collapsed World Trade Centre and the objects he collected include a row of chained-up bicycles, battered fire trucks, splinters from what was once the city's tallest television antenna and the crushed shell of a train which used to run beneath the Centre."

according to a 2002 article in The Scotsman, "Picking up the pieces," by Rhiannon Batten.
Voorsanger was quoted as saying, "two weeks after the attacks, I was approached to form a small committee to save artifacts from the site." The article continued

"So while Ground Zero, as a crime site, was closed off to all but emergency workers and clearance personnel, Voorsanger's committee was granted special access. Searching for finds and marking them down on a map, the archiving team spent about eight weeks on the site.

"At first I went down to Ground Zero every day or every other day, along with other people from my office" he says. "The emergency workers were hostile to us initially - they imagined we were just scavenging.

"The reason Voorsanger, rather than a curator, was chosen to head the project was that architecture had been such a key component of the site. But although it was hoped the collected material could later be used to construct a memorial, Voorsanger was adamant that they called what they were doing archiving. "A memorial seemed to place too much emphasis on the emotional side of things," he says.

"The artifacts we found covered a whole panoply of items, from individual coffee cups to a burning steel facade. As well as forming a picture of everyday life on the site, we wanted to make sure we had a record of the materials used to build each of the towers and that we were documenting their collapse."

Since none of the steel from Building 7 was saved for study to understand why, for the first time in history, a steel-framed building had collapsed due to fires alone, Voorsanger's claim that "we wanted to make sure we had a record of the materials used to build each of the towers and that we were documenting their collapse," is patently offensive in a most amateurish way.

On June 3, 2002, well before President Bush was forced to empanel a semi-legal 9/11 Commission, an ad hoc group made this announcement: "Heritage Preservation Publishes First Comprehensive Study of Loss to Nation's Cultural Heritage as a Result of 9/11," Their comprehensive study, a 26-page report titled Cataclysm and Challenge, offered "the first" look at what was lost on 9/11. It is in keeping with established parameters, and the time frame of the United States government-organized conspiracy, we're told that the

"Heritage Preservation prepared the report on behalf of the Heritage Emergency National Task Force, a partnership of 34 federal agencies and national associations founded with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 1995 to help protect museums, archives, libraries and historic sites from disasters."

The report only mentions the loss of Cloud Fortress once, in passing, when it incorrectly titles the work, saying, "Nagare’s black granite World Trade Center Sculpture...was destroyed." However, they claim their mission differently

"As part of its assessment, the Task Force undertook an evaluation of nearly 200 pieces of outdoor sculpture located south of 14th Street to Battery Park at the island’s southern tip. We have already discussed the destruction and damage to pieces at the Trade Center itself. Beyond its perimeter, however, there was remarkably little damage to outdoor artwork."

However, it lauds the resourcefulness of the enterprising employees at the nearby Museum of Jewish Heritage

"Sensing smoke from the burning towers, the building’s automatic fire alarm system began a computerized shutdown of outside air vents and other critical systems.

"But the entire automated circuit panel failed when all electrical power was cut off to the area. With the Twin Towers ablaze in the background, museum engineers climbed to the roof and hand cranked the remaining vents closed. Even as police warned of the towers’ collapse and ordered the area evacuated, the engineers stayed to finish the job, turning off water valves as they left. Because police and other rescue workers used the museum grounds as a staging area following the
attack, only a few staff members were allowed to return for a brief inspection on September 13. They found no damage to the building or its fragile collection—not even a trace of dust inside."

This is the sort of important finding that they then feature in their news release.

The report produced is filled with terrible mistakes and the most errant nonsense. Private agendas leap from the page, such as

"A complete inventory of the numerous corporate art collections lost on September 11 may be impossible to compile because it is believed many art inventories were destroyed along with the Trade Center itself. AXA Art Insurance Corporation has estimated the value of artwork lost at $100 million."

That estimate is a neat trick of AXA's, who only insured three clients in the trade center, and wasn't privy to other private collections.

This quasi-governmental organization had the covert task of helping to create a totally false version of reality. For instance, they warn us

"In addition, 22 federal government departments and agencies had offices in the Trade Center complex. Included were the Secret Service, the Department of Transportation (Coast Guard), the Department of Defense, the Peace Corps, the Department of Labor, the Federal Maritime Commission, the Treasury Department, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. All official records and office documents, together with computer hard drives, were destroyed. Although certain revenue collection agencies, such as the Internal Revenue Service and the Customs Service, are required to have back-up documentation stored off-site, the National Archives and Records Administration presumes vast numbers of other federal records were simply lost.

This seems like an odd conclusion, since the major advisement the report issued is the importance of maintaining off-site backups of critical records. The group was formed in 1995, and one would assume they arrived at that finding long before September 11th, 2001, and would have advised the individual government agencies that make up the group, as well as private arts organizations.

An example of utter nonsense is their claim that a resource stored in offices on the 60th floor of Tower 1 had "miraculously" survived the total destruction

"Even months after the disaster, a historic photographic archive owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was miraculously recovered. Up to 100,000 negatives dating back to the 1920s were found under the debris of Tower One in conditions ranging from ruined to pristine. This pictorial history of the entire metropolitan transportation system included documentation of the building of the George Washington Bridge, the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, and the World Trade Center itself."

This is evidence of advance planning and foreknowledge, with an obvious removal of a valued collection from the trade center before the attacks took place, similar to a report that a Rodin bronze cast of The Thinker had survived undamaged after falling from Cantor Fitzgerald offices on the 105th floor---only then to be lost or stolen while being held in the custody of members of the New York Fire Department.

An equally specious effort was made to tally cultural losses and create a reality from thin air by the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR), which describes itself un-ironically as "a not-for-profit educational and research organization dedicated to integrity in the visual arts."

IFAR held a public symposium on February 28, 2002, and issued several reports of the proceedings under the heading, September 11th: Art Loss, Damage, and Repercussions."

Each of these separate reports is more fascinating then the last one read.  One of them has long been unavailable online, but has recently surfaced at archive.org. Called "The Art Lost by Citigroup on 9/11," by Suzanne F. W. Lemakis, it provides further evidence that art had been removed in advance from the trade center---in this case, Soloman's headquarters in Building 7. There comes a time when all such "coincidences" as these need to be added up.

Important to a discussion of Nagare's missing sculpture, is the report by Saul Wenegrat, the former Director of the Art Program for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, who curated the public art collection at the trade center, and is titled, "Public Art at the World Trade Center," Wenegrat retired after 20 years on the job, a period of time during which he helped acquire exactly seven pieces of public art. He tells us that

"After the recent destruction of the World Trade Center, I was asked to join a committee to put together items found at the site for possible use later in an archive or memorial. Together with Bartholomew Vorsanger and Marilyn Jordan Taylor, I was a member of a committee with that grim task. When I went to the site shortly after the bombing, this is what I found..."

so he lacks Vorsanger's excuse of only having had come aboard the project two weeks after the "bombing" had occurred. If possible, Wenegrat is even more circumspect about Nagare's lost work than Heritage Preservation was three months later. The extent of Wenegrat's remarks about the missing sculpture is found in one short paragraph:

"At the Church Street entrance to the World Trade Center Plaza (Fig. I), there was a large, black Swedish granite sculpture by Japanese artist Masayuki Nagare (Fig. 2). It was completed in 1972 and measured 14 feet high by 34 feet wide by 17 feet deep. Although it looked like a solid piece, it was actually a veneer of granite over a steel and concrete armature."

Apparently, like Barbara Bush, Wenegrat doesn't bother his "beautiful mind" with unpleasant facts, such as the wanton and willful destruction of a major art work, which formerly was under his care. He remains unmoved, incurious and unaffectionate---unlike the humanity underlying Robert Segal's expression of confusion and regret over the loss. Art means nothing to Wenegrat and it never did. Like the other "professionals" mentioned here, who work in service to the lie, he is a sad bureaucratic cog in a corrupt machine. And since we can tell one another apart now, where once we couldn't, there must be consequences for the evildoers.