Tuesday, November 02, 2010
Monday, October 18, 2010
WPIX September 11th Video
Supposedly, N.I.S.T. publicly released 86GB worth of research materials it used as basis for its written report on the collapses of the World Trade Center towers, including a plenitude of never-before-seen videos.
A YouTube user, 911crastings, recently uploaded 528 of these short clips to his YouTube channel.
There is no rhyme or reason to the way N.I.S.T. cataloged the material. For instance, the local New York news station WPIX shot video from several discrete locations downtown, each of which could have been presented as a straightforward, uninterrupted sequence. Instead, we get clips as short as eight seconds, which are then further disorganized by their random placement within several series.
There are about 74 clips of WPIX footage, many of which consist of steady closeups of the two burning tower facades. I was struck by what seemed to be a complete absence of any shots of jumpers in WPIX's work. In several cases, we can clearly make out debris being expelled and falling, but we never see people collected in the windows, gasping for breath and the attention of rescuers, let alone their horrific plunging demises. I wondered if the people operating the WPIX cameras weren't somehow outside the central command and control of the authorities managing the psy-op.
But then I viewed WPIX Dub 3, #47, and I became sure some aberration to the plan was indicated. The clip is only 18-seconds long, and in it we see the fatal fall of what clearly is intended to be a human jumper, but which is also clearly not a human being falling. I consider it to be a smoking gun, which provides verification of a technique I've long suspected was utilized.
Namely, if the sight of falling bodies was such a widely distributed "fact," which could have been viewed from vantage points far away, then some effort must have been expended to mimic the sight of suicides and jumpers---at least from their starting points high up in the air. (And with apologies to Todd Maisel, I've never seen any photographic evidence of bodies, or body parts, lying anywhere on the ground.)
Since I believe that elevators were still working all the way to the top in both towers until they collapsed, I wondered if crews weren't tasked with throwing mannequins or dummies out of windows from within the smoke zone to simulate these jumpers. They could then have retreated to safety before the planned and scheduled demolitions preceded.
That is exactly what I think is shown in this video. (For the best view, double click on this video and go to YouTube and click on the full-screen version.) See what you think:
The first startling fact is that the clip begins with the camera in a steady and fixed position, and "body" already airborne. This indicates to me there was some problem with its launching, and the clip needed to be edited down. There is no logical explanation for excluding the beginning of this dramatic moment. No other clips leads in, or fills us in.
Secondly, the form does not appear to behave as a human body would as it fell. Although apparently weighted and articulated with a waist joint to simulate a tumbling body, the arms and legs never leave a fixed position relative to each other or the torso.
Thirdly, why does it take "the body" seven seconds to fall only approximately thirty stories? Didn't the entire building crumble in under twelve? The film rate can't have been slowed down, because the smoke, flame and soundtrack are all depicted in real time.
And lastly, the image looks like nothing more than a dress-maker's muslin-covered dummy--or even a mummy from a 1930's horror film, with no contrast between the skin on the hands and face and any clothing worn. In fact, I wonder if this doesn't represent a goof, with a failure to properly prepare and dress the mummy-dummy.
Compare this clip with one cataloged as "Trottenberg 10." There we see what looks like foreknowledged camera panning toward two quick jumpers, accompanied by a soundtrack of horrified eyewitnesses. 26 seconds into the 40-second video, note what appears to be a human body flung a vast distance out from the building. If this was a human being, he or she would have had to get a running start like a pole vaulter to make it that distance. If it is only debris, nothing explains its ejection short of a slingshot.
A YouTube user, 911crastings, recently uploaded 528 of these short clips to his YouTube channel.
There is no rhyme or reason to the way N.I.S.T. cataloged the material. For instance, the local New York news station WPIX shot video from several discrete locations downtown, each of which could have been presented as a straightforward, uninterrupted sequence. Instead, we get clips as short as eight seconds, which are then further disorganized by their random placement within several series.
There are about 74 clips of WPIX footage, many of which consist of steady closeups of the two burning tower facades. I was struck by what seemed to be a complete absence of any shots of jumpers in WPIX's work. In several cases, we can clearly make out debris being expelled and falling, but we never see people collected in the windows, gasping for breath and the attention of rescuers, let alone their horrific plunging demises. I wondered if the people operating the WPIX cameras weren't somehow outside the central command and control of the authorities managing the psy-op.
But then I viewed WPIX Dub 3, #47, and I became sure some aberration to the plan was indicated. The clip is only 18-seconds long, and in it we see the fatal fall of what clearly is intended to be a human jumper, but which is also clearly not a human being falling. I consider it to be a smoking gun, which provides verification of a technique I've long suspected was utilized.
Namely, if the sight of falling bodies was such a widely distributed "fact," which could have been viewed from vantage points far away, then some effort must have been expended to mimic the sight of suicides and jumpers---at least from their starting points high up in the air. (And with apologies to Todd Maisel, I've never seen any photographic evidence of bodies, or body parts, lying anywhere on the ground.)
Since I believe that elevators were still working all the way to the top in both towers until they collapsed, I wondered if crews weren't tasked with throwing mannequins or dummies out of windows from within the smoke zone to simulate these jumpers. They could then have retreated to safety before the planned and scheduled demolitions preceded.
That is exactly what I think is shown in this video. (For the best view, double click on this video and go to YouTube and click on the full-screen version.) See what you think:
The first startling fact is that the clip begins with the camera in a steady and fixed position, and "body" already airborne. This indicates to me there was some problem with its launching, and the clip needed to be edited down. There is no logical explanation for excluding the beginning of this dramatic moment. No other clips leads in, or fills us in.
Secondly, the form does not appear to behave as a human body would as it fell. Although apparently weighted and articulated with a waist joint to simulate a tumbling body, the arms and legs never leave a fixed position relative to each other or the torso.
Thirdly, why does it take "the body" seven seconds to fall only approximately thirty stories? Didn't the entire building crumble in under twelve? The film rate can't have been slowed down, because the smoke, flame and soundtrack are all depicted in real time.
And lastly, the image looks like nothing more than a dress-maker's muslin-covered dummy--or even a mummy from a 1930's horror film, with no contrast between the skin on the hands and face and any clothing worn. In fact, I wonder if this doesn't represent a goof, with a failure to properly prepare and dress the mummy-dummy.
Compare this clip with one cataloged as "Trottenberg 10." There we see what looks like foreknowledged camera panning toward two quick jumpers, accompanied by a soundtrack of horrified eyewitnesses. 26 seconds into the 40-second video, note what appears to be a human body flung a vast distance out from the building. If this was a human being, he or she would have had to get a running start like a pole vaulter to make it that distance. If it is only debris, nothing explains its ejection short of a slingshot.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Edelman Works the Cantor Grief Center at the Pierre Hotel After September 11, 2001,
Transcript [Mike]
...at the grief center, and Edelman has pulled together a whole team at the grief center. And, so for the next ten days or so, what I did was work with the media at the Cantor grief center, and there's nothing I've ever done in my career, or imagine I'll ever do, that was this...was as important as that work...and the fact is,[ as mourning?] as that work, you know, one of the most touching things that happens to me, is that I'll have people come up to me on the street who were related to Cantor in one way or another, and say, "I remember you from those days, and thank you," and that's much more meaningful than anything, anything back than I ever get.
And then what Edelman does was just incredable, like what we did in those days, I remember Noel Cloud, I'm looking at Brett because he knew him well, she was one of the main coordinators of this, so there were people who were doing actual Cantor work, you know, so being on site, people like Mike Halloway back at Edelman, because they needed to be in a kind of a quieter place, where they're dealing with the thousand's of media requests that were coming in. But then we had this whole group of people who just volunteered, and I have this image of just...maybe the night of September 12, or September 13th, of it being four in the morning and this team of 30 Edelman people, essentially, you know, to be morbid for a second, alphabetizing the photos of the people that were unaccounted for, and going through checklists of, what we knew, what relatives were there, and it was just like...the way they were dealing with this incredible difficult thing was---they were doing it! Like they were doing it in a smart efficient way, and just the number of different people who were helping out was really...it was just amazing, um, and um, there's a really, there's such a difficult time, and I kind of can't believe that I'm at a point where I can even talk about it at all, because it was so, so awful...
So Mike, can I make a quick segue then? [continued]
See: Edelman.com, "Taking a Walk to Ground Zero,"
Thursday, October 07, 2010
Cannibalizing Cantor's bond trading has paid off
September 3, 2001, Business Week, "eSpeed's Trading Secrets: Cannibalizing Cantor's bond trading has paid off, but growth is slowing," by Spencer E. Ante,
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_36/b3747619.htm
On the 105th floor of New York's World Trade Center, a bond broker is sleeping, legs stretched out, head resting softly on the back of a chair. When he's awake, he takes phone orders for U.S. Treasury securities at Cantor Fitzgerald, once the leading wholesale broker of government bonds. Two years back, he would have been surrounded by 220 screaming comrades hard at work matching buyers and sellers. Now, he's one of just 25 brokers whiling away the day and waiting for the phone to ring.
The new center of action lies down the hall at eSpeed Inc. (ESPD ) In March, 1999, Cantor spun off eSpeed, an electronic marketplace for bond trading, in a bid to reinvent the brokerage as an e-business and prevent online upstarts from siphoning off trades. Cantor has kept its equity brokerage, which the company says remains healthy. But most of its bond trades have moved over to eSpeed--in which Cantor holds a 55% stake. In the upstart's offices, computer screens silently record billions of dollars in bond and commodity trades every hour with almost no human intervention. "Nobody believed we could go electronic so fast," says Tim Coughlin, Cantor's head of government bond trading.
While most e-marketplaces are in a financial tailspin, eSpeed has been gaining altitude. The company has become the de facto exchange for U.S. Treasury securities, with about half of the $300 billion in daily trades taking place on its system. In the second quarter, eSpeed saw revenues of $34.1 million, up 52% from a year ago. Although the company continues to lose money--$1 million in the second quarter--executives and analysts expect it to turn profitable in the current quarter. Next year, eSpeed is forecasted to earn $24 million on $195 million in revenues, says J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. analyst Greg Smith. That prospect has helped cushion its shares, which have fallen only 10% this year, to $12, compared with the 85%+ drop of many Internet stocks. "ESpeed is going to be one of the survivors," Smith says.
Even so, the highflier may be headed for stormy weather. ESpeed faces slowing growth in its bond-brokering business as it takes an increasingly large chunk of sales from Cantor. In the second quarter, Cantor Fitzgerald completed 25% of its transactions by phone, compared with 63% in the first quarter of 2000. That's starting to affect eSpeed: In the first half of 2001, the upstart's trading volumes grew less than the overall Treasury market for the first time--by 11% vs. 33% for the total market. Within 18 months, eSpeed will have taken everything it can from Cantor, says Robertson Stephens Inc. analyst Justin J. Hughes.
ESpeed may also suffer from slowing action at the Federal Reserve. Since January, the Fed has cut interest rates six times, which makes the government bond market more volatile and boosts trading. As the Fed slows rate cuts, analysts say eSpeed's trading volumes will shrink. "A dull market is not a good thing," admits eSpeed President Frederick T. Varacchi.
Another red flag: Howard W. Lutnick, the 39-year-old chairman and chief executive of both eSpeed and Cantor Fitzgerald, has had run-ins with the Securities & Exchange Commission. In 1994, while Lutnick was president of Cantor, the SEC fined the firm for improperly funneling the brokerage's bond trades through small investors' accounts. The firm paid a $100,000 fine but didn't admit any wrongdoing. Then, this past June, after an SEC investigation of eSpeed's accounting methods, the company agreed to amend its financial statements. The issue: The SEC believed eSpeed overstated revenues by including charges billed to Cantor for processing trades. The change doesn't affect profits, but it takes a bite out of revenues. In the first quarter, for example, eSpeed had to cut its reported revenues by 26%, to $31.9 million. Still, most analysts aren't concerned. "We don't think it changes the economics of the situation," says analyst Diane B. Glossman of UBS Warburg. Lutnick agrees, calling the affair "simply a presentation change."
Lutnick is a classic Wall Street overachiever. He grew up in a middle-class home on Long Island, the son of a college professor and an artist mother. His mother died when he was 16, and his father passed away during Lutnick's first week at Pennsylvania's Haverford College. Upon graduating with a degree in economics, Lutnick joined Cantor Fitzgerald, founded by B. Gerald Cantor. A onetime Yankee Stadium hot-dog vendor who later amassed a $500 million fortune and the world's largest private collection of Rodin sculptures, Cantor took a liking to Lutnick. Under Cantor's guidance, Lutnick prospered, and he soon viewed Cantor as a surrogate parent. In 1991, Cantor made Lutnick, then 29, president of the firm. The two ran Cantor together for the next five years. "He was my family," Lutnick says, glancing at the four-foot-tall portrait of Cantor hanging behind his desk.
Like many families, Lutnick and Cantor had their share of disagreements. In the early 1990s, Lutnick wanted to push into electronic trading. But, he says, Cantor feared the move would hurt the brokerage. "It is very hard when it is your baby to make those tough decisions," says Lutnick. Meanwhile, Cantor's health was declining due to diabetes, and in January, 1996, he was put on life support. Cantor's wife, Iris, tried to take over the firm, Lutnick says. In response, Lutnick convened a five-member incapacity committee provided for in the brokerage's partnership agreement and was granted control of the company. Since then, Mrs. Cantor and Lutnick have been engaged in intense legal warfare, suing each other over issues ranging from funding for a foundation she heads to a dispute over payments from the spin-off of eSpeed. Through her attorney, Barry Slotnick, Iris Cantor declined to comment.
With control of Cantor Fitzgerald, Lutnick was free to push the brokerage into the e-future. He invested $250 million in an electronic trading system. In March, 1999, realizing that Cantor brokers had no incentive to make the switch to electronic trading, he created eSpeed. Outsiders laud Lutnick's bold move. "In the high-tech business, the rule is to cannibalize yourself before anyone else cannibalizes you," says Michael Cusumano, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Business.
To keep eSpeed growing, Lutnick has created an online supermarket of wholesale commodity exchanges. So far, he has built 48 marketplaces for everything from foreign exchange to Eurobonds to electricity. "The world is going to trade these commodities like it trades stocks," says Lutnick. "And eSpeed wants to be the place where that happens."
Insurance policy. So far, he has met with mixed success: Trading of products other than Treasuries has grown to represent about half of eSpeed's revenues. ESpeed, though, is unlikely to dominate many of those markets the way it does the U.S. Treasury trading that it pioneered. More than 70 companies have built electronic exchanges for fixed-income securities. The biggest threats: Garban-Intercapital PLC and Tullet & Tokyo Liberty PLC, two London brokerages with electronic-trading operations. Tullet is strong in emerging markets and Garban is the dominant player in many of the more esoteric markets that eSpeed is trying to attack, such as foreign government bonds. While eSpeed rules in U.S. Treasury securities, "they are not the largest broker of any other instrument," says Michael Spencer, CEO of Garban.
Lutnick acknowledges that he faces plenty of rough patches on the road ahead, but he remains optimistic. In his capacious corner office adorned with a Rodin sculpture, Lutnick predicts 50% annual growth through 2002. Clearly, eSpeed's connection to Cantor is a unique insurance policy, assuring it won't end up in a dot-coma. And Lutnick can draw confidence from his past success and eSpeed's strong start. Considering the challenges ahead, however, Lutnick may want to fasten his seat belt for a bumpy ride.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_36/b3747619.htm
On the 105th floor of New York's World Trade Center, a bond broker is sleeping, legs stretched out, head resting softly on the back of a chair. When he's awake, he takes phone orders for U.S. Treasury securities at Cantor Fitzgerald, once the leading wholesale broker of government bonds. Two years back, he would have been surrounded by 220 screaming comrades hard at work matching buyers and sellers. Now, he's one of just 25 brokers whiling away the day and waiting for the phone to ring.
The new center of action lies down the hall at eSpeed Inc. (ESPD ) In March, 1999, Cantor spun off eSpeed, an electronic marketplace for bond trading, in a bid to reinvent the brokerage as an e-business and prevent online upstarts from siphoning off trades. Cantor has kept its equity brokerage, which the company says remains healthy. But most of its bond trades have moved over to eSpeed--in which Cantor holds a 55% stake. In the upstart's offices, computer screens silently record billions of dollars in bond and commodity trades every hour with almost no human intervention. "Nobody believed we could go electronic so fast," says Tim Coughlin, Cantor's head of government bond trading.
While most e-marketplaces are in a financial tailspin, eSpeed has been gaining altitude. The company has become the de facto exchange for U.S. Treasury securities, with about half of the $300 billion in daily trades taking place on its system. In the second quarter, eSpeed saw revenues of $34.1 million, up 52% from a year ago. Although the company continues to lose money--$1 million in the second quarter--executives and analysts expect it to turn profitable in the current quarter. Next year, eSpeed is forecasted to earn $24 million on $195 million in revenues, says J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. analyst Greg Smith. That prospect has helped cushion its shares, which have fallen only 10% this year, to $12, compared with the 85%+ drop of many Internet stocks. "ESpeed is going to be one of the survivors," Smith says.
Even so, the highflier may be headed for stormy weather. ESpeed faces slowing growth in its bond-brokering business as it takes an increasingly large chunk of sales from Cantor. In the second quarter, Cantor Fitzgerald completed 25% of its transactions by phone, compared with 63% in the first quarter of 2000. That's starting to affect eSpeed: In the first half of 2001, the upstart's trading volumes grew less than the overall Treasury market for the first time--by 11% vs. 33% for the total market. Within 18 months, eSpeed will have taken everything it can from Cantor, says Robertson Stephens Inc. analyst Justin J. Hughes.
ESpeed may also suffer from slowing action at the Federal Reserve. Since January, the Fed has cut interest rates six times, which makes the government bond market more volatile and boosts trading. As the Fed slows rate cuts, analysts say eSpeed's trading volumes will shrink. "A dull market is not a good thing," admits eSpeed President Frederick T. Varacchi.
Another red flag: Howard W. Lutnick, the 39-year-old chairman and chief executive of both eSpeed and Cantor Fitzgerald, has had run-ins with the Securities & Exchange Commission. In 1994, while Lutnick was president of Cantor, the SEC fined the firm for improperly funneling the brokerage's bond trades through small investors' accounts. The firm paid a $100,000 fine but didn't admit any wrongdoing. Then, this past June, after an SEC investigation of eSpeed's accounting methods, the company agreed to amend its financial statements. The issue: The SEC believed eSpeed overstated revenues by including charges billed to Cantor for processing trades. The change doesn't affect profits, but it takes a bite out of revenues. In the first quarter, for example, eSpeed had to cut its reported revenues by 26%, to $31.9 million. Still, most analysts aren't concerned. "We don't think it changes the economics of the situation," says analyst Diane B. Glossman of UBS Warburg. Lutnick agrees, calling the affair "simply a presentation change."
Lutnick is a classic Wall Street overachiever. He grew up in a middle-class home on Long Island, the son of a college professor and an artist mother. His mother died when he was 16, and his father passed away during Lutnick's first week at Pennsylvania's Haverford College. Upon graduating with a degree in economics, Lutnick joined Cantor Fitzgerald, founded by B. Gerald Cantor. A onetime Yankee Stadium hot-dog vendor who later amassed a $500 million fortune and the world's largest private collection of Rodin sculptures, Cantor took a liking to Lutnick. Under Cantor's guidance, Lutnick prospered, and he soon viewed Cantor as a surrogate parent. In 1991, Cantor made Lutnick, then 29, president of the firm. The two ran Cantor together for the next five years. "He was my family," Lutnick says, glancing at the four-foot-tall portrait of Cantor hanging behind his desk.
Like many families, Lutnick and Cantor had their share of disagreements. In the early 1990s, Lutnick wanted to push into electronic trading. But, he says, Cantor feared the move would hurt the brokerage. "It is very hard when it is your baby to make those tough decisions," says Lutnick. Meanwhile, Cantor's health was declining due to diabetes, and in January, 1996, he was put on life support. Cantor's wife, Iris, tried to take over the firm, Lutnick says. In response, Lutnick convened a five-member incapacity committee provided for in the brokerage's partnership agreement and was granted control of the company. Since then, Mrs. Cantor and Lutnick have been engaged in intense legal warfare, suing each other over issues ranging from funding for a foundation she heads to a dispute over payments from the spin-off of eSpeed. Through her attorney, Barry Slotnick, Iris Cantor declined to comment.
With control of Cantor Fitzgerald, Lutnick was free to push the brokerage into the e-future. He invested $250 million in an electronic trading system. In March, 1999, realizing that Cantor brokers had no incentive to make the switch to electronic trading, he created eSpeed. Outsiders laud Lutnick's bold move. "In the high-tech business, the rule is to cannibalize yourself before anyone else cannibalizes you," says Michael Cusumano, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Business.
To keep eSpeed growing, Lutnick has created an online supermarket of wholesale commodity exchanges. So far, he has built 48 marketplaces for everything from foreign exchange to Eurobonds to electricity. "The world is going to trade these commodities like it trades stocks," says Lutnick. "And eSpeed wants to be the place where that happens."
Insurance policy. So far, he has met with mixed success: Trading of products other than Treasuries has grown to represent about half of eSpeed's revenues. ESpeed, though, is unlikely to dominate many of those markets the way it does the U.S. Treasury trading that it pioneered. More than 70 companies have built electronic exchanges for fixed-income securities. The biggest threats: Garban-Intercapital PLC and Tullet & Tokyo Liberty PLC, two London brokerages with electronic-trading operations. Tullet is strong in emerging markets and Garban is the dominant player in many of the more esoteric markets that eSpeed is trying to attack, such as foreign government bonds. While eSpeed rules in U.S. Treasury securities, "they are not the largest broker of any other instrument," says Michael Spencer, CEO of Garban.
Lutnick acknowledges that he faces plenty of rough patches on the road ahead, but he remains optimistic. In his capacious corner office adorned with a Rodin sculpture, Lutnick predicts 50% annual growth through 2002. Clearly, eSpeed's connection to Cantor is a unique insurance policy, assuring it won't end up in a dot-coma. And Lutnick can draw confidence from his past success and eSpeed's strong start. Considering the challenges ahead, however, Lutnick may want to fasten his seat belt for a bumpy ride.
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
The Submission of Cantor Fitzgerald to the Special Master of the September 11th Compensation Fund of 2001, and to The United States Department of Justice,
What follows are highlights from an absolutely remarkable pdf document, which can still be found online, linked to from an archived web page of a now-defunct Cantor Fitzgerald web site, the "Family Information Center," an effort which was active from September 12, 2001 through November 2, 2006.
Dated September 12, 2002, the document was the pro bono effort of Cantor's attorneys Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, to address a perceived potential for unfairness in administrating the recently passed federal law designed to indemnify the airline industry by buying off the victims of 9/11.
Various explanations are offered for the increase in income.
On page 18, is information attributed to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, indicating a corollary increase in the average daily trading volume of U.S. Treasury securities from 1999 ($186.5 billion) to 2001 ($297.9 billion) and further rising to ($344.8 billion) in 2002.
A note says the chart illustrates the gross totals for primary dealers with interdealer brokers and primary dealers with others, but it doesn't offer reasons for the expansion in the volume of traded U.S. Treasury securities, or address Cantor's share of the market. A direct comparison only accounts for about half of Cantor's increased income anyway, which came during a bad year for the rest of Wall Street.
The growth of Cantor's eSpeed division is cited as a reason for a successful future in the company
What possible agenda could Mr. Ante serve being the sole source in the record who paints such a contrary view of a private scene---if it were not the truth? He pays eSpeed a back-handed compliment:
In my opinion, the Skadden, Arps, Slate submission to the September 11th Compensation Fund, materially misrepresents other facts concerning the prospects for future earning for many of the so-called 678 Cantor victims of 9/11. Even outright misrepresentation is not unknown.
Another misrepresentation, which apparently holds a candle to the Cantor wind, concerns a much lauded training program at Cantor for young people entering the bond brokerage business.
CANTOR FITZGERALD'S THREE SEVERELY BURNED SURVIVORS SHOULD RECEIVE FULL AND JUST COMPENSATION
There were three Cantor Fitzgerald employees who were in the World Trade Center on September 11, but who had not yet arrived at the Company's floors at the top of the building. They survived the attack, but were severely burned. No submission to the Department of Justice and Special Master would be complete if it did not mention these three survivors. They have been courageous and inspirational in their struggle to cope with the devastating
injuries they have suffered. We request that the Special Master consider the claims of these three people on an individual basis and that they receive full and just compensation both for their economic loss as well as their incredible non-economic loss. They have been horribly injured and face many years of pain and medical expenses in their struggle to survive.
Page 62
Trainees had starting salaries in the general range of $30,000, depending on class year. However, as demonstrated in the chart below, trainees who successfully completed the program were able to more than quadruple their salaries in as few as three years, earning well into the six figures, whether they stayed at Cantor Fitzgerald or not. For example, for those people in the 1997 training class still working at Cantor Fitzgerald as of September 11, the average salary in 2000 was $219,166, and in 2001 it was $241,222. For those people in the 1997 training class who left Cantor Fitzgerald and for whom salary data is available, the current average salary is $200,300. Page 48
As the trainee class members gained experience, their salaries and bonuses continued to increase rapidly. The salaries of those in the 1993 training class rose exponentially within eight years – on average, forty-eight times their starting salary for those who remained at Cantor Fitzgerald, and twenty times their starting salary for those who left Cantor Fitzgerald. For those 1993 training class members still working at Cantor Fitzgerald as of September 11, the average total compensation in 2000 was $757,522, and in 2001 it was $1,467,631. For those in the 1993 training class who left Cantor Fitzgerald and who provided salary information, the average current salary is $650,000. This information demonstrates that a future income calculation based on set percentage increases is inappropriate compared with Cantor Fitzgerald's actual compensation data. Most of the trainee class members attained a salary at or above the 98th income percentile after just a few years at Cantor Fitzgerald. While the information available for those who left Cantor Fitzgerald shows that those remaining at Cantor Fitzgerald generally earned more, those who left are still doing very well. Page 49
"The absence of a cap," [the Special Master] says, "means that I've got to be aware of what is fair not only from the claimants' point of view, but from the taxpayers' point of view."
Josh Tyrangiel, Holding The Checkbook (Time, Vol. 160, No. 11, September 9, 2002). Page 55
At Cantor Fitzgerald, where the average age of the victim was 38, Page 41
"Finally, with respect to the issue of collateral offsets, Cantor Fitzgerald has voluntarily developed and implemented a number of plans to assist the families of victims, including contributing 25% of its profits to the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund — plans that Cantor Fitzgerald had no legal obligation to create or continue. This submission explains why these plans are not "collateral sources" under the Act or the "Final Rule." Note 2, Page 12
"The vast majority of Cantor Fitzgerald employees killed on September 11 were compensated in the following ways: (i) salary and bonus, (ii) eSpeed stock options, (iii) fringe benefits such as health and life insurance, and (iv) an employer matched contribution in a 401(k) plan. In addition, the 163 Partners who were lost also received (i) Partnership distributions on a quarterly basis, (ii) eSpeed stock in 2001 and 2002; and (iii) awards of Partnership Grants. It is important to recognize that employees and Partners also earned compensation that was not taxable at the time granted and, therefore, not reflected on a W-2 form, but that such Page 24
As described above, as part of its compensation package, Cantor Fitzgerald provided other benefits related to employment, such as paying insurance premiums for medical insurance, disability insurance, life insurance and workers' compensation insurance. These benefits are included in compensation under the Act and state law. Page 31
"More than 250 Cantor Fitzgerald employees who were killed on September 11 had incomes above the 98th percentile (before including eSpeed options and eSpeed stock). These Cantor Fitzgerald families will be seeking calculation of an award based upon their factual record." Page 41
The presumed Age-Specific Earnings Growth Rates published in Table 3 to the Explanation of Process are woefully inadequate as applied to Cantor Fitzgerald victims. Far from the 3-9.7% growth rates presumed by the Special Master in Table 3, the actual growth rates observed for Cantor Fitzgerald decedents during the years 1998 through 2001 actually exceeded 20% for many age groups. When examined at each age group level, the actual average Cantor growth rates exceeded the presumed rates in over 87% of the possible single year comparison points and in over 97% of the three year averages. Page 43
"The Cantor Fitzgerald growth rates were calculated based upon actual data compiled for the lost Cantor Fitzgerald employees, tracking their compensation and age over the 1998 to 2001 period. Chicago Partners compiled the actual compensation data for each lost employee for the years 1998-2001, calculated annual growth rates for each employee, combined the resulting growth rates with all other lost Cantor Fitzgerald employees of a similar age, and determined the average actual percentage increase on an annual basis for each age group. Page 45
A Three-Year Average Of Earnings Would Under Compensate Most Cantor Fitzgerald Families
The Explanation of Process states that, "[g]enerally, the Special Master will consider the past three years of income data," and that "[f]or some cases the most recent year will be the primary basis of the award – other claims may require analyses of trends adjusted to current dollars." Page 46
The Cantor Fitzgerald families should at least be given the choice of selecting whether a two-year average (2000 and 2001) is used or whether 2001 income data alone (on annualized basis) is used. Page 51
Cantor Fitzgerald is adamantly opposed to having its deceased employees' families penalized for voluntary payments that the company has made to them when such payments were not required by law or contract. Both the text of the Act and the Final Rule support the conclusion that voluntary employer contributions, such as those described above, should not be considered a collateral source to be deducted from the Fund award.
Page 58
This Report was prepared by
CHICAGO PARTNERS, LLC
A LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY
140 South Dearborn Street
Chicago, Illinois 60603 Page 64
Following the tragic events of September 11, representatives of the Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom L.L.P. law firm contacted Chicago Partners about the firm’s willingness to serve in a pro bono role helping Cantor Fitzgerald in assisting the victims’ families in applying to the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. This report is the result of those pro bono efforts. Page 66
Chicago Partners compiled a relatively extensive database on the Cantor Fitzgerald September 11th victims. As discussed above, this data was sourced primarily from IRS forms provided by third party payroll service providers to Cantor. Page 67
For the nine Cantor victims within this age group (with data across all three years), the two year average earnings level of $144,764 is 28.6% greater than the $112,594 three year average, while the $204,409 2001 average earnings level is 81.5% greater than the three year average. Page 69
Dated September 12, 2002, the document was the pro bono effort of Cantor's attorneys Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, to address a perceived potential for unfairness in administrating the recently passed federal law designed to indemnify the airline industry by buying off the victims of 9/11.
"It is important to recognize that the Act was adopted by Congress and signed by the President as part of a plan to protect the nation's airlines from potentially devastating civil lawsuits while at the same time providing full compensation to the families of those lost on September 11. The establishment of the Victim Compensation Fund was an extraordinary legislative act to protect the airlines and the victims' families. The Fund was created to compensate, fully and fairly, the families of victims and survivors of the September 11 tragedies for the economic loss that they suffered as a result of the attacks.9 Victims who apply to the Fund waive certain important rights, including the right to sue for damages, including punitive damages, and they must deduct from their awards amounts from certain collateral sources of funds. They were not required to give up was the right to collect their full economic losses. That is the careful balance struck by Congress. It is against the factual backdrop that the Act should be interpreted and applied. Pages 29 & 30At issue was how to properly compensate high-earning victims fully.
"Of the 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees lost on September 11, 163 were Partners, and thus co-owners of the business. In addition to the compensation earned as employees, Partners also earned Partnership distributions, eSpeed stock and Partnership Grants (additional Partnership Units typically awarded as a form of signing bonus or deferred compensation). Page 28A central point concerned the standard practice of averaging incomes over a previous three-year period in arriving at a base figure for further calculations. A problem arose though, from a dramatic increase in the aggregate annual income of the Cantor victims between the years 1999 and 2001. Rather than pulling down the figure by which benefits would be derived with the three-year average, Cantor employees stood to gain by using only the 2001 income. The document is explicit
The two year 2000 – 2001 average aggregate pay is 15% greater than the three year average aggregate level, while the 2001 amount is 47% greater than the three year average aggregate level. Pages 68 and 69On page 78 of the Summary Report and Analysis of Earnings Data for the Cantor Fitzgerald September 11 Victim Compensation Fund Participants, is Exhibit 5, 'Cantor September 11th Victim Aggregate Income, All Cantor Victims with 1999 - 2001 Data (Exclude Options and eSpeed Stock,) which lists the gross collective income for that group as $133,500,111 in 1999, $160,704,717 in year 2000, and $283,724,953 in 2001.
Various explanations are offered for the increase in income.
On page 18, is information attributed to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, indicating a corollary increase in the average daily trading volume of U.S. Treasury securities from 1999 ($186.5 billion) to 2001 ($297.9 billion) and further rising to ($344.8 billion) in 2002.
A note says the chart illustrates the gross totals for primary dealers with interdealer brokers and primary dealers with others, but it doesn't offer reasons for the expansion in the volume of traded U.S. Treasury securities, or address Cantor's share of the market. A direct comparison only accounts for about half of Cantor's increased income anyway, which came during a bad year for the rest of Wall Street.
"The publicly available New York Stock Exchange and Federal Reserve volume figures show that volumes increased last year, even though there was a general economic downturn in 2001." Page 16But Cantor's business wasn't limited to just government securities.
"However, financial services businesses with investment banking and other non-brokerage components had lower earnings in 2001. The reason for the success of wholesale intermediary businesses when other businesses suffered due to the market downturn is marketplace volume." Page 17
"Among other things, the wholesale brokerage business brokered transactions involving government securities, mortgage-backed securities, U.S. government agencies, interest rate swaps, interest rate swap options, emerging markets, municipal securities, corporate bonds, collateralized mortgage obligations, credit derivatives, repos, foreign exchange options, and, through our environmental brokerage business, CO2e.com, environmental-related products. Page 22As we entered into the 2008 recession, those were the growth areas that grew into the Toxic Asset Bail Out Program. Unaddressed however, are questions whether the inflated results of 2001 were due to any possible manipulation---in the way a union worker is faulted for loading up the last year of a contract with overtime to inflate their pensions---it appears to be the start of unsupportable trend that collapsed seven years later.
The growth of Cantor's eSpeed division is cited as a reason for a successful future in the company
"As of September 11, 2001, eSpeed was the leading provider of electronic marketplace and interest-rate related technology solutions and it was in the midst of significant growth. eSpeed's operations had been steadily improving. To illustrate, for the year ended December 2000, eSpeed earned $70.3 million in transaction revenues, a 222% increase over transaction revenues of $21.9 million for the year ended December 31, 1999. The growth in these revenues was attributable to the continued rollout of electronic marketplaces and an increase in the number of clients electronically trading through the eSpeed℠ system. As of December 31, 2000, eSpeed had converted 43 product marketplaces to the eSpeed℠ system. For the quarter ended December 31, 2001, eSpeed recorded operating profits for the first time. For the year ended December 31, 2001, eSpeed earned $98.4 million in transaction revenues – a 40% increase over transaction revenues of $70.3 million from the previous year. eSpeed has met or exceeded its forecasts consistently, a feat very few ecommerce companies have achieved. The steady growth of eSpeed, its ability to meet its projections, and its strong market position, leaves no doubt that the future for its deceased employees would have been extraordinary."Page 15However much new business eSpeed was generating, a great deal of business was simply being shifted over from Cantor's established telephone-voice bond brokering. An article in Business Week published eight days before 9/11 seems specifically to address what I see as a central financial fraud at the heart of the 9/11 conspiracy. Called, " eSpeed's Trading Secrets : Cannibalizing Cantor's bond trading has paid off, but growth is slowing," it was written by a business writer with a punning name, Spencer E. Ante. His lead paragraph opens with an unmistakable effect:
"On the 105th floor of New York's World Trade Center, a bond broker is sleeping, legs stretched out, head resting softly on the back of a chair. When he's awake, he takes phone orders for U.S. Treasury securities at Cantor Fitzgerald, once the leading wholesale broker of government bonds. Two years back, he would have been surrounded by 220 screaming comrades hard at work matching buyers and sellers. Now, he's one of just 25 brokers whiling away the day and waiting for the phone to ring."
"While most e-marketplaces are in a financial tailspin, eSpeed has been gaining altitude. The company has become the de facto exchange for U.S. Treasury securities, with about half of the $300 billion in daily trades taking place on its system."Does "de facto" mean "butt-boy" in Latin? Ante is prescient enough to speak directly to the causes for any hikes in profits:
"ESpeed faces slowing growth in its bond-brokering business as it takes an increasingly large chunk of sales from Cantor. In the second quarter, Cantor Fitzgerald completed 25% of its transactions by phone, compared with 63% in the first quarter of 2000. That's starting to affect eSpeed: In the first half of 2001, the upstart's trading volumes grew less than the overall Treasury market for the first time--by 11% vs. 33% for the total market. Within 18 months, eSpeed will have taken everything it can from Cantor, says Robertson Stephens Inc. analyst Justin J. Hughes."Rather than confusing the issue by comparing a financial chart, which has a four-year growth pattern, against one with three years, and thus overstate a market trend, Mr. Ante gives us the facts that offer up an entirely different reality. When federal borrowing rises significantly in a short period (a serious question in itself, which is entirely ignored. We're we going to war even then?) while Cantor's grip on its traditional market share is sliding for unknown reasons, then I'd guess there's no way the timing of the BusinessWeek piece could be a coincidence. Now could it? Truth must takes a stand like this, even to for account.
In my opinion, the Skadden, Arps, Slate submission to the September 11th Compensation Fund, materially misrepresents other facts concerning the prospects for future earning for many of the so-called 678 Cantor victims of 9/11. Even outright misrepresentation is not unknown.
"Before engaging in economic loss calculations for the Cantor Fitzgerald families, it is important for the Special Master to understand Cantor Fitzgerald's business and the fact that the future of Cantor Fitzgerald employees was secure...Further, this submission explains why Cantor Fitzgerald's business is not adversely affected by market downturns and, thus, why Cantor Fitzgerald's revenues, earnings and earnings growth was and remains sustainable." page 10Perhaps the future is secure for the twenty employees who Cantor fired on Monday, but who were rehired on Wednesday---and who came back!---after the collapse of the towers. When Knight-Ridder's excellent Maureen Fan, writing three days after 9/11, "Financial giant, decimated by tragedy, clings to life," attributes the surviving co-president of equities, Peter DaPuzzo, as telling her that
Though much is made of the family-like nature of Cantor Fitzgerald, it still was, and 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, DaPuzzo said.Whether their were only 25 bond brokers sitting around in the days before 9/11, instead of the former high-energy contingent of 220 traders, figures like 500 who'd been let go, while 300 more awaited, starts to smell like patent disinformation.
Another misrepresentation, which apparently holds a candle to the Cantor wind, concerns a much lauded training program at Cantor for young people entering the bond brokerage business.
"Cantor Fitzgerald and eSpeed, as the largest and leading marketplace intermediary of U.S. Treasuries and a company at the forefront of technology, was a sought-after employer. Cantor Fitzgerald maintained a formal training program for recent college graduates seeking careers as brokers. The program was very selective - approximately 400 people applied each year, 100 were interviewed and 20-50 were accepted for employment, depending on need. Cantor Fitzgerald hired the most promising candidates and kept only the very best. Those who were employed on September 11, 2001 were those who had survived a rigorous training process, and, as a result of their hard work, enjoyed tremendous salary growth and opportunity." Page 47However, in discussing the issue, Cantor only uses data from a training program from 1993 through 1998. Was it because the training program was abandoned afterwards?
From 1993 through 1998, approximately 237 people were accepted into the Cantor Fitzgerald training program. There were 30-50 trainees during each year of the program. Page 47A note tells us that 206 of the 678 victims of 9/11, had started their Cantor employment after January 1, 2000.
As of September 11, 2001, 40 individuals from the 1993-1998 training classes were still with Cantor Fitzgerald. Of those 40, 30 were lost on September 11. Those who died, for the most part, were spread equally among the classes. Note 17,
Note 17: "There were five victims in the 1993 class, nine in the 1994 class, three in the 1995 class, five in the 1996 class, four in the 1997 class and four in the 1998 class." Page 48
The charts exclude options and eSpeed stock and include all victims for whom Chicago Partners has complete data for each time period. Chicago Partners has full information for 323 victims for the four-year period, 1998-2001; it has full information for 383 victims for 1998-1999; it has full information for 452 victims across the years 2000-2001. There were 206 victims who have employment start dates after January 1, 2000, and thus, have only partial 2001 information. This partial year data is not included in the tables for comparative purposes." Page 45The Skadden, Arps, Slate submission takes great pains in describing the security and future in a company culture which had already vanished before tragedy struck on September 11.
At Cantor Fitzgerald, those individuals who had demonstrated their ability to perform in Cantor Fitzgerald's competitive work environment were well-compensated. Cantor Fitzgerald provided generous incentives, including granting opportunities to become partners and to invest in the company to more than 20% of its employees. Once established, many individuals remained at Cantor Fitzgerald due to the cohesiveness of its structure, collaborative environment and compensation packages. Even if an employee decided to leave Cantor Fitzgerald, our research shows that he or she was able to pursue a gainful occupation and earn comparable compensation elsewhere. See, infra, pp. 44-45. The employees lost in the attack had strong economic futures with a successful, expanding company; thus, their prospective earnings would have been significant.That the victim compensation fund was intended to be a giant slush used to buy off the various participants in the 9/11 drama is becoming clear. The Cantor submission includes a dissenting minority opinion, which addresses the unfairness of income disparity directly, albeit from the opposing viewpoint.
Representative John Spratt (D.-South Carolina) made the following remarks I also believe that the victims of this tragedy, whether in the air or on the ground, deserve compensation, and most citizens will be pleased to know that this bill uses their tax dollars for that purpose. But in this case, where the liability of the airlines is unsettled, I do think there are limits to which victims' compensation by the government should be provided. This bill sets up a Victims' Compensation Fund, but does not specify the size of the fund or the maximum that any beneficiary can recover. Many of the victims in the World Trade Center earned many times the incomes of the firemen and police who died trying to protect them. Under this bill, the heirs of those victims will be eligible for many times more benefits than this bill will allow those brave firemen and police. Quite a few claimants will be able to show substantial incomes. The earning capacity of their decedents will run into millions of dollars. I do not doubt their losses, or the grief their survivors must feel, but I do think the compensation to which they are entitled under this bill should be subject to some fair and reasonable limit. At this point, no one has any idea what the government's liability under the Victims' Compensation Fund may be, though it is likely to be substantial. I wanted to propose that we set a fair but generous cap on the victims' benefits paid by the government, and use some of the money saved to help the thousands of airline workers who are being terminated or laid off, and are in a real sense, victims of the September 11 tragedy also. Resolution 244, the rule allowing this bill to come to the House floor, would not permit me to offer such an amendment, and for that reason, I voted against the rule. I will vote for the bill, but it would be a much better bill if such an amendment had been made.Very little was written in the main stream media about the efforts in preparing submissions such as Cantor's document, an effort which can be seen more broadly as an attempt at legitimating victims. One article that succeeded in giving a flavor of the times was a July 9, 2002, New York Times piece by David W. Chen, "Career Profiles of 9/11 Dead Arouse Anxiety ," which attributes the emotions aroused
Representative Spratt's desire for an amendment was precluded by resolution and thus, a cap was rejected. Instead, the Act promises full recovery of economic losses in exchange for waiving rights to sue. Page 56
CANTOR FITZGERALD'S THREE SEVERELY BURNED SURVIVORS SHOULD RECEIVE FULL AND JUST COMPENSATION
There were three Cantor Fitzgerald employees who were in the World Trade Center on September 11, but who had not yet arrived at the Company's floors at the top of the building. They survived the attack, but were severely burned. No submission to the Department of Justice and Special Master would be complete if it did not mention these three survivors. They have been courageous and inspirational in their struggle to cope with the devastating
injuries they have suffered. We request that the Special Master consider the claims of these three people on an individual basis and that they receive full and just compensation both for their economic loss as well as their incredible non-economic loss. They have been horribly injured and face many years of pain and medical expenses in their struggle to survive.
Page 62
Trainees had starting salaries in the general range of $30,000, depending on class year. However, as demonstrated in the chart below, trainees who successfully completed the program were able to more than quadruple their salaries in as few as three years, earning well into the six figures, whether they stayed at Cantor Fitzgerald or not. For example, for those people in the 1997 training class still working at Cantor Fitzgerald as of September 11, the average salary in 2000 was $219,166, and in 2001 it was $241,222. For those people in the 1997 training class who left Cantor Fitzgerald and for whom salary data is available, the current average salary is $200,300. Page 48
As the trainee class members gained experience, their salaries and bonuses continued to increase rapidly. The salaries of those in the 1993 training class rose exponentially within eight years – on average, forty-eight times their starting salary for those who remained at Cantor Fitzgerald, and twenty times their starting salary for those who left Cantor Fitzgerald. For those 1993 training class members still working at Cantor Fitzgerald as of September 11, the average total compensation in 2000 was $757,522, and in 2001 it was $1,467,631. For those in the 1993 training class who left Cantor Fitzgerald and who provided salary information, the average current salary is $650,000. This information demonstrates that a future income calculation based on set percentage increases is inappropriate compared with Cantor Fitzgerald's actual compensation data. Most of the trainee class members attained a salary at or above the 98th income percentile after just a few years at Cantor Fitzgerald. While the information available for those who left Cantor Fitzgerald shows that those remaining at Cantor Fitzgerald generally earned more, those who left are still doing very well. Page 49
"The absence of a cap," [the Special Master] says, "means that I've got to be aware of what is fair not only from the claimants' point of view, but from the taxpayers' point of view."
Josh Tyrangiel, Holding The Checkbook (Time, Vol. 160, No. 11, September 9, 2002). Page 55
At Cantor Fitzgerald, where the average age of the victim was 38, Page 41
"Finally, with respect to the issue of collateral offsets, Cantor Fitzgerald has voluntarily developed and implemented a number of plans to assist the families of victims, including contributing 25% of its profits to the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund — plans that Cantor Fitzgerald had no legal obligation to create or continue. This submission explains why these plans are not "collateral sources" under the Act or the "Final Rule." Note 2, Page 12
"The vast majority of Cantor Fitzgerald employees killed on September 11 were compensated in the following ways: (i) salary and bonus, (ii) eSpeed stock options, (iii) fringe benefits such as health and life insurance, and (iv) an employer matched contribution in a 401(k) plan. In addition, the 163 Partners who were lost also received (i) Partnership distributions on a quarterly basis, (ii) eSpeed stock in 2001 and 2002; and (iii) awards of Partnership Grants. It is important to recognize that employees and Partners also earned compensation that was not taxable at the time granted and, therefore, not reflected on a W-2 form, but that such Page 24
As described above, as part of its compensation package, Cantor Fitzgerald provided other benefits related to employment, such as paying insurance premiums for medical insurance, disability insurance, life insurance and workers' compensation insurance. These benefits are included in compensation under the Act and state law. Page 31
"More than 250 Cantor Fitzgerald employees who were killed on September 11 had incomes above the 98th percentile (before including eSpeed options and eSpeed stock). These Cantor Fitzgerald families will be seeking calculation of an award based upon their factual record." Page 41
The presumed Age-Specific Earnings Growth Rates published in Table 3 to the Explanation of Process are woefully inadequate as applied to Cantor Fitzgerald victims. Far from the 3-9.7% growth rates presumed by the Special Master in Table 3, the actual growth rates observed for Cantor Fitzgerald decedents during the years 1998 through 2001 actually exceeded 20% for many age groups. When examined at each age group level, the actual average Cantor growth rates exceeded the presumed rates in over 87% of the possible single year comparison points and in over 97% of the three year averages. Page 43
"The Cantor Fitzgerald growth rates were calculated based upon actual data compiled for the lost Cantor Fitzgerald employees, tracking their compensation and age over the 1998 to 2001 period. Chicago Partners compiled the actual compensation data for each lost employee for the years 1998-2001, calculated annual growth rates for each employee, combined the resulting growth rates with all other lost Cantor Fitzgerald employees of a similar age, and determined the average actual percentage increase on an annual basis for each age group. Page 45
A Three-Year Average Of Earnings Would Under Compensate Most Cantor Fitzgerald Families
The Explanation of Process states that, "[g]enerally, the Special Master will consider the past three years of income data," and that "[f]or some cases the most recent year will be the primary basis of the award – other claims may require analyses of trends adjusted to current dollars." Page 46
The Cantor Fitzgerald families should at least be given the choice of selecting whether a two-year average (2000 and 2001) is used or whether 2001 income data alone (on annualized basis) is used. Page 51
Cantor Fitzgerald is adamantly opposed to having its deceased employees' families penalized for voluntary payments that the company has made to them when such payments were not required by law or contract. Both the text of the Act and the Final Rule support the conclusion that voluntary employer contributions, such as those described above, should not be considered a collateral source to be deducted from the Fund award.
Page 58
This Report was prepared by
CHICAGO PARTNERS, LLC
A LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY
140 South Dearborn Street
Chicago, Illinois 60603 Page 64
Following the tragic events of September 11, representatives of the Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom L.L.P. law firm contacted Chicago Partners about the firm’s willingness to serve in a pro bono role helping Cantor Fitzgerald in assisting the victims’ families in applying to the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. This report is the result of those pro bono efforts. Page 66
Chicago Partners compiled a relatively extensive database on the Cantor Fitzgerald September 11th victims. As discussed above, this data was sourced primarily from IRS forms provided by third party payroll service providers to Cantor. Page 67
For the nine Cantor victims within this age group (with data across all three years), the two year average earnings level of $144,764 is 28.6% greater than the $112,594 three year average, while the $204,409 2001 average earnings level is 81.5% greater than the three year average. Page 69
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
While Howard Lutnick Gently Weeps: Connie Chung's Interview of Cantor Fitzgerald's Howard Lutnick on September 13, 2001
Or should that read gentilely? From the indispensable September 11 Television Archive, the videotape of Connie Chung's famous ABC News interview with Cantor-Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnik, along with the widow of his best friend and Cantor colleague, Douglas Gardner.
This segment is archived as 'ABC Sept. 13, 2001 8:23 pm - 9:05 pm---ABC 7, Washington, D.C.' and Chung's 13-minute piece aired at 8:33 PM, or at the 11:00 mark on the tape counter. This was the most widely seen rebroadcast, of an interview that originally aired that afternoon (And don't miss Peter Jenning's talk with Eric Holder on this tape, which leads in to Connie Chung . Everything old is new again!)
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The following is a damn good transcript, if I do say so myself!
I'm glad I hadn't studied the nuances on display in this video interview until recently, when they provided me with verification that the many parts to analyzing the 9/11 conspiracy are falling neatly into a proper order.
For example, in these interviews, we can see clear distinctions between two hypothetical classes of mortality-personas---those beings who make up the fabricated lists of those supposed killed on 9/11. One type is known as "vicsim," for digitally fabricated simulations, the "persons" who were played in the run up to 9/11 by agents or assets of the conspiracy, in an establishing ruse that was undertaken for some months, or even years. Afterwards, a reshuffling of actors took place, with new roles established as family-member survivors, which have played out ever since in the media.
The second type of faked death consists of real people in real professions whose social standing, or potential for media prominence as a victim of 9/11, precluded their being created out of recent whole cloth. These more established "persons" underwent rendition, in which their identities were disappeared, apparently even from the knowledge of friends or families, although the details are debatable. Their fates were the equivalent of a living death to any legitimate families, who had to endure the finality of the emotional losses---along with the millions of dollars in financial compensation.
The subtle distinction between the two is made clear when comparing the Jennifer Gardner interview with that of Howard Lutnik's. She is the "widow" of Lutnik's best friend and Cantor CFO, Doug Gardner. When she says of her orphaned children, "I want them to know that daddy did not leave because he wanted to, but that he was taken...and then, it wasn't his fault," she is not speaking about a murder, but from some place of complicit knowing.
Compare this with Howard Lutnik's surreal absence of feelings about his own brother, a lack of affect which causes a startled Chung to go off script and question why.
In other words, it's easy to spot both Gardner and Lutnik as liars on the tape, only for different reasons. Jennifer, as well as her father-in-law, were both "read-in" to the plot's perimeters. Her "knowing/not-knowing" ploy at a comprehension, is a ruse found in many other 9/11 widows records. They serve as a code for public consumption, like the euphemism that someone was merely "missing."
But this kind of partial confession doesn't allay the misdeeds. All stand as guilt as any Muslim suicide bomber would be in their acquiescing to demands, from whatever higher-power it is that guides them, to a public relations stunt, which necessitated that young children must lose parents.
For anybody holding such special knowledge, begs the question: what do they know, and when did they know it? When Jennifer answers with, "Yes. Doug's father, Joe Gardner called Doug at ten of nine when we heard...he heard, on the news, that there was a cras...an explosion," she is making two very different mistakes. One was her use of an incorrect pronoun, which suggests she shared in early knowledge of the disaster; but her slip-of-tongue from "crash" to "explosion" is not supported by the earliest reports that a plane was at fault, thus making her look shifty.
There is an extreme logical disconnect to this statement of Jennifer Gardner
Coincidentally, Howard Lutnik also sends a signal he's lying with an incorrect pronoun usage. He says, "Well, my brother, my brother was on the 103rd floor, he worked, he worked for me, um, he worked at Cantor, and he, um, he called my sister," instead of the proper "our sister." Lutnik may have misspoken when he said his brother died on the 103rd floor---a problem Chung seems to address when she asks him, "normally you would have been in your office, ah...on which floor?" To which Howard replies, "on the 105th floor." If Howard meant to indicate that Gary worked directly as his personal assistant, or gopher, then the location of the executive offices is on 105, which would explain his noticeable change in tact from saying "he worked for me," to "he worked for Cantors"
Lutnik's timeline is also off when he says of the first building to collapse, "then I heard this sound. It sounded like another plane was going to hit the building," but Howard wasn't present for either of the plane crashes, so the "another" reference is another discrepancy. Maybe that's why he added nonsensically, "but it didn't sound like it was far away. It sounded like it was, like, right were the ceiling is above us. It was so unbelievably loud, and someone screamed out, "another one is coming," which forced Chung to ask him to clarify what it was he was talking about.
Apparently, like Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, Lutnik was conspicuously missing-in-action during a crucial part of the morning. What else explains his poor excuse for a four-hour lapse---that he was "walking straight."
Also questionable is Lutnik's claim that he encountered survivors who told him they exited from the 91rst-floor of the North Tower. Could Lutnik have been aware, 48-hours after the collapses, that no one had survived from above the point of plane impact---a hole which conveniently extended from the 92nd to 98th floors? And what about this coincidence in surviving the South Tower:
I will present evidence here later that no such damage as claimed prevented any actual access to any floor in the tower, either up or down, via the stairs, or even by way of working elevators.
If this tape of Jennifer vouchsafes that her husband Doug Gardner was a real person in the traditional sense of the word, then witnessing Howard's tense, syntax, attitude and point-of-view only adds to the mounting evidence, which indicts his brother Gary's identity as being in the classic mold of the ill-thought-out vicsim.
I find Howard's grammar to be even diabolical. Carefully read the following quotes from the interview above
But the vast majority of the names and faces we see in the media endlessly pimping out the sordid wares of a manufactured, synthetic and second-rate reality, exist merely as our specters and shadows---the necessary goads to improving consciousness, I am told. There are no true victims in the Cantor story---nor heroes for that matter.
Connie Chung doesn't get off easily here either. That her interview with Lutnik was said to have rescued her fading career from a previously botched interview with Gary Condit, only speaks to the thrall of emotionalism, which was a key component of the 9/11 psychological operation that overtook us.
If there is any professional journalism left in the world today, it is an incidental fact within an overarching system, which organizes and codifies the lines of power that animate and feed a faked "truth" served once warmed over as reality. It is patently obvious to me now, if it wasn't back then, that in watching this news video, every single component---person, place or thing---is an awful contrivance, especially unsuitable for today's cave walls.
CODA: The New York Times reported on January 23,2002, that Connie Chung Gets CNN Prime-Time Spot,
Was this her reward for a job "well done?"
This segment is archived as 'ABC Sept. 13, 2001 8:23 pm - 9:05 pm---ABC 7, Washington, D.C.' and Chung's 13-minute piece aired at 8:33 PM, or at the 11:00 mark on the tape counter. This was the most widely seen rebroadcast, of an interview that originally aired that afternoon (And don't miss Peter Jenning's talk with Eric Holder on this tape, which leads in to Connie Chung . Everything old is new again!)
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The following is a damn good transcript, if I do say so myself!
Peter Jennings: Eric Holder, thank you very much for your time. Eric Holder, in our Washington bureau tonight. The former deputy attorney general of the United States, and at one point, the acting attorney general of the United States in the Clinton administration, telling us what all of the people most familiar with this have told us, this is going to be a long struggle. Now, as we have watched the results, which have been, just like a ripple effects across the country and across the world at what happened at the twin trade towers, we have focused from time to time on companies, which had their offices in the trade towers, and there is no company, to the best of our knowledge, which has been more profoundly affected than a company called Cantor-Fitzgerald, which does a huge amount of the bond trading in the United States. A huge number of its employees have been lost, and are still...have been lost, and/or still missing. And earlier today, ABC's Connie Chung sat down and talked to the CEO of that company, and we wanted very much for her to come back live this evening and, and review her, her reporting on that company today. Connie..These people are are all lying. Why would the New York Times on September 15, 2001, in "The Sound Was 'Like a Jet Engine Right in My Ear," report Howard's slip of the tongue
Connie: Thank you Peter. Peter, to some on Wall Street, Cantor Fitzgerald sort of symbolizes the devastation of the terrorist attack. When American Airlines Flight number 11 crashed into the North Tower, it cut off any hope of escape for almost all the Cantor employees."
[Start pre-recorded video.]
Connie Chung: In the high flying world of high-finance the company of Cantor-Fitzgerald occupies an elite position. Last year the firm handled 50 trillion dollars of business as an exchange market for banks and companies doing trades in the global bond market. And for its headquarters Cantor chose an elite location, proudly showcased in its corporate video---the North Tower of the World Trade Center. About one thousand of Cantor's employees worked on the 101rst, 103rd, 104rth and 105th floors of the tower. Doug Gardner was the chief financial officer of Cantor. His wife Jennifer...
Jennifer Gardner: Doug is everyone's shoulders. If you...if you need support, he's shoulders. If you need money, or a helping hand, there was his hands. If you needed legs for a basketball game, he was there. He's just everybody's rock, everybody's center, the warmest, kindest, biggest smile. Big blue eyes. The most delicious man you ever met.
Connie: As CFO, Gardner had a window office on the executive wing of the 105th floor. Gardner liked to get in early. He was at his desk at 8:48AM on Tuesday. Jennifer Gardner didn't find out right away that a plane had crashed into the North Tower, hitting between floors 96 and 103. She was with her children Michael and Julia. [Addressing Jennifer] Did your husband talk to anyone that morning when the plane hit?
Jennifer: Yes. Doug's father, Joe Gardner called Doug at ten of nine when we heard, he heard on the news, that there was a cras...an explosion. And Doug answered the phone, and said, 'we're evacuating, we have to get out of here.' And Doug's father just said 'just go! Go!' So, and you know, I heard, someone called me, and said someone talked to Doug, and I said fine, so I went home kind of casually to watch what happened, and then I saw the building collapse, and I felt his presence just leave me.
Connie: Cantor Fitzgerald has set up a corporate center at the Pierre Hotel providing up-to-date information and grief consoling. Two employees who were on the concourse level survived, badly burned and critical condition. None of the employees on the upper floors it's believed to have made it out.
Connie: [to Jennifer] Have you told your children?
Jennifer: Julia doesn't really understand anything, she feels the intense emotion around her, but she's still too much of a baby. Michael is five---he knows. We told him that, um, there was a big accident at daddy's building, and we can't find him. And then the next day he woke up and said 'I think daddy died.' [Video Edited] I want them to know that daddy did not leave because he wanted to, [Starts to weep] but that he was taken...and then, it wasn't his fault. And it wasn't their fault. And daddy loved them.
Connie: Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor-Fitzgerald, was best friends with Doug Gardner. Lutnick had been on top of the world, celebrating his 40th birthday this past July in Europe with Doug and Jennifer Gardner, [the clause that follows sounds like an edit, spliced in by Chung after the fact] and other friends in the company. Last Tuesday his world and his company crumbled around him.
[End videotape.]
Connie: Of the thousand of Cantor employees at the trade center, only 300 are
accounted for at this time, and none was at the building at that time. This immense human loss has truly devastated the chairman and CEO, Howard Lutnik, whose own brother is missing and presumed dead.
[Start Lutnik video interview]
Connie: You have suffered such great professional and personal loss. Do you...what is the fate of your brother?
Howard: Well, my brother, my brother was on the 103rd floor, he worked, he worked for me, um, he worked at Cantor, and he um, he called my sister, ah, just after the, just after the plane hit, and he told her that, um, he said that the smoke was pouring in. He was, he was stuck in a corner office, and there was no way out, and the smoke was coming in, and, he's not good, and things are not good, and he's not going to make it. And he just wanted to say that he loved her. And he wanted to say goodbye, and tell everyone that, that he loved them. Then the phone went, the phone went dead, so while I'm the head of the company, I'm trying to help my 700 employees who are missing their loved ones, I'm just, I'm just another one of them. I'm just another one of them.
Connie: Normally you would have been in your office, ah...on which floor?
Howard: On the 105th floor.
Connie: On the 105th floor. And yet you didn't go in early that morning. Because of a critical decision you made.
Howard: [Laughing] My little boy--I have a five-year-old, and it was his first day of kindergarten at, at ah, at Horace Mann, so, I took him for his first day of big-boy school. And, ah, because of that I was late getting down to the office, and therefore I wasn't in the building. I was on my way to the building instead.
Connie: And when you got to the building?
Howard: Well, I saw the building on fire, so I didn't go in, um, but I stood, I stood at the door, um, off of Church Street, um, where there are flags there, and I stood at the door, um, and people were coming out, and I was yelling at them, you know, to run and get out, and there were police sort of around me, um, yelling at people to get out, and I would ask them what floor they were coming from, what floor they were coming from? And someone said, "55!" And I'd scream out, "55!" and, because I kept wanting to get up the building..
Connie: So all of your employees were on...?
Howard: 101 to 105, the top floors of, of, number One World Trade Center, which they call now the North Tower.
Connie: So how high was the highest number that you got to?
Howard: I got to the 91rst floor. And I know that if I got to one employee, if one person came down from that floor, then I know that there had to be others, there would be others behind them, and there would be others going out other doors, and that would be good, but I got up to 91, and then I heard this sound. It sounded like another plane was going to hit the building, and it was, but it didn't sound like it was far away. It sounded like it was, like, right were the ceiling is above us. It was so unbelievably loud, and someone screamed out, "another one is coming!" So I just turned around and I ran, and I was running...
Connie: What was it?
Howard: It was, it was, number 2 World Trade Center collapsing. So I'm, I'm standing underneath a building like an idiot, um, and I start running and I'm trying to get ahead of the smoke, and then the smoke comes around the corner on Trinity and Church, where I ran, and it knocks me down underneath a truck, and I'm sitting there in this black, the blackest black that could ever be. I reached up and tried to see if I could see, and I put my hand up and I actually touched me eye, because...and was so much smoke and I wasn't...
Commie: So you couldn't even see your own hand?
Howard: I couldn't see my hand. I could feel the particles in the air. They were like this big [holds up fingers] I could feel them going in, and I couldn't think to pick up my shirt, I was just sitting there thinking, I can't believe it, I can't believe that by standing there I died. So I just start walking, I start walking straight, and I just walked straight, I kept walking straight. And I called my wife four hours later, and she was hysterical crying. So I understand why it took lots of people lots of time. I was, I'm a pretty together person and I...four hours I walked. I just walked north, I just kept walking.
Connie: One of your other offices had a squawk box open, and the other offices were able to hear the screams. Is that true?
Howard: I dunno, I dunno that they heard...it is true that we had a squawk box..yea...we have a speaker phone because all our offices are connected in our equity business, um, they're all connected to each other, because they talk to each other all day, and they heard them saying, "we need help, we need help!" It wasn't, it wasn't screams, it was, there was nowhere to go. You couldn't go down, you couldn't go up, there was nowhere to go, but I don't know of a single one of my employees who got down---zero, zero, and it's really sad but I think we're all pulling together, with the view that, we want to make things happen for them, we need to take care of them, we need to figure out how to take care of them, and give them more, take care of them. And I think it's going to be a completely different kind of drive then I've ever had before, it's not about, it's not about my family, I can kiss my kids. I can kiss my kids tonight, but other people don't get to kiss their kids, and I just have to help them. And I think, I think it's amazing, amazing that 300 people, they lost all their friends, they lost the person to their left, they lost the person to their right, and they call me up and say I want to go to work. I say, why do you want to go to work? Let's just go to funerals. I don't know. I want to go to work and not stay home. I can't stay home. I have to make, and I have to work, and I have to do something, and so they actually wanted to try and figure out how to be in business. It's unbelievable! It's crazy. It doesn't make any sense, but the reason they want to be in business---and there's only one reason to be in business. It's because we have to make our company be able to take care of my 700 families. 700 hundred families! We have 700 families... [sobs] It's just...I can't say it...I can't say it without crying, but...
Connie: You spent hours and hours talking to every family member. You have spent hours at the Pierre Hotel, in that ballroom.
Howard: Well, I go in, I just, I just tell them, look, I'll answer any question, any question you want, anything about it, but I lost my brother, and I'm in no different position then you are, I'm not any different, I'll just tell you everything I know. But I got to say to everybody, so that they believed me, that when I say that we are doing everything we can to find their kid, that they know that I do not look for my brother---I don't go to any hospital, or get anybody to go to any hospital and say, find Gary Lutnik for me...
Connie: Why not?
Howard: Because I go with employee list. Here's my list. Here's everybody that I got. Find somebody on this list. I don't care who they are. Because if you find me somebody on this list, then I get to call them, then I get to give somebody else some hope, some dream, maybe, maybe, they get to kiss their kids...it's...I'd love to find my brother...I'd love to find, to find THEIR brother, or their wife, or their husband, or anything, anything.
Connie: It's been said that the loss of your company will have world-wide impact.
Howard: Cantor-Fitzgerald is the primary...it's like the exchange for the world's bond markets, I mean, it, IT IS the exchange for the world bond markets. We, last year, we did 50 trillion dollars in business. Today, the remaining employees of Cantor-Fitzgerald and eSpeed, have worked every second, since that BOMB, and they made that decision, and I told them there's no reason for us to open. I don't care when we open, if we open, it doesn't matter to me. And they, collectively, 250 of them, collectively voted, that they were going to open the markets, and this morning, at seven AM, those people opened, for business, not to make money, not to...but they did it because, they thought if, that if the, if the Fed and the treasury wanted it to be open, it was important enough for them to show strength for America and for these markets, then they would do their damnedest to get it open, and they did. And if...I voted against it, I said why? I don't want you to work. I want you to go home and kiss your kids and hug your families...but they, it's them, they wanted, they wanted to do it, maybe for themselves, maybe for their friends who, who they lost, but, for right this second, our electronic systems are running around the world, and it's...I don't know...maybe it's a miracle, maybe it's because...these people are just, they're unbelievable. They are the best.
Connie: Maybe they're the best because they had an incredible boss.
Howard: Let me...a route, you can only be a good boss if you have the right people, and I'm glad they chose to be with me, but I'm the saddest person in the world that they chose to be with me, cause they chose to be with me...[sobs]...so many people, so many names...so many people that I loved...
[End videotaped interview]
Connie: Many of the Cantor families that we spoke with said he's truly a remarkable man, and I think Peter, he just clearly doesn't fit the image of a typical CEO on Wall Street.
Peter: No kidding. Thanks Connie, very much. Connie Chung. And Howard Lutnik, a personality from Cantor-Fitzgerald, the CEO, a man with 700 families, and a much, ah, expanded family, I would think, now that we have been with him and shared his tragedy with him. Howard Lutnik, a personality this country will not forget. Period. Now, as we take a deep breath, there are major developments in the investigation...
[8:49PM EST]
"...but I got up to 91, and then I heard this sound. It sounded like another plane was going to hit the building, and it was, but it didn't sound like it was far away. It sounded like it was, like, right were the ceiling is above us. It was so unbelievably loud, and someone screamed out, "another one is coming!" So I just turned around and I ran, and I was running..."this way:
I got to the 60's, 70's, then 80's. The last number I heard was 91.What kind of conspiratorial power does it take to get the New York Times involved in an attempt to clean up a devastating slip? According to his own story, Howard Lutnick was not present downtown for either plane crash. To further muddy the record, the Daily Record in Glasgow, Scotland, also published an article on September 15th, "Terrorist Attack New York: 700 Dead Friends, and they put it this way:
Then I heard this noise. It sounded like a jet engine coming. I looked up. The sound was the loudest thing I had ever heard -- like a jet engine right in my ear.
"I heard a sound," Lutnick wept. "It sounded like another plane hit the building.Here they excuse Lutnick's reference to "another" as meaning he was referring to the second plane crash, which of course is an absurdity given he wasn't present at the site then.
"It was the plane that hit tower two. It was so unbelievably loud.
"Someone screamed that another one was coming. I started running,
I'm glad I hadn't studied the nuances on display in this video interview until recently, when they provided me with verification that the many parts to analyzing the 9/11 conspiracy are falling neatly into a proper order.
For example, in these interviews, we can see clear distinctions between two hypothetical classes of mortality-personas---those beings who make up the fabricated lists of those supposed killed on 9/11. One type is known as "vicsim," for digitally fabricated simulations, the "persons" who were played in the run up to 9/11 by agents or assets of the conspiracy, in an establishing ruse that was undertaken for some months, or even years. Afterwards, a reshuffling of actors took place, with new roles established as family-member survivors, which have played out ever since in the media.
The second type of faked death consists of real people in real professions whose social standing, or potential for media prominence as a victim of 9/11, precluded their being created out of recent whole cloth. These more established "persons" underwent rendition, in which their identities were disappeared, apparently even from the knowledge of friends or families, although the details are debatable. Their fates were the equivalent of a living death to any legitimate families, who had to endure the finality of the emotional losses---along with the millions of dollars in financial compensation.
The subtle distinction between the two is made clear when comparing the Jennifer Gardner interview with that of Howard Lutnik's. She is the "widow" of Lutnik's best friend and Cantor CFO, Doug Gardner. When she says of her orphaned children, "I want them to know that daddy did not leave because he wanted to, but that he was taken...and then, it wasn't his fault," she is not speaking about a murder, but from some place of complicit knowing.
Compare this with Howard Lutnik's surreal absence of feelings about his own brother, a lack of affect which causes a startled Chung to go off script and question why.
In other words, it's easy to spot both Gardner and Lutnik as liars on the tape, only for different reasons. Jennifer, as well as her father-in-law, were both "read-in" to the plot's perimeters. Her "knowing/not-knowing" ploy at a comprehension, is a ruse found in many other 9/11 widows records. They serve as a code for public consumption, like the euphemism that someone was merely "missing."
But this kind of partial confession doesn't allay the misdeeds. All stand as guilt as any Muslim suicide bomber would be in their acquiescing to demands, from whatever higher-power it is that guides them, to a public relations stunt, which necessitated that young children must lose parents.
For anybody holding such special knowledge, begs the question: what do they know, and when did they know it? When Jennifer answers with, "Yes. Doug's father, Joe Gardner called Doug at ten of nine when we heard...he heard, on the news, that there was a cras...an explosion," she is making two very different mistakes. One was her use of an incorrect pronoun, which suggests she shared in early knowledge of the disaster; but her slip-of-tongue from "crash" to "explosion" is not supported by the earliest reports that a plane was at fault, thus making her look shifty.
There is an extreme logical disconnect to this statement of Jennifer Gardner
"So, and you know, I heard, someone called me, and said someone talked to Doug, and I said fine, so I went home kind of casually to watch what happened,"beyond the obvious evasiveness. If her husband had responded to his father's call with alarm and panic during the opening moments of a crisis, who was the "someone" who casually informed Jen with second-hand news that all was cool with Doug, and to mosey on home when she could get around to it? This is called lying!
Coincidentally, Howard Lutnik also sends a signal he's lying with an incorrect pronoun usage. He says, "Well, my brother, my brother was on the 103rd floor, he worked, he worked for me, um, he worked at Cantor, and he, um, he called my sister," instead of the proper "our sister." Lutnik may have misspoken when he said his brother died on the 103rd floor---a problem Chung seems to address when she asks him, "normally you would have been in your office, ah...on which floor?" To which Howard replies, "on the 105th floor." If Howard meant to indicate that Gary worked directly as his personal assistant, or gopher, then the location of the executive offices is on 105, which would explain his noticeable change in tact from saying "he worked for me," to "he worked for Cantors"
Lutnik's timeline is also off when he says of the first building to collapse, "then I heard this sound. It sounded like another plane was going to hit the building," but Howard wasn't present for either of the plane crashes, so the "another" reference is another discrepancy. Maybe that's why he added nonsensically, "but it didn't sound like it was far away. It sounded like it was, like, right were the ceiling is above us. It was so unbelievably loud, and someone screamed out, "another one is coming," which forced Chung to ask him to clarify what it was he was talking about.
Apparently, like Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, Lutnik was conspicuously missing-in-action during a crucial part of the morning. What else explains his poor excuse for a four-hour lapse---that he was "walking straight."
"So I just start walking, I start walking straight, and I just walked straight, I kept walking straight. And I called my wife four hours later, and she was hysterical crying. So I understand why it took lots of people lots of time. I was, I'm a pretty together person and I...four hours I walked. I just walked north, I just kept walking."At that pace he would have wound up marching past Yonkers. What became of his daily life-style accoutrement---his perk of a car and driver? This narrative detail has changed considerably in subsequent news reports, which have him traveling to the Upper West Side apartment of a Cantor colleague, or alternately, his lawyer's Greenwich Village townhouse.
Also questionable is Lutnik's claim that he encountered survivors who told him they exited from the 91rst-floor of the North Tower. Could Lutnik have been aware, 48-hours after the collapses, that no one had survived from above the point of plane impact---a hole which conveniently extended from the 92nd to 98th floors? And what about this coincidence in surviving the South Tower:
Only 14 people escaped from the impact zone of the South Tower after it was hit and only four people from the floors above it. Individuals escaped from as high up on the South Tower as the 91st floor after initial impact. WikipediaIn a total record lacking in much specificity, I would call Howard's recollection of a floor number as being an overwritten detail. It sounds more like the word-of-mouth talking points of a totally contrived and false narrative---it's called "getting your stories straight. On this tape, Connie Chung says the plane hit the North Tower "between floors 96 and 103," rather than the 92nd to 98th floors. Being in the media, Chung had access to all the uncontrolled photographs taken of the north facade of the North Tower---heavily witnessed parts of the "most photographed event in world history."
I will present evidence here later that no such damage as claimed prevented any actual access to any floor in the tower, either up or down, via the stairs, or even by way of working elevators.
If this tape of Jennifer vouchsafes that her husband Doug Gardner was a real person in the traditional sense of the word, then witnessing Howard's tense, syntax, attitude and point-of-view only adds to the mounting evidence, which indicts his brother Gary's identity as being in the classic mold of the ill-thought-out vicsim.
I find Howard's grammar to be even diabolical. Carefully read the following quotes from the interview above
"...so while I'm the head of the company, I'm trying to help my 700 employees who are missing their loved ones, I'm just, I'm just another one of them. I'm just another one of them."and
"...it's not about my family, I can kiss my kids. I can kiss my kids tonight, but other people don't get to kiss their kids."Yes, the dead don't get to kiss their kids specifically because the kids are alive and they're dead. It is the point of view of a living and pained child that we can empathize with rather. Howard is directly commiserating with the feelings belonging to his disappeared personnel---and I don't mean vicsims like "his brother Gary," the mention of whose death is repeated relentlessly---usually in the opening paragraph of any article. Howard treats him like a credential, for that is what he is to him.
"...but I lost my brother, and I'm in no different position then you are, I'm not any different,"says Howard, who apparently can't tell the difference between the meaning of "I'm trying to help my 700 employees who are missing their loved ones," and "I'm trying to help the loved ones of my missing 700 employees." Some unknown, but very small percentage of the 658 supposed 9/11 casualties from Cantor-Fitzgerald were once organically living and breathing co-workers of his, gainfully employed in mutual, shared effort. The only heart in Howard is for them.
But the vast majority of the names and faces we see in the media endlessly pimping out the sordid wares of a manufactured, synthetic and second-rate reality, exist merely as our specters and shadows---the necessary goads to improving consciousness, I am told. There are no true victims in the Cantor story---nor heroes for that matter.
Connie Chung doesn't get off easily here either. That her interview with Lutnik was said to have rescued her fading career from a previously botched interview with Gary Condit, only speaks to the thrall of emotionalism, which was a key component of the 9/11 psychological operation that overtook us.
If there is any professional journalism left in the world today, it is an incidental fact within an overarching system, which organizes and codifies the lines of power that animate and feed a faked "truth" served once warmed over as reality. It is patently obvious to me now, if it wasn't back then, that in watching this news video, every single component---person, place or thing---is an awful contrivance, especially unsuitable for today's cave walls.
CODA: The New York Times reported on January 23,2002, that Connie Chung Gets CNN Prime-Time Spot,
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
No God, and the Old Elm Tree
Recently, someone named nogod on a message board www.oldelmtree.com, linked to a blog of mine about two 9/11 researchers who post at the Reality Shack forum, Max Konrardy & Simon Hytten. nogod explains why:
nogod downloaded from my blog and reupped to his thread a photograph I'd posted of Max and Simon, which I'd taken in Rome. This caused Simon Shack to break his OldElmTree silence, and he posted a request to the thread:
All of this does call into question the issues of fairness, propriety, and the "obviousness" of privacy, but it also speaks to a larger issue of public identity, which lies at the heart of the 9/11 conspiracy, and hence our search for truth.
Any number of prominent 9/11 researchers, such as Richard Gage, Judy Wood, Dick Eastman, Paul Thompson, Jim Hoffman, Aldo Marquis, and Phil Jahan, are publicly known by their names and images, both online and in "real world" gathering places, such as research symposium.
A different class of players has operated anonymously online in blogs, web sites, and message boards.
Max Konrardy & Simon Hytten were working anonymously online under the nicknames Simon Shack and hoi poloi until just before I posted the first of two blogs about them. Both of their names were already "outed" on a blog called killtownsecretarchive, which focuses on policing an entity known as "Killtown," who is a 9/11 research colleague of Simon and Max's.
The saga between the online 9/11 archivist called Killtown, and its equally anonymous nemesis, Killtown's Secret Archive, ran a course over the past year, and the central issue there was also the public identification of "personas," or the outing of covert agents/actors/players who figure in the 9/11 narrative, for the "real" underlying human beings. Killtown had identified individuals like Val McClatchey, and Mark Humphrey as somehow being illegitimate. Apparently this was a major breach of covert etiquette, but even amid their rancorous infighting, the Secret Archive never dared to out Killtown himself/herself, singular or plural.
It is interesting to note that Simon and Hoi are aligned with others such as Killtown, where they apparently must wear masks to hide some covert reality behind "obvious" rationals.
In my own 9/11 work I've found no need for the privacy that Simon feels is so necessary. My home address, and telephone number, are as easy to locate online as they once were through a telephone book. Even though I have espoused some pretty radical positions, which were sure to alienate and arouse many different factions involved in 9/11, only once in the past five years have I received an annoyance phone call, and that was from somebody who was charmingly drunk.
I address all of this for a specific reason, and that is the same reason I posted images of Simon and Hoi in the first place---the construction and maintenance of an overt public record.
Simon makes two serious errors of fact in his request to the administrators of the OldElmTree board.
First, I was only a guest at Simon's house outside of Rome for one week, not two. I spent a second week at an hotel in Rome, and Simon and a friend came into town on my last night there to have dinner with me. I don't mean to minimize his hospitality, but it is interesting to note that Simon seems to have experienced the visit through my eyes, and not his own.
Secondly, Simon says that as soon as I returned to the U.S. I published photographs of the both of them, and this statement is wrong on two points. First, it wasn't until I was banned from participating on the Reality Shack forum, which Simon and Hoi administrate, that on October 29, I posted the blog Reality Shack 9/11: The Famous hoi polloi, aka Max Konrardy at Work, which was my attempt at explicating the strange interpersonal dynamics I found myself confronted with vis-a-vis Simon and his research collective. (And I only posted a single, obscured image of Max/Hoi then--not of the both of them.)
Two weeks prior, on October 15, I had posted a blog Jeannieann Maffeo and Ruth Magdaline, which was my first effort working under the new research paradigm of the Vicsim report (and let it be said that none of our interpersonal conflict impacts on the validity of that insight.)
Simon left friendly comments on that blog praising my work, and four days later, he came out with a YouTube video on the same subject. I may have fed him some information concerning inconsistencies in a BBC interview, but if so, he certainly didn't give me any credit. However, shortly thereafter, a message board that opposes the work of Simon, Hoi and myself, PumpItOut, came out with an attempt at minimizing the damage of the news report we'd highlighted.
It wasn't until six months later, after Simon had been impressed with my subsequent work on the phenomena of false victim identity that he asked me to rejoin the Reality Shack forum, but where I was summarily dismissed for a second time, that I chose to publish what I thought was an important, and not gratuitous, photograph of the pair for the historical record.
"Thus (through perspective) every sort of confusion is revealed within us; and this is that weakness of the human mind on which the art of conjuring and of deceiving by light and shadow and other ingenious devices imposes, having an effect upon us like magic... And the arts of measuring and numbering and weighing come to the rescue of the human understanding-there is the beauty of them --and the apparent greater or less, or more or heavier, no longer have the mastery over us, but give way before calculation and measure and weight?"[7]
Plato's Republic, Book X, 602d.
Since Simon Hytten has repeatedly refused to answer my questions I was forced to search elsewhere for the answers. What I came across was a blog by another truther. (the link is below)nogod's putting "truther" in italics leads me to believe he is in the opposing camp---what is generally known as a "skeptic." I don't know what questions he'd previously asked of Simon that had remained unanswered until he discovered my blog. I read through the ten-page thread and found nothing that was pertinent. The sections of my blog he quotes speak to the authenticity of authorship of the work attributed to Simon Shack and hoi poloi, but I quite clearly make no claims one way or the other.
I guess I have to take this guys word for it since Simon chooses to ignore my direct questions. Be sure to read Simons reaction below the article in the link. Enjoy!
nogod downloaded from my blog and reupped to his thread a photograph I'd posted of Max and Simon, which I'd taken in Rome. This caused Simon Shack to break his OldElmTree silence, and he posted a request to the thread:
Dear administrators,Within 15 minutes an administrator of the board, "Andrea," wrote "I will remove the picture," and she did so, but nogod got the last word in, saying
I ask you to remove the above picture. It was copied-and-pasted by member 'nogod' from the blog of Steven Welch (aka "Steven Warran"). Steven was my guest in Rome for 2 weeks, during the 6-month span in which my fellow researcher Hoi Polloi and I were working on the "Vicsim" research.
We both let Steven snap pictures of us all along - asking him specifically NOT to publish them on the internet - for obvious privacy reasons. As soon as Steven returned to the USA, he posted pictures he had snapped of both of us on his blog.
Thanks for removing the above picture - besides, it's a very unflattering one: I have no such beer-belly ...hehe...that's a gust of wind filling up my T-shirt !
"Sorry that wasnt called for to post his photo. But non the less it was fair, but still not proper."Whatever "questions" nogod had of Simon must not have been very important, because the thread died at this point.
All of this does call into question the issues of fairness, propriety, and the "obviousness" of privacy, but it also speaks to a larger issue of public identity, which lies at the heart of the 9/11 conspiracy, and hence our search for truth.
Any number of prominent 9/11 researchers, such as Richard Gage, Judy Wood, Dick Eastman, Paul Thompson, Jim Hoffman, Aldo Marquis, and Phil Jahan, are publicly known by their names and images, both online and in "real world" gathering places, such as research symposium.
A different class of players has operated anonymously online in blogs, web sites, and message boards.
Max Konrardy & Simon Hytten were working anonymously online under the nicknames Simon Shack and hoi poloi until just before I posted the first of two blogs about them. Both of their names were already "outed" on a blog called killtownsecretarchive, which focuses on policing an entity known as "Killtown," who is a 9/11 research colleague of Simon and Max's.
The saga between the online 9/11 archivist called Killtown, and its equally anonymous nemesis, Killtown's Secret Archive, ran a course over the past year, and the central issue there was also the public identification of "personas," or the outing of covert agents/actors/players who figure in the 9/11 narrative, for the "real" underlying human beings. Killtown had identified individuals like Val McClatchey, and Mark Humphrey as somehow being illegitimate. Apparently this was a major breach of covert etiquette, but even amid their rancorous infighting, the Secret Archive never dared to out Killtown himself/herself, singular or plural.
It is interesting to note that Simon and Hoi are aligned with others such as Killtown, where they apparently must wear masks to hide some covert reality behind "obvious" rationals.
In my own 9/11 work I've found no need for the privacy that Simon feels is so necessary. My home address, and telephone number, are as easy to locate online as they once were through a telephone book. Even though I have espoused some pretty radical positions, which were sure to alienate and arouse many different factions involved in 9/11, only once in the past five years have I received an annoyance phone call, and that was from somebody who was charmingly drunk.
I address all of this for a specific reason, and that is the same reason I posted images of Simon and Hoi in the first place---the construction and maintenance of an overt public record.
Simon makes two serious errors of fact in his request to the administrators of the OldElmTree board.
First, I was only a guest at Simon's house outside of Rome for one week, not two. I spent a second week at an hotel in Rome, and Simon and a friend came into town on my last night there to have dinner with me. I don't mean to minimize his hospitality, but it is interesting to note that Simon seems to have experienced the visit through my eyes, and not his own.
Secondly, Simon says that as soon as I returned to the U.S. I published photographs of the both of them, and this statement is wrong on two points. First, it wasn't until I was banned from participating on the Reality Shack forum, which Simon and Hoi administrate, that on October 29, I posted the blog Reality Shack 9/11: The Famous hoi polloi, aka Max Konrardy at Work, which was my attempt at explicating the strange interpersonal dynamics I found myself confronted with vis-a-vis Simon and his research collective. (And I only posted a single, obscured image of Max/Hoi then--not of the both of them.)
Two weeks prior, on October 15, I had posted a blog Jeannieann Maffeo and Ruth Magdaline, which was my first effort working under the new research paradigm of the Vicsim report (and let it be said that none of our interpersonal conflict impacts on the validity of that insight.)
Simon left friendly comments on that blog praising my work, and four days later, he came out with a YouTube video on the same subject. I may have fed him some information concerning inconsistencies in a BBC interview, but if so, he certainly didn't give me any credit. However, shortly thereafter, a message board that opposes the work of Simon, Hoi and myself, PumpItOut, came out with an attempt at minimizing the damage of the news report we'd highlighted.
It wasn't until six months later, after Simon had been impressed with my subsequent work on the phenomena of false victim identity that he asked me to rejoin the Reality Shack forum, but where I was summarily dismissed for a second time, that I chose to publish what I thought was an important, and not gratuitous, photograph of the pair for the historical record.
"Thus (through perspective) every sort of confusion is revealed within us; and this is that weakness of the human mind on which the art of conjuring and of deceiving by light and shadow and other ingenious devices imposes, having an effect upon us like magic... And the arts of measuring and numbering and weighing come to the rescue of the human understanding-there is the beauty of them --and the apparent greater or less, or more or heavier, no longer have the mastery over us, but give way before calculation and measure and weight?"[7]
Plato's Republic, Book X, 602d.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Firefighter Darren Harkins, Pilot Timothy Martins and Ladder 2
In doing some research recently comparing the different way in which the media, and those they report on, handled the August, 2007 fire and loss of life at the Deutsche Bank building near the World Trade Center site, as distinct from the earlier attacks on the WTC itself, I was struck by the elaborate compendiums of news articles assembled by the firefighters themselves in 2007, such as this one.
For the much more devastating attacks of 9/11, no professional firematics organization cared enough to collect and protect the public record of their experiences in this fashion.
At www.thebravest.com/FDNYNewsArchive, my work was speeded along by the comprehensiveness of their efforts at listing links to news articles. Nowhere did I find a broken link, or a robots.txt exclusion, which is the bane of online research into the earlier tragedy.
That is until I got down to the last article on the page. There I found a tantalizing snippet, from a piece in the Des Moines Register, dated December 2, 2008.
Titled, "9/11 survivor inspires with talk about courage," it was about a former New York City firefighter, Darren Harkins, who was the sole survivor of Ladder Company 2 on Sept. 11, 2001. Seven years later, he was living in Waukee, Iowa, while attending law school at Drake University. But when I tried to expand the start of the article to the complete version, for the first time in using this web-page resource I was defeated.
So, with the article's subtitle, "Sole survivor of FDNY Ladder Company 2 tells Johnston Middle School ninth-graders that serving your community the most important job," I searched Google, where I located its home page link at the Register, but it was broken. So I attempted to find a cached copy of the same page at archive.org. There I got the dreaded "Blocked Site Error. http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020315 is not available in the Wayback Machine."
I don't know if a "Blocked Site Error" is more sinister than a "robots.txt exclusion," but they both indicate to me that a deliberate effort was made to suppress the piece of journalism. Since a Google search for Ladder Company 2 + "Darren Harkins" returns only seven hits, I knew something was up.
A broader search for Darren Harkins the NYC fireman, returns only a single pre-9/11 reference in Google---it is to his time in a foot race on Staten Island in 2000. Only one other return references him---from the Staten Island Advance, where Harkins is vaguely quoted in a piece about Ladder 2 victim George DiPasquale.
If the rest of the Des Moines Register article was as damaging as the beginning, I wondered what it might contain worth the effort at suppression. Here's the way it led off...
I suppose it wouldn't be so odd for a former NYFD member to go off to law school in Iowa, but in a Drake University newsletter was this: "Former NYPD firefighter aims to use his law degree to help Iowans," where we are told Harkins was setting up a law practice in Iowa too!
Unless his wife were very well connected in Nevada, Iowa, Harkins' chances for success in Clive, Iowa might not pay off any student loans anytime soon. But it is not just in an unlikely start to a mid-western law career that makes me question his motives and agenda
Of the seven men said to have died from Ladder 2: Michael J Clarke, 27, George DiPasquale, 33, Denis P Germain, 33 , Daniel E Harlin, 41, Frederick Ill, Jr, 49, Carl Molinaro, 32, and Dennis M Mulligan, 32, only Fire Captain Frederick Ill has a significantly established profile.
He is also described as being Staff Sergeant Frederick Ill, who had sixteen years of military service, was a fire captain, and was in the New York State Army Reserves at the time of the attack.
Much research is being done to ferret out fake identities on the 9/11 victim's rosters, but this is one of the first clear indications that a survivor of that day, a fireman who escaped from inside the North Tower, may be a manufactured identity--with all that entails for proving NYFD collusion with the 9/11 plot.
But even more fascinating is someone named Timothy J. Martins.
On a thread dated April 1, 2010, at the www.firehouse.com/forums is this grave warning
Didn't their mothers ever tell them? Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive?
1/8/2009 - Senior Airman Adam McCarty helps transfer a New York Fire Department flag between two Army units before a transfer of authority ceremony at Ali Base, Iraq, Jan. 6. The 962nd Ordnance Company, 1st Platoon, deployed from Schenectady, N.Y., transferred the U.S. and New York Fire Department flags to the 157th Combat Service Support Battalion, which is deployed from Willow Grove, Pa. The flags were flown over the World Trade Center Ground Zero site for four months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, by firefighters from Engine Company 8, Ladder Company 2 and Battalion 8. Since then, these flags have been in the care of six Army units deployed in Iraq and have returned home twice. McCarty, a firefighter with the 407th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron, is deployed from Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Christopher Griffin)
Ali Base
For the much more devastating attacks of 9/11, no professional firematics organization cared enough to collect and protect the public record of their experiences in this fashion.
At www.thebravest.com/FDNYNewsArchive, my work was speeded along by the comprehensiveness of their efforts at listing links to news articles. Nowhere did I find a broken link, or a robots.txt exclusion, which is the bane of online research into the earlier tragedy.
That is until I got down to the last article on the page. There I found a tantalizing snippet, from a piece in the Des Moines Register, dated December 2, 2008.
Titled, "9/11 survivor inspires with talk about courage," it was about a former New York City firefighter, Darren Harkins, who was the sole survivor of Ladder Company 2 on Sept. 11, 2001. Seven years later, he was living in Waukee, Iowa, while attending law school at Drake University. But when I tried to expand the start of the article to the complete version, for the first time in using this web-page resource I was defeated.
So, with the article's subtitle, "Sole survivor of FDNY Ladder Company 2 tells Johnston Middle School ninth-graders that serving your community the most important job," I searched Google, where I located its home page link at the Register, but it was broken. So I attempted to find a cached copy of the same page at archive.org. There I got the dreaded "Blocked Site Error. http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020315 is not available in the Wayback Machine."
I don't know if a "Blocked Site Error" is more sinister than a "robots.txt exclusion," but they both indicate to me that a deliberate effort was made to suppress the piece of journalism. Since a Google search for Ladder Company 2 + "Darren Harkins" returns only seven hits, I knew something was up.
A broader search for Darren Harkins the NYC fireman, returns only a single pre-9/11 reference in Google---it is to his time in a foot race on Staten Island in 2000. Only one other return references him---from the Staten Island Advance, where Harkins is vaguely quoted in a piece about Ladder 2 victim George DiPasquale.
If the rest of the Des Moines Register article was as damaging as the beginning, I wondered what it might contain worth the effort at suppression. Here's the way it led off...
"He now lives in Waukee, and recently spoke to Johnston Middle School ninth-graders about the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, which killed 2,751, including office workers, airline passengers and emergency crews in the buildings....where it peters out.
"Harkins told students that in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks he worked to dig survivors out of the rubble at ground zero.
"The ninth-grade seminar curriculum focuses on character education traits every two weeks. When the mother of a student heard about Harkins, she recommended that he speak to classes about the trait of courage. The students were in second grade when the attack happened, so they didn't understand the impact that 9/11 events had on the country.
"It was a really good fit with all of our curriculum," said ninth-grade English teacher Kate Leo.
"Harkins, a New York native, moved to Iowa after retiring from the fire department in 2005 because of health issues. Harkins met his wife, Kaylene, on the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. Now, Harkins is a law student at Drake University and had never done a presentation about his experiences before speaking to Johnston classes.
"To Harkins, what he went through was just his job..."
I suppose it wouldn't be so odd for a former NYFD member to go off to law school in Iowa, but in a Drake University newsletter was this: "Former NYPD firefighter aims to use his law degree to help Iowans," where we are told Harkins was setting up a law practice in Iowa too!
"Darren Harkins isn't the typical Drake University Law School graduate. The New York City native is 38 and worked as New York City police officer for two years. He then served for 10 years as a FDNY firefighter, was promoted to lieutenant and helped with rescue and recovery efforts during the 9/11 terrorist attack.In what may have seemed like quick work to envious fellow grads, the May 2009 piece reports that
"The graduation ceremony is a jumping off point for me, and my professional career as an attorney is starting," said Harkins, who also holds a bachelor's degree in political science and history from the State University of New York, Binghamton.
He graduated in December and already has passed the Iowa Bar Exam, been sworn in as a practicing attorney and established his own law practice in the Des Moines area. New furniture was just delivered last week to his office at 8450 Hickman Road in Clive.The Drake newsletter informs us that...
Harkins came to live in Iowa in 2006, when he moved here with his wife Kaylene from Nevada, Iowa. The two met when Harkins visited the state for the annual RAGBRAI bike tour in 1999. She moved to New York City in 2000 and they got married in 2003....without informing us as to what made Harkins visit the state for the bike tour to begin with.
Unless his wife were very well connected in Nevada, Iowa, Harkins' chances for success in Clive, Iowa might not pay off any student loans anytime soon. But it is not just in an unlikely start to a mid-western law career that makes me question his motives and agenda
Harkins said he always wanted to go to law school and knew Drake was a good fit for him because of its size and reputation for its faculty-student ratio that lends itself to close relationships.It is in Darren Harkins special status as being the only "survivor" of Ladder 2 that draws attention to him.
"My whole life, I have chosen to work in public service," said Harkins, who also worked at the Legal Clinic through Drake's clinical program. There, he helped people with various challenges and that experience inspired him to focus helping people through civil practice.
"Although he won't be battling fires and carrying people to safety, Harkins said he knows he can count on his new career to help him continue to find "fulfillment in helping people."
Of the seven men said to have died from Ladder 2: Michael J Clarke, 27, George DiPasquale, 33, Denis P Germain, 33 , Daniel E Harlin, 41, Frederick Ill, Jr, 49, Carl Molinaro, 32, and Dennis M Mulligan, 32, only Fire Captain Frederick Ill has a significantly established profile.
He is also described as being Staff Sergeant Frederick Ill, who had sixteen years of military service, was a fire captain, and was in the New York State Army Reserves at the time of the attack.
Much research is being done to ferret out fake identities on the 9/11 victim's rosters, but this is one of the first clear indications that a survivor of that day, a fireman who escaped from inside the North Tower, may be a manufactured identity--with all that entails for proving NYFD collusion with the 9/11 plot.
But even more fascinating is someone named Timothy J. Martins.
On a thread dated April 1, 2010, at the www.firehouse.com/forums is this grave warning
Calling all members of the NYFD, specifically the NYFD Ladder 2 of Manhattan:What makes this EVEN MORE fascinating can be found in an article in the New York Post on April 1, 2010, "American Eagle pilot grounded after lying about background," by Christine Negroni, which states
Within the last week the Air Line Pilot Association (ALPA) union published in their April 2010 member magazine (which was distributed to over 53,000 members) an article on an American Eagle airline pilot named TIMOTHY J. MARTINS who, among other verified false claims, has made claims to be a member of NYFD Ladder Company 2. In the article he also claimed to be an F-16 fighter pilot in the New Jersey Air National Guard as well as a Paramedic for New York City. Both of these claims have been since verified as false. As a result MULTIPLE military and airline forums numbering in excess of ten have begun threads on this individual and more and more of his lies have surfaced.
He does claim to be a volunteer of the Nesconset Fire Department, which does appear to be true, however.
The severity of his blatant false claims has led to both the ALPA and his employer beginning an investigation into this individual. In the meantime it appears as though he has been suspended from his duties with pay.
Attached below are scans of the original published article. Please read them.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/...3&id=213500296
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/...d=520047385846
Also, below is a link to the military forum that broke the story and continues to discuss this issue.
http://www.flyingsquadron.com/forums.../page__st__160
The question I have for you is: Is this individual indeed a member of Ladder 2? Is he even a Firefighter for NY? Or is it another one of his lies that is greatly disrespectful of Firefighters everywhere and the great service to their country?
Thank you for your time.
A pilot for a commuter airline that flies out of all three New York airports was grounded after telling multiple lies about his background to make himself look a poster boy for his industry in a magazine profile, The Post has learned.That Colgan Air jet crash near Buffalo was the flight which killed Beverly Eckert!
Timothy Martins, who flies for American Eagle, told the magazine, published by his union, that he’s an active member of the New Jersey Air National Guard, an FDNY firefighter and a graduate of an aviation school on Long Island.
None of it was true, officials of the agencies said.
The safety of regional commuter carriers and their pilot training came under heavy scrutiny after a Colgan Air jet crashed near Buffalo last February, killing 50 people.
Many of the smaller carriers pay their pilots peanuts, give them insufficient rest time between flights and make them commute thousands of miles.
The story about Martins was written, in part, to counter the bad publicity resulting from the crash and other highly embarrassing incidents — including an airliner overshooting Minneapolis while its pilots chatted about their schedules.
Andrea Huguely, a spokeswoman for American Eagle, which is owned by American Airlines, refused to comment on the allegations.
But she insisted that Martins holds all the required FAA certifications for his job as a first officer. There’s no indication he lied to his employer about his background.
Martins, who has been grounded, did not respond to a call and an email requesting for comment.
The controversy began after the lengthy article appeared in the April edition of the Air Line Pilots Association magazine.
Questions about his claim to be an F-16 pilot in the 177th Fighter Wing of the New Jersey Air National Guard soon began circulating on the Internet.
Major Yvonne Mays, spokeswoman for the Jersey Guard, said it didn’t "have any record of a pilot" named Martins.
The 24-year old, who is from Long Island, also claimed to be a firefighter and paramedic in New York. But an FDNY spokesman said, "He’s not a firefighter, he has not worked for our department."
Dowling College confirmed that Martin attended the school, but said he did not graduate and his years of attendance do not correspond to the dates he said he was there.
Jim Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board said if Martins lied, it should be of concern to American Eagle.
"Anyone who is charged with a responsibility for transporting the lives of other people safely who is evidently intentionally fabricating or embellishing credentials or falsifying stories, that’s obviously a terrible problem that should be of concern to the airline," he said.
An ALPA spokeswoman declined comment.
Didn't their mothers ever tell them? Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive?
1/8/2009 - Senior Airman Adam McCarty helps transfer a New York Fire Department flag between two Army units before a transfer of authority ceremony at Ali Base, Iraq, Jan. 6. The 962nd Ordnance Company, 1st Platoon, deployed from Schenectady, N.Y., transferred the U.S. and New York Fire Department flags to the 157th Combat Service Support Battalion, which is deployed from Willow Grove, Pa. The flags were flown over the World Trade Center Ground Zero site for four months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, by firefighters from Engine Company 8, Ladder Company 2 and Battalion 8. Since then, these flags have been in the care of six Army units deployed in Iraq and have returned home twice. McCarty, a firefighter with the 407th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron, is deployed from Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Christopher Griffin)Ali Base
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