NYPD memo from 1998: Secret Service aided in blast analysis for WTC7, worried a bomb could collapse building

Memo Details Objections to Command Center Site
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

The New York Police Department produced a detailed analysis in 1998 opposing plans by the city to locate its emergency command center at the World Trade Center, but the Giuliani administration overrode those objections. The command center later collapsed from damage in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

“Seven World Trade Center is a poor choice for the site of a crucial command center for the top leadership of the City of New York,” a panel of police experts, which was aided by the Secret Service, concluded in a confidential Police Department memorandum.

The memorandum, which has not been previously disclosed, cited a number of “significant points of vulnerability.” Those included: the building’s public access, the center’s location on the 23rd floor, a 1,200-gallon diesel fuel supply for its generator, a large garage and delivery bays, the building’s history as a terrorist target, and its placement above and adjacent to a Consolidated Edison substation that provided much of the power for Lower Manhattan.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the mayor then, has acknowledged some police skepticism about the site, but he has described it as resulting from a jurisdictional dispute between police officials and his emergency management director, who had played a role in selecting the site.

The eight-page memo reveals that police officials asked a variety of in-house experts in various disciplines and an outside expert to prepare a detailed analysis of the site’s vulnerabilities.

The decision to put the command center in the trade center has been a continuing source of discomfort for Mr. Giuliani, whose expertise and preparedness as a leader in a time of crisis has been the chief element in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

The site was completed in the summer of 1999 and was destroyed when the 47-story building at 7 World Trade Center collapsed on Sept. 11 after a fire there burned for much of the day.

“This group’s finding is that the security of the proposed O.E.M. Command Center cannot be reasonably guaranteed,” the commander of the intelligence division, Daniel J. Oates, wrote in the July 15, 1998, memo to the police commissioner.

The memo said the conclusions were based on analysis by police officials with expertise in infrastructure, building security, explosives, traffic and ventilation systems, who also consulted the Secret Service, including the agency’s New York special agent in charge, Chip Smith.

“Mr. Smith agrees with this assessment,” the memo says in its concluding paragraph, “even though his own office is in Seven World Trade Center. He acknowledges that the security of his office is a continuing concern because of the public nature of the building and the other reasons specified in this report.”

The memorandum was provided to The New York Times by a law enforcement official not affiliated with a rival political campaign.

Mr. Giuliani received a briefing on the Police Department’s recommendations, but it is unclear whether he received a copy of the memorandum.

Mr. Giuliani has said in the past that one of the reasons for choosing the location was that several federal agencies with which city officials needed to be in contact during emergencies, including the Secret Service, had their offices there. Other federal agencies in the building included the Defense Department and the C.I.A.

But the Police Department took the opposite position in the memo, saying the presence of those agencies made the building a more likely target.

Mr. Giuliani’s campaign declined on Friday to answer questions about the memo. But Maria Comella, a campaign spokeswoman, said the Giuliani administration had considered 50 different sites and examined a variety of factors before selecting the trade center.

“This is one memo out of a variety of memos that were presented,” she said.

Two years ago, in their book, “Grand Illusion,” Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins described the vehement objections to the choice raised by Police Commissioner Howard Safir and Chief of Department Louis R. Anemone. The memo from the Intelligence Division lays out what appears to have been the foundation for their arguments against the location.

Mr. Safir, who now operates a private security company and has supported Mr. Giuliani’s candidacy, did not a return a call seeking comment.

In response to questions about the site selection, Mr. Giuliani has typically said he relied on his emergency management director, Jerome M. Hauer, to find the best site and suggested he had little role in the process.

Mr. Hauer, however, has publicly disputed Mr. Giuliani’s assertion, saying that although he helped pick the site, he did so only after mayoral aides had told him the command center had to be within walking distance of City Hall. He has said he originally recommended a site in Brooklyn.

Mr. Hauer left the Giuliani administration in 2000 and worked as a consultant and served in the Department of Health and Human Services in the Bush administration. He later became a vocal critic of the former mayor. Mr. Hauer, however, has also praised Mr. Giuliani’s overall effort at emergency preparedness, a record that the Giuliani campaign went to some lengths to underscore on Friday.

Before Mr. Hauer left the Giuliani administration, great enmity existed between him and Mr. Safir. Mr. Safir’s critics have contended that he sought to limit the power and scope of the Office of Emergency Management once he became police commissioner in 1996. Mr. Giuliani created the office in 1996, and Mr. Hauer was its first director.

The memorandum sets out in detail the reasons why the Police Department concluded that the site was a poor choice for a command center, including its vulnerability to a biological attack and the ease with which a bomber could have damaged the building and crippled the center.

It has nine sections, the longest one headed “Explosives.” It describes a blast analysis conducted by the Police Department’s bomb squad, aided by the Secret Service, which looked at the likely impact of bombs of varying sizes, from one that could be carried in a car or a van to a large truck bomb.

The analysis, a standard practice used routinely to determine street closings when the president or another dignitary is in New York City, uses a computer system derived from the military and based on projections by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

It concluded that the largest of such bombs would have led to the collapse of the building.

This article is desperately trying to rationalize why WTC-7

imploded in a controlled demolition on 9/11.

I think Larry Silverstein's statement that they "decided to pull-it and then watched the building collapse" is much more accurate.

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It's funny that people would vote this down

We're here to make public relevant information, are we not? If this article is a case of limited hangout, then so be it. But that in itself is no reason to rate it down.

There's often an absurd contradiction that rules reader participation on this site: on the one hand, everyone clamors for openness and rails against censorship; on the other hand, some people vote down anything that doesn't fit their narrow understanding of relevant data.

I think this information is incredibly important, for two possible reasons: one, it could be the government providing the grounds for a limited hangout conclusion of the NIST study; or two, it could be a coded admission that explosives were in WTC7 on 9/11. Of course we believe the latter is true and not the former; but the information is relevant, regardless.

Also

one could speculate the relevance of the above revelation is that the Secret Service understood how to collapse WTC7, since they were part of the original "blast analysis."

Some people may be voting down the nature of the article itself,

and are not voting down the importance/evidence in this article. (I read all articles posted on 911Blogger, regardless of votes anyway.)

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I think this is front page material

now that I re-read the last few paragraphs of the article. Isn't this an incredible admission:

"It has nine sections, the longest one headed “Explosives.” It describes a blast analysis conducted by the Police Department’s bomb squad, aided by the Secret Service, which looked at the likely impact of bombs of varying sizes, from one that could be carried in a car or a van to a large truck bomb.... It concluded that the largest of such bombs would have led to the collapse of the building."

It suggests to me that, according to the Secret Service, one would not have to place explosives all over WTC7 to bring it down. Apparently, a well placed bomb of sufficient size placed in the basement would lead to "the collapse of the building." Recall that NIST is not investigating the bottom 7 floors of WTC7.

This report from NYPD

is very important. This report gave the perps all the info they needed to figure out how to destroy WTC 7.

It is more evidence that the destruction of WTC 7 was preplanned and that whoever did it knew a lot about the design of the building. WTC 7 was built on top of cantilevered trusses that held the building up over the ConEd Substation, destroying these trusses would be the easiest way to bring the building down and to reduce the amount of explosives you would need. No wonder the NIST folks refuse to look at what caused floors 5 - 7 to fail and if explosives were involved.

Aside from the people who prepared this report (I doubt if they knew the real purpose of their work) who else had access to it?

Rudy Giuliani? Benie Kerik? Jerome Hauer? I bet this report made their job a whole lot easier.

That's the Problem...

...with having this undefined "rating system"--this piece rates high on "interest" or "importance" but very low on "truthfulness" or "integrity of intent." This piece is essential disinformation, as important as it is reprehensible.
Let the vote-downs flow as you post it on the front page. It's value is as a target for tomatoes!

From Message ListBlackstone Acquires Debt On 7 World Trade Cente

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=24048.0

So 11 months before 9/11 this article comes out ....

http://www.accessmy library.com/coms2/summary_ 0286-28446975_ ITM

Blackstone Acquires Debt On 7 World Trade Center.

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 17, 2000

Blackstone Real Estate Advisors, the global real estate investment and
management arm of The Blackstone Group, L.P., announced today that it has
purchased, from Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association, the participating
mortgage secured by 7 World Trade Center, a commercial office complex
controlled by real estate developer Larry Silverstein.

Located in downtown Manhattan, 7 World Trade Center is a 47 story, Class A,
office tower containing 2 million square feet of office space. The property,
which is 100% occupied, houses some of Manhattan's premier companies
including Salomon Smith Barney, Hartford Fire Insurance, American Express and
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The mortgage contains certain features which allow Blackstone, as the lender,
to share in the improvement in performance of the asset over time through its
maturity in 2006. Average rents in the building are currently $45 per square
foot, reflecting a significant discount to current market rents. Additional
terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Steve Galiotos, a Managing Director of The Blackstone Group, said, "Rising
rental rates coupled with the lack of available office space in downtown
Manhattan, made 7 World Trade Center an attractive investment opportunity for
Blackstone. We are pleased to be a lender to Larry Silverstein, a seasoned
real estate veteran, on one of Manhattan's trophy properties." 7 World Trade
Center is the second investment made by Blackstone in a Silverstein office
building. In April 2000, Blackstone formed a joint venture with Larry
Silverstein and Walton Street Capital to own and operate the Equitable
Building at 120 Broadway in downtown Manhattan.

Larry Silverstein stated that "Blackstone has one of the most exceptional
track records in real estate investment and we are pleased to have them as a
primary lender to a premier New York office property. Their commitment
demonstrates the strength of this market."

About Silverstein Properties, Inc.

Silverstein Properties Inc. is a Manhattan-based real estate development and
investment firm that owns, manages, and has developed more than 20 million
square feet of office, residential and retail space. The office space is
located primarily in the financial district of downtown Manhattan and along
Fifth Avenue in midtown. Current projects in development include River Place,
the entire 42nd Street block between 11th and 12th Avenues, with two 40-story
residential towers to contain a total of 1,800 apartments, retails and
parking facilities.

About The Blackstone Group L.P.

The Blackstone Group, a private investment bank with offices in New York and
London, was founded in 1985 by its Chairman, Peter G. Peterson, and its
President and CEO, Stephen A. Schwarzman. Blackstone's Real Estate Group has
raised three funds representing approximately $3 billion in total equity. The
group has made around 100 separate investments in hotels and other commercial
properties with a total transaction value of about $11 billion. In addition
to real estate, The Blackstone Group's core businesses include Mergers and
Acquisitions Advisory, Restructuring and Reorganization Advisory, Private
Equity Investing, Private Mezzanine Investing, and Liquid Alternative Asset
Investing.
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

So the two guys that founded Blackstone, one of them was at this time the
chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (Peterson)
http://www.iie.com/institute/peterson-bio.cfm

Peter G. Peterson

Peter G. Peterson is senior chairman and co-founder of The Blackstone Group. He is founding chairman of the Institute for International Economics, chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, and founding president of The Concord Coalition. Mr. Peterson was the co-chair of The Conference Board Commission on Public Trust and Private Enterprises (co-chaired by John Snow, former secretary of the treasury). He was also chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from (2000–04), chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers (1973–77), later chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers, Kuhn, Loeb Inc. (1977–84), and chairman and CEO of Bell and Howell Corporation (1963–71).

In 1971 President Richard Nixon named Mr. Peterson assistant to the president for international economic affairs. He was named secretary of commerce in 1972 and assumed the chairmanship of the National Commission on Productivity and was appointed US chairman of the US-Soviet Commercial Commission. Mr. Peterson was chairman of the US Council of the International Chamber of Commerce in 1978–79. President Ford appointed him chairman of the Quadrennial Commission on Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Salaries in 1976, and in 1994 President Clinton named him as a member of the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform.

Mr. Peterson is the author of several books, including Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It; Gray Dawn: How the Coming Age Wave Will Transform America—and the World; Will America Grow Up Before It Grows Old?; and Facing Up: How to Rescue the Economy from Crushing Debt and Restore the American Dream. His Atlantic Monthly cover article, “The Morning After,” received the National Magazine Award for Best Public Interest Article of the Year in 1987. He has been awarded honorary degrees by Colgate University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, Northwestern University, New School University, the University of Nebraska, the University of Rochester, and Southampton College of Long Island University. He is married to Joan Ganz Cooney, creator of Sesame Street.

>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>

And the other guy (Schwarzman) attended Yale at the same time as G Bush. He
also was a member of a death cult with G Bush called Skull & Bones
http://www.nndb.com/org/723/ 000041600/

Bush and Schwarzman were even roommates at Yale
http://uk.askmen.com/specials/2007_top_49/stephen-schwarzman-37.html

Stephen Schwarzman Why He's No. 37Stephen Schwarzman, chairman, CEO and cofounder of the Blackstone Group, the world's leading private-equity firm, became news when his company went public early in the year. Following an SEC filing, Blackstone disclosed their annual earnings for the first time in their history, and Schwarzman's personal worth was estimated to be in the several billions.
Rank Last Year: -- See Top 49 Men of 2006
No.37 on Top 99 Women list

2007 Resume
Listed as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People for 2007.
Ranked by Forbes magazine as the 73rd richest person in the U.S., with an estimated net worth of about $3.5 billion.
Estimated to be worth over $7.7 billion in Blackstone stocks.
Received $800 million for the Blackstone IPO.
Had $3 billion non-voting stocks in the Blackstone Group purchased by the government of China.
Announced Blackstone's plans to obtain Hilton Hotels in an all-cash deal worth $26 billion.

Behind the ScenesSchwarzman' s link to people in power extends beyond the world of high finance and big business, as he and President George W. Bush were roommates while attending Yale University in the 1960s. Their relationship was further cemented by virtue of the fact that they were also Skull and Bones brothers during that time. In addition to his towering status in the world of business, the Blackstone chief is also Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and has served as an adjunct professor at the Yale School of Management.
2007 Manly MomentWhen Schwarzman turned 60 in February, the guest list at his Park Avenue bash in Manhattan was a who's who of the business, entertainment and political elite, including Vernon Jordan (advisor to President Clinton), Barry Diller (creator of FOX Broadcasting Corp.) and Cardinal Edward Egan. Rod Stewart also provided a live concert (for a reported $1 million for 30 minutes).
Partner LinksMenCelebs. com: Stephen Schwarzman
CelebritiesFans. com: Stephen Schwarzman
Additional Links
Discuss Stephen Schwarzman on AskMen.com Message Boards

READER COMMENTS: ( 17 posts )

If these were the true owners then Larry was working for these guys. They
would be the real owners of WTC 7 or is that wrong?