Appeals Court Upholds Finding: Port Authority 68% Liable for the 1993 WTC Bombing and Terrorists Only 32% Responsible
The New York Times has a story covering the finding of an appeals court upholding the jury's finding that the Port Authority was 68 percent liable for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the terrorists were only 32 percent liable:
A state appeals court ruled on Tuesday that the Port Authority was liable for damages caused by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, because it knew about but chose to ignore “an extreme and potentially catastrophic vulnerability that would have been open and obvious to any terrorist who cared to investigate and exploit it.”
The ruling unanimously upheld a jury’s verdict that the agency was 68 percent liable for the bombing and the terrorists 32 percent liable. Under state rules, because the Port Authority’s liability was more than 50 percent, it can be forced to pay all the damages to injured survivors and to relatives of those killed.
In its decision, the court noted that the Port Authority, a bistate New York and New Jersey agency that owned the trade center, did not argue that the bombing was unforeseeable, only that it was unlikely, since its own consultants and an internal study group had predicted “with exact prescience” how an attack could be carried out.
Andrew Carboy, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, estimated on Tuesday that the Port Authority faced more than $100 million in damages for the 50 personal injury and dozen business-interruption cases remaining. Apart from its fiscal effect, the unanimous, 35-page decision signified the first time that a body of judges, versed in the nuances of the law and legal precedent as well as the evidence, had ruled on a seminal moment in New York history.
After the jury’s verdict, in 2005, the Port Authority called the notion that the agency would be more at fault than the terrorists “egregiously incorrect” and “bizarre.” The appeals court disagreed.
The amount of the damages has yet to be determined. The court, a five-judge panel of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, said that the jury decided that “the acts of these terrorists, even while obviously odious in the extreme, were not a cause for the easy absolution of this defendant from its civil obligations.” The five judges were Jonathan Lippman, Angela M. Mazzarelli, Luis A. Gonzalez, John W. Sweeny Jr. and Rolando T. Acosta.
In assigning fault, the court said, the jury considered not just the moral wrong of the terrorists, but how much the Port Authority contributed to the conditions that allowed the bombing.
“The evidence, fairly considered, clearly supported the view that the defendant’s negligence had been extraordinarily conducive of the terrorists’ conduct,” the judges said.
The blast, on Feb. 26, 1993, set off by Islamic militants who detonated explosives in a van they drove into the underground parking garage, killed six people and injured almost 1,000 others, foreshadowing the attack that brought down the towers and killed nearly 3,000 people. It created a crater about six stories deep that covered an area about half the size of a football field under the building complex.
Yet unlike its actions after the Sept. 11 attack, the federal government did not create a fund to compensate victims of the first bombing, and they have waited 15 years without a trial on damages. If Tuesday’s ruling stands, the remaining plaintiffs can go to trials for specific dollar awards.
The ruling may have at least psychological if not legal ramifications for another case now working its way through federal court in Manhattan. In that case, a small group of families of people killed in the 2001 attack declined to take federal compensation for their losses and have instead sued the airlines and airport security companies, saying that they failed to take adequate steps to protect the airplanes from hijackers. None of them have yet gone to trial.
The lead lawyer who argued against the Port Authority in the 1993 bombing trial, David Dean, said on Tuesday that he was “elated” by the appellate ruling.
“The best thing about the verdict, I think, is that it vindicated the jurors who heard the case for a month and a half and the trial court who heard the case,” Mr. Dean said.
He said that the Port Authority would have to ask permission to appeal to the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. If permission to appeal is not granted, he said, “I’m ready to roll up my sleeves” and start to try cases.
Steve Coleman, a Port Authority spokesman, declined to say whether the authority would appeal, and said it would continue to try to settle the remaining cases. “We have resolved all but a few dozen of the remaining cases from the 1993 bombing, and we look forward to resolving those as well,” Mr. Coleman said.
The authority said that it originally faced 575 lawsuits and that over the years, all but about 50 have been resolved. He said he did not know how much the authority had paid to settle the cases so far. The appellate court rejected the authority’s argument that it could not be held responsible because there had never been such a bombing before, noting that liability was ultimately based on “notice, not history.”
The judges said, after reviewing the evidence at the trial on liability, that there was plenty of notice. In 1984, Peter Goldmark, then the Port Authority’s executive director, recognizing the trade center’s “iconic” stature, asked Scotland Yard to assess the security of the complex and reported back to his colleagues that British officials were “appalled” that there was public parking underneath the towers.
In July 1985, an outside engineering consultant, Charles Schnabolk, issued a report saying that it was not only possible but “probable” that there would be an attempt to bomb the trade center, and that it was “highly vulnerable through the parking lot.”
The court noted that in November 1985, a Port Authority study group, the Office of Special Planning, described a scenario eerily similar to the actual bombing, in which “a time bomb-laden vehicle could be driven into the W.T.C. and parked in the public parking area.”
But the authority decided that banning public parking in the underground lot, as the report recommended, would be an unacceptable inconvenience and loss of revenue, the court said.
The decision was filled with pungent and scathing language. The judges said that the Port Authority should have realized that it faced a “potentially monstrous” risk. In one aside, they noted that the terrorists had fulfilled their mission “without meeting a scintilla of resistance.”
And they scoffed at the Port Authority’s concerns about loss of revenue from eliminating underground parking. It said that the jury heard testimony that the Port Authority’s net income from the World Trade Center at the time was about $100 million, and the loss of revenue from closing the parking lot to the public would have been “inconsequential.”
The judges said that even if they accepted the Port Authority’s argument that it was required to take only “minimal” security precautions, the authority had failed to meet even that standard.
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Of course, THIS is the real reason that
governmental folks should be held responsible:
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/nytimes/116193080.html?did=116193080&FMT=ABS...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F1Y6cGRXEs&eurl
http://reddit.com/info/6ausy/comments
The FBI Bombed the World Trade Center in 1993
It was the FBI that bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. None of this would be known today if it were not for the FBI's undercover agent Emad Ali Salem taping his conversations with his FBI handlers (unbeknownst to them). Salem thought that the FBI might try to pin it on him so he took measures to protect himself. Indeed, without the FBI the '93 WTC bombing would never have happened, as it was agent Salem who built the bomb for the would-be Muslim "terrorists." Salem wanted to use fake ingredients for the "bomb" but the FBI ordered him to make a real one. When the making of the bomb was complete Salem told the FBI that they could now arrest the would-be terrorists, but the FBI refused to stop the bombing. After agent Salem went public with his tapes in a news conference the FBI found it necessary to pay him over a million dollars to shut him up.
For more on the above, see the below New York Times articles:
"Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast," Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times, October 28, 1993, Section A, pg. 1, Column 4; and "Tapes in Bombing Plot Show Informer and F.B.I. at Odds," Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times, October 27, 1993, Section A, pg. 1, Column 4 http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b3c830e34de.htm
http://stateterror.web1000.com/fbi-bombed-wtc-new-york-times.html
Also see the below article:
"Who Bombed The World Trade Center? FBI Bomb Builders Exposed," Paul DeRienzo, Frank Morales and Chris Flash, The Shadow, October 1994/January 1995 Issue http://pdr.autono.net/WhoBombedWTC.html
From the above article one can find the below two audio clips from one of Emad A. Salem's recorded telephone conversations with one of his FBI handlers, FBI Special Agent John Anticev:
http://nwo.media.xs2.net/tape/emad%20salem.mp3
http://stateterror.web1000.com/emad-salem.mp3 (Backup copy.)
The above clip is an excerpt from the below longer clip:
http://nwo.media.xs2.net/tape/SalemWBAI.mp3
http://stateterror.web1000.com/SalemWBAI.mp3 (Backup copy.)
The above clips are from a broadcast on WBAI Radio in the city of New York which aired this taped conversation between Emad A. Salem and FBI Special Agent John Anticev.
In this audio recording of Emad A. Salem in conversation with one of his FBI handlers, Special Agent John Anticev (recorded unbeknownst to him), Salem admits a number of times to building, with the supervision of the FBI and the District Attorney of New York, the bomb that exploded in the North Tower (Tower One) of the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993. FBI Special Agent John Anticev doesn't disagree with Salem's account of the event, and indeed Anticev admits in the recording that Salem has only ever told him and the FBI the truth.
The below transcript is from 2:57 to 4:31 min:sec from the longer clip (SalemWBAI.mp3):
""
FBI Special Agent John Anticev: But, uh, basically nothing has changed. I'm just telling you for my own sake that nothing, that this isn't a salary, that it's--you know. But you got paid regularly for good information. I mean the expenses were a little bit out of the ordinary and it was really questioned. Don't tell Nancy I told you this. [Nancy Floyd is another FBI Special Agent who worked with Emad A. Salem in his informant capacity.]
FBI undercover agent Emad A. Salem: Well, I have to tell her of course.
Anticev: Well then, if you have to, you have to.
Salem: Yeah, I mean because the lady was being honest and I was being honest and everything was submitted with a receipt and now it's questionable.
Anticev: It's not questionable, it's like a little out of the ordinary.
Salem: Okay. Alright. I don't think it was. If that's what you think guys, fine, but I don't think that because we was start already building the bomb which is went off in the World Trade Center. It was built by supervising supervision from the Bureau and the D.A. and we was all informed about it and we know that the bomb start to be built. By who? By your confidential informant. What a wonderful, great case!
Anticev: Well.
Salem: And then he put his head in the sand and said "Oh, no, no, that's not true, he is son of a bitch." [Deep breath.] Okay. It's built with a different way in another place and that's it.
Anticev: No, don't make any rash decisions. I'm just trying to be as honest with you as I can.
Salem: Of course, I appreciate that.
Anticev: And as far as the payments go, and everything like that, they're there. I guarantee you that they are there.
""
Salem says in the above that he and the FBI built the bomb, i.e., "we." Indeed, he says it three different times here in three different ways: first he says "we [i.e., at the very least Salem] was start already building the bomb," then he says "It was built by supervising supervision from the Bureau and the D.A.," and lastly he asks "By who?" (i.e., "By whom was the bomb built?") to which he answers "By your confidential informant" (i.e., by Salem).
Salem was a former Egyptian army officer and the explosives expert within Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman's circle of followers. The fact that Salem was the explosives expert and bomb-builder within Sheik Rahman's circle is further reinforced by the fact that Salem tried to get the FBI to allow him to secretly substitute harmless powder for the explosives, but the FBI wouldn't allow it (see the two New York Times articles I previously cited above for that). Let me repeat: Salem himself wanted to substitute harmless ingredients for the bomb. What this demonstrates is that (1) Salem was regarded within Sheik Rahman's circle as the bomb-making expert (such that Salem would be allowed by them to be in charge of building the bomb), and that (2) Salem wasn't all that concerned about anyone else within Sheik Rahman's circle knowing the difference between fake or real bomb-making ingredients.
Nor can point No. 2 be dismissed as Salem not being very cautious, because not only was Salem concerned enough about his dealings with the FBI to secretly record his phone conversations with them (lest the FBI attempted to deny the extent of their relationship with Salem and blame him for the bombing), but Salem also refused to wear a "wire" in case he should be discovered as an undercover agent. In other words, if Salem thought that there was anyone else within the circle that he infiltrated who would know the difference between fake or real bomb-making ingredients then he wouldn't have been at all keen--as he indeed was--on the idea of substituting fake bomb-making ingredients.
There is simply no getting around the fact that Salem was the one who built the bomb under orders and supervision of the FBI. Not only did Salem say three different times in three different ways that he and the FBI built the bomb, but then one has points Nos. 1 and 2 which demonstrate that Salem was in charge of bomb-building within Sheik Rahman's circle, and that no one else within this group besides Salem would have been able to recognize fake bomb-making ingredients.
The following exchange is from 8:00 to 8:34 min:sec on the longer clip (SalemWBAI.mp3):
""
FBI undercover agent Emad A. Salem: [Have] you ever verified information and you find me falsifying any information to the Bureau?
FBI Special Agent John Anticev: Falsify? No. No.
Salem: No. Alright. So, every single information I supplied, it's very excellent and correct.
I was talking to El Sayyid Nosair's [I'm not sure if this is the correct name that Salem says] wife yesterday, and she's going to visit him today, and I will be going to visit him next week, as per the arrangement. What am I supposed to do this trip? I don't have money to do this trip. And then to go over there and the guy will ask me to build a bomb again. ...
""
One reason for me bringing up the above exchange is that it once again, at the very least, demonstrates that Salem was in charge of bomb-building within Sheik Rahman's circle. And depending on how one interprets the phrasing, it could very well mean that Salem is here saying that he had previously built a bomb for this group and hence "the guy will ask me [i.e., Salem] to build a bomb again": i.e., Salem had already built a bomb for this group, and now they're asking him to build another one for them. But at the very least this exchange further demonstrates that this group thought that Salem was the one to go to when it comes to having a person build bombs.
Moreover, another point to me bringing up this exchange is that FBI Special Agent John Anticev here admits that Salem hasn't ever said anything false to him or the FBI. That is, Anticev here agrees that Salem's statements in the audio recording regarding how the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bomb was built are correct.
____________
"Terrorism is the health of the State."--James Redford, author of "Jesus Is an Anarchist," June 1, 2006 http://praxeology.net/anarchist-jesus.pdf
'93
I thought this was a weird ruling that distracts from what really happened there.
This ruling means that underground parking garages must be phased out everywhere, or else you will be 68% liable if someone blows it up. That is strange, assigning the majority of liability solely because the garage exists.
Anyway, this NY Times summary (linked above) omits some KEY testimony:
"Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast."
But the "informer", an undercover PROVOCATEUR WHO BUILT THE BOMB, was told NOT to substitute the explosives with "harmless powder" by his FBI handlers. And he recorded their conversations to prove it!
Further, the article accuses the patsies of driving the truck bomb into the WTC. This has no evidence.
The patsy reported the van STOLEN the night before the blast, and he went back to collect his deposit money at the rental agency, where he was arrested.
There is MOSSAD involvement in the operation as well. A Mossad agent "provided an apartment" in NY to the alleged bombers.
The van was identified by its vin number plate while it was still buried under "6 stories" of rubble.
Who Bombed the U.S. World Trade Center? — 1993, Growing Evidence Points to Role of FBI Operative
By Ralph Schoenman
http://takingaim.info/articles/wtc93.html
Are the '93 trial transcripts online anywhere?
70 Disturbing Facts About 9/11
John Doraemi publishes Crimes of the State Blog
http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/
johndoraemi --at-- yahoo.com.
at the very least gross
at the very least gross governmental misconduct but just your typical false flag state sponsored terroristic act