Profil de Little Girly Ma...Why Does He Love Bricks?PhotosBlogListesPlus  |  Outils Aide |
|
9 février The Cow Blog- so called because it's pretty big and it has 3 appendicesok, I went to see a talk with william rodriguez ['last man out' of the world trade centre] yesterday. it was amazing, the guy is a true hero and he is cool
William Rodriguez is doing a 28 day tour of the uk
mostly he told the story of his experience- he was in the basement of the world trade cemtre when the plane hit the north tower, and over the next 97 minutes [before the tower collapsed] he went back in, repeatedly, and he saved 'dozens' [possibly hundreds] of people by climbing up 40 flights of stairs and opening every door on his way up [except one- see later!]. This is my reccollection of his account [i have also seen some of his testimony on videos such as 'loose change'].
All the quotes in here are approximate, and are from my recollection of the meeting. Names and identities in here are again down to my recollection. if i can find these details on his website [http:\\www.911keymaster.com], then i will update them as and when. William Rodriguez [WR] was in the B1 basement of the Norh Tower of the World Trade Centre [WTC] on the morning of 9/11 in a meeting with his supervisor. They heard a huge BOOM. William's first thought wsa that a generator in the maintainence room [directly below them] had just blown up, as the room had shaken, and the sound came from BELOW them. before he could actually say this, however, another, more distant boom was heard, from ABOVE them [the sound of the plane hitting the building].
Shortly afterwards, after leaving his supervisor's office, he ran into a man [DS] who worked for the company that filled the vending machines, who had been on the B2 level [below William and his supervisor]. He had had the skin ripped from his arms and it was 'dangling from his fingertips' WR said 'at first we thought it was bits of his clothes, but then we realised it was his skin...' bits of the skin on his face were missing. WR told the man to come into the office, and he was going to try to ring the EMT [Emergency Medical Team] who were based in the south tower. As he was about to do this, Another explosion occurred somwhere in the building, and ceiling tiles collapsed on top of them. This explosion shook the building, and people in the office were hiding in doorways, thinking there was an earthquake.
So just to clarify this - according to WR, there were explosions in the BASEMENT of the WTC before the plane even hit the tower! The fact that DS [the guy from B2] was so much more badly hurt than WR and the people who were with him backs this up.
The university of Colombia also recorded explosions around 9-10 seconds BEFORE the planes hit the towers. See Appendix 1] WR then took DS and went with other people from the janitor's office out of the building via the cargo bay ramp. Once outside, and once they had found an ambulanec to treat DS, they heard people saying 'a plane has hit the building, and WR could see the smoke at the top of the tower. This, moment, in my opinion is where he bacame a hero- he went back into the building- against the advice of his supervisor. He says that his reason was 'every morning i used to eat breakfast in the 'Windows on the World' restaurant [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_on_the_World] because they used to give me cheap food in there. I wanted to help them. I wanted to save my friends.'
When i heard him say those words, i suddenly felt so moved by the story this man was telling. I cant realy express what it was like to be there as he related the rest of the tale to us, but i was spellbound, and awestruck by what he told us over the next hour.
When he returned to the WTC, WR went straight to the South Tower through the basements [the basements are linked] and went to the Emergency Control Centre - this was an office set up after the 1993 bombing, at the cost of over a million dollars, to be a control centre in the case of any other similar event. It should have been manned 24 hours a day. WR knocked on the doors, and the windows, but there was nobody there.
Pretty Odd. Potentially they already knew about the situation, and were elsewhere, but still- it was supposed to be where all the response was co-ordinated from!!
WR then headed back towards the exit ramp, but on his way, he met someone who said he had heard cries for help. 'It was pretty noisy in there with all the alarms going off and the sprinklers so i was suprised he could hear anyone, but i went to the lift shaft, and i could hear two people screaming "save us, please help us, We're going to drown".
At this point in his story, WR mentions that three times that day he asked God to help him - 'even though i am agnostic [i think he meant atheist, but he said agnostic]'. The first time he asked God to help him, he turned around and found a metal bar, 'in an area that should have been clear', WR and the guy who he was with [a painter] prised open the doors of the lift shaft with the metal bar, and they could see down to the lift. The shaft was filling with water, run off from the sprinklers from all of the 110 floors above them, and there were two people in a lift, below WR and the painter. There was no way that WR could get down to save them however, so again he asked 'Please, God help me to save these people', and went looking for a ladder. WR said that contractors often left ladders near the cargo bay ramp, but that they always chained them up as there ws easy access and anybody could just drive in and put a ladder in the back of their car/van and drive off. On that day, however, WR found that the largest ladder of them all was not chained up! So he took the ladder back to the lift shaft, climbed down and helped the two people out of the lift, and again left the building.
Outside, he ran into people from the Port Authority Police Department, and Fire Department. WR had a master key to the stairwells [as a fire prevention measure, only the doors on every fourth floor would open without a key]. Somehow, he got talking to David Lim of the Port Authority Police, and mentioned his key, and they, together with some firemen made their way back [again] into the building- this time through the front doors.
Now WR wsa not the olnly person with a key- there were 4 others, all trained by the Port Authority in emergency measures
Interestingly, there was a great deal of damage - on the ground floor, more than 70 floors below where the plane hit, marble panneling had blown off the wall, all the glass in the shopping centre had blown out, and the doors of the elevator shafts were buckled outwards, as if an explosion had occured somehere very close by [see the Naudet brothers' film "911" which shows these effect shortly after the first plane hit the tower].
WR then took several firefighters [who were carrying 60-120lbs of equipment on their backs] into the stairwells, and began to climb - opening doors as he went up. He said there were devices going off all over the building - that he and the firefighters could hear explosions periodically as they climbed.
After about 27 floors, the firefighters could not continue [they had carried about 1/2 their bodyweight up hundreds of vertical feet]. Around this floor on the 27th or 29 floor there was a handicapped person. Evacuation proceedure dictates that anyone in a wheelchair must wait until last to be evacuated. This will be relevant later. It was also around this time that WR rang his mother, only to be told to GET OUT OF THERE! She [along with many other people around the world] was watching on TV - she probably knew more about what was going on than WR himself did! He told his mother he would leave the building.
WR continued upwards, opening doors until he reached the 33rd floor, where there was a woman, panicking, who, when asked why she had not left said 'i dont know where the exits are...'. WR heard people on the stairwell and got them to help her to leave the building.
Above him, while he was on the 33rd floor, WR said he could hear heavy objects moving 'like a big metal dumpster being moved around'. he said 'And for the first time i was afraid. I was afraid because i knew that this was an empty floor'.
WR said he knew this because he used to go there for his lunch - 'my supervisor used to come and hassle me in my office and try to talk to me about things, but because i had the master key, i could get into the 34th floor to eat my lunch. i was literally hiding from him up there'.
WR said he had a really bad feling about htis floor, and he didnt open the door- the only one of the floors he reached that he didnt open. It was around this time that WR heard a massive WHOOSH and felt the tower shake. he didnt know at the time, but this was the South tower of WTC collapsintg!
WR continued upwards until he reached the 39th floor, where he met PAPD officer David Lim [DL], who was co-ordinating the rescue. DL told him that as a civilian, he was not allowed to be a part of the rescue effort, but WR told him that as the only person left with the master - key he would stay. DL agreed that he could continue to be in the building, but said they needed to get that disabled person on the 29th floor out. 'Then you can come back in'
So WR descended to the 27th floors, to help this person out. DL was helping a fire crew to get an elderly woman out of the North Tower when it collapsed, and was in the stairwell, around the 6th floor when the collapse occured. he survived to tell the tale - and to corroborate William's story.
The firemen on the 29th floor were more than happy to help WR to help the disabled person out of the building and they began to descend the stairs. WR says that the building was swaying, glass was heard cracking and smashing. At one point the building flexed so much that flourescent lighting tubes broke in sequence heading down the building.
He had just made it outside when the police told him not to look back. 'So what do you do? when someone tells you to look back? So i looked back, and i could see them' the stuff of nightmares - people who had jumped out of the building, flattened beyond recognition, and, worse, the woman from the 33rd floor - cut in half as she left the building by a falling pane of glass. Police then starting shouting, and running away. WR looked up to see the building collapsing. He ran towards the nearest shelter he could see- a fire truck - and he slid under it, and heard debris start to rain down on top of it. He felt the hot dust cloud on him, but remembered what an old illusionist ans escapologist had told him: 'if you are ever in that kind of situation, just try to be calm, and relax and slow your breathing' so he did this, and waited and he asked God for the third time: to spare his mother the pain of his death there.
He waited and was pulled from the rubble by people who saw him as he left the Tower, and went looking for him. Shortly after he was pulled free, the tyres on the fire truck blew- which had he been under it still, would have crushed him.
William Rodriguez never reached Windows on the World, and lost around 200 friends and colleagues that day.
An unbelievable story - but true.
Part 2 - the aftermath
William Rodriguez was decorated 5 times by the US authorities, and went to the White House and met George Bush. Lucky him?
After 9/11, he became a campaigner for victims rights, he says his main motivations for this was to deal with his loss.
There was initially to be NO INVESTIGATION of the events of 9/11.
let me repeat that.
There was initially to be NO INVESTIGATION of the events of 9/11. "we know arabs did it... we dont need an investigation"
So William was involved in the effort to get an investigation into the events of that day - they succeeded. The people who brought that investigation into being wanted Henry Kissinger [see appendix 3] to be one of the commitee. The victim's families wanted to veto his involvement on the grounds of a potential conflict of interest. He [kissinger] withdrew the day after the families demanded a list of his clients. He said he was 'too busy'
The victims' families wanted to have a representative on the commission, but they were told that even though some of the family members were respected judges - professionals with the appropriate skills, and respect, and trust of the authorities. The families were told that no-one from the families could be cleared for security reasons, and couldnt see sensetive information
The 9/11 comission heard WR's testimony in private, even though they heard the rest of the civilians in public, virtually none of his testimony appeared in the final report even though he was in the buildings virtually start to finish, and his testimony was backed up by another two workers [DS and the painter], and the chief of the port authority police on site [DL].
Recently WR has been to Malaysia, and Venezuela.
He got a fright when the hotel manager in venezuela asked him to meet him. He said 'this is quite serious Mr Rodriguez, an FBI agent came in here and showed his badge and asked for the list of residents in the hotel'
William Rodriguez was the only person there of note - he had been giving interviews on national TV. The next day, WR was summoned to the headquarters of the venezuelan government. He met with a very important minister in the venezuelan government, who gave him 5 bodyguards for the rest of his stay, and ordered the national TV station to record ALL of his testimony for historical record. This minister said that the venezuelan government feared the US would try to have him killed in venezuela and blame it on them! by the way FBI jurisdiction is on US soil only. Part of the reason the government there gave him security was because the minister said 'we believe your story about the fbi agent because we know who comes in and out of this country'!
Since then, Rodriguez, along with others, has sued bush on numerous occasions, for release of documents etc. Families say: we want the transcripts of the radio transmisions in the twin towers. The government said 'no'. Families said: ok we'll take you to court...
and they won there is a 'suit out there from some of the victims, against cheney rumsfeld bush etc which is ongoing. That really would be the killer- if the courts find the government guilty of conspiracy to murder... i think we will have civil war. But it wont happen.
Why do i think William Rodriguez is such a hero?
He did what a lot of ppl didnt do- he went INTO that building. He led the fire department up the stairwell as he was the only person on the scene with a master key- but he only had it because he was the guy who cleaned the stairwells... everyone else just panicked and ran away - there were 4 ppl who had keys, all trained Port Authority officials, but they bottled it [as u would when a plane flew into your work!]... WR has turned down massive amounts [$millions] of campaign funding from both parties - because of his popularity he was a desirable political asset for both parties. WR also turned down compensation deals because he would have to stop talking about what happened, which would effectively end his stint as a campaigner...
WR was [credit] blacklisted, but i dont know if that is because he has spent all his money on promoting his version of events and campaigning, or quite what. He apparently ended up living under a bridge for a while. nbc covered that. they give him airplay but not for his story - just because he is a decorated hero and because he was homeless.
william rodriguez is doing a 28 day tour of the uk
Aftermath
So why does no-one report this?
I will post some answers and theories in my next post. Incidentally the media were invited last night - the bbc, ITV and Manchester Evening News. They declined to come. ITV said 'who is he?' and 'what does september 11th have to do with us?'
On the positive side, WR appeared on both BBC GMR radio and on TVM. i think the most likely papers to print these stories [conspiracy stories rather than WR's heroism] are the Guardian and Independent but they are 'serious' papers and probably wouldnt be up for the fallout of their readers going 'this is bullshit' without reading it.
Appendix 1:
In order for an explosion or similar event [eg building collapse] to be recorded by a seismograph, the force must be 'coupled to the ground'. This means that is can transfer a force into the ground, so that a shockwave moves through the Earth - like a sound wave through air. The WTC bomb of 1993 was not recorded on any seismograph because it was not coupled to the ground. It was a van packed with explosives, which detonated in the basement levels of the WTC. The collapse of both buildings 1 and 2 and building 7, as the material from these buildings shook the earth. So the Columbia University seismographs have a time reference for how long the waves took to travel from New York on that day, and gave an estimate of 8-10 seconds BEFORE the two planes hit for the seismographic events they recorded. The only type of explosion within the building that WOULD be coupled to the ground would be one that affected the 47 [load bearing] central columns in the centre of the building, or the numerous external columns, all of which ran into the ground. Judging by the fact that there were pools of molten steel in the footprint of the WTC after the collapse - which smouldered for weeks afterwards - the fact that the 47 core columns were key to the structure - and the fact that a 50 ton hydrualic press was completely destroyed in the sub-basement, the most likely candidate is the central columns. Also see phillip morelli's testimony re explosions in WTC.
Appendix 2:
Floors on the WTC were both periodically and permanently empty because the building was undergoing constant refits and upgrades, and wasnt fully occupied- certain companies were moved multiple times so that new internet cables etc could be installed. Floor 34 was not occupied by any company, and had no interior walls, or ceilings. The floor was just: the external walls, the lift doors and the concrete floor and ceiling. The elevators were also locked out on that floor - only someone with a lift master key could access it via the lifts. Appendix 3:
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, is a very colourful character. Google him and take your pick. Wanted as a war crminal in Cambodia, kissinger is a bigtime lawyer with clients all over the middle east, america and asia, but most significantly David Rockerfeller.
Here's a nice story:
[also see: Zbigniew Brzezinski 'The Grand Chessboard' for the background] Kissinger is a former consultant to Unocal - a company who's former employee and consultant [Hamid Karzai] was the first prime minister of Afghanistan after 9/11. Unocal wanted to create a pipeline to ship Oil from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan etc, which crossed Afghanistan and reached the sea in Pakistan, where it would be shipped by US tankers to Japan and especially China. Construction could not begin until Afghanistan had an internationally recognised government... Less than one month after 9/11 [11/10/01], and just days after 'we' moved into Afghanistan, this pipeline project was decidedly ON. Unocal hired Henry Kissinger as a consultant when the pipeline came back online. A few weeks later [4/11/01] Kissinger was hired as a consultant to a Chinese oil firm [the Chinese National Offshore Oil Company] who chose him to head it's foreign advisory board. So Kissinger [and possibly Rockerfeller] have both the financial ends of this pipeline. What's the betting this pipeline will run into Iraq at some point? One final happy quote from Kissinger runs as follows:
"military men are dumb stupid animals, to be used as pawns for foreign policy"
You want another interesting fact? You know Halliburton? Course you do. Well, their former chairman was: Dick Cheney. lovely. They built that pipeline... http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/oilwar1.html CommentairesPour ajouter un commentaire, connectez-vous avec votre identifiant Windows Live ID (si vous utilisez Messenger ou Xbox LIVE, vous avez un identifiant Windows Live ID). Connectez-vous Vous n'avez pas d'identifiant Windows Live ID ? Inscrivez-vous RétroliensL'URL de rétrolien de ce billet est : http://welovebricks.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!135C83B6406C5783!1755.trak Blogs Web qui font référence à ce billet
|
|
|
