Since the attacks of September 11th, a growing chorus of 9/11 researchers have cited Mayor Giuliani's Office of Emergency Management (OEM) bunker on the 23rd floor of WTC 7 as a possible operations center for the 9/11 conspirators — a convenient location from which to guide the "hijacked" planes to their targets and fine-tune the demolition strategies for the Twin Towers. But this intriguing (and, some might think, bizarre) hypothesis has always relied a little too heavily on vague and circumstantial evidence. Here is what we do know.

In 1996, by executive order, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani created the Office of Emergency Management (OEM), an agency designed to develop strategies and resources to deal with any catastrophic event that might threaten the welfare of the city and its people. Possible threats included natural disasters and terrorist attacks.

In June 1999 Giuliani completed his $13 million emergency command bunker on the 23rd floor of World Trade Center Building 7. This reinforced emergency control center — complete with its own air, water and power supply — was intended to provide a secure command post for leadership should such a disaster occur.

From the outset, the location for the facility provoked controversy. The Police Commissioner's Chief of Staff, Richard Sheirer, clashed bitterly with OEM director Jerry Hauer over the planned site. Hauer's decision to locate the emergency command retreat in the midst of the number one terrorist target in the western hemisphere — a place likely to be destroyed (as it was) in the event of an actual attack — was, Sheirer felt, surely an act of lunacy.

During the 9/11 Commission hearings, Senator Tim Roemer revisited this point: "Mr. Sheirer ... there was a decision made to locate the [bunker] right in the nest of where the terrorists had struck in 1993. Why put it in one of the most likely places where people are going to come back and hit us again ... ?" In response, Sheirer was diplomatic: "I did not agree with it for the very reasons that you said. I did not agree with it simply because it was on the 23rd floor of a building. And do I look like a guy that wants to walk up 23 flights?" Amazingly, when Roemer questioned Hauer himself the next day, he never mentioned a word about the location of the OEM.

Sheirer's prophetic concern, that an above-ground facility could sustain damage rendering it inaccessible (and its elevators inoperable), was echoed in a NY Daily News article that described the command post in WTC 7 as being "the first-ever aerie-style bunker," the vast majority (or, apparently, all) of similar facilities naturally having been built underground (and well removed from potential hot spots).

We also know that one of the two small fires later blamed for the collapse of the huge steel-framed WTC 7 was on its seventh floor, the location of the OEM's emergency generators. It's commonly thought by 9/11 researchers that these fires were ignited to serve as "cover" for the building's forthcoming but utterly inexplicable collapse. The fact that 1) this fire occurred on a floor that was presumably secured and accessible only by OEM personnel, and 2) floor 7 housed not only OEM generators but a "day" tank, presumably of diesel fuel, is, some feel, additional evidence linking the OEM to the attacks.

But the point most often promulgated in support of the theory at hand is the obvious controlled demolition of WTC 7 itself. It's been argued that if the OEM was really just a front for the conspirator's operations center, the facility would then need to be destroyed should evidence of its existence be discovered. To adherents of this theory, the intentional destruction of Building 7 was meant to dispense with this problem and, most likely, a host of others.

There are two tangential points worth mentioning as well. First, there have always been questions as to why Flight 175 (or rather, the plane alleged to be UA Flight 175 in the official story) hit the South Tower at such a sharp angle, so unlike the impact of (alleged) Flight 11. Once the "terrorists" had determined the optimum trajectory for the impacts of the planes, you'd think they would use the same plan for each building. But if Flight 175 hit the South Tower high up and straight on, as Flight 11 did, the possibility that tons of flaming debris might pass right through the building and impact WTC 7 is not unreasonable. Look at the videos of the crash and examine the site diagram. The dramatic images of rocketing debris passing through the South Tower (and harmlessly off to the northeast) seem to confirm this possibility.

The second point might help to resolve a question that's lingered in the years since the attacks: Why did the South Tower collapse first when it was the second one to be hit? Well, if you were in the OEM bunker putting the finishing touches on the explosive systems in the Twin Towers, which one would you bring down first; the dangerously close North Tower or the safely distant South Tower?

This point resonates best when linked to a new and compelling theory: that personnel stationed in the OEM bunker, first, demolished the South Tower and then exited WTC 7 to prepare for the near simultaneous demolition of the North Tower and WTC 7 from a secondary location — an attempt by the conspirators to complete the demo job on the entire WTC in one fell swoop. Their efforts in regard to the North Tower came off without a hitch. But when they attempted to "pull" Building 7 several minutes later — when its obvious demolition would be completely hidden beneath the North Tower's enormous debris cloud — the demolition system failed and the building remained intact. This controversial theory (see link below) would certainly explain WTC 7's incongruous survival when every other WTC building lay in ruins.

Whatever the case may be, the priorities of psychopaths naturally tend toward self-preservation, and the two peripheral (though intriguing) points mentioned above may be an expression of this noble concern.

The fortuitous timing of the OEM's construction — shortly before the most spectacular and audacious terrorist attack in human history — seems, in retrospect, suspiciously convenient. It's reminiscent of another similar "coincidence" often cited by 9/11 skeptics; the acquisition of the entire WTC by Manhattan developer Larry Silverstein just six weeks before 9/11 — the first time the WTC had changed hands in thirty years and the first time it had ever come under private control.

9/11 skeptics naturally connect the suspiciously anomalous features of Giuliani's OEM with their many other sober and well-researched doubts about the attacks. Whether or not these points prove conclusively that the mayor's bunker was, in reality, a nest of 9/11 conspirators, they would certainly appear to explain the poor choice of locations for a command retreat that oddly rewrote the rules set in place for similar facilities in the past.

Read "Was WTC 7 a Dud?" at: http://www.serendipity.li/wot/wtc7_dud.htm

For a transcript of the exchange between Senator Roemer and Richard Sheirer see:
http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing11/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-05-18.pdf

Comments? Web_wender@hotmail.com

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