ASBESTOS ATTACKS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE

By Hans Boes

[This article published in the German-English cyber journal Telepolis, 8/6/2006 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web www.telepolis.de/r4/artikel/23/23257/1.html.]

On order of the White House, the US Environmental Protection Agency concealed atmospheric dangers around Ground Zero. Tens of thousands of persons will die a slow, agonizing death.

September 11, 2001 will be recorded as one of the turning points in the history of the 21st century. The pictures of the collapsing Twin Towers shocked nearly everyone. In August 2006, a new Hollywood epic by Oliver Stone will celebrate the heroes of September 11.

Since September 11, the politics of most western industrial states has changed dramatically, first of all in the US. Through September 11, cuts have been made in the rights of citizens of which we could not even dream in the past – in Germany and in America.

9/11 (the American abbreviation for September 11) is still exploited as propaganda for the belligerent adventures of the present US administration. Audio communication of the victims and pictures of the alleged Pentagon crash of a passenger aircraft were recently published in order to overshadow the population’s increasing skepticism, which is provoked by the official version that insists a handful of terrorists with carpet-cutters eliminated the American secret service with a budget of untold billions of dollars and the whole North American Air Defense (NORAD).

According to a survey in the US [1], nearly half of the citizens believe the Bush administration concealed essential facts of September 11 or had something to hide. They are right in at least one point: the cover-up scandal around the deadly air quality after the collapse of the Twin Towers.

The current Bush administration always likes to cite September 11 when it conjures the dangers of international terror. Basic articles of the American constitution have been broken and American citizens spied on unscrupulously [Abbau der Demokratie (2)] or their civil rights trampled [3]. In Germany, the terror mania has led to granting considerably more powers to the secret service [4] that could have far-reaching political consequences for the future.

TERROR AGAINST ITS OWN POPULATION

In the meantime, information has surfaced that overshadows the first terror shock. The government of the US is probably responsible for the deaths of far more people than died directly through the terror attack on September 11.

The White House manipulated the reports of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) [5] about the air quality in the environment of Ground Zero after the attacks [6] and thus exposed all the relief workers, residents and employees in south Manhattan to extreme health risks [7]. In the meantime, 15,000 already show symptoms of this sickness. The first persons have already died [8]. According to some estimates [9], 30,000 to 50,000 persons may have been affected.

That the US government exposed many patriotic rescue workers to an extremely deadly risk and that this was hardly noticed in the press is really incomprehensible. The fatal effect of the most trifling amounts of asbestos dust has been known for decades. The air at Ground Zero consisted of a mixture of asbestos dust, mercury and dioxins – an extremely dangerous compound. Simple gas masks did not provide adequate protection.

In 2004, Mount Sinai hospital in New York after examining over a thousand former relief workers [10] found that three-quarters of them reported respiratory problems during their cleaning work at Ground Zero. Half of the examined have had chronic respiratory problems since then. Only 21% of the support workers had adequate breathing protection.

Two years after the attack, an investigatory commission [11] concluded that the White House manipulated essential parts of the EPA press releases:

„(...) a report by the EPA´s Office of the Inspector General released on Aug. 21 states, among other criticisms, that the White House reviewed and even changed EPA statements about public health risks to make them sound less alarming. The reports charges that the White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced “the information EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones.” The report cites “reopening Wall Street” and “national security” as reasons for this spin.“

In the Philadelphia Daily News, an article appeared in September 2001 that unfortunately cannot be found on the original website [but is available on the www.truthout.org website (12)]. On the article’s first page, there are a whole series of questions about September 11 including the question about the cover-up of potential danger through asbestos and other toxins at Ground Zero:

“13. Why did the Bush administration lie about dangerously high levels of toxins and hazardous particles after the WTC collapse? Because apparently some White House officials felt that the health of the American economy and Wall Street was more important than the health of New York City residents who lived nearby. For example, on Sept. 16, 2001, a draft press release from the Environmental Protection Agency said: "Recent samples of dust gathered by OSHA on Water Street showed higher levels of asbestos in EPA tests." That was deleted and replaced with this: "The new samples confirm previous reports that ambient air quality meets OSHA standards and consequently is not a cause for public concern.”“

After this scandal has been published in the media, Hillary Clinton together with her collegue Liebermann wrote a letter to President Bush asking for a thourough investigation and the publication of the communication files of the White House with the EPA ( Link www.nzz.ch/2003/08/27/al/newzzDJVD8M02-12.html)
”At a press conference, Hillary Clinton criticized the Bush administration on Tuesday for deceiving the New York population. She claimed that a White House advisor instructed the EPA on higher orders not to reveal the truth. In her argument, she referred to her knowledge of the working method of the White House.”

In the beginning of 2006, there were many reports in the German media about the health problems of the people who came into contact with the toxic mixture. The complicity of the White House in this scandal was not mentioned anywhere [The Cough of the Workers (14); Late Consequences of 911 (15); The Forgotten 50,000 Victims (16).

Some New Yorkers reacted in a resigned way to a misanthropic White House [17]. Others sued the former director of the EPA, Ms. Whitman, demanded compensation from the US government or took the city of New York to court. In one of the first trials, the court removed the immunity of the ex-EPA director and allowed a suit against her conduct [18]. As its reason, the court said Ms. Whitman consciously spoke untruth to thousands of people against better knowledge and could not appeal to her normal immunity as a government official. This is at least a first beginning of the clarification of this incredible event.

But the real ringleaders of this decision sit in the White House. They cover up themselves by diverting responsibility to the EPA. All persons who did cleaning work as voluntary workers at Ground Zero are affected. Ten – to fifteen thousand persons took part. In addition, thousands upon thousands lived and worked in south Manhattan at that time.

This shows the Bush administration intentionally drove tens of thousands of people to an excruciating death. At that time the officials sided again and again that the air was clear and people should not worry. Many of these people will first notice their lung cancer in 5 to 15 years when Bush will have long been on pension in Texas.

Every building engineer knows that the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were covered with asbestos. In the 1970s, there was no other possibility for providing fire protection for steel-framed buildings.

99-YEAR LEASE FOR TWO ASBESTOS RUINS

This brings us to another point: The lease agreement signed by Larry Silverstein two months before September 11 was extremely dubious since the structure was leased for 99 years by the New York Port Authority just before the attacks [19].

Just think about it for a moment: Mr. Silverstein took over two asbestos-contaminated skyscrapers in the middle of New York City for 99 years that were conveniently detonated by terrorists two months later. Instead of having to pay hundreds of millions for asbestos removal, he received several billion dollars in insurance settlements with which he can build new office towers from the treasuries of German and Swiss re-insurance companies. This whole thing is at least very strange.

Especially because we know that substantial put-options were made in the days before the attack. Thus a whole series of insiders profited enormously on September 11. And the tracks don’t lead to Saudi Arabia but directly to Deutsche Bank or at least to one of its subsidiaries in New York, Alex Brown Bankers Trust. Former officers of this subsidiary of Deutsche Bank were already charged with money laundering and personnel rendezvous with the CIA, Harald Schuhmann wrote at that time in Spiegel [20]:

“What is risqué in the Bankers trust connection is the circumstance that former officials of the bank were long investigated for entanglement in money laundering offenses while the former head of private banking with Alex Brown, Alvin Krongard, serves today as director of the CIA secret service.”

Maybe that is why in the past, tracing the money was not very productive. On the Internet, there is an abundance of speculation that building No. 7 was detonated. Larry Silverstein even said he pulled the building and mysteriously retracted the statement two years later. (Link: 911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/pullit.html )

Prof. Jones, the new star of 9/11 skeptics, also refers [22] to the unexplained demolition of WTC building No. 7 that collapsed the same day as the two Twin Towers without ever being hit by an airplane. He assumes both building No. 7 and the Twin Towers collapsed by controlled demolition.

Jones, professor of physics at Brigham Young University in Utah, created quite a stir with his theses. His essential argument is very simple. If the official version of events is correct that the twin Towers collapsed in themselves floor by floor, then the collapse would have lasted at least twice as long as has been observed. Actually the Twin Towers fell to the ground in a nearly free fall. In his opinion, this is clear evidence for a demolition. He also reasons that the fire probably never damaged the concrete frames as supports in the middle of the building.

In the meantime, Jones has put even more coal on the fire [24] and says he has found evidence of the use of thermite, an explosive usually employed in demolitions of steel-frame structures. At a meeting of experts on this theme, he recently confirmed his theses and offered more evidence for the presence of thermite in the Twin Towers. The meeting in Los Angeles was also broadcast on the American television station C-Span [24]. Together with other scholars, he founded the organization “Scholars for 9/11 Truth [25]. More than 250 scholars have joined this club of academic doubters. Dirk Gerhard recently compiled a first German summary of Jones’ theses [26].

Representatives of the largest organization of the families of victims of 9/11 [27] also presume the American government was far more involved in the terror attacks of 9/11 than was publically admitted. The film “Loose Change” [28] of the young American filmmakers Dylan Avery and Korey Rowe on the many peculiarities of September 11 broke all records on the Internet and has been seen by more than 10 million people. The film can also be seen with German subtitles on Google Video [29].

Meanwhile more and more persons in New York face a slow excruciating death. Yet the responsible ones in the White House will probably get off scot-free. Even Hillary Clinton apparently has more important things to do than agitate for clarification of this New York scandal whose casualty numbers far surpass the original terror attacks on the World Trade Center.

[The numbers in brackets refer to footnotes in the Telepolis article.]