The Secret Retrofit of the Citibank Tower in 1978

A useful counterpoint to the 9/11 Truth denier's oft-repeated claim that the World Trade Center's owners could not have installed explosives without being detected:

The video from Discovery's "Science Channel" summarizes the story of the Citicorp Center, which underwent major structural retrofits barely a year after its completion, when the architect, William LeMessurier, realized that a design flaw could lead to the building's collapse in a strong wind.

The truth only became known to the public nearly twenty years later, in a 1995 article that appeared in New Yorker magazine entitled "The Fifty-Nine-Story Crisis"...

"The weakest joint, he discovered, was at the building's thirtieth floor; if that one gave way, catastrophic failure of the whole structure would follow. Next, he took New York City weather records provided by Alan Davenport and calculated the probability of a storm severe enough to tear that joint apart. His figures told him that such an event had a statistical probability of occurring as often as once every sixteen years--what meteorologists call a sixteen-year storm.

"That was very low, awesomely low," LeMessurier said, his voice hushed as if the horror of discovery were still fresh.
...

On Tuesday morning, August 8th, the public-affairs department of Citibank, Citicorp's chief subsidiary, put out the long delayed press release. In language as bland as a loan officer's wardrobe, the three-paragraph document said unnamed "engineers who designed the building" had recommended that "certain of the connections in Citicorp Center's wind bracing system be strengthened through additional welding.'' The engineers, the press release added, "have assured us that there is no danger."

WELDERS started work almost immediately, their torches a dazzlement in the night sky."

Ask yourself, how many people know this story - even today - ten years after a magazine article was published about it?

It is obvious that the installation of cutter charges in the WTC Towers could easily have been accomplished with no public awareness of what was being planned - especially in view of eyewitness accounts of mysterious power outages and construction noise in the towers in the days and weeks before 9/11.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• 9/11
• Inside
• Job
• WTC
• citibank
• retrofit
• documentary

[bluedaisy211]

I worked in this building on 9/11. After it was a marked target in 2001/2002, lots of construction work took place at the base to provide additional support for the building. My firm moved out shortly thereafter because of safety concerns. Never felt safe, but my office had a kickass view to the east.

[Seigu007]

@grandmastershek Typical kook response. I hope you're getting paid to be such a dumbass. I mean, even hookers get paid for it, right?

[grandmastershek]

@Seigu007 "Fabulous..."

Oh well you say so Seigu. I love how you fools make all sort of claims then demand evidence.

[Funkadelic2]

@Limerick9824 No, that LIE is far from the basis or grasping at straws.

It doesn't matter whether Osama and the "al-Qaeda" network took credit for the attacks or not (he has denied it too), there is room for domestic involvement either way. It's not unlikely at all that he would have ---->

[Funkadelic2]

@Limerick9824 ----> planned attacks on US soil (rather much evidence suggest just that), but to say what really happened on 9/11 was not carried out partially with help from insiders should not be considered more likely. However, to say "The goverment did it", is very telling misconception. The government was partially responsible for the cover-ups of the investigations, ----->

[Funkadelic2]

@Limerick9824 ----> and of course for dealing with the attacks as "opportunities" (i.e. the war on terror), and a few high-ranking officials (Cheney for example? Rumsfeld?) must have had foreknowledge. That's about it. Then some very powerful people behind the scenes and within the intelligence community and the industrial-military complex the only ones reasonably complicit in the other parts of a domestic conspiracy.

There is plenty of evidence of forknowledge of the attacks ----->

[Funkadelic2]

@Limerick9824 ----> (highly unusual and suspect activity on the trade market in the weeks leading up to the attacks, which for some resaon have not been openly investigated). Able Danger obviously had some of the terrorists monitored (why was Able Danger terminated and the vast majority of it's intelligence data destroyed, as well as was the interrogation tapes of Khalid Shaik Mohamed..?), and the CIA knew that two main Cole bombing suspects who had attended the Kuala Lumpur ---->

[Funkadelic2]

@Limerick9824 ----> summit where in the US as early as january 2000 (very thorough research done by Kevin Fenton "Disconnecting the dots"). Clearly some knew the attacks were coming - and did NOTHING to stop it. And that's bad enough. The 9/11 commission - which the White house obviously didn't want in the first place (how can you not want these crimes as thoroughly investigated as possible?!) - have omitted lots of information, and distorted a good portion of facts. These are not straws. ----->

[Funkadelic2]

@Limerick9824 ----> And then of course, NIST has not dealt with the implications of the free fall of building 7, nor have they explained many anomalous features of the collapses of the twin towers (not to mention that the evidence presented does not support even collapse initiation). I still think it is somewhat challenging to deal with the thought of secretive rigging for demolition in a deceptive manner, but the case of bldg 7 makes it all managable.

[Limerick9824]

@Funkadelic2 That "lie" is your basis for this conspiracy theory? What I would've have done if i was head of al-Qaeda?? I wouldn't have wrongly taken the blame for 9/11...I would have said "eh, no America, we actually didn't carry out these attacks..it must have been your own government" But they accepted the blame and publicly declared it too. I wonder why? I reckon it would have caused more mayhem if Americans knew for a FACT that it was thier own government instead of grasping at straws..