Boycott Silverstein Properties!

(Updated on: 12/04/05)

In light of the Larry Silverstein's first public "pull it" response that was issued by his company on September 9, 2005 to the U.S. State Dept's Identifying Misinformation website, their public statement has answered some, but not all of the Silverstein Boycott questions:

1. What did Larry Silverstein mean by the phrase "pull it" when talking to the fire department commander about the WTC 7 on the PBS documentary, "America Rebuilds: A Year at Ground Zero"?

Silverstein Properties: "In the afternoon of September 11, Mr. Silverstein spoke to the Fire Department Commander on site at Seven World Trade Center. The Commander told Mr. Silverstein that there were several firefighters in the building working to contain the fires. Mr. Silverstein expressed his view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building.
Later in the day, the Fire Commander ordered his firefighters out of the building..."

U.S. State Dept: "As noted above, when Mr. Silverstein was recounting these events for a television documentary he stated, “I said, you know, we've had such terrible loss of life. Maybe the smartest thing to do is to pull it.” Mr. McQuillan has stated that by “it,” Mr. Silverstein meant the contingent of firefighters remaining in the building.


2. Who was the fire department commander he was speaking to and what time did this call take place?

(Still unanswered.)

3. Who made the decision to "pull" after his recommendation to the fire department commander to "pull it"?

Silverstein Properties statement: "Later in the day, the Fire Commander ordered his firefighters out of the building..."

4. What time was the decision to "pull" made?

(The time of this decision to "pull" is still unknown. The released statement mentions the Fire Commander ordered the firefighters out of the building "later in the day" after Mr. Silverstein spoke to the Fire Commander "in the afternoon". The WTC 7 collapsed at 5:20 p.m.)

As soon as the public receives an answer to the rest of these questions, the boycott will be rescinded.

Contact Silverstein Properties and urge them to answer the remaining questions and tell them that you will support a boycott against their company until he does.

Email Silverstein Properties at: info@silvprop.com

Or call them at 212.490.0666. That's 212.490.0666

World Trade Center homepage

INFORMATION/PRESS
Dara McQuillian
Communications Director
Silverstein Properties
530 5th Avenue
NY, NY 10036
212-302-6847
E-mail DMcQuillan@silvprop.com

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Recap about Silverstein and the WTC 7 collapse

Larry Silverstein is the owner of the WTC and president of his real estate firm, Silverstein Properties. He owned the WTC 7 since 1987 and purchased the rest of the WTC complex only six weeks before the attacks:

"A private developer little known to the general public, Silverstein signed a 99-year lease for the twin towers just six weeks before the attack... His lease with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey remains in place, making Silverstein, 72, a key figure in the rebuilding of the site." - CBS Interactive

He has profited around $478 million from the WTC 7 collapsing:

"Industrial Risk Insurers is set to pay around $861 million to Silverstein for the lost building, which the company has owned since the 1980's, long before it acquired the master lease on the WTC. The debt on the property is around $383 million, much of it securitized as mortgage bonds." - Insurance Journal (06/07/02)

He has also profited of over a billion dollars (yes, billion!) when he won a court decision that said the attacks on his complex counted as two attacks instead of one in which his insurers were ordered to pay double the amount of his claim:

"The World Trade Center leaseholder has won a court victory over his insurers as he attempts to rebuild the site... A New York jury has decided that the 11 September 2001 attack on the two towers constituted two separate events... The US District Court ruling means Larry Silverstein could now get an extra $1.1bn from nine insurers to finance reconstruction... He has been fighting the insurance companies, arguing he was owed $7bn - double his $3.5bn policy." - BBC (12/07/04)

Controversy erupted in 2002 when Silverstein was interviewed on a PBS documentary, America Rebuilds: A Year at Ground Zero, and seems to be saying that he recommended to "pull" the WTC 7, then they all watched the building collapse after the decision to "pull" was made:

Silverstein: "I remember getting a call from the, uh, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'You know we've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is, is pull it.' Uh, and they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse." (See video)

This admission is highly crucial because no plane crashed into it WTC 7, a 47-story skyscraper, and it was not right next to the collapsing WTC 1 or 2:

yet it mysteriously collapsed at 5:20 pm that evening with no immediate explanation as to why. By viewing videos of the 7 collapsing, it collapses in a manner that looks like it was brought down by a controlled demolition:

"For the third time today, it's reminiscent of those pictures we've all seen too much on television before when a building was deliberately destroyed by well placed dynamite to knock it down." - Dan Rather, CBS News (09/11/01) (hear audio)

The most revealing part of his admission is the word "pull" which is demolition lingo for "demolish" and to illustrate this, the term "pull" was used again in the same PBS video to describe the demolition of the WTC 6:

Construction worker: "Hello? Oh, we're getting ready to pull building six."

Luis Mendes, NYC official: "We had to be very careful how we demolished building six. We were worried about the building six coming down and then damaging the story walls, so we wanted that particular building to fall within a certain area." (See video)

Another crucial piece of evidence of a controlled demolition came when four WTC rescuers, who were interviewed by the WTC Task Force, reported that they were "waiting around" for WTC 7 to collapse and one rescuers even says he was told around 3 pm that the 7 was going to collapse:

FIREFIGHTER SCOTT HOLOWACH, Interviewed 10/18/01

"We ended up back up on Vesey Street and West Street and just hanging out until tower 7 came down. After tower 7 came down, we went right to work over at tower 7 to put the fires out." - New York Times

PARAMEDIC STEVEN PILLA, Interviewed 10/17/01

"Then it was about 5:00, because I was getting hungry... We didn't do any further because building number seven was coming down. That was another problem, to wait for building seven to come down, because that was unsecure. It was about 5:30 that building came down." - New York Times

LIEUTENANT WILLIAM RYAN, Interviewed 10/18/01

"At that time he said, "7 has got fire on several floors." Then we found out, I guess around 3:00 o'clock, that they thought 7 was going to collapse... So it took us a while and we ended up backing everybody out, and that's when 7 collapsed... Basically, we fell back for 7 to collapse..." - New York Times

FIREFIGHTER FRANK SWEENEY, Interviewed 10/18/01

"Once they got us back together and organized somewhat, they sent us back down to Vesey, where we stood and waited for Seven World Trade Center to come down." - New York Times

Upon collapsing, the WTC 7 imploded and neatly fell on it's own footprint, consistent with a controlled demolition:

"The debris generated by the collapse of WTC 7... The average debris field radius was approximately 70 feet... The collapse of WTC 7 had a small debris field as the facade was pulled downward, suggesting an internal failure and implosion." - FEMA (05/02)

"...when you need to bring down a massive structure, say a... skyscraper, you have to haul out the big guns. Explosive demolition is the preferred method for safely and efficiently demolishing larger structures. When a building is surrounded by other buildings, it may be necessary to "implode" the building, that is, make it collapse down into its footprint." - HowStuffWorks.com

Also, there was a near total black-out of media coverage on it's incredible and highly unusual collapse, consistent with a cover-up:

"Almost lost in the chaos of the collapse of the World Trade Center is a mystery that under normal circumstances would probably have captured the attention of the city and the world. That mystery is the collapse of a nearby 47-story...Building 7 didn't get much attention in the media." - New York Times (11/29/01)

Two months after the attacks, the official theory on what caused the WTC 7 to mysteriously collapse was a "fire," which would have made it the first high-rise building in history to collapse from a fire:

"7 World Trade Center, had suffered mightily from the fire, and had been wounded by beams falling off the towers. But experts said no building like it, a modern, steel-reinforced high-rise, had ever collapsed because of an uncontrolled fire." - Chicago Tribune (11/09/01)

However, the U.S. government's own investigation into the collapse couldn't conclusively prove the "fire" theory:

"The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time. Although the total diesel fuel on the premises contained massive potential energy, the best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence. Further research, investigation, and analyses are needed to resolve this issue." - FEMA (05/02)

(For more info about the WTC 7 collapse, see: Was the WTC 7 pulled?)