Post by lenbrazil on Mar 18, 2007 9:31:23 GMT -4
I updated my paper due to it's length I had to devide it in 2
The Ever Changing Story of William Rodriguez
Most backers of the “theory” that the Twin Towers collapsed due to controlled demolition (CD) put a great deal of weight on the claims of William Rodriguez that he and his co-workers heard and felt a loud explosion from below which threw them upwards and made the walls crack and sprinklers go off etc a few seconds before flight 11 crashed into the North Tower.
There are two problems with his account:
1) It doesn’t make sense.
2) It differs substantially from earlier accounts he gave of what happened that morning and there are contradictions between his various retellings.
1 – Rodriguez’s story doesn’t make sense.
Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower at 8:46 AM and the building collapsed from the top down almost two hours later at 9:28. I and other skeptics have asked “inside jobbers” (i.e. people who believe 9/11 was a “inside job” orchestrated by the Bush Administration, PNAC andor the ‘Illuminati’ etc) on a few forums: a) how setting off explosives in the basement fits into the scenario of a top down “implosion” 102 minutes later? and b) why the plotters would have set off the charges just before the impact? The best explanation I’ve seen is ‘maybe they screwed up and accidentally set the charges off early’. These are supposedly the same people who set off charges on all 110 floors of each tower over a period of 8.4 – 16 seconds precisely enough that the buildings collapsed with out any noticeable pauses. If we calculate for the most commonly cited time, 10 seconds , it comes to an average of 0.09 seconds per floor and since the collapse was accelerating the interval between floors at the end would have been close to 0.04 seconds. Any destruction of structural supports in the basement serious enough to facilitate a later collapse would presumably have left the towers unstable, yet there are no reports (that I have seen) of either tower rocking or swaying except in the immediate aftermath of the impacts. Nor has anyone else AFAIK reported a pre-impact explosion, Rodriguez has said repeatedly that his coworkers will back this part of his story but so far none have.
His version is contradicted by Mike Pecoraro who was in the 6th subbasement level (B6) Rodriguez who was in the 1st (B1) said he thought the explosion came from the 2nd or 3rd. Pecoraro makes no mention of him or his co-worker feeling even a vibration when the 767 struck the top of 1 WTC, his coworker but not Pecoraro himself noticed the lights flicker.
That is not to say there weren’t explosions in the subbasements as Pecoraro and others have attested. They are believed to have been caused by jet fuel which had traveled down elevator and utility shafts being ignited. This was discussed in both the 9/11 Commission and NIST reports. It is very much part of the “official story” as “truthers” disparagingly call the commonly accepted version of events. Only Rodriguez party to a multi-billion dollar lawsuit against the Bushes and various other defendants claims such an explosion proceeded impact. A few other witnesses described feeling explosions in their proximity in the basement but only Rodriguez (AFAIK) claims to have felt an explosion on another level. There is no record of him making such claims before late May 2005 almost four years after the fact and months after the lawsuit had been filed.
–– Seismic Readings ––
Proponents of the CD theory like to claim that a “paper” by Gordon Ross and Craig T. Furlong based on readings from a seismic observatory “proves” that explosions preceded the impact times of flights AA11 (North Tower) and UA175 (South Tower) by 14 and 17 seconds respectively thus backing Rodriguez’s claims. However the question isn’t as “cut and dried” as they make out they based their impact times on those cited by the 911 Commission who used the times determined by the FAA, NIST calculated impact times within the seismic observatories margin of error and the author of an NTSB paper described the times as “approximate” and said the times at different radar stations “is set at each facility, such that each ASR facility's radar data could have a slightly different time of day” and indeed identified variances of up to “25.3 seconds” and radar returns are only taken every 4 ½ – 12 seconds .
There are other problems with Ross and Furlong’s ‘thesis’. Surprisingly no where in their paper do they even attempt to explain why the plotters would have set off explosives before impact, are we to believe the plotters made the same mistake twice? At the estimated impact speed 590 MPH flight 175 would have been 2.8 miles from 2 WTC 17 seconds before the crash. The authors of the paper who have no credentials or demonstrable experience in seismology or any related field like geology believe that some of the world’s leading seismologists are wrong and that the impacts would not have registered at their observatory. One must also wonder if the impacts which shook the towers back and forth several times weren’t strong enough to register at the seismic observatory why two explosions strong enough to have registered were only reported by at best a handful of people, none off whom were on the above ground floors (several people reported explosions in the basement only Rodriguez said one of them preceded the impacts of the planes).
There is also a problem with the timing. Rodriguez said that before he could say that he thought the first noise was a generator that had exploded flight 11 hit 1 WTC so at best what 5 seconds had elapsed and while addressing a “truther” rally near the UN on September 11, 2005 said he felt the explosions “1 or 2 seconds before the plane hit” **and in a question and answer thread on 911Blogger he said he heard the impact “about 4 to 6 seconds after” the initial explosion . If I were pick I could say he contradicted himself but that would be nitpicking**, the paper however says the explosion preceded impact by 14 seconds.
2) It differs substantially from earlier accounts he gave of what happened that morning and there are contradictions between his various retellings.
He gave one of his most recent and most embellished retellings of what happened that morning at a “truther” event in Los Angeles organized by Alex Jones on June 25, 2006 he said:
“As I was talking to a supervisor at 8:46 like chitchatting and all of a sudden we hear PAAH very strong BOOM!!! An explosion so hard that it pushed us UPWARDS, UPWARDS!!…The explosion was so hard that all the walls cracked the false ceiling fell on top of us, the sprinkler system got activated and when I was going to verbalize it was a generator we hear BOOM! All the way at the top"
However when he was interviewed over the phone live by Aaron Brown on CNN at 1:30 PM, September 11, 2001 he gave a very different much less dramatic account of what had happened only a few hours earlier:
“RODRIGUEZ: I was in the basement, which is the support floor for the maintenance company, and we hear like a big rumble. Not like an impact, like a rumble, like moving furniture in a massive way. And all of sudden we hear another rumble, and a guy comes running, running into our office, and all of skin was off his body. All of the skin.”
He recounted his actions up to the point he took police and firefighters up to the 39th floor. He made no mention of hearing any other sounds or explosions though he would later claim he heard “many explosions” including one so strong he “thought it was an earthquake” and heard strange noises like people “moving heavy equipment and furniture” (gee where have I heard that before?). CNN posted a story the next day in which he gave a very similar account . Nor did he say anything about hearing strange noises or explosions during another interview with Aaron Brown a year later where he recounted his exploits on the stairs in greater detail .
He said nothing in either account about sprinklers going off or walls cracking or ceilings falling. The “rumble” that sounded like “moving furniture in a massive way” had not yet been transformed into a “BOOM!!” that sounded like a generator exploding (or a truck bomb as he would later claim he thought the first noise had been) and was so strong it pushed him and his co-workers upwards and cracked the walls etc and notably he said nothing about the direction the “rumbles” had come from. In my many years living apartment buildings I’ve frequently heard people moving furniture on the floor above me but never from the floor below, it’s an odd way to describe a sound from below and wouldn’t remind me of a generator exploding or a truck bomb.
It is interesting to note that even in the complaint for his famous RICO suit filed October 21, 2004 against the Bush Administration, PNAC, the 9/11 Commission and numerous other defendants nothing is ever said, either in the part where his actions that day were described or in the outline of the “evidence” against the defendants, about a pre-impact explosion from below pushing him upward, cracking the walls, setting off the sprinklers or causing the false ceiling to fall etc. In fact there is no mention at all of what he experienced at the time of the impact. Nor is anything said about his testimony before the commission which is odd because he would later claim he filed his suit because the media and commission ignored his story of a pre-impact explosion . The parts below are especially telling (emphasis added):
In other words, his belief that 9/11 was an "inside job" didn't stem from his experiences that day but rather from his "study of 9-11" based on “facts available in the public domain”. **This corresponds with his recent admission on one of his YouTube pages that he believed “goverment official story early on. As I asked questions and put things together” but was unable to explain how he could have believed it if he had really experienced why he latter claimed he had .**
He listed 23 “facts” upon which he based his belief 1, 2 and 7 WTC had been subject to controlled demolition on pages 42 – 52 but no mention was made of his personal experiences that day or of unusual noises or explosions heard by anyone in the towers even in the section where he stated his belief that “the true perpetrators of the attacks placed and detonated explosives below ground level beneath each of the towers, where the columns were affixed to bedrock. ” In fact he stated the explosives were detonated “1-1/4 to 1-1/2 hours after” the crashes (pg. 50) .
An article from the American Free Press (an extreme rightwing “inside job” paper and website) about the lawsuit also fails to mention his testimony or any noises or explosions Rodriguez heard or felt. Excerpts of an interview with his lawyer are included and as in the complaint he says that the case is based on publicly available information . Nor was any such thing mentioned in another article about the suit by Greg Szymanski in the Idaho Observer in which both Rodriguez and Berg were interviewed .
A few days after filing his RICO suit Rodriguez and four other plaintiffs submitted a “CITIZENS’ COMPLAINT AND PETITION” to the NY State Attorney General asking for a grand jury investigation of 9/11 . About a month later on November 19, the petition was amended a few other plaintiffs joined and several pages of new evidence were added in neither document was any mention made of explosions, odd noises, what Rodriguez experienced around the time of impact or his 9-11 Commission testimony.
Rodriguez spoke to numerous publications and TV stations since 9/11 but apparently his 1st first recorded mention of an explosion or a pre-impact explosion from below came in a May 25, 2005 interview with the American Free Press (AFP), which was quoted in an article published in mid June. He made no mention of the force of the explosion pushing him and others upwards; he only added that into the mix about a year later:
Odd that he forgot to tell Aaron Brown about the third explosion which was so hard he thought it was an earthquake, he didn’t mention it in most other accounts. There are inconsistencies between this and future retellings of what happened. In this one the walls cracked after the SECOND “explosion” but later he said this happened after the FIRST one. He told the AFP he told his boss he though "…it was the electrical generators" just before the second “explosion” but in his other retellings said the plane impacted before he could “verbalize it”.
Shortly after his AFP interview he spoke to Greg Szymanski again for an article released June 24, 2005. Even though cracking walls are mentioned he seems to have forgotten about the ceiling and sprinklers he in fact left those out of most accounts until the speech he gave a year later. He had yet to mention being pushed upwards only saying that the floor had “vibrated” and “rattled”:
"When I heard the sound of the explosion, the floor beneath my feet vibrated, the walls started cracking and it everything started shaking," said Rodriguez, who was huddled together with at least 14 other people in the office.
Rodriguez said Anthony Saltamachia, supervisor for the American Maintenance Co., was one of the people in the room who stands ready to verify his story.
"Seconds after the first massive explosion below in the basement still rattled the floor, I hear another explosion from way above," said Rodriguez. "Although I was unaware at the time, this was the airplane hitting the tower, it occurred moments after the first explosion."
A July 2005 Szymanski article from the Idaho Observer an “inside job” site indicates that Rodriguez’s ‘explosion from below’ story 1st appeared in “late last June”.
When Lenny Charles interviewed Rodriguez and Szymanski on INN, a cable TV channel, in September 2005 he gave a similar account, making no mention of being pushed upwards, walls cracking, sprinklers going off, false ceilings collapsing or an earthquake like third explosion (though he said he felt explosions while going up the stairs).
I am not sure of the date of the interview but when he spoke to the makers of Loose Change the second noise was only a light “poooh” and no mention is made of being pushed upwards, walls cracking, sprinklers going off or false ceilings collapsing:
“All of a sudden we hear BOOM! (claps hands together at waist level loudly) and I said to myself ‘Oh my God! I think it was a generator’ and I was going to verbalize it and when I finish saying that in my mind I hear poooh (claps hands less loudly than before over head) right on top pretty far away…”
–– Strange Noises on the 34th Floor ––
In his January 2006 affidavit for his RICO suit the version stayed pretty much the same a loud explosion from below which sounded like a generator exploding preceded the impact from above. Walls cracked after the first “explosion” and the floor vibrated but there was no mention of sprinklers going off, ceilings falling, being pushed upward or an earthquake like third explosion felt before leaving the basement
On the day of the attacks Rodriguez said the first noise was a rumble that sounded like “moving furniture” a few years later it was transformed in a loud and violent “BOOM!” which cracked the walls but he still remembered noises like moving furniture but the time and place had now changed again from the affidavit:
“On the 33rd floor, I went into a maintenance office. I found a woman on that floor, conscious but laying in a fetal position, apparently frozen with fear and not knowing what to do. I spent a few moments on the 33rd floor. It impressed me as very strange that, immediately above, almost certainly on the 34th floor of the North Tower, there was much noise, as if workers were moving heavy equipment and furniture around on that floor. One reason this impressed me as highly peculiar was that the 34th floor was supposedly vacant. The floor was off-limits, supposedly due to ongoing construction on that floor, and elevators did not stop there. It was at about this moment that I began to feel afraid.”
He gave a similar account in the Szymanski article:
“I heard strange sounds coming form the 34th floor, loud noises like someone moving and thumping heavy equipment and furniture. I knew this floor was empty and stripped due to construction work”
But on another occasion when he was interviewed on St. Louis radio station in July 2005 he said:
“On my up, something very strange happened on the 34th floor, which was a completely vacant floor, gutted for construction. As I was walking by the stairwell door, I heard these very loud noises like somebody moving heavy dumpsters or office furniture. I don’t know what it was but it was very strange because I know it was supposed to be a vacant floor.”
Uuuum, so did he hear the “strange noises” when he was in the 33rd floor maintenance office while he was helping the woman or when he “was walking by the [34th floor] stairwell door”? One could he argue both were true but then it would be odd that he wouldn’t have said this and it doesn’t make sense as per the first account that he wasn’t sure which floor the noises were coming from if he also heard them through the door.
A few other things are odd about this account:
1) There was indeed construction work being done that morning according to more than one source . Why would he think it strange to hear such noises coming from a floor undergoing construction? It can’t have been completely “off limits” how would the “on going construction” work get done?
2) The floor wasn’t completely stripped, vacant or off limits because in addition to the construction work the PANYNJ had offices there . In fact that’s where John O'Neill, the ex FBI agent who started his job as head of security the day before and died when the tower collapsed had his office according to Time, PBS and the New Yorker . The latter confirming that the elevators stopped on that floor . Rodriguez claimed to have earlier left “his backpack in his closet on the 33rd floor” as he presumably did every day, he had worked (indirectly) for the PA for nearly 20 years how could he not have known the PA had offices on the floor above the maintenance office where he had his closet? If the area above his closet and the maintenance office was the part undergoing construction presumably he would have heard noises of people moving heavy equipment before.
3) The story doesn’t really make sense from a CD perspective, are we to believe the plotters’ henchmen were still noisily planting heavy explosive charges at that point? What if somebody walked in on them? He doesn’t explain why he didn’t open the door wasn’t he there to give the NYFD access to the locked floors?
–– Felipe David - Rodriguez blamed OBL for attacks in 2002 ––
Rodriquez was a featured speaker at the Indian YMCA in London on November 27, 2006. As he had the previous June he mentioned being pushed upwards and said the plane hit before he could “verbalize” that he thought a generator had exploded on the B2 or B3 level. He made claims about Felipe David, the man whose face, arms and hands were burnt by an explosion while standing near the elevators that contradict earlier statements:
- He described him as “a Black man called Felipe David, Felipe David from Honduras who I do not know” and
- Apparently wanting to place him closer to “the explosion” said (while pointing to the floor) “he was on the B2 level below me when this huge explosion happened” .
**Similarly he said during his presentation at the University of East London, Dockland’s Campus, February 5, 2007:
“That’s Felipe David [he points to an off screen projected slide explains how David was interviewed by NBC] and his story is exactly the same as what I’m telling you right now, nothing changed and I didn’t know him never saw him again after 9/11 and his story validated the whole thing.” **
This contradicts his affidavit (see below) when he said he knew David and numerous other occasions (including the affidavit) when he said that David like him had been on B1 . According to Szymanski Rodriguez gave him a video tape in 2005 from Colombian TV of David saying he was on the B1 level . It is unclear whether or not Rodriguez knew David before September 11, 2001 but he definitely knew him in 2006, he was shown meeting with the Honduran in his (David’s) home with his family on a NYC Spanish language channel about a year after the terrorist attacks. Near the end of the story both men blamed bin-Laden for the attacks .
This was not the first time Rodriguez contradicted himself about Felipe David. On September 11, 2002 he told Aaron Brown “I took people out of the office, one of them totally burned because he was standing in front of the freight elevator and the ball of fire came down the duct of the elevator itself” but in his Affidavit he said “A co-worker whom I knew, Felipe David, came into the office at about the moment that those of us in the office were starting to leave. David told me he had been standing in front of a freight elevator on level B1, when flames burst out of the elevator shaft…I believe Mr. David’s burns could only have occurred due to fire resulting either from the explosion heard seconds before the aircraft’s impact, or one or more of the explosions at or near ground level that followed soon after the plane’s impact. I do not believe that the time that elapsed from the aircraft hitting roughly 1150 feet above ground level could have sufficed for jet fuel from the aircraft to reach level B1 causing a fire sufficient to burn Mr. David as he was burned.” [Exactly how he determined this since it would have taken less than 9 seconds for the fuel to drop down the shaft is never explained].
The Ever Changing Story of William Rodriguez
Most backers of the “theory” that the Twin Towers collapsed due to controlled demolition (CD) put a great deal of weight on the claims of William Rodriguez that he and his co-workers heard and felt a loud explosion from below which threw them upwards and made the walls crack and sprinklers go off etc a few seconds before flight 11 crashed into the North Tower.
There are two problems with his account:
1) It doesn’t make sense.
2) It differs substantially from earlier accounts he gave of what happened that morning and there are contradictions between his various retellings.
1 – Rodriguez’s story doesn’t make sense.
Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower at 8:46 AM and the building collapsed from the top down almost two hours later at 9:28. I and other skeptics have asked “inside jobbers” (i.e. people who believe 9/11 was a “inside job” orchestrated by the Bush Administration, PNAC andor the ‘Illuminati’ etc) on a few forums: a) how setting off explosives in the basement fits into the scenario of a top down “implosion” 102 minutes later? and b) why the plotters would have set off the charges just before the impact? The best explanation I’ve seen is ‘maybe they screwed up and accidentally set the charges off early’. These are supposedly the same people who set off charges on all 110 floors of each tower over a period of 8.4 – 16 seconds precisely enough that the buildings collapsed with out any noticeable pauses. If we calculate for the most commonly cited time, 10 seconds , it comes to an average of 0.09 seconds per floor and since the collapse was accelerating the interval between floors at the end would have been close to 0.04 seconds. Any destruction of structural supports in the basement serious enough to facilitate a later collapse would presumably have left the towers unstable, yet there are no reports (that I have seen) of either tower rocking or swaying except in the immediate aftermath of the impacts. Nor has anyone else AFAIK reported a pre-impact explosion, Rodriguez has said repeatedly that his coworkers will back this part of his story but so far none have.
His version is contradicted by Mike Pecoraro who was in the 6th subbasement level (B6) Rodriguez who was in the 1st (B1) said he thought the explosion came from the 2nd or 3rd. Pecoraro makes no mention of him or his co-worker feeling even a vibration when the 767 struck the top of 1 WTC, his coworker but not Pecoraro himself noticed the lights flicker.
That is not to say there weren’t explosions in the subbasements as Pecoraro and others have attested. They are believed to have been caused by jet fuel which had traveled down elevator and utility shafts being ignited. This was discussed in both the 9/11 Commission and NIST reports. It is very much part of the “official story” as “truthers” disparagingly call the commonly accepted version of events. Only Rodriguez party to a multi-billion dollar lawsuit against the Bushes and various other defendants claims such an explosion proceeded impact. A few other witnesses described feeling explosions in their proximity in the basement but only Rodriguez (AFAIK) claims to have felt an explosion on another level. There is no record of him making such claims before late May 2005 almost four years after the fact and months after the lawsuit had been filed.
–– Seismic Readings ––
Proponents of the CD theory like to claim that a “paper” by Gordon Ross and Craig T. Furlong based on readings from a seismic observatory “proves” that explosions preceded the impact times of flights AA11 (North Tower) and UA175 (South Tower) by 14 and 17 seconds respectively thus backing Rodriguez’s claims. However the question isn’t as “cut and dried” as they make out they based their impact times on those cited by the 911 Commission who used the times determined by the FAA, NIST calculated impact times within the seismic observatories margin of error and the author of an NTSB paper described the times as “approximate” and said the times at different radar stations “is set at each facility, such that each ASR facility's radar data could have a slightly different time of day” and indeed identified variances of up to “25.3 seconds” and radar returns are only taken every 4 ½ – 12 seconds .
There are other problems with Ross and Furlong’s ‘thesis’. Surprisingly no where in their paper do they even attempt to explain why the plotters would have set off explosives before impact, are we to believe the plotters made the same mistake twice? At the estimated impact speed 590 MPH flight 175 would have been 2.8 miles from 2 WTC 17 seconds before the crash. The authors of the paper who have no credentials or demonstrable experience in seismology or any related field like geology believe that some of the world’s leading seismologists are wrong and that the impacts would not have registered at their observatory. One must also wonder if the impacts which shook the towers back and forth several times weren’t strong enough to register at the seismic observatory why two explosions strong enough to have registered were only reported by at best a handful of people, none off whom were on the above ground floors (several people reported explosions in the basement only Rodriguez said one of them preceded the impacts of the planes).
There is also a problem with the timing. Rodriguez said that before he could say that he thought the first noise was a generator that had exploded flight 11 hit 1 WTC so at best what 5 seconds had elapsed and while addressing a “truther” rally near the UN on September 11, 2005 said he felt the explosions “1 or 2 seconds before the plane hit” **and in a question and answer thread on 911Blogger he said he heard the impact “about 4 to 6 seconds after” the initial explosion . If I were pick I could say he contradicted himself but that would be nitpicking**, the paper however says the explosion preceded impact by 14 seconds.
2) It differs substantially from earlier accounts he gave of what happened that morning and there are contradictions between his various retellings.
He gave one of his most recent and most embellished retellings of what happened that morning at a “truther” event in Los Angeles organized by Alex Jones on June 25, 2006 he said:
“As I was talking to a supervisor at 8:46 like chitchatting and all of a sudden we hear PAAH very strong BOOM!!! An explosion so hard that it pushed us UPWARDS, UPWARDS!!…The explosion was so hard that all the walls cracked the false ceiling fell on top of us, the sprinkler system got activated and when I was going to verbalize it was a generator we hear BOOM! All the way at the top"
However when he was interviewed over the phone live by Aaron Brown on CNN at 1:30 PM, September 11, 2001 he gave a very different much less dramatic account of what had happened only a few hours earlier:
“RODRIGUEZ: I was in the basement, which is the support floor for the maintenance company, and we hear like a big rumble. Not like an impact, like a rumble, like moving furniture in a massive way. And all of sudden we hear another rumble, and a guy comes running, running into our office, and all of skin was off his body. All of the skin.”
He recounted his actions up to the point he took police and firefighters up to the 39th floor. He made no mention of hearing any other sounds or explosions though he would later claim he heard “many explosions” including one so strong he “thought it was an earthquake” and heard strange noises like people “moving heavy equipment and furniture” (gee where have I heard that before?). CNN posted a story the next day in which he gave a very similar account . Nor did he say anything about hearing strange noises or explosions during another interview with Aaron Brown a year later where he recounted his exploits on the stairs in greater detail .
He said nothing in either account about sprinklers going off or walls cracking or ceilings falling. The “rumble” that sounded like “moving furniture in a massive way” had not yet been transformed into a “BOOM!!” that sounded like a generator exploding (or a truck bomb as he would later claim he thought the first noise had been) and was so strong it pushed him and his co-workers upwards and cracked the walls etc and notably he said nothing about the direction the “rumbles” had come from. In my many years living apartment buildings I’ve frequently heard people moving furniture on the floor above me but never from the floor below, it’s an odd way to describe a sound from below and wouldn’t remind me of a generator exploding or a truck bomb.
It is interesting to note that even in the complaint for his famous RICO suit filed October 21, 2004 against the Bush Administration, PNAC, the 9/11 Commission and numerous other defendants nothing is ever said, either in the part where his actions that day were described or in the outline of the “evidence” against the defendants, about a pre-impact explosion from below pushing him upward, cracking the walls, setting off the sprinklers or causing the false ceiling to fall etc. In fact there is no mention at all of what he experienced at the time of the impact. Nor is anything said about his testimony before the commission which is odd because he would later claim he filed his suit because the media and commission ignored his story of a pre-impact explosion . The parts below are especially telling (emphasis added):
2. Rodriguez, at great risk to his own life, re-entered the Towers three times after the first, North Tower impact at about 8:46 A.M., and is believed to be the last person to exit the North Tower alive…
<snip>
10. Plaintiff avows at the outset that he does not know all the facts of the catastrophes of 9-11, but his study of facts available in the public domain — most of which come from “conventional” or “mainstream” news media, or agencies of the U.S. government — have convinced him, to a moral certainty (as they have convinced millions of Americans who, regrettably, are being ignored by Congress and establishment media) that the “Official Story” is a government propaganda exercise, and a “Big Lie” in the ugly tradition of Joseph Goebbels, to maintain the control of the elite over the masses.
11. Plaintiff’s study of 9-11 leads him to conclude, and therefore to allege upon information and belief as set forth below, that President George W. Bush, his father, former President George H. W. Bush, his brothers, <snip> Senior Political Advisor Karl Rove, and others of the Defendants had actual knowledge, prior to September 11, 2001, that on or about that date one or more commercial airliners would be commandeered or diverted, flown into a landmark building or structure within the territory of the United States, and that the deaths of all or most of the passengers on the airplane(s), as well as hundreds or thousands of people in and about the targeted building(s), would result.
In other words, his belief that 9/11 was an "inside job" didn't stem from his experiences that day but rather from his "study of 9-11" based on “facts available in the public domain”. **This corresponds with his recent admission on one of his YouTube pages that he believed “goverment official story early on. As I asked questions and put things together” but was unable to explain how he could have believed it if he had really experienced why he latter claimed he had .**
He listed 23 “facts” upon which he based his belief 1, 2 and 7 WTC had been subject to controlled demolition on pages 42 – 52 but no mention was made of his personal experiences that day or of unusual noises or explosions heard by anyone in the towers even in the section where he stated his belief that “the true perpetrators of the attacks placed and detonated explosives below ground level beneath each of the towers, where the columns were affixed to bedrock. ” In fact he stated the explosives were detonated “1-1/4 to 1-1/2 hours after” the crashes (pg. 50) .
An article from the American Free Press (an extreme rightwing “inside job” paper and website) about the lawsuit also fails to mention his testimony or any noises or explosions Rodriguez heard or felt. Excerpts of an interview with his lawyer are included and as in the complaint he says that the case is based on publicly available information . Nor was any such thing mentioned in another article about the suit by Greg Szymanski in the Idaho Observer in which both Rodriguez and Berg were interviewed .
A few days after filing his RICO suit Rodriguez and four other plaintiffs submitted a “CITIZENS’ COMPLAINT AND PETITION” to the NY State Attorney General asking for a grand jury investigation of 9/11 . About a month later on November 19, the petition was amended a few other plaintiffs joined and several pages of new evidence were added in neither document was any mention made of explosions, odd noises, what Rodriguez experienced around the time of impact or his 9-11 Commission testimony.
Rodriguez spoke to numerous publications and TV stations since 9/11 but apparently his 1st first recorded mention of an explosion or a pre-impact explosion from below came in a May 25, 2005 interview with the American Free Press (AFP), which was quoted in an article published in mid June. He made no mention of the force of the explosion pushing him and others upwards; he only added that into the mix about a year later:
At 8:45, he was talking with his supervisor in the first basement level, B1, when he heard and felt a tremendous explosion. Rodriguez told AFP that he felt the first explosion come from a lower basement level. The towers had 6 basement levels.
The building shook, the ceiling fell, and some of the sprinklers began spraying.
"Oh my God, what happened?" Rodriguez, who survived the first bombing of the WTC in 1993, told AFP he recalled saying to his boss. "I think it was the electrical generators."
No sooner had he spoken these words than a second explosion shook the building, this time coming from the upper part of the tower. This second shock, Rodriguez said, shook the building and cracked the walls. "The building moved," he said.
<snip>
Rodriguez then felt a third explosion coming from above. "The ground was shaking," he said. "I thought it was an earthquake."
<snip>
Thinking that a bomb had been exploded in the building, Rodriguez checked the trucks he passed.
<snip>
[Referring to the period he was in one of the North Tower’s stairwells helping firefighters] "I heard many, many explosions," Rodriguez said.
Odd that he forgot to tell Aaron Brown about the third explosion which was so hard he thought it was an earthquake, he didn’t mention it in most other accounts. There are inconsistencies between this and future retellings of what happened. In this one the walls cracked after the SECOND “explosion” but later he said this happened after the FIRST one. He told the AFP he told his boss he though "…it was the electrical generators" just before the second “explosion” but in his other retellings said the plane impacted before he could “verbalize it”.
Shortly after his AFP interview he spoke to Greg Szymanski again for an article released June 24, 2005. Even though cracking walls are mentioned he seems to have forgotten about the ceiling and sprinklers he in fact left those out of most accounts until the speech he gave a year later. He had yet to mention being pushed upwards only saying that the floor had “vibrated” and “rattled”:
"When I heard the sound of the explosion, the floor beneath my feet vibrated, the walls started cracking and it everything started shaking," said Rodriguez, who was huddled together with at least 14 other people in the office.
Rodriguez said Anthony Saltamachia, supervisor for the American Maintenance Co., was one of the people in the room who stands ready to verify his story.
"Seconds after the first massive explosion below in the basement still rattled the floor, I hear another explosion from way above," said Rodriguez. "Although I was unaware at the time, this was the airplane hitting the tower, it occurred moments after the first explosion."
A July 2005 Szymanski article from the Idaho Observer an “inside job” site indicates that Rodriguez’s ‘explosion from below’ story 1st appeared in “late last June”.
When Lenny Charles interviewed Rodriguez and Szymanski on INN, a cable TV channel, in September 2005 he gave a similar account, making no mention of being pushed upwards, walls cracking, sprinklers going off, false ceilings collapsing or an earthquake like third explosion (though he said he felt explosions while going up the stairs).
I am not sure of the date of the interview but when he spoke to the makers of Loose Change the second noise was only a light “poooh” and no mention is made of being pushed upwards, walls cracking, sprinklers going off or false ceilings collapsing:
“All of a sudden we hear BOOM! (claps hands together at waist level loudly) and I said to myself ‘Oh my God! I think it was a generator’ and I was going to verbalize it and when I finish saying that in my mind I hear poooh (claps hands less loudly than before over head) right on top pretty far away…”
–– Strange Noises on the 34th Floor ––
In his January 2006 affidavit for his RICO suit the version stayed pretty much the same a loud explosion from below which sounded like a generator exploding preceded the impact from above. Walls cracked after the first “explosion” and the floor vibrated but there was no mention of sprinklers going off, ceilings falling, being pushed upward or an earthquake like third explosion felt before leaving the basement
Less than a minute before the plane struck the North Tower, as I later learned, between approximately the 93rd and the 98th floors, I heard a very loud, explosive sound. I was still in the maintenance office on B1 at the time. From my long familiarity with the sub-basements, I believed that the explosion came from below, from level B2 or B3. My thought was that an electrical generator on one of those levels must have exploded. Not only did I hear what I believe to have been a large explosion in a lower-level basement of the North Tower, but I felt the floor beneath my feet vibrating, I saw the concrete walls of the maintenance office crack, and everything started shaking.
Seconds later, there occurred a second, distinct, and large explosion which caused the maintenance office to shake for some seconds. This, I later learned, was an aircraft striking the north façade of WTC1 above the ninetieth floor.
On the day of the attacks Rodriguez said the first noise was a rumble that sounded like “moving furniture” a few years later it was transformed in a loud and violent “BOOM!” which cracked the walls but he still remembered noises like moving furniture but the time and place had now changed again from the affidavit:
“On the 33rd floor, I went into a maintenance office. I found a woman on that floor, conscious but laying in a fetal position, apparently frozen with fear and not knowing what to do. I spent a few moments on the 33rd floor. It impressed me as very strange that, immediately above, almost certainly on the 34th floor of the North Tower, there was much noise, as if workers were moving heavy equipment and furniture around on that floor. One reason this impressed me as highly peculiar was that the 34th floor was supposedly vacant. The floor was off-limits, supposedly due to ongoing construction on that floor, and elevators did not stop there. It was at about this moment that I began to feel afraid.”
He gave a similar account in the Szymanski article:
“I heard strange sounds coming form the 34th floor, loud noises like someone moving and thumping heavy equipment and furniture. I knew this floor was empty and stripped due to construction work”
But on another occasion when he was interviewed on St. Louis radio station in July 2005 he said:
“On my up, something very strange happened on the 34th floor, which was a completely vacant floor, gutted for construction. As I was walking by the stairwell door, I heard these very loud noises like somebody moving heavy dumpsters or office furniture. I don’t know what it was but it was very strange because I know it was supposed to be a vacant floor.”
Uuuum, so did he hear the “strange noises” when he was in the 33rd floor maintenance office while he was helping the woman or when he “was walking by the [34th floor] stairwell door”? One could he argue both were true but then it would be odd that he wouldn’t have said this and it doesn’t make sense as per the first account that he wasn’t sure which floor the noises were coming from if he also heard them through the door.
A few other things are odd about this account:
1) There was indeed construction work being done that morning according to more than one source . Why would he think it strange to hear such noises coming from a floor undergoing construction? It can’t have been completely “off limits” how would the “on going construction” work get done?
2) The floor wasn’t completely stripped, vacant or off limits because in addition to the construction work the PANYNJ had offices there . In fact that’s where John O'Neill, the ex FBI agent who started his job as head of security the day before and died when the tower collapsed had his office according to Time, PBS and the New Yorker . The latter confirming that the elevators stopped on that floor . Rodriguez claimed to have earlier left “his backpack in his closet on the 33rd floor” as he presumably did every day, he had worked (indirectly) for the PA for nearly 20 years how could he not have known the PA had offices on the floor above the maintenance office where he had his closet? If the area above his closet and the maintenance office was the part undergoing construction presumably he would have heard noises of people moving heavy equipment before.
3) The story doesn’t really make sense from a CD perspective, are we to believe the plotters’ henchmen were still noisily planting heavy explosive charges at that point? What if somebody walked in on them? He doesn’t explain why he didn’t open the door wasn’t he there to give the NYFD access to the locked floors?
–– Felipe David - Rodriguez blamed OBL for attacks in 2002 ––
Rodriquez was a featured speaker at the Indian YMCA in London on November 27, 2006. As he had the previous June he mentioned being pushed upwards and said the plane hit before he could “verbalize” that he thought a generator had exploded on the B2 or B3 level. He made claims about Felipe David, the man whose face, arms and hands were burnt by an explosion while standing near the elevators that contradict earlier statements:
- He described him as “a Black man called Felipe David, Felipe David from Honduras who I do not know” and
- Apparently wanting to place him closer to “the explosion” said (while pointing to the floor) “he was on the B2 level below me when this huge explosion happened” .
**Similarly he said during his presentation at the University of East London, Dockland’s Campus, February 5, 2007:
“That’s Felipe David [he points to an off screen projected slide explains how David was interviewed by NBC] and his story is exactly the same as what I’m telling you right now, nothing changed and I didn’t know him never saw him again after 9/11 and his story validated the whole thing.” **
This contradicts his affidavit (see below) when he said he knew David and numerous other occasions (including the affidavit) when he said that David like him had been on B1 . According to Szymanski Rodriguez gave him a video tape in 2005 from Colombian TV of David saying he was on the B1 level . It is unclear whether or not Rodriguez knew David before September 11, 2001 but he definitely knew him in 2006, he was shown meeting with the Honduran in his (David’s) home with his family on a NYC Spanish language channel about a year after the terrorist attacks. Near the end of the story both men blamed bin-Laden for the attacks .
This was not the first time Rodriguez contradicted himself about Felipe David. On September 11, 2002 he told Aaron Brown “I took people out of the office, one of them totally burned because he was standing in front of the freight elevator and the ball of fire came down the duct of the elevator itself” but in his Affidavit he said “A co-worker whom I knew, Felipe David, came into the office at about the moment that those of us in the office were starting to leave. David told me he had been standing in front of a freight elevator on level B1, when flames burst out of the elevator shaft…I believe Mr. David’s burns could only have occurred due to fire resulting either from the explosion heard seconds before the aircraft’s impact, or one or more of the explosions at or near ground level that followed soon after the plane’s impact. I do not believe that the time that elapsed from the aircraft hitting roughly 1150 feet above ground level could have sufficed for jet fuel from the aircraft to reach level B1 causing a fire sufficient to burn Mr. David as he was burned.” [Exactly how he determined this since it would have taken less than 9 seconds for the fuel to drop down the shaft is never explained].