democracy now excerpts
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/01/1455255
US Travelers Electronically Analyzed For Terror, Criminal Threat
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged the existence of a program that assigns travelers crossing US borders a computerized score rating their risk as terrorists or criminals. The risk assessments are kept on file for forty years. Travelers are not allowed to see their own ratings. The program has affected nearly every traveler crossing US borders in the last four years – including US citizens. David Sobel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said: "It's probably the most invasive system the government has yet deployed in terms of the number of people affected."
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http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/03/1459244
WAYNE BARRETT: Right. The firefighters were using the same radios that they used at the ’93 bombing, even though we found a report that was written in 1990 that said that they were already obsolete and that they were a danger to the life of firefighters. And the firefighters are still carrying those same radios eight years after the 1993 bombing.
But what we focus on -- I mean, just take the bunker, for example. It turns out we discovered memos where his top security advisors say you can't put it in the World Trade Center complex. We discovered a five-page memo from Jerry Hauer, who was the head of Emergency Management under Giuliani, that wanted it to be located in Brooklyn in the Metrotech complex. That happens to be roughly where Mike Bloomberg has since put it. It's a block away from Metrotech in downtown Brooklyn. Giuliani said, “No, I want it within walking distance of City Hall.” No one could figure out the security rationale for that. But once he said it had to be within walking distance, Jerry Hauer then said, “You can't go underground, because it’s all below the flood plane within walking distance, so you’ve got to go to a tower.” The nearest tower was the World Trade Center complex.
The 23rd floor of 7 World Trade had never been rented. It was built for an investment banking firm as a trade floor. It had extremely high ceilings. It had been laying vacant for more than ten years. The private landlord who owned that became a gigantic donor to Rudy Giuliani, threw two big fundraising events on his yacht for it. They move into that floor, and it is a disaster on that day. We quote people from John Farmer, who was the staff attorney who wrote the chapter that deals with the city's response for the 9/11 Commission, as saying that if they had had a functioning command center that day, it would have saved the lives of many firefighters and police officers and rescuers. They had no functioning command center. They had no functioning command center, because of terrible decisions that were made.
Even Howard Safer, who was the police commissioner appointed by Giuliani, who goes way back with Giuliani to his federal days as a prosecutor, even Howard Safer warned him. We quote from a meeting of the cabinet, in which he called it in 1997. He said, “You can't put it in ground zero.” He called it “ground zero” then because it had already been bombed. Rudy just brushed aside all of this advice, was determined to put it there, put it there, and it had dire, even deadly, consequences that day. So that's just one example of many that we raise in the book.
KEVIN KEATING: ...You know, Giuliani, we quote the head of -- his own commissioner from the Department of Design and Construction, who ran the ground zero cleanup. He said he dealt with Giuliani every day, that Giuliani only asked him one question: how much debris did you remove yesterday? Are we on schedule? Are we ahead of schedule? All he cared about, even though the fires were still burning and spewing toxins in the air, all he cared about was the public relations. I mean, obviously, it's five years later. Nothing’s been built there. What was the rush? The public relations question of making it look like they were efficiently cleaning up the site. And the consequences have been dire.
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US Travelers Electronically Analyzed For Terror, Criminal Threat
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged the existence of a program that assigns travelers crossing US borders a computerized score rating their risk as terrorists or criminals. The risk assessments are kept on file for forty years. Travelers are not allowed to see their own ratings. The program has affected nearly every traveler crossing US borders in the last four years – including US citizens. David Sobel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said: "It's probably the most invasive system the government has yet deployed in terms of the number of people affected."
---
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/03/1459244
WAYNE BARRETT: Right. The firefighters were using the same radios that they used at the ’93 bombing, even though we found a report that was written in 1990 that said that they were already obsolete and that they were a danger to the life of firefighters. And the firefighters are still carrying those same radios eight years after the 1993 bombing.
But what we focus on -- I mean, just take the bunker, for example. It turns out we discovered memos where his top security advisors say you can't put it in the World Trade Center complex. We discovered a five-page memo from Jerry Hauer, who was the head of Emergency Management under Giuliani, that wanted it to be located in Brooklyn in the Metrotech complex. That happens to be roughly where Mike Bloomberg has since put it. It's a block away from Metrotech in downtown Brooklyn. Giuliani said, “No, I want it within walking distance of City Hall.” No one could figure out the security rationale for that. But once he said it had to be within walking distance, Jerry Hauer then said, “You can't go underground, because it’s all below the flood plane within walking distance, so you’ve got to go to a tower.” The nearest tower was the World Trade Center complex.
The 23rd floor of 7 World Trade had never been rented. It was built for an investment banking firm as a trade floor. It had extremely high ceilings. It had been laying vacant for more than ten years. The private landlord who owned that became a gigantic donor to Rudy Giuliani, threw two big fundraising events on his yacht for it. They move into that floor, and it is a disaster on that day. We quote people from John Farmer, who was the staff attorney who wrote the chapter that deals with the city's response for the 9/11 Commission, as saying that if they had had a functioning command center that day, it would have saved the lives of many firefighters and police officers and rescuers. They had no functioning command center. They had no functioning command center, because of terrible decisions that were made.
Even Howard Safer, who was the police commissioner appointed by Giuliani, who goes way back with Giuliani to his federal days as a prosecutor, even Howard Safer warned him. We quote from a meeting of the cabinet, in which he called it in 1997. He said, “You can't put it in ground zero.” He called it “ground zero” then because it had already been bombed. Rudy just brushed aside all of this advice, was determined to put it there, put it there, and it had dire, even deadly, consequences that day. So that's just one example of many that we raise in the book.
KEVIN KEATING: ...You know, Giuliani, we quote the head of -- his own commissioner from the Department of Design and Construction, who ran the ground zero cleanup. He said he dealt with Giuliani every day, that Giuliani only asked him one question: how much debris did you remove yesterday? Are we on schedule? Are we ahead of schedule? All he cared about, even though the fires were still burning and spewing toxins in the air, all he cared about was the public relations. I mean, obviously, it's five years later. Nothing’s been built there. What was the rush? The public relations question of making it look like they were efficiently cleaning up the site. And the consequences have been dire.
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