re: A place for all things 7 World Trade Center [W:424,1132]
"Pull it"? Exactly What did Larry Silverstein Say and Why?
Larry Silverstein, whose company owned 7 World Trade Center tower, a non-descript, un-important and virtually unknown office building in the WTC complex and held the leases on most of the other 6 buildings of the WTC complex is alleged by some Conspiracy Theorists (9/11 Truthers) to be the real mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, not terrorists. They base this claim entirely on a public statement Mr. Silverstein made in which they claim he very casually admitted on national TV (on a government owned network no less) that he had 7 World Trade Center blown up, Mr. Silverstein conveniently fulfilling the "Evil Jew" requirement in the 'Great 9/11 False Flag operation'.
As I mentioned above, this is a classic example of how Conspiracy Theorists can not reason properly. Of how they tend to just accept a claim because it fits what they want to believe without taking even a moment to find out if it is true, let alone if it makes any sense.
Here is the alleged admission, made during an interview for the documentary
America Rebuilds: A Year at Ground Zero, broadcast on
PBS in 2002, when discussing the loss 7 World Trade Center that collapsed at 5:21pm on 9/11:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hRPpva1ujE (1:08:23)
Narrator (Kevin Spacey): World Trade Center 7 had always been considered the starting point for rebuilding. Located north of the slurry wall, 7 had been cleared faster than the rest of the site and there had been no bodies to recover. Pelted by debris when the North Tower collapsed, 7 burned until late afternoon allowing occupants to evacuate to safety.
Larry Silverstein: "I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, "We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it. And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse."
Conspiracy Theorists, who frequently edit the quote down to
"I said,… the smartest thing to do is pull it…" claim, based on this one statement that Larry Silverstein is the mastermind of the greatest crime in American history and is admitting - with no prodding and under no duress on national TV - that he ordered the New York Fire Department to blow up his building with secretly pre-planted explosives.
We don't know the question Silverstein was asked so therefore the exact context in which the statement was made isn't present in the program. We know based on the recordings of FDNY radio communications as well as interviews and public statements made by fire officials and individual firefighters that at the time 7 was "fully involved" (as in, unsafe to enter) and showing signs of imminent collapse such as creaking and moaning sounds from the structure, a visible bulge in several floors (from thermal expansion) and even reports the building was starting to lean. To most of us it sounds then like the Fire Department commander called Larry Silverstein to inform him Building 7 could not be saved and they agreed that to avoid further loss of life it would be best to
pull rescue operations from the area (which was done) and it was clearly the FDNY that made that call, not Larry Silverstein. We know this because we can read and we can hear and we can think.
In conspiracy theory mythology, "pull it" is erroneously believed to be the order used by people in the building demolition business to fire off the explosives (it isn't). To the FDNY "pull" means to pull their people out of harms way.
That "pull it" refers to the rescue efforts and not the building is corroborated by statements like the following from Chief Hayden in a 2002 interview with Firehouse magazine published long before Truthers decided pull = CD;
"But also we were pretty sure that 7 World Trade Center would collapse. Early on, we saw a bulge in the southwest corner between floors 10 and 13, and we had put a transit on that and we were pretty sure she was going to collapse. You actually could see there was a visible bulge, it ran up about three floors. It came down about 5 o’clock in the afternoon, but by about 2 o’clock in the afternoon we realized this thing was going to collapse."
"It was a heavy body of fire in there and then we didn’t make any attempt to fight it. That was just one of those wars we were just going to lose. We were concerned about the collapse of a 47-story building there. We were worried about additional collapse there of what was remaining standing of the towers and the Marriott, so we started PULLING the people back after a couple of hours of surface removal and searches along the surface of the debris. We started to PULL guys back because we were concerned for their safety. Yeah, we had to PULL everybody back. It was very difficult. We had to be very forceful in getting the guys out. They didn’t want to come out. There were guys going into areas that I wasn’t even really comfortable with, because of the possibility of secondary collapses. We didn’t know how stable any of this area was. We PULLED everybody back probably by 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon. We said, this building is going to come down, get back. It came down about 5 o’clock or so, but we had everybody backed away by then." (emphasis added)
Dissecting the Statement
So what to make of Silverstein's comment? Is it a casual admission of the greatest crime in history or grossly misinterpreted by a handful of idiots for ideological purposes? First off,
the fire department commander called Larry Silverstein, he didn't call them. What did the FDNY commander call Mr. Silverstein about?
"…they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire"
This begs the question
why does the building need to be blown up if the fire is going to take it down anyway? The fires would do the job with no outside assistance.
And what was Mr. Silverstein's reply?
"
We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it."
So what does "we've had such a terrible loss of life" mean? And how does "we've had such a terrible loss of life..." part equate to "so lets blow up the building"? Since when does one blow up a building to save lives? Why blow up the building at all if the fires can not be contained and will take it down anyway?
"And they made that decision to pull,..."
Who is "they"? "They" certainly isn't Larry Silverstein. "They" is the fire department. And what did they do?
They made the decision, not Larry Silverstein. So who is in command here? Who is giving the orders? Not Larry Silverstein. Larry Silverstein didn't order anyone to do anything.
What Larry Silverstein statement tells us is that after being informed by the fire department commander that building 7 could not be saved agreed they should, to avoid the further loss of life of first responders, pull the efforts to save the building. The FDNY then made the decision to pull the rescue efforts and create a safe zone around the building, which they did.. That this in fact was done is a matter of historical record. Sure enough, a few hours later building 7 quietly collapsed.
What he meant is obvious from the context. Too many people have already died, so let's minimize further casualties by pulling firefighters out of the area, not "Too many people have already died, so let's BLOW THIS PUPPY UP!!!"
But CT's can not think. All they see is "Larry said pull it" on some website and that's enough.
