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"The World Trade Center: Rise and Fall of an American Icon" is pretty good: it discusses the

planning, construction, collapse, recovery, and cleanup of the buildings. Curiously, it never
mentions that many people found the buildings ugly, or that the WTC had low occupancy
during its early years due to a glut of office space downtown.

I was shocked at one highly inaccurate statement made in the video: that after the 1993
bombing of the WTC "no one dreamed that some 8 1/2 years later, (al Qaeda) would bring
death, not from a bomb in the basement, but from the sky".

Wrong.

In 1995, people within the White House knew of al Qaeda plans to hijack jetliners in Manila
and blow them up over the pacific (see Richard Clarke's book "Against All Enemies", or
"9/11 Commission Report" page 147). And in the summer of 2001, an FBI agent in
Minneapolis communicated to headquarters that they were worried that Moussaoui might be
part of an al Qaeda plot to crash an airplane into the World Trade Center (9/11 Report, page
275).

Writers of this documentary: you should have done your homework!

The World Trade Center: Rise and Fall of an American Icon (TV 2002)

http://www.creativepro.com/article/world-trade-center-an-icon-destroyed

For the thing which


I greatly feared is come upon me,
and that which I was afraid of
Is come unto me.
I was not in safety, neither
had I rest, neither was I quiet;
yet trouble came
-Job

Katrin and I are very fortunate. We have productive and creative lives. Yet, we never fully
appreciated our good fortune until we began living within view of the World Trade Center.
We were indeed very lucky, and we felt as much each time we took stock and pleasure from
our magnificent view of New York.

For 18 months, we enjoyed an unobstructed view of the World Trade Center's North Tower.
You cannot imagine how many times each day we would look to see the tower; every
morning, every night, during the middle of the night.

There were a few disturbing moments when the World Trade Center disappeared from our
view. Ominous storms moving up the Hudson River obscured even the brightest lights on
Manhattan. The first time we saw this, we were sure there was a power failure, a blackout. We
could not imagine why the television was not reporting the event. Each time after that when
we lost sight of the World Trade Center we would joke, "It's gone again."

Tuesday, September 11th was a clear and beautiful late summer day. At dawn the World
Trade Center was glistening in red morning sun. We were up early and enjoying the morning.
Then it began. Katrin heard a loud bang that she assumed came from a nearby construction
site. Moments later I noticed a beautiful cloud hanging directly over the World Trade Center.
I yelled to Katrin to come and look but before I could finish the sentence, I saw the fire and
smoke coming from the upper floors of the North Tower. It looked bad but not nearly as bad
as we would soon understand. Of course it rapidly became worse and worse.

Minutes before I took the picture below, the Waterway commuter ferries unloaded their
passengers and headed full-speed down the Hudson River to the Wall Street area. A number
of the boats began taking refugees to New Jersey ports. Suddenly all the ferries turned and
sped away from lower Manhattan. Minutes later the South Tower collapsed. It looked as if an
atomic bomb had exploded. The Jersey shoreline was jammed with commuters, all staring,
slack-jawed or weeping uncontrollably. It appeared that all of lower Manhattan was lost. It
was horrible.

This last image of the World Trade Center is the image I will not forget. In a sea of tragic
images, surreal and disturbing, we all have our own memory of the events of September 11,
2001. This is mine.

I can think of a thousand times I looked up at the World Trade Center. It altered the New
York skyline, dominating and imposing. I loved those moments in New York when you
would catch a glimpse of the World Trade Center looming between buildings, standing above
the avenues. I never could ignore its presence. I never took it for granted.

I have always understood the significance of the place, the politics of its construction, and I
even felt ambivalent about the implications of the financial empires it housed. They were
never pre-eminent in my mind as I admired the structure and the skyline but they were never
completely out of my mind either. I was looking at structure, a magnificent sculpture. It was a
visual anchor, a guidepost. It was an icon. It was not a symbol.

I realized that for some people the World Trade Center was a symbol. A symbol they
despised. A symbol so strong in their minds that they would kill themselves and thousands of
innocent bystanders to destroy it. I always felt ill at ease at the target I knew it had become. I
dreaded the thought that this could happen, and I never spoke of it.

Five days after the disaster, we still see plumes of smoke where the World Trade Center once
stood. The smell is a disturbing combination of industrial waste, construction materials, and
human remains. The smoke burns your eyes, your lungs, and your heart. We will never forget
the destruction and the tragic loss of life. We lost far more than an icon.

Yet, we are still fortunate. We will still live productive and creative lives. A building on our
horizon is gone. We can live without it. In fact, today more then ever before, when we look at
New York we can see the people and the place that we are proud to call home.

John McIntosh is chair of Computer Art at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

World Trade Center, New York City, 1962–1973 (page 541). Architect: Mi- noru Yamasaki and
Associates; architects in association: Antonio Brit- tiochi and Emery Roth and Sons;
engineers: Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson. World Trade Center One (right) and
World Trade Center Two (the “Twin Towers”) were destroyed by terrorist attack on Septem-
ber 11, 2001; the remaining buildings in the complex, damaged by the collapse, had to be
demolished.

An Icon of Capitalism: 'Now It's All Gone'


World's 5th-Tallest Buildings Housed Offices, Retail
Shops
By Greg Schneider and David S. Hilzenrath
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 12, 2001

For three decades the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center stood as the symbol of
American economic might, as powerful an icon for capitalism as the Statue of Liberty is for
freedom.

The two 110-story buildings defined the Manhattan skyline at the turn of the millennium the
way the Empire State Building did in an earlier era. But their presence was more than
symbolic.

The complex was a city within a city, with 50,000 workers and 150,000 others passing
through on a typical workday. It represented one-tenth of all office space in Lower
Manhattan.

Scores of corporations had offices there, including financial services giant Morgan Stanley
Dean Witter & Co., the biggest single tenant, with one-eighth of the space in the south tower.

The complex was a major home to the insurance companies Empire HealthChoice Inc. and
Marsh USA Inc., the law offices of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood, and Cantor Fitzgerald
Securities. It was also a top tourist draw, with observation decks, a simulated helicopter tour
of Manhattan and a famous restaurant, Windows on the World.
"The twin towers stood for America in the same way that Big Ben stands for England," said
Angus Kress Gillespie, author of the 1999 book "Twin Towers: The Life of New York City's
World Trade Center."

"If you're trying to poke America in the eye, this is the way to do it."

When terrorists tried to bring the buildings down in 1993 by planting bombs in a parking
garage beneath them, the business world reeled at the notion that it could be the target of a
new kind of war. That bombing killed six people and injured more than 1,000, but after
extensive renovations -- and with greatly increased security -- the towers reopened.

"Some people I know never went back again, or they couldn't get back into an elevator again,"
said Neil Lagala, who survived the 1993 bombing and continued working there for six years
as an engineer with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

"I did have a feeling way back in my mind that we were still a target -- these guys didn't finish
the job, and I felt they would make an example of the trade center . . . but everybody felt that
they shouldn't give in to the terrorists."

Just two months ago, two real estate companies, Silverstein Properties of New York and
Westfield America of Los Angeles, won a bidding contest to lease the towers and their
underground mall from the Port Authority for 99 years at a price of $3.25 billion. The
authority had rejected earlier overtures from would-be buyers.

The World Trade Center was more than an American phenomenon; it was also what its name
suggested -- a concentration of commercial forces from around the world. It housed banks
from Germany, Japan, Chile and Taiwan; investment companies from Asia, Europe, South
America; and even the China Chamber of Commerce.

The Royal Thai Embassy had three offices in one tower and managed to track down all 20 of
its employees yesterday. All were safe, but two were hospitalized. "We're just relieved to have
located them," Ambassador Tej Bunnag said. "But the shock hasn't gone away."

Officials from other tenants spent the day wracked with uncertainty.

Empire HealthChoice, which provides health insurance to thousands of New Yorkers under
BlueCross/BlueShield, had 4,200 employees on several floors in one tower. Empire's other
facilities in Albany, Staten Island and Long Island were transformed into emergency call
centers in an effort to contact employees.

Morgan Stanley had about 3,500 people in its World Trade Center offices, with more than
two-thirds of them in the south tower. Chairman Philip Purcell said in a message on the
company's Web site that he had "limited information" about the fate of the employees. But he
added that "in spite of this tragedy, all of our businesses are functioning and will continue to
function."

A spokesman for RLI Insurance Co., based in Peoria, Ill., said all five of the employees who
worked for the company at its corner office on the 80th floor of the north tower were
accounted for and unhurt.
"The three people who were there grabbed their briefcases and ran down the stairwell,"
spokesman Mike Quine said. "Skip Orza, one of our vice presidents, found one of the World
Trade Center's maintenance men lying on the stairs, burned. He helped him get out of the
building. . . . We do a lot of business with folks in the south tower, though, and we think a lot
of them are dead."

Rockville-based Weisenberger, a Thomson Financial company, has accounted for all 10 of its
employees at 195 Broadway, which is "right in the shadow of the World Trade Center," said a
shaken-sounding William Chambers, the company's president.

The twin towers, developed by the Port Authority, supplanted the Empire State Building as
the world's tallest buildings when they were dedicated in 1973. They held the title until
Chicago's Sears Tower claimed it the following year. Before yesterday, they were the world's
fifth-tallest.

Construction began in the late 1960s, and the first of the towers opened in 1970. President
Richard Nixon sent a message for the 1973 ribbon-cutting.

The towers cost $1.1 billion to build, according to Eric Darton, author of "Divided We Stand:
A Biography of New York's World Trade Center."

The center quickly became a magnet for publicity seekers. In 1974, a French high-wire artist
strung a tightrope between the towers for an aerial performance. In 1975, a man jumped off,
opened a parachute and drifted to a safe landing.

Darton said yesterday that the destruction of the landmark "reminded me of the Hindenburg
tragedy -- how something that appears to be so solid could be so unsubstantial, ultimately."

"It was an excellent target to impact the maximum amount of psychological trauma," he said.

Few could grasp the fact that such a hole was so violently ripped in the city's commercial
heart.

"It's a beautiful area, actually -- the Financial Center and the river. It was a beautiful area.
Now you look at it today and there's nothing there. It's unbelievable," said Lagala, the former
Port Authority engineer. "I saw when those buildings were being built, I could see them from
my home. And now it's all gone."

The Empire State Building is once again the tallest building in New York.

Staff writers Sandra Fleishman, Renae Merle, Ellen McCarthy, Carrie Johnson, Daniela
Deane, Kathleen Day, Amy Joyce and Steven Pearlstein contributed to this report.

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