Lets not forget the lucky Larry Silverstein, his family and associates who all miraculously avoided death on that day, such a lucky guy..
The fortunate circumstances that kept the high-level individuals out of danger the morning of 9/11 were quite extraordinary. Larry Silverstein survived the attacks supposedly because his wife forced him to go to a doctor's appointment instead of a meeting at the WTC; Silverstein's son and daughter survived because, independently of each other, they were running late; his top aide survived because he cut short a meeting he was in at the top of the North Tower; his publicist agreed to join a meeting at the WTC at 9:00 a.m. instead of 8:00 a.m.; and others associated with Silverstein Properties may have avoided danger due to the cancellation of a meeting on the 88th floor of the North Tower.
See, that's more provocative evidence than
buying an insurance policy 10 years prior to a payday.
Is your thinking and research always this sloppy. Or is your desire to shoot the messenger greater than your desire to be objective. You appear to have allowed your emotions (again all that self-imposed, blindspot angst in you when any person delves into religion) to rule your pre-frontal cortex.
Ownership Change
Author Don Paul investigated this and related issues for his 2002 book, which contains the following passage detailing financial aspects and ownership changes of the complex preceding the attack.
On April 26 of 2001 the Board of Commissioners for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey awarded Silverstein Properties and mall-owner Westfield America a 99-year-lease on the following assets: The Twin Towers, World Trade Center Buildings 4 and 5, two 9-story office buildings, and 400,000 square feet of retail space.
The partners' winning bid was $3.2 billion for holdings estimated to be worth more than $8 billion. JP Morgan Chase, a prestigious investment-bank that's the flagship firm of its kind for Rockefeller family interests, advised the Port Authority, another body long influenced by banker and builder David Rockefeller, his age then 85, in the negotiations.
The lead partner and spokesperson for the winning bidders, Larry Silverstein, age 70, already controlled more than 8 million square feet of New York City real estate. WTC 7 and the nearby Equitable Building were prime among these prior holdings. Larry Silverstein also owned Runway 69, a nightclub in Queens that was alleged 9 years ago to be laundering money made through sales of Laotian heroin.
In December 2003, the Port Authority agreed to return all of the $125 million in equity that the consortium headed by Silverstein originally invested to buy the lease on the World Trade Center. The Port Authority rejected a request by the Wall Street Journal to review the transaction. 5 A press report from November 2003 about the same transaction noted that it would allow Silverstein to retain development rights. 6
The lease deal didn't close until July 24th, just 6 weeks before the attack.