The Zionists Who Gained from 9-11

 by Christopher Bollyn 

June 19, 2002

Who benefitted when the World Trade Center towers collapsed? Who controlled access to the complex prior to 9-11? These burning questions continue to be ignored by the mainstream media.

Larry Silverstein, lease-holder of the World Trade Center, and Lewis Eisenberg, the man who negotiated the lease, are key supporters of Israel who have both held high positions in the largest Israeli fund-raising institution in the United States.  Silverstein and his Australian-Israeli partner, Frank Lowy, are the real estate developers who obtained 99-year leases on the rental and retail spaces of the World Trade Center shortly before the catastrophe of 9-11.  Although their leased property is destroyed, the leaseholders themselves stand to gain billions of dollars from insurance.

Eisenberg, the former chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, personally arranged the privatization of the World Trade Center property and oversaw the negotiations that delivered the leases into the private hands of Silverstein and Lowy.  Eisenberg was recently appointed finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.

How did these well-known supporters of Israel come to control the property? What actually caused the buildings to collapse? There are two schools of thought.

There is the "official" theory that hijacked planes crashed into the towers and the subsequent fuel fires caused the twin towers to fall.  The second theory, however, argues that other devices, such as explosive charges, were used to collapse the towers in a kind of controlled demolition for which the planes provided a useful distraction.

There remain significant amounts of eyewitness testimony and evidence to support the theory that explosives contributed to the collapse of the twin towers and WTC 7, which fell for no apparent reason late in the afternoon of 9-11.  WTC 7 was a 47-story building built by Silverstein on property leased from the Port Authority.

There are video recordings and photographs which appear to show explosions occurring at the base of the towers prior to and during the collapses.  In a remarkable three-dimensional image published in the German magazine GEO EPOCHE, which dedicated the December 2001 issue to 9-11, there are five or six large and deep craters be seen beneath the rubble. At least four huge craters are seen where the twin towers stood and one is squarely at the center of WTC 6. Another photograph shows what appears to be a sand-colored blast originating at the base of one of the towers and growing into an immense cloud of dust.

If explosive charges were used to collapse the towers, the question of who had access to the buildings prior to 9-11 emerges. Silverstein controlled access to the towers from the end of July when he obtained the 99-year lease.  Who Silverstein is and how he obtained these leases for a fraction of their value are questions that have been completely avoided by the mainstream media.

Silverstein is the New York City commercial landlord who built WTC 7 in 1987. Silverstein won, with Lowy's Westfield America, a 99-year right-to-lease of the World Trade center from Eisenberg, the former chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on July 26, 2001. While Silverstein controlled the 10.6 million-square-foot office space in the WTC complex, Westfield leased the 427,000 square-foot retail mall.

Silverstein and Eisenberg have both held leadership positions with the United Jewish Appeal (UJA), a billion dollar Zionist "charity" organization.  Silverstein is a former chairman of United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, Inc. This is an umbrella organization which raises hundreds of millions of dollars every year for its network of hundreds of member Zionist agencies in the United States and Israel.

Eisenberg, who was instrumental in obtaining the lease for Silverstein, sits on the Planning Board of UJA/United Jewish Federation.  Eisenberg was the key person in negotiating the lease for Silverstein and Westfield, who were not the winners of the final bidding process on the 110-story towers.  While the high bid came from Vornado Realty Trust, its path was blocked by demands to pay back taxes. In March 2001, Vornado pulled out after failing to reach a purchase agreement with Eisenberg, which opened the door for Silverstein and Lowy. Lowy obtained the retail lease in April while it took Silverstein until the end of July to obtain funding for the down payment.

One lender, GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corp., accused Silverstein of misallocating insurance money paid out after the 9-11 attack. In a complaint filed on Jan. 14 in the State Supreme court in Manhattan, the lender, GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corp., asserts that Silverstein used some insurance money to pay lobbyists in Albany and in Washington to try to limit his liability to the victims.

Eisenberg is a "New York moneyman" and a former Democrat who supports the liberal wing of the Republican Party. He has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to "pro-choice" Republican candidates. The newly appointed finance chairman for the Republican National Committee, Eisenberg has also served as a vice president of the strong arm of the Israeli lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. 

When New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman appointed Eisenberg Chairman of the Port Authority in February 1996, Forbes magazine said the formerly disgraced Goldman Sachs partner "got real lucky." 

"What a strange political appointment," the magazine said, "considering the part he played in the sex scandal that rocked Goldman Sachs after his secretary accused him of sexually harassing her.  "The truth ended up being that, yes, they had a brief affair, but, no, she was never harassed," Forbes wrote, adding, "all charges were dismissed, though Eisenberg did resign."

Silverstein is engaged in a lawsuit to double his insurance pay-off and may win as much as $7.1 billion from the insurance companies by arguing that the destruction of the towers was two insured events instead of one. The property was insured for $3.55 billion. Silverstein Properties Inc. had asked the judge to rule on the one-loss-or-two issue in a lawsuit against 22 of the 22 insurers on the property. District Judge John S. Martin Jr. rejected a notion for summary judgment in June.  A trial is scheduled Sept. 3, although a request for a delay by the insurers is under consideration.  While Silverstein Properties, a family-owned business, is "disappointed that the issue was not decided at this time, they are confident that they will prevail at trial," said Howard Rubenstein, a spokesman for Silverstein.