William Rodriguez 911 Hero?

[Bushknew]

What do you all think about this?

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William had worked for the New York Port Authority for about twenty years. He was in charge of the three stairwells - A, B and C. They were narrow and without windows. There were also 150 elevators in the building. He knew the building well. His job included the maintenance of the three narrow stairwells in the class "A" building - WTC1, the north tower. On a typical morning, he would have breakfast then begin at the top of the building and methodically work his way down. Arriving at 8:30 on the morning of 9-11 he went to the maintenance office located on the first sublevel, one of six sub-basements beneath ground level. There were a total of fourteen people in the office at this time. As he was talking with others, there was a very loud massive explosion which seemed to emanate from between sub-basement B2 and B3. There were twenty-two people on B2 sub-basement who also felt and heard that first explosion.

At first he thought it was a generator that had exploded. But the cement walls in the office cracked from the explosion. "When I heard the sound of the explosion, the floor beneath my feet vibrated, the walls started cracking and everything started shaking." said Rodriguez, who was crowded together with fourteen other people in the office including Anthony Saltamachia, supervisor for the American Maintenance Company.

Just seconds later there was another explosion way above which made the building oscillate momentarily. This, he was later told, was a plane hitting the 90th floor. Upon hearing about the plane, he immediately thought of the people up in the restaurant. Then there were other explosions just above B1 and individuals started heading for the loading dock to escape the explosion's resulting rampant fire. When asked later about those first explosions he said: "I would know if an explosion was from the bottom or the top of the building." He heard explosions both before and after the plane hit the tower.

A fellow worker Felipe David came into the office. "He had been standing in front of a freight elevator on sub-level 1 about 400 feet from the office when fire burst out of the elevator shaft, causing his injuries." The skin on his face had been peeled away by the heat of the blast and he was horribly burned on thirty-three percent of his body. "He was burned so badly from the basement explosion that flesh was hanging from his face and both arms." William asks: "How could a jetliner hit 90 floors above and burn a man's arms and face to a crisp in the basement below within seconds of impact?" William led Felipe David outside to safety. William continued to hear people screaming and returned to the building in spite of police orders. There were people encased in elevators. There were people who needed help.

There was a swooshing sound coming from the freight elevators on B2 and B3. Water from the fire sprinklers from all of the floors had gone into the elevator shaft. There were two individuals trapped below who were in danger of drowning. Rodriguez was able to secure a long enough ladder to extend into the shaft to facilitate their escape from a watery grave.

He had possession of just one of the five master keys that opened all of the stairwell doors at each of the floors in the 110 story building. The other four key holders were trained for emergencies. They had already left the building. Firemen from New York City Unit Six arrived. Each fireman, in addition to protective clothing, had about 70 pounds of equipment. William, who now had the only key, led the firemen up stairwell B. Firemen were going up as victims were coming down. The stairwells were narrow with no windows.

The firemen made it up to the 27th floor but were exhausted from the burden of their equipment. As William had ascended up the stairwell he, as well as the firemen, had heard explosions from the 20th through the 30th floor. Chunks of the building were falling down all around them and they could literally hear the building coming down. Yet, the firemen continued to climb and give aid. After all, they assumed the fire was isolated at the location where the plane entered.

On the 33rd floor, William was able to procure some dust masks from a maintenance office. The air was thick with smoke. On the 33rd floor he found a woman laying on the floor in a fetal position. She didn't know where to go or what to do. They had fire drills twice a year but because of employee turnover, not everyone had a clear view of emergency procedures. While some individuals intuitively respond appropriately in an emergency, others are absolutely paralyzed by their fears.

Strangely, while William was on the 33rd floor he heard lots of very loud noise as if someone was moving heavy equipment and furniture around on the 34th floor. The reason this is interesting is that the 34th floor was completely empty. Elevators did not stop at the 34th floor. It was off limits due to a construction project. He said that this was the first time that he felt fear.

They continued to ascend to the 39th floor. This is as far as William got before he was turned back by the firefighters. As he began his descent he heard the plane hit the south tower.

He made it back down to the hole where the front doors used to be before they were blown out. The bottoms of the elevator doors were blown partially open. He couldn't breath, his eyes burned, his leg was burned. Someone yelled: "Don't look back!" William looked back momentarily then raced for the first cover he saw - a fire truck. That is where he was found. Pulverized concrete mixed with asbestos and smoke created a dark cloud of doom. Flashlights were necessary. William received temporary medical assistance and then went to work trying to find survivors.

The mangled bloodied bodies of the jumpers blanketed the ground. William will never forget the anguish he felt or the sight of this senseless horrific carnage. This was evidence of desperation - people desperate to escape possible death by suffocation or by fire chose death by jumping. The fires were contained and isolated. Much of the flame actually burned outside of the building upon impact. The fire was out - even at the giant gaping hole where the plane breached the building where people worked, talked with friends and felt relatively safe.

William Rodriguez saved lives that day. Currently he is attempting to alert the public to what actually happened. He is a courageous witness to those terrible events. The controlled censored media doesn't really appear willing to report the real news but rather they promote whatever the propaganda ministry wants the masses to believe. It takes continuous courage to go against such opposition but that is the kind of man he is. He says that he owes it to his friends - those that were slaughtered for some covert political agenda.

William spent hours testifying before the 9-11 Commission behind closed doors. His testimony as an eye witness does not appear anywhere in the 576 page report. But after all, Bush told us who did it, so why bother to examine the evidence or talk with the witnesses. The only agency that was allowed to investigate the circumstances of the event was FEMA.

The National Institute of Safety and Technology (NIST), an independent investigative group ignored his plea to tell his story. He contacted them four times but never got a response. NIST was funded by the government which gives you a pretty good idea of just how subjective their findings were. They were paid $35 million dollars and the investigation lasted two years. The taxpayers certainly did not get their money's worth.
William Rodriguez also contacted the FBI who never followed up. The media was not interested. CNN spent a day filming and interviewing him at his home but when it was shown the following day it was thoroughly edited. Some reporters have subtly warned Rodriguez to keep quiet as he could jeopardize his life. They said "You do not know who you are dealing with!" He already looked death in the face and he will probably continue to courageously tell his story. He is speaking the truth and he is speaking it for his friends. He says: "I am living on borrowed time since I probably should be dead anyway."

William Rodriguez is the lead plaintiff in a RICO lawsuit filed against George W. (warmonger) Bush and others. He is alleging conspiracy to commit murder and other crimes. So not only is he speaking for his friends but he is seeking justice for all of the victims, both those who died and those who were injured.

The World Trade Center twin towers were built from 1968 to 1972. To fireproof the building a mixture of asbestos and cement was sprayed during the construction. However, this fireproofing technique was banned in 1971 by the New York City Council. By then there was already hundreds of tons of this material in the building. Later, some of this material was removed yet there was still about 100 tons of asbestos remaining. Asbestos was used in other areas that would not leave the harmful residue unless there were extraordinary circumstances such as those that occurred on 9-11.

William Rodriguez says: "I have tried to tell my story to everybody, but nobody wants to listen. It is very strange what is going on here in supposedly the most democratic country in the world. In my home country of Puerto Rico and all the other Latin American countries, I have been allowed to tell my story uncensored. But here, I can't even say a word." Thank goodness for the alternative media where one may still discover the truth.
On 11 September 2001 our defense systems failed, NORAD failed, our president, intent on a goat story, failed to immediately respond; the twin towers failed - they collapsed - the only known steel frame buildings in history claimed to have failed because of fire. Other steel frame buildings have been known to burn for hours and hours yet they did not collapse. Of course, we do not know the cause of their failure as the evidence was rendered unavailable for investigation - either immediately sold or otherwise withheld. There was also the failure of the local authorities to warn the people about the toxic air that burned their lungs and blanketed their homes and would create life long health problems. They were told that there was no problem.

After 9-11 there was a failure to discover exactly who made millions on all of the put options on American Airlines and United Airlines. That was another failure. So many failures and I haven't heard of one person reprimanded for inefficiency. However, there are those who were promoted.

However, there were also great successes:

The firemen who gave their lives - crushed in the totally unexpected and unusual building collapses. There were medical people who tenderly treated the trauma struck victims. The policemen did not fail and the thousands of volunteers who searched for the dead and dying did not fail. There were search and rescue dogs who did not fail - many of whom have since died of cancer. And William Rodriguez did not fail. He acted appropriately -just like a man of integrity and courage should act. He did not hesitate. Unlike others who should have responded immediately, he sprang into action and made selfless sacrifices for others.

http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/7762.html

[Bushknew]

1. more

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0512/S00291.htm

When William Rodriguez was a young man, the Amazing Randi hired him as an assistant--but not for help with his magic act. Randi enlisted Roudy, the aspiring magician's stage name in his native Puerto Rico, in his cause: exposing faith healers and psychics. Rodriguez, as Benjamin Smith explained in a New York Sun article, proved adroit at insinuating himself into the good graces of Randi's targets and eliciting incriminating information.

Two decades later Rodriguez's life has come full circle and once again he's taken on the task of unmasking what he sees as the truth behind a spectacle. This time it's the grand opera that was 9/11--along with its libretto, the 9/11 Commission Report. Yes, Rodriguez is among the legions that question its conclusions. But before attempting to transform himself into a truthteller, Rodriguez had established his credentials with a fearsome display of physical courage.

We're a nation that can no longer agree on who qualifies as a hero. Because of our questionable motives for undertaking recent wars, progressives won't countenance those who shine in combat. Conservatives, meanwhile, disdain do-gooders for enabling neediness in the needy. However, while 9/11 may have deprived us of our innocence, it at least provided us with consensus heroes, such as the first responders.

Less likely to be lionized, either because he survived or because he's Latino stands William Rodriguez. A custodian at the World Trade Center, Rodriguez shepherded a number of those who worked there out of the basement. Also, accompanying firefighters up the stairs, he unlocked doors for them until they turned him back. He may, in fact, have been the last man out of the North Tower. ADVERTISEMENT

However, not content to bask in his 9/11 hero status, he had to go and muddle matters by morphing into a gadfly. Still, whether in spite of or because of the twin sets of tracks on which his courage travels, Rodriguez stands poised to break out in 2006.

An eloquent man with an outsized personality, he recently completely a European tour of speaking engagements in Europe. Back home, Emmy-winning Irish documentary maker Pat O'Mahony ("Reporters at War") has pitched HBO about making a documentary about him. Another film, entitled "The Keymaster," by Mario Diaz, is slated for a fall 2006 release by Brooklyn's Cinemar Films. Also, already his de facto biographer, Greg Szymanksi of the American Free Press is writing a book about him.

After emigrating from Puerto Rico, where he'd been featured on TV escaping from a chained straight jacket while hanging from a burning rope, Rodriguez found himself a small fish in the big pond of New York magicians. While struggling to catch on, he took a day job as a custodian at the World Trade Center.

But when his responsibilities expanded to not only caring for the office Governor Cuomo kept at WTC, but organizing his press conferences, his show biz aspirations fell by the wayside. After Cuomo left office, keeping the staircases of the North Tower clean became Rodriguez's new assignment. While a less-challenging job, in retrospect, it paved the way for what life had in store for him next.

Szymanski describes how Rodriguez usually clocked in at eight a.m. and rode an elevator to the 106th floor, where Latino employees of Windows on the World fed him a free breakfast. On 9/11, however, he was a half hour late. While checking in at an office on sub-level one, he heard and felt, along with 20 others, a massive explosion--from below. Seconds later, he heard another--from above (Flight 11).

While Rodriguez was wondering if the first explosion was an electrical generator, a co-worker burst into the office covered with third-degree burns he suffered when flames burst from an elevator shaft. After helping him out of the building, Rodriguez returned and pulled out two men trapped in an elevator shaft filling with water from the sprinkler system. He led them and others to safety.

Then, wielding a master key, he ascended the stairs with the struggling firemen and unlocked doors (every fourth floor) that were equipped with locks. As he climbed from the twentieth to the thirtieth floors, he heard yet more explosive sounds. They also resounded from the South Tower when, turned back at the thirty-ninth floor, he descended and, for the last time, exited the North Tower.

When it began to collapse, Rodriguez took refuge under a car. Once safe, he was interviewed by CNN and became the designated Spanish-speaking eyewitness for Spanish TV like Telemundo and Univision and newspapers like Hoy and El Diario. When the families of Spanish victims who'd seen him on TV later reached out to him, he was driven by frustration over his inability to reach his Windows of the World friends to help.

Rodriguez soon established the Hispanic Victims Group and helped secure an amnesty for undocumented Hispanic workers who perished. Their families were thus able to apply for the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund--with Rodriguez translating and helping them fill out the intimidating forms.

Confident the explosions he'd heard on 9/11 would get their day in court, Rodriguez had no qualms about being honored at the White House and posed for a picture with Bush. What then made him later do an about-face and step forward with concerns that the administration's negligence in dealing with terrorists may have crossed the line to enabling them?

First Rodriguez watched as his interviews edited by the English-speaking (but not the Spanish-) media. After all, since he'd been one of those pushing for the creation of the 9/11 Commission along with the Jersey Girls, he looked forward to his appearance at a closed-doorhearing. "Up to that moment," Rodriguez told us, "I was thinking that they were going to do the right thing."

But when the commission didn't answer his questions and avoided the issues he was presenting, "it raised flags." Then, when he realized the administration was using 9/11 as one of the pretexts for invading Iraq, he felt "manipulated and used."
Rodriguez also sought out the National Institute of Safety and Technology, which was investigating the collapse of the WTC, but was rebuffed. Neither was the FBI interested in his contention that he'd encountered one of the hijackers casing out the buildings several months before 9/11.

"You have two options," Rodriguez declares. "Stand for the truth or be part of the game. I didn't want to be part of the game."

Not only wasn't Rodriguez playing the game, but, like 9/11 widow Ellen Mariani, he signed on with lawyer Phil Berg to file a suit against the entire administration. The government normally uses the RICO Act to nail organized crime as a conspiracy. However, in a daring display of turnabout-is-fair-play, Berg accused the government of conspiring against the people.

Then, when the government filed a motion to dismiss, or at least transfer, the case on grounds of national security, Berg filed an affidavit that goes beyond the usual aggressive legalese, races past bold, and flies off into the realm of courting disaster.
It alleges that the defendants "had knowledge that the attacks were impending. . . but they failed to , not by reason of mere negligence, confusion, or ineptitude, but because they affirmatively desired such attacks to occur ." The progress of the case, which awaits discovery and depositions, can be followed at 911fortheTruth.com. Rodriguez, meanwhile, is spokesman for Reopen911.org.

When asked if he ever dreamt he'd become what some might call a conspiracy theorist, Rodriguez replied, "I never expected to be in the middle of this whole thing." In his travels he's heard what he calls, "really far-out theories, crazy." He explains that some become involved "just because of the theory." He's content to present his experience "exactly like I presented it to the 9/11 Commission and let the people draw their own conclusions."

Nevertheless, we tried to lure him into theorizing about his description of loud sounds he heard from the floor above while on the thirty-third floor. They sounded to him "like a dumpster with steel wheels scratching a bare cement floor."

"I was like," Rodriguez says, "'Oh my God, that's an empty floor, what's going on?'" No construction had been underway and, in fact, a special access key was needed to make an elevator stop at that floor. Fearing "somebody was there with a gun or something," he bypassed the floor.

But he stands by his vow: "I won't speculate because I'm not a theorist." However, it's surprising that the more, uh, creative minds of the 9/11 Truth Movement haven't latched onto the thirty-fourth floor. It could be positioned as both controlled-demolition-central and a munitions dump, where the largest bombs awaited detonation by a suicide crew manning the floor.

Still, in a picturesque analogy, Rodriguez concedes that the administration and 9/11 Commission "are giving you a whole recipe and soup, but in reality the stock inside is totally different from what you expected."

The media-savvy Rodriguez is careful to avoid being lumped in with those who believe passengers were spirited away pre-flight, the planes guided to their destinations by remote control. It's apparent, however, that he and Berg tacitly support the controlled demolition scenario.

On April 5, 2005, the National Institute of Safety and Technology finally issued its report, "NIST Response to the World Trade Center Disaster." To summarize, it concluded that the impact of the jets and intense fire weakened structural components, damaging fireproofing materials. The buckling that ensued allowed the upper floors to pancake onto the floors below.

The NIST report, of course, has taken some mighty salvos. Former Bush administration Department of Labor economist Morgan Reynolds's famous article for LewRockwell.com--"Why Did the Trade Center Skyscrapers Collapse?"--is chock full of rebuttals. It's as comprehensive, in fact, as an oft-cited March 2005 Popular Mechanics article debunking alternate theories is sketchy.

Reynolds calls the governmentís collapse "theory," as he termed it, "highly vulnerable its blinkered narrowness and lack of breadth its principal scientific rival--controlled demolition."

Even more devastating to the empirical-minded is the paper recently presented by Steven E. Jones, a physics professor at Brigham Young University. Regarding the collapse of the three WTC buildings, he writes that, "as upper-falling floors strike lower floors--and intact steel support columns--the fall must be significantly impeded by the impacted mass." In other words, not only was the collapse "in-their-footprints," but way too fast.
Between Reynolds and the experts he cites and Jones, it's as if scientists and engineers are putting their foot down. "If you wanted us to remain quiet for the nation's well-being," they seem to be saying, "you should have seen to it that whoever pulled this off resisted the expert's natural impulse to make it look like a piece of cake."

Meanwhile, reporters and commentators, concerned Rodriguez antagonized people in high places, advised him to back off. As if to lend credence to them, his apartment was broken into and, among other things, his laptop was stolen. It failed to scare Rodriguez, however, because he feels that by all rights he should have died on 9/11 and is now living on borrowed time.

"I'm alive because of the miracle," he says. "This is a second chance. The William Rodriguez who was here before 9/11 has disappeared completely. Gone, gone."
As for his future, Rodriguez declares that "my mission is to help as many people as possible. I have a big sign on the wall in front of my bed that I wrote on 9/11. It's been there ever since and it says, 'Who did you help today?' It just gives me the motivation. . . to pick up the phone and call someone." He maintains that he's become addicted to helping. "It's an addiction. It really is."

Rodriguez has also assisted victims, and their families, of the Madrid bombings, as well as the Paraguay supermarket fire, in which 399 died. In the latter instance, he appointed a contact person and helped raise funds and set up rallies. "Once organized I gave them the tools so they become activists to change the laws in terms of building construction, fire regulations, prosecution of the people who locked the doors. All the pressure points."

At times, Rodriguez seems too good to be true. Losing himself in service, he neglected his own needs and, briefly homeless, actually lived out of his car. Most telling though was his refusal to submit an application to the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund.
A cynic might maintain that he was reserving the right to the lawsuit Berg subsequently filed on his behalf. But Rodriguez had to know, as Kenneth Feinberg, special master of the 9/11 Victims Fund, made clear in his book, What is Life Worth? (Public Affairs, 2005), that those who opted out of the fund to file suit on their own had little chance of a substantial financial settlement.

To indulge in armchair psychoanalysis, Rodriguez's self-denial makes him look like a martyr who's thrown himself on the funeral pyre of survivor guilt. Of course, this does nothing to diminish what he's done.

It's more apparent than ever how much the public, consciously or unconsciously, fears being smeared with the dreaded conspiracy-theorist label. Even a glancing acknowledgment that the administration not only nonchalanted warnings about 9/11, but actually turned a blind eye to incipient terrorism, is out of the question. However, our reluctance to conceive of the inconceivable only reveals our ignorance of history.

In writing Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor (Free Press, 2001), Robert Stinnett used the Freedom of Information Act to dredge up documents from World War II that go a long way toward proving a thesis long suspected. You know--the one in which Franklin Roosevelt, to galvanize an isolationist nation behind an undeniable threat, both provoked the Japanese and refrained from mobilizing defenses despite knowledge of the attack.

Should there be any truth to the charge the administration greased the wheels for 9/11, it would be ironic. The Neocons, of course, profess to despise Roosevelt and everything he stood for. But according to this scenario, they used a page out of his playbook.

Their repudiation of him would then be but a smokescreen. But one with a spot threadbare enough to glimpse the Project for a New Century's famous statement that what was needed to rally the nation around their program was a "new Pearl Harbor."
Culpable or not, if this is what 9/11 represented to the administration, how, we asked Rodriguez, would he describe 9/11 to a child? He responded without hesitating.
"I was a magician for thirty years. . . It is very easy to do misdirection, to make you look into one place while you're doing the magic with the other hand." He's obviously inferring that in plain sight, the planes struck; out of sight, bombs exploded. "It's just a big magic trick," Rodriguez concludes. "It's an illusion."

Guess it would take an illusionist to know one

[boastOne43]

2. Alex Jones reported...

"We have received word from numerous different sources that CNN is trying to bait 9/11 truth activists to appear as guests on its programs and attack Charlie Sheen.

WTC survivor and truth activist William Rodriguez was contacted by the Anderson Cooper show and asked if he would go on record as saying the new Pentagon footage dispelled all 9/11 questions. They also requested that he attack Charlie Sheen's public stance on 9/11.

After Rodriguez refused to take the bait and said he supports Sheen 100% CNN cancelled his appearance even as the car to pick him up was en route.

Lawyer Philip Berg and philanthropist Jimmy Walters were also approached by CNN and promised TV time if they agreed to debunk Charlie Sheen. Both refused."

http://prisonplanet.com/articles/may2006/180506attacksheen.htm

[Bushknew]

3. So much for the "Free Press" nt