By Yoichi Shimatsu
Exclusive to Rense
9-10-25

24 years after the destruction of the iconic World Trade Center by hijacked aircraft strikes followed by serial explosions from top down, the shocking event has gradually faded from the American memory. Here, as a former business magazine staffer who delivered the latest editions to offices inside the WTC, I recall some of the mood in Lower Manhattan, including the nearby Wall Street district, prior to the terrorist attack. The main thrust of this memoir essay, however, is focused on the vulnerability of the twin tower’s elevator system, both as an obstructive design that impeded rapid evacuation and also enabled secret installation of explosives for the serial demolition of the structure minutes after the aircraft strikes. A point to note is that before the first aircraft strike, the opposite tower suffered a premature explosion – probably due to a timing error in the serial detonation and that mishap is the probable reason for the delay of the serial implosions that top-down demolished the twin towers.

Motive behind the method is always a point of controversy. Deceptive provocation from William Randolph Hearst’s sabotage of the Battleship Maine to enable Teddy Roosevelt’s war to seize Spanish colonies to Franklin Roosevelt’s eagerness for U.S. entry into WWII through diplomatic hostility prompted the Imperial Japanese naval assault on Pearl Harbor (following the secret removal of America’s core-asset aircraft carriers and newer battleships), such deliberate covert acts of warmongering has been a hallmark of the American Dream of global expansionism - an elitist obsession not shared by the majority of a hardworking but gullible American people. The total collapse of the WTC was blamed on the Muslim hijackers of two passenger aircraft that struck the upper floors. Their motive behind the suicide operation was supposedly the arrest of the “blind sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman who was sentenced to life in prison following his 1993 bombing of the parking lot below the WTC office structure.

The far more probable cause was WTC owner Larry Silverstein’s financial cunning – as his surname suggests a shrew Jewish business scammer – plan to demolish the towers on the cheap rather than suffer the astronomical cost of renovation. His purchase of terrorism insurance just prior to the aerial attack was a rather unusual business decision. The convenient conjoining of different motives resulted in the “cluster ‘fork’’’ behind the nationally televised spectacle. As for outcomes, the WTC affair triggered by return on journalistic assignment to Pakistan to chart the war-mongering that blamed Islamic guerrilla enabler Osama Bin Laden for the distant WTC disaster – as a convenient means for the Bush-Cheney plan to extend the desultory Iraq War into mineral-rich and strategically located Afghanistan. Two decades later with Biden’s pullout that left 13 American soldiers behind to die violently, it’s widely assumed that Afghanistan is way too tough to tame and otherwise worthless in terms of lucrative assets.

News Delivery

The many anomalies of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in New York City (and the less destructive Pentagon-targeted aircraft strike) have raised many theories, some plausible, others controversial and those which were quite improbable. In the 1980s as employee of a business magazine published in NYC who routinely delivered the newest edition to offices in the twin towers, the focus of my analysis of 9-11 is on the dual-elevators that required passengers to transfer midway up or down. The 110-floor structure was too tall for a continuous ride from the ground plaza to the top floor level at more than 415 meters above ground level. That split of lifts was a deadly impediment to office workers, and the elevators failed due to a massive outage (probably caused by sabotage, since the emergency controls should have switched on following the rupture of power lines in the uppermost floors. Even more troubling was the early failure of the lower-tier elevators, which by their separate control systems should have kept moving until the final structural collapse.

The inefficient and overcrowded elevators were all too familiar on my magazine delivery, causing long waits especially at lunch hour, especially for me rolling a wheel-mounted suitcase full of the latest issue of Newsfront magazine. It took many hours to deliver to dozens of offices and also giving free samples to prospective subscribers. One of my tactical moves was passage through the dual elevator system in the morning, with delivery to Cantor Fitzgerald first and then working my route downward. In event of a jam midway down, I’d use the stairwell to deliver to mid-level clients and then catching the lift on an uncrowded floor. These maneuvers show how the panicked staffers on upper floors had zero chances of escaping the collapse. Design flaws can be fatal. Luckily for the landlord a horrifying spectacle of the serial collapse of both towers – obviously ground for suspicion of simultaneous demolition with timed explosive charges switched on fear and erased logic for billions of TV viewers.

How It was Done

Aside from passenger elevators, the WTC towers each had a much smaller maintenance lift - a light-weight cage with independent power for service personnel including electricians, plumbers and window washers. Access (unbeknownst to the occupants and visitors) to that smaller lift enabled rapid passage from the basement to the service attic at the structure’s highest point. That unmentionable cable car provides the most plausible explanation for the sabotage of the Twin Towers with serial explosives attached along the main steel pillars demolished the WTC top-down. The method’s precision and totality of chain-detonation was first successfully attempted in January 1993 on the Dunes casino in Las Vegas – seven years prior to 9-11.

The two plane crashes and the serial collapse of the entire structure were clearly two separate acts of targeted sabotage, both carried out with astounding precision – perfectly timed coordination that requires the capabilities of a major intelligence agency during the W. Bush-Cheney regnum. The latter had to have been prepared by a demolition team that had access to the underground tunnels and service elevator – with undetected access from the then “closed for repairs” former office building then being converted into a college campus, which had direct access to the WTC complexes’ underground tunnel maze accessed by repairmen. The college was financed by Canadian Jewish businessman, who had made his fortune in the lumber-sales industry – his identity since scrubbed from the public record (the cover-up continues to this day and hour). Meanwhile WTC owner Larry Silverstein appalled by the astounding cost of repair and renovation of the twin towers, which were built more than 30 years earlier in 1968 and ‘69.

Another motive for a sinister provocative attack was infamously the eagerness of the George W. Bush and Dick Cheney team for a plausible pretext for a punitive military assault on jihadist movements, which had arisen after the U.S. invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Despite the many distracting theories suggested at the time, the main features of the WTC event do fit precisely into a convincing totality of motives. The involvement of Egyptian terrorists (not as patsies) is plausible due to the arrest and imprisonment of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, a fanatical Islamist preacher who eight years earlier attempted to bomb the parking lot under the WTC. That raises the question of whether fanatic elements in Israeli intelligence aka the Mossad have a hand in a clandestine operation to recruit Islamist fanatics in Egypt and enroll dozens of those terrorists in flight schools and muscle-building gyms in Florida? As put by the cop in the movie Casablanca: “Round up the usual suspects!” Shades of Hamas, eh?

WTC NYC: A Personal Affair

My job at a publishing office in the upper floors of 42nd Street near Broadway was strange in many ways, partly due to the day’s work schedule began at 11 p.m. My most important duty as the low man on the totem pole was to step outside in the night air to pick up 6 cups of hot black coffee at a small diner packed with African American hookers and pimps. Getting past the mob of hungry night crawlers with cardboard box of paper cups filled to their steaming brims was an acrobatic achievement. My dexterity was honed inside Saturday Night Fever dance halls in the Puerto Rican-dominant Lower East Side, not far from my 4th floor walk-up flat in the alphabet soup (A-B-C etc.) district.

Across the street, upstairs, my other task was as a stripper (with my clothes on since I wasn’t gay), a job that entailed carefully cutting large pieces of film with a razor blade for photo layout of the pages-to-be of our financial magazine. Then I’d carve out accompanying text from strips of developed film to tack down as captions or spreads of text. After 3 hours my eyes went fuzzy and so I’d wave at the text editor or photographer upon departure to my next night job, which was to sort out packages on convey belts to be delivered to the cargo bays of UPS jets.

At that late hour, Manhattan traffic was still buzzing, so I’d dodge cars and delivery men on bicycles to reach the open-air street theater on 8th Avenue, where the sidewalk was packed with black Amazon-resembling transvestite hookers - all of them between 6 and 7 feet tall and dressed like showgirls. The female impersonators ducked around expensive sports cars of wealthy white men from New Jersey bored with marriage in need of refreshing oral entertainment. On the back seats it was a two-way affair involving a lot of hot dark meat. Was it racist exploitation or simply getting off - New York slang for mutual pleasure. My impression was that it was a crude sign of mental retardation. Anyway, that was back when the gay scene was openly starting to expand. Oh, well, all the more lovely females for me!

Shaking my head at the bizarre ritualistic parade, I’d push on into darkness of poorly lit alleyways to arrive at the industrial building that housed UPS. After sorting out packages along the moving conveyor belts, blurry-eyed I’ve leave work to breakfast in the early dawn hours at one of the cheap cafes south of Chinatown. Then I’d rush to my longer-term job at an artist’s paint store to unload trucks and protect the goods with a steel pole and nun-chucks (two wood rods connected by a chain - no relation with the 18th Street weapons - since the Italian boys who delivered women’s clothing to department stores and shops were infatuated with thieving unprotected goods along the alleyways. Soon after 5 p.m. I’d head back to my 4th floor walk-up for some shut-eye for up to 4 hours, then drink beer or wine with my pals until it was time to push off for midtown at 9. After the first month, you get used to a short sleep cycle and dark eye lids.

The Twin Towers

My baggage of magazines was a detrimental to slipping into crowded elevators, often resulting in being accosted by an angry executive or even an office secretary crushed by my load. Apologetically I tried to humor the irate New Yorkers, they too part of the social pecking order. Once my magazine deliveries were done, I’d reward my unburdened self with a stroll to the old Reformed Church of the Dutch colonial days or tiptoe through the ancient graveyard to read the headstone inscriptions. The cemetery was the only quiet peaceful place in Manhattan - or in all of New York City for that matter - if the peace of the dead counts for anything. Then I’d stroll over to one of the nearby bars packed with Wall Street brokers enjoying a late lunch or simply boozing on the job.

On unburdened better days, I much preferred an IRA bar on the northern edge of the Lower East Side, where the ritual entry procedure involved stuffing a few dollars into a bucket marked NorAid (Northern Ireland aid), a charitable fund for widows and children of fallen or jailed Irish nationalists opposed to British colonialism. Since I wasn’t fond of martinis, I much preferred a draft dark beer from Dublin or a even cheap watery lager like Rhinegold. In contrast to IRA secretiveness, the bored stockbrokers were intrigued when I gave them a copy of our biz mag that they had previously never heard of, but was a literary gem, the best kept secret in the City. That gift out of nowhere usually got my bar bill paid in full, following a brief chat with a waiter to add it to the brokers’ tab. My boss appreciated my extra publicity effort but was kept unawares of the midday boozing by his lowly employee.

BTW, when the publisher went away after deadline back to his home in Petaluma, California, I’d be the sole (part-time) employee in the office, mailing the mag to curious businessmen or trying to fix the lights in the darkroom. Whenever mail arrived from the boss, I’d have to take the subway and then a train out to the racetrack in Long Island for delivery to either the photographer or the so-called editor. They might buy me a beer for my troubles but I never got a tip-off on an upcoming race and the few times that I placed a small bet, it was a total loss. Despite the showmanship in the paddock - or because of it - I figured the races were rigged, like everything else in the Big Apple. Eventually the publishing office was moved to Hoboken, across the Hudson River, in a small office behind a Italian Mafia run bar. So yet another career option hit a dead end. It was time to move uptown, where I was hired as an archivist by the posh New York Museum of Modern Art. I should not trouble you with my brief infatuation with a pretty blond patroness whose braided hair reminded me of the devil. It turned out that her husband was out to kill me. City life is and was not what it’s cracked up to be.

Here, I spare you the ordeal that was Saturday Night Fever dancing at Lower Eastside disco dives - as in look at what the cat dragged in. Things changed for the better after I imported out-of-state ladies for much needed companionship in proper music clubs - although they all desperately wanted to go to real deal discos, which I could not deny them. For dames from the Great American (and Canadian) hinterlands NYC was a nitty-gritty dream world whereas for me as a downtrodden resident it was the stinking underside of Hell. I always kept a pair of nun-chuks in my back pocket to deal with muggers and lunatics, especially after midnight. In truth, the safest place in town was Little Italy, thanks to the good fellows who called me “Luigi”. Do I miss the stately presence of the iconic WTC? Absolutely not! It was a prestigious death trap, whereas my preoccupation was “Stayin’ Alive” like Travolta's Saturday Night Fever - working a crap job and trying to have fun before dying of urban cancer.

If there was anything good about my 9-11 horror story, it was that the disaster prompted my return to the Pakistan-Afghan border region to interview many a Taliban warrior and enjoy pastimes like watching rural polo matches, interviewing soldiers involved in the wars with India in the Kashmir region and managing to survive a bloody insect bite on my right leg which put me in the care of a hostel for Taliban supports. It was already apparent then that the War on Terror was going to end in dismal failure. But all that is another tale in the Kipling school of high adventure.