--- Begin Message ---
-Caveat Lector-
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Zimmerman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2002 5:50 AM
Subject: [Lis-LEAF] Prior Knowledge of Sept. 11 Not Just Urban Legend
http://www.insightmag.com/news/269873.html
Prior Knowledge of Sept. 11 Not Just Urban Legend
Posted Sept. 10, 2002
By Jeffrey Scott Shapiro
"What are you looking at?" asked the schoolteacher as she approached one of
her freshman students. The boy, a young Palestinian, seemed captivated as he
stared out the window across Brooklyn toward the lower downtown area of
Manhattan.
"Do you see those two buildings?" he asked while pointing toward the World
Trade Center. "They won't be standing there next week." It was noon, Sept.
6, 2001.
Antoinette DiLorenzo didn't take her student's comment all too seriously. Of
course the twin towers would be there next week, she assured him. The
student shook his head and reiterated his prediction until his 15-year old
brother, a sophomore, elbowed him and told him to be quiet. "He's just
kidding," the older boy said politely.
Five days later at 8:45 a.m., DiLorenzo heard a loud explosion from the
north. Thunderstruck, she turned to the window and eventually watched both
towers collapse into shattered glass and crumbled steel.
Many people believed this story was nothing more than an urban legend when
they first heard it. Everyone has heard similar stories in the wake of such
a disaster. Despite the almost unbelievable circumstances of the story, I
was able to confirm it last October while working as a crime reporter for
the Journal News, a New York-based Gannett newspaper. Catie Marshall, a
spokeswoman for the New York City Board of Education, confirmed that school
officials reported the incident to police and that the matter had since been
taken over by the FBI Joint Terrorist Task Force (FBI-JTTF).
New Utrecht High School was closed Sept. 12, 2001, but as soon as it
reopened the following morning, a shaken DiLorenzo quietly approached a New
York City Police Department (NYPD) school-safety officer in the school's
first-floor lobby. Soon, a dozen investigators stormed the school,
interrogating students and searching lockers.
After federal agents questioned DiLorenzo, police detectives questioned her
fourth-period class to see if anyone else had heard the boy's comments. Once
the detectives were finished, the boy and his brother forcibly were taken to
the 62nd Precinct headquarters, where two investigators with the FBI-JTTF
questioned them for several hours. Their father, who was in Israel at the
time of the attacks, was scheduled to fly home Sept. 11 on a commercial
airliner, but he was delayed when all flights to the United States were
grounded.
"They asked us if we knew [Osama] bin Laden or if we knew the airline
hijackers," the older brother told me. "They were convinced my brother was
not only a part of the attacks but that he had helped plan them. They
believed it, I could see it in their eyes."
The two boys were grilled for hours. By the end of the interviews, they had
answered repeated questions about what they had said in class the week
before.
"From the angle we were looking at, you could only see one of the trade
towers because one was hidden behind the other," the older brother told me.
"My brother likes attention, and so he called me over and pointed out the
window toward the tower. He smiled at me and said, 'Do you know why you can
only see one building? Because I blew the other one up.'"
The first time I heard the boy's explanation I considered that he was
telling me the truth. But school officials said the boy's explanation about
the twin towers simply didn't add up.
"You may not have been able to clearly see the gap between them, but you
could certainly tell there were two buildings," one official told me.
My story was published Oct. 11, 2001, by the Journal News ? on page 7A. The
editors' reason for publishing the story on the inside was that it was
"sensitive" and could cause a great deal of "outrage and backlash." By the
end of the day I was back to being a free-lancer.
The next day, Jonathan Alter published an online column for Newsweek.com
that verified my story, and MSNBC repeatedly played an interview I had given
Matt Lauer that morning on the Today show. Both the Daily News and the New
York Post published follow-ups crediting the Journal News, and I received
phone calls from media organizations from across the nation.
Both Dateline NBC and ABC's 20/20 invited me to their offices and asked me
to do a follow-up with them. Unfortunately, no one from the school or police
department was authorized to grant them an on-camera interview, which made
it difficult for them to go forward. Luckily, an editor at a Manhattan-based
magazine contracted me to stay on the story.
During my continued investigation I learned that the FBI-JTTF was
investigating two other students in the New York metropolitan area for the
same reason.
On Sept. 10, 2001, a sixth-grade student of Middle Eastern descent in Jersey
City, N.J., said something that alarmed his teacher at Martin Luther King
Jr. Elementary School. "Essentially, he warned her to stay away from lower
Manhattan because something bad was going to happen," said Sgt. Edgar
Martinez, deputy director of police services for the Jersey City Police
Department. Initially, the Jersey City rumor was met with some controversy.
The New York Times called it an unsubstantiated rumor, and both the Daily
News and the Jersey Journal quoted a board of education official who denied
that the boy had made any reference to the Sept. 11 attacks at all. Despite
their reports, Martinez said the FBI-JTTF took over the matter for further
investigation.
On Sept. 11, NYPD school-safety officers interrogated a Middle Eastern boy
at Health Opportunities High School in the Bronx who had made similar
comments that alarmed his teacher. Catie Marshall said the boy told his
peers something as the school was being evacuated on Sept. 11.
"He warned them not to ride any city buses because he had been told at his
mosque the week before to stay off all public transportation for a while,"
said one NYPD officer from the investigating 40th Precinct. "He said it
wouldn't be safe." The FBI-JTTF since has taken over the matter.
One New Utrecht official told me that of the 509 Arab-American students who
attend the school, many have come forward with their own stories about
having prior knowledge. "Kids are telling us that the attacks didn't
surprise them," she told me. "This was a nicely protected little secret that
circulated in the community around here. I guess they were talking about it
among themselves, but they didn't share it with us ? at least not before the
attacks."
According to students, many of their Arab-American peers were seen taking
photographs of the crumbling twin towers from New Utrecht on Sept. 11.
"Don't you think it's strange so many of them happened to take their cameras
to school that particular day?" one student asked me.
I was beginning to get the picture. Both Brooklyn and New Jersey
historically have been associated with terrorism. According to an FBI
indictment against bin-Laden, al-Qaeda members used to operate secretly out
of the now-defunct Alikifah Refugee Center on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn,
an office surrounded by Islamic schools and mosques. Today, the former
organization's address has been stripped from the building and co-opted into
a private business that sells Middle Eastern fragrances, incense and
hardbound copies of the Koran. Those familiar with the center told me that
New Jersey-based Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman was a frequent
visitor to the secret al-Qaeda hideout.
Police always have had concerns about sleeper agents in the area. They
particularly were concerned by a story I had heard from several NYPD sources
about an abandoned rental car that was parked in front of a mosque only a
few blocks from New Utrecht.
The car had been rented under the phony name "Bomkr" from Logan
International Airport in Boston shortly before the attacks. Investigators
thought the name sounded a lot like "bomb car." The anonymous party rented
several other cars from Logan, all of which either have disappeared or been
abandoned. Police suspect the cars were used by al-Qaeda operatives to
return to their home bases after the attacks.
I turned in my story to my editor who, after reading it, hesitated and then
opted to pay me a kill fee instead. I called the New York Times Magazine. "I
don't doubt the boy actually said these things," a top editor told me. "But
we don't know why he said them."
I received a similar wave of responses from a variety of national magazines.
I reflected on a conversation I had had with someone I knew at NBC who told
me that Dateline actually had known about the New Utrecht incident before I
published my story. "No one wanted to follow up on it," he told me. "They
figured it either wasn't true or it would be too hard. They were only
interested in the story after you broke it first."
It's been one year since I first began working this story. There isn't a day
that goes by that I don't think about what that man at NBC said to me. Even
Marshall admitted she was surprised that it took as long as it did for the
New Utrecht story to get out and that she was even more surprised that more
news agencies didn't follow up.
I don't have the resources to continue an ongoing investigation into who had
prior knowledge of the attacks ? but I am sure someone out there does. Many
things have happened since I broke my first story. On Nov. 9, 2001, my
sources informed me that the same boy who predicted the attacks told school
officials there would be a plane crash on Nov. 12. I decided to inform an
FBI agent I knew who told me that without specific information, there was
little they could do.
Once again, the boy's prophecy came true.
Three minutes after American Airlines Flight 587 took off from JFK
International Airport to the Dominican Republic, both its engines fell from
its wings, dooming the plane to crash in Belle Harbor, located in the
Rockaway section of Queens. Of the 260 people aboard, there were no
survivors. To date, authorities suspect the crash was an accident. I'm not
so sure.
Recently I learned the investigation into the New Utrecht incident had been
closed because authorities were "unable to obtain any further viable
information that would explain what really happened." School sources tell me
DiLorenzo has "stood firm" on her account of the boy's comments.
There's a story out there ? and it needs to be covered.
Jeffrey Scott Shapiro is an investigative reporter who spent several months
covering the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City. He still is researching the
issue of prior knowledge and can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
****************************************************************************
********************
"Whenever legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the
people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put
themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved
from any further obedience."
- - John Locke, 1690
****************************************************************************
*************************************
"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority.
It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the
people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who
mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good
masters, but they mean to be masters." -- Daniel Webster
****************************************************************************
*************************************
"I am sure there was no man born marked of God above another for none comes
into the world with a saddle upon his back, neither any booted and spurred
to ride him."- Last words of Richard Rumbold before being hanged for
planning an insurrection against the tyrant Charles II, 1679
****************************************************************************
*************************************
_________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
Liberty's Educational Advocacy Forum
http://freedomlaw.com
promotes "action that raises the cost of State violence for its
perpetrators ... lay(ing) the basis for institutional change." [Noam
Chomsky]
Freedom Law.com Self Help Clinic and Sovereign Law Library
http://freedomlaw.com/selfhelp.htm
Not a high-tech law firm brochure, "because a lawyer is only
as smart as you make him "[Max Katz] and
"the Law . . . should be accessible to
every man and at all times." [Franz Kafka]
For Liberty in Our Lifetime,
R.J. Tavel, JD
Support our affiliates, like, CASHevolution "Financial Freedom by Choice"
http://rjtaveljd.cashevolution.com/
SUBSCRIBE TO Lis-LEAF the
Learning Electronically About Freedom mailing service at
http://freedomlaw.com/FORM.html
Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Shortcut URL to this page:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Lis-LEAF
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
<FONT COLOR="#000099">Plan to Sell a Home?
</FONT><A HREF="http://us.click.yahoo.com/J2SnNA/y.lEAA/MVfIAA/xYTolB/TM";><B>Click
Here!</B></A>
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->
Please let us stay on topic and be civil.
To unsubscribe please go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cia-drugs
-Home Page- www.cia-drugs.org
OM
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
--- End Message ---
