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Rodriguez
By: someoneisatthedoor

William Rodriguez was the janitor for tower one of the World Trade Center complex in New York, having worked for American Building Maintenance for almost twenty years prior to the attacks of September 11th, 2001. He witnessed some suspicious things on that day, which he included in his testimony to the 9/11 Commission, though his testimony was taken in secret (whereas many were on TV) and what he saw was never included in the final report. Given that he was recognised and commended for his heroic actions on that day, and was part of the group whose activism pressurised the unwilling or apathetic government into setting up the Commission in the first place, I find it suspect that what he saw has never been officially investigated.

Rodriguez was in the north tower when a plane, allegedly Flight 11, hit it at 8:46 a.m. Fortunately, he was late to work that day because at that time on a normal day he would have been at the top of the tower having breakfast at Windows on the World. Being late, he was at ABM’s offices in the basement of the tower and hence wasn’t trapped at the top. The first he knew of the attack was an explosion, coming from beneath him, between the B2 and B3 levels. His initial reaction was that he thought a generator blew up, and went he went to say this to his colleagues, they heard the impact of the plane on the top of the building. Two different events, he says, from two different directions. A man came running saying ‘explosion, explosion’ and he had his arms extended, and the skin was hanging off the underside of his arms. A few moments later, Rodriguez heard another explosion, and the building oscillated so much that the walls cracked and people cowered in doorways thinking that it was an earthquake. Rodriguez also noticed, and this is confirmed by video shot on the day, that in the Lobby, two floors above, all the plate glass windows had been blown out and marble slabs had been blown off the walls. The suggestion, that has never been investigated, is that a bomb or bombs were planted in the base of the building designed to explode simultaneously with the impact of the plane.

When he got everyone in the offices outside he heard a security guard’s radio blaring that a plane had hit the building, and looked up and saw the impact zone. He saw the hole in the side, and the black smoke pouring out. He resolved to go back inside and go up the tower to help his friends in the kitchen at Windows on the World, where he went for breakfast every morning. He knew all of the 76 people from there who died that day. His supervisor tried to stop him from going back into the building so he took the radio from the security guard and ran back into the tower, down to the basement. There was water everywhere because the sprinkler system got activated. Again, this is odd to say the least because only fires or explosions in the bottom of the tower should set off the sprinkler system down there.

Shortly after, he found a guy who worked for the recycling company who said that he heard people screaming in the elevator, stuck in the basement. They went to the elevator shaft and listened at the doors, and heard people screaming and saying that they were going to drown. Rodriguez was agnostic before September 11th, but at that moment he prayed to God for help. He looked around and found a piece of metal in an area that was meant to empty of construction materials, and he and the other man used this to prise open the doors of the elevator. He looked down and saw that the gap was too long, and he cried again to God for help. He remembered that in the area with the trash compactors for the building and the loading dock there were electricians’ ladders stored and chained up. He ran to that area, praying that there be at least one ladder that was not chained up. When he got there, the only ladder free was the longest one of all of them. After using this ladder to rescue the two people stuck in the lift they explained to him that there was a huge explosion in the basement and they’d fled into the elevator for cover, it had gone down and then they lost power. This strongly suggests that the explosion and fires in the basement were not caused by a fireball caused by the jet fuel barrelling down the elevator shafts, as some have suggested.

After ensuring that those two men got out of the building and into and ambulance, Rodriguez went back inside. Again, people shouted at him to stop but he replied ‘no entiendo, no entiendo’. Inside, he met David Linn, a police officer in charge of the rescue effort. He asked Rodriguez if he had the key, meaning the master key for the complex. Rodriguez had one of only five master keys in existence, the other four being held by the Port Authority, whose officers had run out of the building. He had taken the Port Authority to court in 1996 after he’d fallen down the stairwell and couldn’t be rescued for several hours. He sued for the key and won, and still owns it to this day. The two of them ran to the lobby, where the firemen were trying to use the access key on the elevators. The elevators weren’t working, which is bizarre given that most of them didn’t go as high as the floor where the plane struck and so should have been relatively undamaged. Rodriguez told them he could take them up the staircase, and proceeded to lead the way, unlocking doors onto the stairwell to let people out and showing the firemen up. On the way up they heard lots of small explosions emanating from various parts of the building. One of the firemen suggested it was gas canisters in the kitchens but Rodriguez says that all the kitchens were electrical. This is another phenomenon that has never been explained in the official accounts of the attacks but appears in dozens of witness statements, including several firemen.

When Rodriguez eventually got to the 33rd floor, the firemen having collapsed in need of rest on the 27th, he got out of the stairs and went to a supply closet that he had on that floor, to get dust masks for the people in the smoky stairwell. He found a terrified woman cowering in the closet; terrified because she was a new employee and didn’t know the way down. After Rodriguez took her to the stairs and told to get out he went back into the corridor and then heard something that made him scared for the first time since the attacks started. Coming from the floor above him he heard a noise like heavy equipment being moved around, scraping on the floor. This frightened him because the floor, the 34th, was meant to be completely empty, having been hollowed out eight months earlier. This was the only floor that he bypassed on his way up the tower, the only door that he didn’t unlock. When he got as high as the 39th floor he met officer Linn again. As they were discussing what to do the second plane, allegedly flight 175, hit the south tower. The vibrations hit them and they stumbled, almost falling over. Then they heard a boom, boom, boom, boom, boom and the radio blurted out ‘we lost 65, we lost 65’. According to Rodriguez this meant that the 65th floor had collapsed onto the one below it, and then onto the floor below that, all the way down to the 44th floor, the reinforced sky lobby that was designed to halt such a ‘pancake collapse’. If this is true, then there was an internal collapse in at least one of the towers prior to the total collapses that happened later, and so this internal pancake collapse is not the reason why the towers came down, directly contradicting the NIST Report.

Indeed, Rodriguez escaped from the north tower just before it collapsed, having helped to carry a disabled man down the stairs and out into the ambulance, once the police officer had insisted he not continue his ascent. As Rodriguez came out of the tower he saw the devastation of the first collapse, buildings gouged by falling debris, dust everywhere, the bodies of people who’d thrown themselves out of the towers, and the lady he’d rescued from the 33rd floor, who had been cut in half by falling glass. He describes this last image as the most Dantesque thing I ever saw. Moments later the building started to collapse. Rodriguez heard the boom of what he believes to be explosives in the building, and threw himself under a nearby firetruck. He prayed again, ‘don’t let my mother see my body in pieces, please let her recognise my body’. The building came down, and he was covered in dust. He thought that he was going to die from asphyxiation, despite surviving the collapse, but having trained as a magician and escape artist in his younger days, he was able to carefully control his breathing until the initial rescue parties pulled him from the rubble. Rodriguez is currently pursuing a legal case against the US government, and President Bush in particular, for complicity in the attacks. He has also raised over 100 million dollars for victims of the attacks and travels the world talking to the international media about what he saw and what he suspects really happened.

Article Source: http://journal.ilovephilosophy.com

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