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The
British Knights DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE The editor-in-chief of Fire Engineering magazine, William A. Manning, issued an urgent call to action to America s firefighters at the end of 2001, calling for a forensic investigation and demanding that the steel from the site be preserved to allow investigators to determine what caused the collapse. The destruction and removal of evidence must stop immediately, Manning wrote. Such destruction of evidence, he said, shows the astounding ignorance of government officials to the value of a thorough, scientific investigation of the largest fire-induced collapse in world history. For more than three months, structural steel from the World Trade Center has been and continues to be cut up and sold for scrap. Crucial evidence that could answer many questions about high-rise building design practices and performance under fire conditions is on the slow boat to China, Manning says, perhaps never to be seen again in America until you buy your next car. I have combed through our national standard for fire investigation, NFPA 921, but nowhere does one find an exemption allowing the destruction of evidence for buildings over 10 stories tall, Manning said. Clearly, there are burning questions that need answers. Based on the incident's magnitude alone, a full-throttle, fully resourced, forensic investigation is imperative. Three months later, the Science Committee of the House of Representatives reported that the WTC investigation was hampered by the destruction of crucial evidence. The committee report of March 6, 2002 says, Some of the critical pieces of steel were gone before the first [investigator] ever reached the site. The investigation Manning called for never happened, and never will, because the essential evidence is now destroyed: Valuable evidence has been lost irretrievably, Chairman of the Science Committee, Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-NY) said. The [FEMA-sponsored] building performance assessment currently being conducted of the World Trade Center is just that: an assessment, not an investigation, Prof. Glenn Corbett of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City told the Science Committee in March. Corbett had previously called the FEMA-led investigation uncoordinated and superficial. The World Trade Center disaster demands the most comprehensive detailed investigation possible. No event in our entire fire service history has ever come close to the magnitude of this incident, Corbett wrote in the January 2002 issue of Fire Engineering. You would think we would have the largest fire investigation in world history. You would be wrong, he wrote, We are literally treating the steel removed from the site like garbage, not like crucial fire scene evidence. WHO'S IN CHARGE? The New York Times was unable to find out who was behind the destruction of evidence. On Dec. 25, 2001, the Times reported, Officials in the mayor s office declined to reply to written and oral requests for comment over a three-day period about who decided to recycle the steel and the concern that the decision might be handicapping the investigation. I must say that the current investigation, some would argue that review is the more appropriate word, seems to be shrouded in excessive secrecy, Chairman Boehlert said. There are no clear lines of authority, he said, No one is in charge. Before the dust had settled on September 11, the mayor of New York City, Rudolph Giuliani, and Kenneth Holden of the city s Dept. of Design and Construction (DDC), contracted 4 major construction management companies to begin the removal of the debris from the World Trade Center. Three of the four major companies involved in the clean-up are foreign owned: AMEC, Bovis Lend Lease, both headquartered in London; and Turner, a subsidiary of Germany s Hochtief. Only Tully Construction of Flushing, New York, is a truly American-owned company. Peter Tully, president of the company, was, notably, the only person willing to speak openly with AFP about his work at the WTC site. The mayor s office and DDC called us on Sept. 11...I was there every day," Tully told AFP. "On the site we had at least three meetings a day with Ken Holden and Mike Burton [executive deputy commissioner of DDC]. The WTC site was initially divided into four quadrants and Tully Construction was assigned to Quadrant 3. Tully told AFP that his company had worked on the South Tower, WTC 4 and 5, and the 425,000 square foot underground retail mall. EVERYTHING WAS PULVERIZED
Tully Construction specializes in concrete. AFP asked Tully if he had ever seen concrete pulverize as it did at the WTC. No never, he said. Tully said that there were hot spots where he observed literally molten steel. Asked about what could have caused such intense heat, Tully said, Think about the jet fuel. BRITISH MANAGEMENT The London-based firm AMEC, ranked by Engineering News Record magazine as the world s largest firm , oversaw the actual management of the debris removal at both the Pentagon and the WTC. AMEC was the only construction company working at both disaster sites, the company s website says, AMEC is managing Hudson River barging operations to transport the rubble from the entire WTC site to a landfill on Staten Island and to steel recycling operations in New Jersey. AMEC had just finished the renovation at the Pentagon when it was called to manage the removal of debris there and at the World Trade Center. AMEC was placed in charge [by the City of New York] of organizing and engineering the around-the-clock clean up operation in the northwest sector, the website says, which included the North Tower and 6 WTC (U.S. Customs House). The company also cleaned up the 47-story WTC 7, which mysteriously collapsed late in the afternoon of 911. AMEC co-managed the WTC site with another London-based firm, Bovis Lend Lease, from January 2002. Bovis was a somewhat troubled construction subsidiary of Britain s P&O, which was taken over by Australia s Lend Lease Corp in 1999. Sir Frank Lampl, a Czechoslovakian who emigrated to England at age 42, heads Bovis. Lampl, who claims to have been imprisoned in Auschwitz and Dachau during the Nazi era, is also a British knight. Mary Costello, spokesperson for Bovis in New York, told AFP that the company had assumed overall responsibility for the WTC site on Jan 4, 2002. She didn t want to discuss what buildings Bovis had worked on and said, You should not be contacting us. You should be speaking to DDC, Costello said. Calls to DDC public affairs department are neither answered nor returned. Turner Construction, the third foreign firm, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hochtief AG, headquartered in Essen, Germany. Turner was unwilling to discuss its role at the WTC site. AMEC & THE PENTAGON AMEC is an informal acronym for Asset Management and Engineering Consultancy, according to the firm s communications director David Paterson. Paterson told AFP that oil and gas extraction provides 25 percent of the company s revenue. AMEC operates the North Sea oilrigs for Shell and British Petroleum, Paterson said. AMEC had just completed a project to strengthen and renovate a section of the Pentagon, Wedge 1, when the building was attacked. The damaged area is between Wedges 1 and 2. Marcella Diaz, communication director for the firm s U.S. subsidiary, AMEC Construction Management, told AFP that the company s work on the Pentagon had been completed on the Friday before Sept. 11. When AFP asked how AMEC responded to criticism that crucial evidence from the WTC had been improperly disposed of, Diaz said, "It's the first time I've heard such criticism." Paterson told AFP that AMEC is the prime contractor for the U.S. Dept. of Defense on environmental work. The firm was paid some $752 million for its 2-year renovation and clean up at the Pentagon, according to Rachel Decker, spokesperson for the Pentagon s renovation entity known as PENREN. The fact that a British firm had been given the contract to renovate the Pentagon was not a problem, Decker said. CITY OF NEW YORK Asked about who was in charge of the clean up at the WTC, Paterson said, The City of New York was the project manager. The director of DDC, Kenneth Holden, was the person in charge at the site, Paterson said. AMEC is in line for further construction work at both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center according to the Daily Mail. The company s London-based chief executive, Sir Peter Mason said about the Pentagon clean up, The target is to have it reopened for business by Sept. 11, 2003, as a point of principle. Sir Peter Mason is a Knight of the British Empire. The former mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, who gave the management of the WTC site to the two British firms, AMEC and Bovis Lend Lease, received an honorary knighthood in the Order of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth II on Feb. 13, 2002.
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A
foreign company - headed by a Knight of the British Empire - managed the
controversial clean-up of the rubble at the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon. 
Think
of the thousands of file cabinets, computers, and telephones in those
towers - I never saw one everything was pulverized, Tully said, Everything
that was above grade above the 6th and 7th floor disintegrated it was
like an explosion. 