Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward, and freedom will be defended.

George W Bush

The two questions that Americans ask today are, “Where were you when JFK got shot?” and “Where were you when the towers fell?” Well that latter question came up last week when the fourteenth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center (WTC) right here in the financial section of New York City (N.Y.C) took place. This was the event that propelled the U.S into wars on two fronts. In as much as a prolong war in far off lands violate the principles laid out in San Tzu’s “Art of War.” Plus Hitler also made the mistake of fighting a war on two fronts. We all know what happened in the end. Is America truly winning? Anyway, there were many things that took place at the site that was dubbed “ground Zero” that was not in the news. So now you’ll hear some of the things that were witnessed by True_George during his time serving at Ground Zero.

Where I Was

      So where was I when the planes hit the towers? At that point in time I was doing some serious weight training to get back to the muscular level I used to be at. I developed a daily routine of going to the gym at the Brooklyn Health and Racket Club at 5:30 am. I would do my work out, S.S.S (shit, shave, and shower) put on my clothes and go to work directly from the gym. On that day September 11, 2001 when I was leaving the gym around 8:45 am, the news reported that a plane hit one of the WTC towers. By the time I got to the Brooklyn Bridge the Cops blocked off the Bridge so I went over to the Williamsburg Bridge. Traffic was too heavy I decided not to go to work. I tried calling my job on my cell phone to tell them I wasn’t coming in, but cell phone transmission was down. I got back to my area and stopped to get some gas. I could see the smoke above the sky that was coming from the towers. People were standing around with a dumbfounded look on their face looking up at the smoke. I got back home and saw that all T.V transmission was down, except for one channel which carried the news of the event. Then around 2:00pm the New York State Governor activated the N.Y National Guard. Two hours later my unit called me and told me to get my buns down to the Armory.

Assembled

When I got to the Armory there was a big turnout. Soldiers who I’ve never seen attend a regular drill showed up. In formation we heard the speeches from the commanders then we loaded up on the trucks and headed out to Manhattan and arrived at the Lexington Ave & Park Ave Armory the home Armory of the 69th Infantry. At that Armory we linked up with Bravo battery from the Bronx, Service, and Alpha & Headquarters batteries from Queens. The 69th Infantry had their people there also. That night we were dropped off in pairs on each corner in the financial district (Wall Street).

Downtown Manhattan

When we got to downtown Manhattan it was like a ghost town. It was deserted since the evacuation of downtown Manhattan was ordered. The people who lived in condos in the Battery City developments and other residences in downtown Manhattan was told that they could not return to their home. Hot dog vendors and other vendors, newspaper stands, left their carts with their merchandise unattended as though it was suddenly abandoned. There were lots of debris and a thick layer of grey ash that blanketed the entire area. The weather was warm and the smell of charred wood, sulfur and chemicals filled the air. The World Trade Center site was still burning hours after the buildings collapsed; I’m not sure how long it took them to put out the fire. The only people in the area were the Police, Firefighters, Emergency Medical Services, and search and recovery crews and construction workers operating heavy equipment. The Cops took over a coffee shop and set up an unofficial rest stop, Soldiers, Firefighters etc were also using it to chill out taking a break from their tasks.

The general public was prohibited from being in the downtown area, but that didn’t stop some of them from being there. Some people that lived in the Battery City Condos sunk back to feed their pets, then they would come back to us with complaints that their condo door was kicked in and their condo was burglarized. The only people who had access were the Police and Firemen. At the WTC site where the buildings used to stand; below was the WTC plaza where some high-end stores were located. There was a big hole in the ground and the rumor was that a rope was rigged from the street leading down to the WTC Plaza and some rogue fire fighters repelled down and burglarized the jewelry stores. You’re thinking that it is far-fetched. Think about it if a rope was the only means of entering the WTC Plaza then it can only be the work of the fire fighters or search & rescue personal. They are the only ones who have the equipment to do such a thing. I cannot rule out that corrupted elements of the mentioned departments were doing dirty deeds; one thing for sure is that all the incidents of robberies and condo break in were blacked out from the media. Hopefully the Police and Fire Departments dealt with this internally.

Securing The Area

The first and second night was pretty much the same routine we were put on the corners of the street and acted as security to secure the area. According to some of my fellow soldiers they said that they helped the firefighters with the recovery efforts, and there were some reports of seeing body parts on the site of the collapsed towers. Even though I was in the same area and was directly in the site of the collapsed towers I did not witness any body parts, perhaps I blocked it out; and I did not assist in the recovery efforts. I’m unaware that members of the unit participated in recovery efforts. If they did it was in an unofficial capacity. So if anyone from the unit who was there is reading this, please acknowledge if there was any helping out with the recovery effort. What I did notice were wallets and Id’s of people laying in the grey dust and debris and parts of the airplanes, the landing gear assembly of one of the planes that hit the towers was lying on the ground intact.

Relief Agency Set Up

The third day was pretty interesting; that morning McDonalds set up breakfast stations and were serving breakfast to the relive workers, and uniformed service personal and anyone else who wanted some. Then donations came in from lots of corporations. All brand new products such as utility tools, designer jeans and every type of clothing, boots, shoes, sneakers, underwear, socks etc. The volunteers from disaster relief agencies laid them out; then I could hardly believe my eyes to what took place. It was a free for all. People were grabbing stuff, Cops, Civilians, Soldiers, construction workers, relief workers and volunteers were all grabbing stuff. The people with vehicles filled them with the donated items. Those without vehicles carried whatever they could. It was like a free sale at Walmart. Despite the free for all gabfest, not everyone was pleased concerning the behavior of their people. There was a Police Captain who got pissed off that his people were participating in the gabfest. He made them put back everything they took.

Catered Services

In the evening hours when the unit came back to the area we saw that other food corporations set up lunch and dinner stations. The hotel near Federal Hall started serving catered meals; the Spirit of N.Y. tours stationed one of their ferries at the water front and they were serving catered meals also. I can tell you the meals that the hotel and tour Company were serving was some good shit, it would have cost you if you paid for the type of meals they were serving. Even massage therapists set up stations and were giving free full body massages. Before we were dropped off at out posts, there was a formation and the Commanders gave their speech and complained that the gabfest amounted to looting; and that the relief agencies were complaining that Soldiers were taking donated items, they said the relief agencies were told not to give anything to Soldiers and that the only thing we were allowed to get was  the food or drinks from the food stations and that anyone caught taking donated items will be charged under some article of the State militia law. As it stands what was going on were civilian infiltrators were dressing up in military uniform and were doing misdeeds. They were stealing donated items, breaking into the unattended stores and burglarizing them; going into commercial buildings because private security was not present and taking what they could.

We were on the lookout for these people; they were easy to spot because the manner in which they wore the uniform was not correct. Another problem was that people were volunteering themselves to come to the WTC site to help clean up. They did not represent any relief organization, and often had no form of identification. One cop was complaining that it was a big security breech. They don’t know who was at the site; they did not know if these unidentified people were criminals; they don’t know what was in the boxes that were constantly being dropped off; it was a big cluster fuck. It took a week before the authorities finally started to put in place some type of security control. Volunteers had to be registered, and everyone had to have some type of I.D. So if the volunteers that were already there did not have any personal credentials they were told to leave. A fence was placed around the WTC building sites. The moral of this is that anyone who had bad intentions had a week of free reign to carry out their misdeeds.

Time Spent

Overall, the unit spent two weeks at the site, and then other units were rotated in; plus after security measure were put in place they didn’t need an abundance of security personal. While I was there I observed that a lot of money was spent on the relief operations. Corporations sent help, and the Red Cross, Scientology and other disaster organizations were there. I spoke to some of the so called “volunteers” for those organizations. One lady who did “volunteer” work for the Red Cross told me that the Red Cross sends her all over the country to disaster sites. They pay her air fare; they put her up in five star hotels and they give her a stipend for “expenses.” Like rent. I realized that she was a parasite. She did not volunteer to do relief work because she believe in such an endeavor; she does it to travel and stay in places that most people cannot afford to stay in. She is what we call a professional volunteer; and on an individual level it is very profitable. How many people benefit off other people’s misery? How genuine are these organizations? Sure they do some disaster relief work but I truly believe the cost of disaster relief work is far less than the actual amount they report spending to their corporate sponsors and gov’t funding agencies. So you see the whole thing was turned into a Circus.