Larry Silverstein - Criminal Mastermind or Greedy Old Man?

A lot of the threads here cover all of the events of 9/11 in a single thread and they get really messy and hard to follow and keep up with. Let's just take a moment to look purely at Mr Larry Silverstein (aka Lucky Larry).

I also just want to say, I am writing this as someone sitting on the fence, so while doing my research I'm looking at all the facts and not just cherry picking ones to fit into a view that is either very "truther" or "debunker".

So, let's start at the beginning:

Pre July 2001
A property risk assessment report is prepared for Silverstein Properties before it acquires the lease for the World Trade Center. It identifies the scenario of an aircraft hitting one of the WTC towers as one of the “maximum foreseeable losses.” The report says, “This scenario is within the realm of the possible, but highly unlikely.” Further details of the assessment, such as who prepared it, are unreported.

Larry knows going into the lease that the buildings are going to have to come down eventually , according to a 1971 New York Council ban on asbestos. They are going to have to be taken down piece by piece and the cost will be in the billions.

July 24th 2001
Larry and Westfield America finalize a deal worth $3.2 billion to purchase a 99-year lease on the World Trade Center. The agreement covers the twin towers & WTC buildings 4 and 5.

Larry already owns WTC 7, which was built in 1987.

This is the first time for the WTC to change hands since it opened in 1973.
Larry only uses $14 million of his own money for the deal. His partners put up a further $111 million, and banks provide $563 million in loans.

The Port Authority had taken out insurance for just $1.5 billion, but Larry's lenders insist on increasing the insurance to $3.55 billion.

August 23rd 2001
Former FBI Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden Expert John O'Neill Begins Job as Head of Security at the WTC. He had quit his job at the FBI in disgust after all his investigations kept getting blocked. Larry employed him and insisted he start in the post no later than the first week of September. He was in his new office and killed in the attacks on the 11th.

Sept. 1st to Sept. 7th 2001
Larry takes over control of the WTC. Although Larry didn't actually take control of the WTC until the 1st week of Sept., according to the New York Times, “Silverstein Properties asked Mr. Reiss (Port Authority) to let it more fully operate everything from safety systems to tenant relations" before the 1st week of September.

Sept. 10th 2001
Howard Rubenstein cancels a meeting he had scheduled at the WTC for the morning of Sept. 11th. Rubenstein is a famous public relations man for powerful New Yorkers and has represented Larry for many years.

Also on Sept. 10th an anti-terrorism meeting at the WTC scheduled for the morning of 9/11 is cancelled.

9/11
Instead of going to work at the WTC, Larry goes to see his dermatologist, so fortunately he isn't in the building when the attacks occur. Two of his children are delayed from going to work at the WTC, so they are fortunately not there either. His employees aren't so fortunate and 4 of them are killed in the attacks.

The afternoon of 9/11
With regards to WTC 7, Larry tells the fire dept. commander to "pull it" and he later clarifies this to mean the contingent of firemen inside the building.

To be continued......


[edit on 20-7-2009 by Mark_Amy]

The evening of 9/11
Larry's lawyers claim that he calls them to see “whether his insurance policies could be read in a way that would construe the attacks as two separate, insurable incidents rather than one.”

(To put this into context this would be like a person leasing an expensive house, and immediately taking out an insurance policy covering the entire value of the house and specifically covering bomb attacks. Six weeks later two bombs go off inside the house, separated by one hour. The house burns down, and the lessor immediately sues the insurance company to pay him twice the value of the house. In Larry's case, he won.)

Sept. 12th
Larry tells people that he's going to be able to claim for double the insurance after speaking to his lawyers.
Larry instructs his architect, David Childs, to begin sketching plans for the new building.

May 2002
Larry receives a full payout of $861 million for the collapse of WTC 7.

October 23rd 2002
To support Larry's $7 billion claim on the twin towers, he commissions a study to blame the collapse of the twin towers on the failure of support columns. The study found this not to be the case, but supported his claim by saying that the collapse of one tower didn't cause the other one to collapse, so the events should be kept separate. Another study commissioned by the insurers later contradicted Larry's study.

May 23rd 2007
Insurance companies have so far paid out $2.55 billion and today Larry gets another $2 billion. How much Westfield America have received or are to receive is unclear.

March 18th 2008
Larry is now claiming $12.3 billion in damages from the airlines & airline security companies for allowing the planes to be hijacked. The claim was originally filed in 2004, but an amount hadn't been set.

All the families of the victims of 9/11 accepted a payout from the Victim Compensation Fund and unfortunately gave up their rights to sue the airlines.

So, make of this what you will. Criminal mastermind or greedy old man?

I put together all this information from:
911research.wtc7.net...
onlinejournal.com...
www.debunk911myths.org...
www.historycommons.org...

I'm afraid IMO I'd have to go so far as to say

PROBABLY BOTH.


A Criminal mastermind AND a greedy old man.
or at the very least a very inconsiderate man.

No one intheir right mind a day after the atrocity would be straight on the phone to the insurance company.
The real galling part is trying to sue the airlines , its not as if they invited the terrorists to hijack the planes is it?

Saying that I knew someone who lost a son and 30 minutes after hearing the news phoned their partner and asked "How much did he leave me?"

how about a 50\50 on both.......... lol pretty disgusting.... I am sure he knew what was going on.... he just happened to not go there on that day due to his wife bugging him to see the dermatologist give me a break......and he just happened to buy a building that was largely in the red give me a break... and he just happened to take out a terrorist insurance policy the month he bought it which happened to be 1 month before 911 give me a break........and he just happened to say pull it regarding WTC7 .....give me a fing break!! he also just so happened to make billions of the whole affair give me a huge fing break break break!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah indeed he is both, there was no doubt in my mind that he was in on it before i read this thread, and then reading that he didnt make officetime coz of a dermatoligist and his kids being late just put the hammer on the nail.

Guilty

Best regards

Loke.:.

ps.

In the country i live in, when you lease you dont have ownership of it, how come he gets the insurance and not the real owners?

[edit on 20-7-2009 by Loke.]

I've been studying the insurance deals and lawsuits for a thread of my own, and its a complicated matter. I was taken by a bad source and made a incorrect post on the subject (that Larry chose a policy with a double premium) and have been looking into it.

To be honest, as it stands it just seems like greedy with a good lawyer. The lawyers failed the first time but succeeded the second time.

The way they won the second case was definitely after the fact or they wouldn't have lost the first one. The way they won the second case was interesting. There was an insurance case where the same storm left the area and then came back. It turned out to be cheaper for the insurance company to qualify it as 2 events. The industry standard before that for definition of "incident" was 72 hours between events. If Larry's lawyers knew about this precedent, they would have won the first case too.

The final ruling was 4.8 billion from 25 insurers.

I've posted several times on the insurance issues in this case in different threads. They are very interesting and complex.

Just on the face of it; guy leases buildings for 99 years, guy loads up big on insurance, buildings are destroyed almost immediately by hooligans, guy collects double the insurance on a technicality, . . . insurance companies and police go to work on the guy to try to get him jailed for insurance fraud. I think that's what would happen in a typical case like this, but 9/11 was different.

Were there too many co-conspirators in high places? Were the insurance companies brought onside through pressure? I think it is likely.

Here is the short version of the secret conversation with the insurance companies.

Company: "We are not going to pay Larry and furthermore we are going to make sure that he is put away for a million years. What he did sends the wrong message to every property owner in America. He's not going to get away with this."

Shadowy high level operative: "Heh, heh, heh. I know you guys are pissed off and yeah, I don't like it any better than you do, but look at it this way: You can spend a lot of time swimming upstream on this and trying to put the toothpaste back into the tube and Larry in jail, or you can go with the flow and make up your losses in terroism insurance. I mean, hell, we've created a whole new industry for you!"

My own opinion: I think Larry was greedy and in on the conspiracy. "Mastermind" however is not something I would accuse him of.

[edit on 20-7-2009 by ipsedixit]

Just on the face of it; guy leases buildings for 99 years, guy loads up big on insurance, buildings are destroyed almost immediately by hooligans, guy collects double the insurance on a technicality, . . . insurance companies and police go to work on the guy to try to get him jailed for insurance fraud. I think that's what would happen in a typical case like this, but 9/11 was different.

Actually, thats pretty much BS. He didn't "load up big" on insurance, the policy was less than the value of the property. He didn't collect double, he collected 4.8 billion.

The insurance company(s) did go to court. As far as the police, where is the fraud?

Originally posted by jprophet420
As far as the police, where is the fraud?

That's for the police to determine. Where is the investigation?

What I am saying is what fraud? How did he fraudulently obtain money from the insurance company?

Well we can all ask this question forever but my question isn't why this time.

It's more along the lines of where is this money going?

Could you imagine someone being pulled over by a cop and finding even remotely this kind of cash on them? Instant confiscation and drug trafficking/cartel leader even if it was all hard earned cash.

If anything the banks with these deposits should be freezing the account and attaching about 600 lawyers to the account. Or at least follow the money and see where it goes.

In the country i live in, when you lease you dont have ownership of it, how come he gets the insurance and not the real owners?

[edit on 20-7-2009 by Loke.]

When you have multi apartments occupying the same ground area it`s kind of impossible to buy that space, think of loads of flats in one tower no two people can own the same land, afaik the 99 year lease is renewed each time it is sold, this is how it works in my country anyway, when you buy a flat in a block it is theoretically yours, but you still have to pay for ground rent.

Hope this clears it up .

Originally posted by ipsedixit
guy loads up big on insurance

I wanted to highlight this belief as well because I've seen it mentioned here a lot. I don't believe that increasing the amount of insurance was his original idea, like I put in my OP it was his lenders who insisted on increasing the insurance amount to $3.55 billion.

Of course, I don't know what to believe and what not to believe anymore, but it is conceivable to me that they insisted upon that.

[edit on 20-7-2009 by Mark_Amy]

reply to post by Mark_Amy

I don't know who these lenders were. It would be interesting to have that information with a view to determining if Silverstein were involved in a criminal conspiracy as I believe he was.

Playing devil's advocate for a moment: Let's say that Silverstein's insurance claims were perfectly legitimate and all of his conduct in this affair was perfectly innocent.

It still seems to me that, in the normal course of events involving most people, there would have been a police investigation of the matter, if only to show that justice has been done. Let's face it, Silverstein looks very bad in all of this.

I think an honest businessman would insist on a police investigation, if only to make it perfectly clear to anyone dealing with him, especially insurance companies, that he is an honest man.

reply to post by ipsedixit


I meant to add in my last post, but I can't edit it, I'm not sure why. Anyway, this is what I wrote in response to your previous post and it's relevant also to your last post:

I meant to add that I agree with you about the "mastermind" bit. That is a bit of a strong word and I don't think anyone would ever consider the greedy old so and so a mastermind! I should have made a clearer distinction in my OP...something like "Innocent Opportunist or Greedy Old Man with Inside Knowledge" I have a feeling not too many people would go with the "innocent opportunist!"

There is something that bugs me though. I'm not sure about the legal aspect, but is it a crime to have knowledge about something and not doing anything about it? I assume it must be a crime, especially when people are killed. It must be like aiding and abetting or criminal negligence maybe.

So, if Larry is guilty of that, he must be so confident that he will never get prosecuted for it because isn't he just pushing his luck with all these insurance claims?? I think it if was me, I would be thinking, "OK, I got away with claiming double and I got $4 billion whatever, there's no way I'm gonna go and claim another $12 billion from the airlines and risk a massive investigation!"

With that thought in mind, I then start thinking he either must be innocent even though all the facts scream otherwise, or he is just ultra-confident because all of the perpetrators are protecting each other and know that if they all stick together then nothing will bring them down.

Originally posted by Mark_Amy
With that thought in mind, I then start thinking he either must be innocent even though all the facts scream otherwise, or he is just ultra-confident because all of the perpetrators are protecting each other and know that if they all stick together then nothing will bring them down.

The above quote is very much to the point. I think Larry's function in the plot was to be the front man, the innocent buffeted by events that he had no control over, the average New Yorker writ large. Injured by what happened but fortunately covered by insurance. Ready to soldier on and rebuild even bigger and better. A true New Yorker. The spirit of the city!

These people really have no perception of themselves.

But if all that failed, Larry has over a billion dollars and extremely well heeled and powerful friends who would go down with him. Conrad Black found out that hundreds of millions of dollars couldn't keep him out of jail, but other than Bernie Madoff, how many billionaires go to jail? Did Robert Vesco go to jail? That big junk bond guy, Michael Milken, went to jail but he didn't do much time and was worth billions when he got out.

Billionaires who go to jail are a rarity.

[edit on 20-7-2009 by ipsedixit]

reply to post by Mark_Amy


Mark_Amy,

Great work here! Also please remember that in my "Financial Proof Thread", that the usual suspects in 9/11 were either "adversely" or "in adversely" involved....either way however, his perpetual admission in where he gives the infamous quote "pull it", proves that he is at the very least guilty after the fact.

However, it should also be noted that:

[WTC 7] contained offices of the FBI, Department of Defense, IRS (which contained prodigious amounts of corporate tax fraud, including Enron’s), US Secret Service, Securities & Exchange Commission (with more stock fraud records), and Citibank’s Salomon Smith Barney, the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management and many other financial institutions. [Online Journal]

The SEC has not quantified the number of active cases in which substantial files were destroyed [by the collapse of WTC 7]. Reuters news service and the Los Angeles Times published reports estimating them at 3,000 to 4,000. They include the agency's major inquiry into the manner in which investment banks divvied up hot shares of initial public offerings during the high-tech boom. ..."Ongoing investigations at the New York SEC will be dramatically affected because so much of their work is paper-intensive," said Max Berger of New York's Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann. "This is a disaster for these cases." [New York Lawyer]

Citigroup says some information that the committee is seeking [about WorldCom] was destroyed in the Sept. 11 terror attack on the World Trade Center. Salomon had offices in 7 World Trade Center, one of the buildings that collapsed in the aftermath of the attack. The bank says that back-up tapes of corporate emails from September 1998 through December 2000 were stored at the building and destroyed in the attack. [TheStreet]

Lucky Larry has gotten away with making billions from this crime. And it is amazing how little guilt these guys show as they live their lives.But everywhere he goes, we are there to confront him at each chance we get.

Marc
wearechange

He was pretty dumb too for using the words "pull it" giving a hard time for the other criminals to defend him.

And here's the latest in Lucky Larry's new purchase:

Sears Building aka Willis Tower...in Chicago

www.youtube.com...

Should the Chicagonites be worried?

And who other than Lucky Larry's close friend about to become mayor; Rahn Emanuel.