Now that Rosie O'Donnell is trying to table it on The View, I guess we can talk about it here. First, a news quiz: If, some time after the collapse of World Trade Center towers 1 and 2, a 47-storey office building in a major American city also came crashing to the ground, do you think you'd know about it?
Of course, you would.
But if I were to tell you that such an event actually did happen, could you name that building?
If you are like most North Americans, I'm guessing probably not.
In fact, the collapse of the Salomon Brothers Building, which was also known as WTC 7 and stood but two blocks away from ground zero, occurred late in the day on Sept. 11, 2001.
It remains one of the central anomalies in a day filled with anomalies, yet it was treated then, and remains today, at least in official annals, as an insignificant footnote.
Struck by no aircraft, and little debris, WTC 7 nevertheless had small fires mysteriously burning in several of its middle floors. Judging from photographs, one would assume those fires should have been easily contained.
Yet at 5:20 p.m., in a space of 6.5 seconds, or practically at a free-fall rate, WTC 7 collapsed perfectly into its footprint. It should have been big news, if only because it would have been the first steel-frame building in history to collapse due exclusively to fire. But for some reason, reporters gave it a wide berth.
Shortly after 9/11, when Associated Press published a timeline of events called A Stunning 48 Hours of News, WTC 7 was not mentioned at all. Neither was it in the government's official 9/11 report. And to this day, authorities have only issued an inconclusive draft report as to why the building fell.
Not everyone is so incurious, however. A host of researchers have busily gathered everything they could learn about that day, and WTC 7 in particular.
Though you're unlikely to have seen it, video of the collapse does exist (and can be found on the Internet). The footage exhibits the hallmarks of controlled demolition, including bursts of dust from what appear to be many tiny explosions and the curtain-like plummeting of the entire structure.
During the brief aftermath before WTC 7 disappeared into the memory hole, CBS anchor Dan Rather showed the video and said, "For the third time today, it's reminiscent of those pictures we've all seen too much on television before, where a building was deliberately destroyed by well-placed dynamite."
Many have concluded it was just that. Moreover, they discovered that WTC 7 had unusual tenants, including several floors devoted to each of the FBI, the CIA and mayor Rudy Giuliani's emergency headquarters. It was also home to a legal branch of the Security and Exchange Commission, which allegedly harboured evidence relating to a number of ongoing investigations of market malfeasance.
A PBS television documentary later showed the WTC's owner, Larry Silverstein, describing how he reacted that day: " 'We've had such terrible loss of life,' " he recalled saying, " 'maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse."
You can read into that what you may, just as you can with the fact that Silverstein's group had only acquired WTC six months earlier, for $3.2 billion, and bought insurance that for the first time specifically indemnified acts of terrorism. As of last report, Silverstein had collected $4.6 billion. Finally, from the department of curiouser and curiouser, came another bombshell this year. Researchers unearthed a BBC television report from 9/11 in which the reporter announced the collapse of WTC 7. Strangely, though, the building is still plainly visible over her right shoulder, and would not fall for another 20 minutes. Well, if the rest of the world won't get to the bottom of this, maybe Rosie will.
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