CIA in NYC

[John Young]

The report a while back in the NY Times on the secret
CIA station located in 7 World Trade Center, claimed
its primary role was to surveil UN members and staff.
And its cover was the Secret Service office in the
building (which also housed NYC's Emergency
Operations).

Couple of things on that. The building, which was only
a few years old, is reported to have collapsed due to
high heat of oil storage tanks, a small tank on the upper
floor to serve NYC Emergency Operations, and an
unsually large tank in the basement. The building owner,
Larry Silverstein, who leased the WTC towers, says
the basement tank was for emergency power. Period.

However, while many buildings have emergency power
systems, few have the size of tanks in 7 WTC. Which may
indicate that the building housed a variety of operations
needing uninterruptable power, and which, in turn, could
explain why NYC put its emergency operations center
there despite public ridicule for putting it on a high floor,
of a glass walled building, next to a likely terrorist
target.

Moreover, it is unlikely that the purpose of the CIA station
was only that made public to the Times. More likely is
that the public story is a cover for what the station did.

One possibility is that it engaged in communication
interceptions, if not transmissions to agents as well, and 
could have made use of the antennas atop WTC 1, or 
antennas cloaked by the public antennas.

Now whether bin Laden, or whoever planned the attack,
knew of this, or suspected it, could enrich the speculation
about why the towers were targeted.

Certainly it would take no comsec genius to perform
analysis of what was coming and going atop the towers,
or that may have been going on under cover of the
tower's emissions. All the public emissions could have
been discounted and the remainder subject to detailed
scrutiny.

Perhaps the ordinary mujahadeen couldn't do that kind
of analysis but certainly a slew of other nations could.
As well as private comsec companies, of which there
are dozens in NYC peddling their services to US and
foreign clients.

So, if the CIA was surveilling these private security
companies, along with the comms of the UN members,
it may well be that countersurveillance picked up the
snoops and the information was peddled to assassins
or used to justify engaging hit squads to take out the
transgressors.

Finally, oil storage tanks are required by building and
fire codes to have especially durable fire-proofed enclosures,
the design based on the size of the tank and any expected
worse case scenario. At least this is the case when a
facility is subject to municipal regulations. Which we 
know the WTC was not. Whether the Center's unusual
vulnerability attacted the attack is a fair question.

But don't expect any findings to be made public is this
is the case, for that might require delving into which
operations in the Center invited retaliation by those
who had been attacked by them.