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''William Rodríguez''' was a janitor at the ] of the ] during the ].<ref>{{cite web | title=CNN publication September 12, 2001 | url = http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/new.york.terror/}}</ref> On 9/11, he was in the basement of the North Tower when ] crashed into the building.<ref>{{cite web | title=CNN publication September 12, 2001 | url = http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/new.york.terror/}}</ref> After the attacks, he received awards for heroism.<ref name="csmonitor"> </ref> In 2002, he initiated an economic amnesty program for undocumented victims of 9/11 with the help of ], Special Master of the ].<ref>http://www.gothamgazette.com/citizen/sep02/spanish-911.shtml</ref> Subsequently, Rodriguez became prominent in the 9/11 Truth Movement and has traveled around talking about conspiracy theories and his experiences on 9/11. He claims that he single-handedly rescued fifteen persons from the burning north tower<ref>{{cite web | title=Rodriguez Complaint | url = http://rodriguezlawsuit.googlepages.com/RodriguezComplaint.pdf}}</ref> and he claims that he saved hundreds of people by using a master key to open locked emergency exit doors.<ref>http://badgerherald.com/news/2007/04/23/trade_center_custodi.php</ref> <ref>http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/1527870.0/</ref> In 2004, Rodriguez sued President George W. Bush and 155 others, alleging that they were complicit in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. '''William Rodríguez''' was a ] of 19 years at the ] of the ] during the ]. <ref name=autogenerated2>{{cite web | title=CNN publication September 12, 2001 | url = http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/new.york.terror/}}</ref> On 9/11, he was in the basement of the North Tower when ] crashed into the building.<ref name=autogenerated2 /> After the attacks, he received awards for heroism.<ref name="csmonitor"> </ref>
He has been written about in the NY Post, the Christian Science Monitor, New York Magazine, and the Herald of Glasgow. He has appeared on the Cristina show, on BBC, on Dutch national TV, and on C-Span. In 2002, he initiated an economic amnesty program for undocumented victims of 9/11 with the help of ], Special Master of the ]. <ref></ref> Subsequently, Rodriguez became prominent in the 9/11 Truth Movement and has traveled around talking about his experiences on 9/11. He is believed to have saved many people on the burning tower<ref></ref>. In an article from CNN it states: "Rodriguez, who had keys to the elevators, began climbing the upper levels of the tower with a police officer to help trapped people" <ref name=autogenerated4></ref>. He is widely believed to have rescued fifteen persons from the burning north tower<ref name=autogenerated6>{{cite web | title=Rodriguez Complaint | url = http://rodriguezlawsuit.googlepages.com/RodriguezComplaint.pdf}}</ref> According to Rodriguez, he saved hundreds of people by using a master key to open locked emergency exit doors.<ref></ref> <ref></ref> In 2004, Rodriguez sued President George W. Bush and 155 others.



==Biography== ==Biography==

Revision as of 13:44, 28 August 2008

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William Rodriguez at American Scholars Symposium: 9/11 and the NeoCon Agenda in Los Angeles, California, June 24/5, 2006.

William Rodríguez was a janitor of 19 years at the North Tower of the World Trade Center during the September 11, 2001 attacks. On 9/11, he was in the basement of the North Tower when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the building. After the attacks, he received awards for heroism. He has been written about in the NY Post, the Christian Science Monitor, New York Magazine, and the Herald of Glasgow. He has appeared on the Cristina show, on BBC, on Dutch national TV, and on C-Span. In 2002, he initiated an economic amnesty program for undocumented victims of 9/11 with the help of Kenneth Feinberg, Special Master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. Subsequently, Rodriguez became prominent in the 9/11 Truth Movement and has traveled around talking about his experiences on 9/11. He is believed to have saved many people on the burning tower. In an article from CNN it states: "Rodriguez, who had keys to the elevators, began climbing the upper levels of the tower with a police officer to help trapped people" . He is widely believed to have rescued fifteen persons from the burning north tower According to Rodriguez, he saved hundreds of people by using a master key to open locked emergency exit doors. In 2004, Rodriguez sued President George W. Bush and 155 others.

Biography

Template:911tm

Magician's assistant

When Rodriguez was a young man, he worked under the stage name "Roudy" as an assistant to magician James Randi. Rodriguez mentioned in an interview with Benjamin Smith of the New York Sun that he helped Randi expose fraudulent faith healers and psychics. According to a December 2005 article published on the Internet, Rodriguez was adroit at insinuating himself into the good graces of Randi's targets and eliciting incriminating information, and had previously been featured on television in Puerto Rico escaping from a chained straightjacket while hanging from a burning rope.

WTC janitor

Rodriguez emigrated to New York from Puerto Rico and, according to the article linked above, he "found himself a small fish in the big pond of New York magicians" and, as a result, he took a day job as a custodian at the World Trade Center.

The article goes on to state that Rodriguez's showbiz aspirations fell by the wayside when his responsibilities for cleaning the office of Governor Mario Cuomo at the WTC expanded to include organizing Governor Cuomo's press conferences. After Cuomo left office in 1994, Rodriguez was re-assigned to cleaning the staircases of the North Tower.

Rodriguez worked as a janitor at the World Trade Center for 19 years.

9/11 attacks

According to Rodriguez, he usually clocked in at 8:00 a.m. and rode an elevator to the 106th floor, where Hispanic employees of Windows on the World fed him a free breakfast. On 9/11, however, he was half an hour late so he did not go for breakfast but reported to a basement office of his employer, American Building Maintenance.

Shortly after the attacks, Rodriguez told CNN:

We heard a loud rumble, then all of a sudden we heard another rumble like someone moving a whole lot of furniture. And then the elevator opened and a man came into our office and all of his skin was off.

Rodriguez's early accounts repeatedly mentioned a large fireball that shot down the elevator shafts and exploded through the doors, causing serious burn injuries to a man who happened to be standing in front of one of the freight elevator doors. This was consistent with similar reports by numerous other witnesses who saw fireballs erupting and blowing out elevator doors and burning people.

In September 2002, Rodriguez said in an CNN interview:

And at that terrible day when I took people out of the office, one of them totally burned because he was standing in front of the freight elevator and the ball of fire came down the duct of the elevator itself, I put him on the ambulance.

Rodriguez said that he assisted the injured man out of the building and into an ambulance and then returned to the north tower to continue his efforts to help.

At a public meeting held by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2004, Rodriguez continued to refer to the fireball, saying nothing about a blast below:

The fire, the ball of fire, for example, I was in the basement when the first plane hit the building. And at that moment, I thought it was an electrical generator that blew up at that moment. A person comes running into the office saying 'explosion, explosion, explosion.' When I look at this guy; has all his skin pulled off of his body. Hanging from the top of his fingertips like it was a glove. And I said, what happened? He said the elevators. What happened was the ball of fire went down with such a force down the elevator shaft on the 58th (50A) – freight elevator, the biggest freight elevator that we have in the North Tower, it went out with such a force that it broke the cables. It went down, I think seven flights. The person survived because he was pulled from the B3 level. But this person, being in front of the doors waiting for the elevator, practically got his skin vaporized."

At that same public meeting, Rodriguez inaccurately described himself to NIST investigators as "the last survivor pulled from the rubble". There were, in fact, at least 18 survivors pulled from the rubble of the North Tower long after Rodriguez left the building unharmed. The last survivor was Jenelle Guzman-McMillan, who was rescued some 26 hours later at approximately 12:30 p.m. on September 12, 2001.

Several years after the events of 9/11, Rodriguez's accounts of the morning became much more dramatic and detailed.

In an article published on the Internet on December 30, 2005, he said that from his location in the basement, he heard and felt a massive explosion from below, and that seconds later, he heard another, smaller explosion above, which he attributed to Flight 11 crashing into the tower.

At a presentation in Los Angeles in 2006, Rodriguez said,

all of a sudden we hear PAAH very strong BOOM!!! An explosion so hard that it pushed us UPWARDS, UPWARDS!!…The explosion was so hard that all the walls cracked the false ceiling fell on top of us, the sprinkler system got activated and when I was going to verbalize it was a generator we hear BOOM! All the way at the top.


Rodriguez also stated quite emphatically that there was a partial internal collapse (22 stories) of the north tower.

When I got to the 39th floor from the opposite staircase there were three staircases: A, B and C. Police officer David Lim came up with two firemen. As we were talking about what was going to be our next move we hear “Boom!” The impact of the plane on the other tower. It was so hard that the building oscillated and we practically lost our footing and all of a sudden we hear:

“BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!”

And on the radio we hear 'we lost 65, we lost 65!' Meaning that the 65th floor collapsed floor by floor by floor by floor! Up to the 43rd floor—the Sky Lobby. Five flights of stairs away from us. And I start screaming “we gotta go up, we gotta go up!”

At the same Los Angeles presentation, Rodriguez claimed that office workers were trapped behind locked fire exit doors:

I continue going up the building… by myself, opening doors, letting people out until I got to the 33rd floor.

Rodriguez also claims to have seen hijacker Mohand al-Shehri scoping out the building prior to the attacks, in June 2001, and he claims to have told the FBI and the 9/11 Commission that he recognized the man after a brief, chance encounter months prior to the terrorist attacks.

Rodriguez received a National Hero Award from the Senate of Puerto Rico, was once a member of the Families Advisory Council created by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, and is an organizer and president of the Hispanic Victims Group.

Rodriguez gave evidence to the 9/11 Commission. Like the vast majority of the more than 1200 witnesses who gave evidence to the Commission, Rodriguez's evidence was not given in public, and was not specifically itemized in the final report. Of the 1200+ witnesses whose testimony was taken by the Commission, only approximately 155 were conducted publicly.

RICO lawsuit

In October 2004, Rodriguez sued the President of the United States and 155 other parties, accusing them of complicity in the 9/11 attacks.

His 237-page civil lawsuit included allegations pursuant to the RICO, directed against The United States Of America, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, George Herbert Walker Bush, George Walker Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald H. Rumsfeld,and numerous others, totaling 156 defendants in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

In his lawsuit, Rodriquez made hundreds of allegations, including – but not limited to – allegations that the Twin Towers were destroyed by means of “controlled demolitions”; that members of the FDNY were ordered, on instructions of the CIA, not to talk about it; that the FDNY conspired with Larry Silverstein to deliberately destroy 7WTC; that missiles were fired at the Twin Towers from “pods” affixed to the underside of the planes that struck them; that FEMA is working with the US government to create “American Gulag” concentration camps which FEMA will run once the government’s plan to impose martial law is in place; that phone calls made by some of the victims, as reported by their family members, were not actually made but were "faked" by the government using "voice morphing" technology; that a missile, not American Airlines Flight 77, struck the Pentagon; that United Airlines Flight 93 was shot down by the US military; that the defendants had foreknowledge of the attacks and actively conspired to bring them about; that the defendants engaged in kidnapping, arson, murder, treason, conspiracy, trafficking in narcotics, embezzlement, securities fraud, insider trading, identity and credit card theft, blackmail, trafficking in humans, and the abduction and sale of women and children for sex. In his Complaint, Rodriquez also alleged that he "single-handedly rescued fifteen (15) persons from the WTC" . No evidence in support of any of Rodriguez's claims was ever provided by Rodriguez.

In December 2004, the only three defendants who had been served with Rodriguez's Complaint (FEMA, the USA and the DHS) filed a motion to dismiss, or, in the alternative, to transfer, the case on the grounds of lack of jurisdiction and/or improper venue. This was premised on the fact that the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act vests exclusive jurisdiction for litigation relating to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the courts of the Southern District of New York.

The Pennsylvania court granted the defendants' motion to transfer the case to the Southern District of New York on May 2, 2005.

On September 30, 2005, the same three defendants (USA, DHS, and FEMA) brought a motion to dismiss Rodriguez's claims, based on, inter alia, lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

In January 2006, Rodriquez swore and filed a 51 page affidavit in opposition to the defendants' motion to dismiss, in which he reiterated and expanded upon his numerous conspiracy allegations.

On June 26, 2006, the court dismissed Rodriguez's claims against the three defendants (USA, FEMA, DHS) and gave Rodriguez until July 7, 2006 to show cause why his lawsuit should not be dismissed with respect to the other 153 defendants.

Rodriguez did not do so, and the court dismissed all of his claims against the remaining 153 defendants on July 17, 2006.

International travels

In May of 2005, Rodriguez and his lawyer Philip Berg did tours of speaking engagements in Europe financed by multi-millionaire Jimmy Walter. .

In 2006, Rodriguez traveled to Malaysia appearing at a conference with Michael Collins Piper and with Jimmy Walter.

In February, 2007, Rodriguez toured in the UK with former MI5 agent Annie Machon. Rodriguez' Glasgow appearance was written up in The Herald (Glasgow).

In June 2007, he was a guest speaker at the International Islamic Fair in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Also in 2007, Rodriguez spoke at the Global Peace and Unity Conference in London.

Other events

In 2006, he received the Latin Pride National Award for Lifetime Achievement helping the Latino Community

He converted to Islam in 2006.

November 1, 2007 to November 7, Mr. Rodriguez took his "Last Man Out" program on tour on the west coast of the USA. In Oakland, California, he was introduced by Cindy Sheehan.

Press coverage and publishings

References

  1. ^ "CNN publication September 12, 2001".
  2. ^ A key force behind the 9/11 commission | csmonitor.com
  3. Gotham Gazette - The Citizen
  4. lpna_williamrodriguez
  5. CNN.com - Collapsed Trade Center towers still dangerous - September 12, 2001
  6. "Rodriguez Complaint" (PDF).
  7. The Badger Herald - Trade Center custodian shares story
  8. Twin Towers hero speaks in East Lancs (From Lancashire Telegraph)
  9. The Faith Healers, by James Randi, Prometheus Books; 2nd edition (1989) ISBN-10 0879755350 p. 133.
  10. Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions, by James Randi. Prometheus Books (June 1982) ISBN 0879751983, pp.293, 306, 323.
  11. ^ Scoop: UQ Wire: Russ Wellen - The Magic Man
  12. http://latinpridenationalawards.com/lpna_web_william.html
  13. CNN.com - Collapsed Trade Center towers still dangerous - September 12, 2001
  14. NIST Report NISTNSTAR1 sections 2.4 and 3.4
  15. Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand up to the Facts by David Dunbar and Brad Reagan, Hearst; (2006) ISBN-10 158816635X
  16. CNN.com - Transcripts
  17. Microsoft Word - Public Transcript 021204 Final.doc
  18. TIME: September 11 — 11 Lives — The Survivor
  19. Arabesque: 9/11 Truth: The Heroism of William Rodriguez: Amazing Testimony from Inside the World Trade Center Towers on 9/11
  20. Arabesque: 9/11 Truth: The Heroism of William Rodriguez: Amazing Testimony from Inside the World Trade Center Towers on 9/11
  21. "Janitor tells 9/11 panel of brush with WTC thug". New York Daily News. June 2004. Retrieved 2007-11-27.
  22. Lower Manhattan Development Corporation - CHAIRMAN WHITEHEAD ANNOUNCES LMDC ADVISORY COUNCILS
  23. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
  24. "Rodriguez Complaint" (PDF).
  25. "Rodriguez Lawsuit Page".
  26. "Rodriguez Complaint" (PDF).
  27. "Gov't Motion to Dismiss" (PDF).
  28. "Gov't Motion to Dismiss" (PDF).
  29. "Order Granting Motion to Transfer" (PDF).
  30. "Gov't Motion to Dismiss" (PDF).
  31. "Memo in Support of Motion" (PDF).
  32. "Rodriguez Affidavit January 2006" (PDF).
  33. "Order Dismissing Complaint against USA, DHS, and FEMA" (PDF).
  34. "Order Dismissing Complaint against Balance of Defendants" (PDF).
  35. Press Release 18
  36. ^ The Herald : Features: MAIN FEATURES
  37. lpna_coverage
  38. Portal Rasmi Negeri Pahang Darul Makmur - Bil 01/August/07 (01 - 15 August, 2007) (Vol. 3)
  39. William Rodriguez- Last Man Out World Tour
  40. CNN.com - Collapsed Trade Center towers still dangerous - September 12, 2001
  41. El Tiempo Latino
  42. Eureka Reporter http://www.eurekareporter.com/node/93817

External links

9/11 conspiracy theories
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William Rodriguez, a 9-11 Survivor By Deanna Spingola http://www.spingola.com/william_rodriguez.htm

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