beautiful missing you

trapped neat stuff from customs and other high dollar crap under all the
WTC stuff . . . neat piece.



Below Ground Zero, Silver and Gold



By JIM DWYER




About two weeks ago, a security team spotted scorch marks
on a basement doorway below 4 World Trade Center, on the
east side of the ruined complex, according to officials.

Even in a place of mass devastation and death, those scorch
marks got fast attention. They had not been noticed by a
patrol team a few hours earlier, and behind the damaged -
but intact - door were nearly a thousand tons of gold and
silver. To security officials, it looked as if someone had
tried to break in.

Within hours, a video surveillance system was installed to
keep at least an electronic eye on the precious metals
until their custodian, the Bank of Nova Scotia, had a
chance to remove them. That work began this week.

A team of 30 firefighters and police officers are helping
to move the metals, a task that can be measured practically
down to the flake but that has been rounded off at 379,036
ounces of gold and 29,942,619 ounces of silver.

As layers of debris are peeled away, recovery workers are
opening gangways to intact portions of a 16- acre basement
that was largely unseen but was a place of spectacular
scope in its own right. Just the basement area of the World
Trade Center enclosed twice as much space as the entire
Empire State Building.

Nearly a quarter of a mile below the spectacular vistas
from the towers was their upside-down attic dropping 70
feet below the ground, a strange world with enough room for
fortunes in gold and silver, for Godiva chocolates, assault
weapons, old furniture, bricks of cocaine, phony taxicabs
and Central Intelligence Agency files. With so many people
still lost, the owners of this stuff have maintained a
discreet silence during the recovery operations. But that
doesn't mean they're not interested.

Beneath the Customs House - 6 World Trade Center - was an
armada of government vehicles, including dozens owned by
the Secret Service, in a fenced-off area. Within that area
was a garage where a single armored limousine was parked
under the tightest security.

The limousine was so long that it needed straight-line
access to the street, because it could not clear tight
corners in the basement.

That car had been used to carry heads of state visiting the
city, said Tony Ball, a spokesman for the Secret Service.
(The president's limousines are stored in Washington and
flown everywhere he visits.)

In the 1993 trade center bombing, an armored Secret Service
limousine was parked about 100 feet from a truck bomb.
Although the bomb crashed through five stories of concrete
and the concussion destroyed cars all over that floor, the
Secret Service limousine "did not even have a broken
windshield," according to a government official on the
scene that day. The condition of the limousine after
September's attack was not known yesterday. "We haven't
gotten anything back yet," Mr. Ball said.

Asked about reports that his agency also kept what looked
like ordinary taxis and telephone company trucks in the
basement, Mr. Ball laughed. "What I would say is that it is
not unusual for law enforcement agencies to have these
kinds of things," he said.

Besides the Secret Service, the building named for the
United States Customs Service also housed an office of the
C.I.A.

That building is now partly collapsed, with a rubble pit 30
feet deep. Somewhere in there are drugs, weapons and
contraband seized by the Customs Service at the region's
airports. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms also
lost two evidence vaults, according to a spokesman for that
agency, Joseph Green. They have not yet been recovered.

"There could be several hundred weapons - somewhere between
200 and 400, ranging from small-caliber semiautomatic
pistols to assault rifles," Mr. Green said, adding that a
few of the guns had been found. Agents plan to be on the
scene when the remains of the building are demolished
sometime in the next two weeks, he said.

"After that, we'll be working at the landfill to search for
any important items that are still missing."

For people who have seen the surface destruction, either in
pictures or in person, it may be hard to imagine that
anything is intact below ground. But engineers and recovery
officials say that large parts of the underground perimeter
are undamaged, even though the buildings above them are
partly collapsed.

One area is below 4 World Trade Center, where more than two
decades ago, Swiss Bank built a huge vault and storage
area. The vault was reached from the Swiss Bank offices by
a private elevator.

To reach the vaults, armored trucks would drive through
what had once been the tunnels for the Hudson and Manhattan
railroad, the predecessor of the PATH system. These tunnels
had run as far east as Church Street, but were not needed
when the trade center was built and the PATH terminal was
set closer to the river.

The western stubs of the original tunnels, ringed with cast
iron, were converted into roadways. These roads ran
directly to a roll-down door in front of the Swiss Bank
vault area. Inside was a loading dock.

By the time of the 1993 bombing, Swiss Bank no longer was
using the vault, and shortly afterward, the bank relocated
its remaining operations.

The next tenant of the vault space was the Bank of Nova
Scotia, which estimated the value of the metals at $200
million.

"We are in the process of relocating the contents of our
vault at World Trade Center building No. 4 to another
secure location, because authorities need to demolish the
building," Pam Agnew, a spokeswoman for the bank, said
yesterday by phone from Toronto.

Some of the metal is owned by the bank, and some by its
customers, she said. She declined to say where the metals
were being taken.

"The contents remain safe and intact," Ms. Agnew said. "The
contents are fully insured. We're working very closely with
local authorities to ensure a safe and secure relocation
effort.

"The removal of the contents was not a priority for us
because we've always known it was safe and secure," Ms.
Agnew said.

Asked about what appeared to be an attempted break-in two
weeks ago, Ms. Agnew said that she was unaware of it.
Later, she called to reiterate that the metals were safe:
"It would be factually incorrect to say there had been any
attempt to steal the contents of our vault."

However, a government official involved in the recovery
efforts said that there had clearly been an attempt within
the last two weeks to enter the vault area. "It looked like
they used a blowtorch, a crowbar," said the official, who
spoke on the condition that neither his name nor his
position be identified. "The Port Authority police began
periodic patrols, and then a closed-circuit television
system was put in."

The bank also engaged Kroll Inc., a security business based
in New York, to supervise the relocation of the gold and
silver, a process that began this week, The Daily News
reported yesterday.

Michael Cherkasky, the president of Kroll, declined to
comment on his company's involvement.

Anyone trying to make off with the gold would not be able
to run very fast: each ingot weighs 70 pounds.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/01/ny...263511&ei=1&en
=7ab56b60c61cea6e

On Fri, 23 Feb 2007 19:34:00 -0500, marika wrote:

more

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/06/ar...er/06PIET.html

Pedro Pietri, 59, Poet Who Chronicled Nuyorican
Life,
Dies By DAVID GONZALEZ Published: March 6, 2004 edro Pietri, a poetand
playwright who chronicled
the
joys and struggles of Nuyoricans — urban Puerto
Ricans
whose lives straddle the islands of Puerto Rico and
Manhattan — died on Wednesday en route from Mexico
to
New York. He was 59 and lived in Manhattan. Mr. Pietri had been ata
holistic clinic in Tijuana
since January because of advanced stomach cancer. He
was flying back to New York for specialized
treatment
of a bleeding ulcer when he suffered renal failure,
said his sister, Carmen Pietri Diaz. Mr. Pietri's poetry about the
competing cultural
tugs
of New York and Puerto Rico was often playfully
absurd. He was perhaps best known for "Puerto Rican
Obituary," an epic poem published in 1973 that
sketched the lives of five Puerto Ricans who came to
the United States with dreams that remained
unfulfilled. By turns angry, heartbreaking and
hopeful, it was embraced by young Puerto Ricans, who
were imbued with a sense of pride and nationalism. Throughcountless
poems and plays — he continued to
write even after his illness was diagnosed late last
year — he defined the Nuyorican experience,
inspiring
a new generation of Latino poets, including the
streetwise slam poets whose provocative performances
were showcased at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, a Lower
East Side institution that he helped to found. His
writing has been included in many anthologies and
translated into more than a dozen languages,
although
his books are hard to find in this country. Though often humorous,his
work was also deeply
political, like the performance piece "El Puerto
Rican
Embassy," which he staged throughout New York with
the
photographer Adal Maldonado. At ceremonies where he
sang "The Spanglish National Anthem," Puerto Rican
"passports" were distributed, their pages filled
with
poetry and images of dominoes and roosters. This
idea
of an embassy for an island that is neither
independent nor a state captured Mr. Pietri's own
nationalist beliefs. "This is about proclaiming the whole thing about
being
sovereign without the trials and tribulations of
armed
conflict," he said in an interview with The New York
Times in 1996. "You don't have to leave or go
anywhere. You don't have to be a radical or wear a
beret. You just have to have a passport." Mr. Pietri was born inPonce,
P.R., and moved with
his
family to Harlem when he was 3, eventually settling
into the Grant Houses, a housing project on
Amsterdam
Avenue. His father, a dishwasher at the St. Regis
Hotel, had come to New York ahead of his wife and
children. His interest in poetry, his sister said, was
encouraged by their aunt Irene Rodriguez, who often
recited poetry and put on theatrical productions at
the First Spanish United Methodist Church in East
Harlem, where the family worshiped. He started
composing his own poems when he was a teenager at
Haaren High School, his sister said. After high school Mr. Pietriworked
in a variety of
jobs in the garment district, his friend and
biographer Robert Waddell said. He was drafted into
the Army and served with a light infantry brigade in
Vietnam, an experience that Mr. Pietri said had
further radicalized him. Upon his return, Mr.
Waddell
said, Mr. Pietri barely lasted one week working at a
hospital before he quit in disgust to pursue poetry.


The Methodist church he attended in his youth became
the stage for his first public reading of "Puerto
Rican Obituary": when the Young Lords, an activist
group, briefly took over the church in 1969, Mr.
Pietri read his poem as an act of solidarity. It was
the beginning of his association with activist
causes,
including the fight against AIDS. In addition to Ms. Pietri Diazand his
brother, Joe,
both of New York, he is survived by his wife,
Margarita Deida Pietri, of Yonkers, and four
children.


When doctors told him he had inoperable cancer last
year, he sought alternative treatment in Mexico.
Within a few weeks his friends and fans had donated
$30,000 for his care. Their generosity, he said, was
humbling and reassuring. "We're still together, despite our
differences," he
said in an interview in January, shortly before he
left for Mexico. "I see the foundation of a
community
that ensures our survival, that perseveres. This
history we made, these poets we created." "We're here to stay," hesaid.
"They can't replace
us." --- k r ********************* wrote: no. i have neverregistered
for the nytimes site. i am very sad--this death tearsat me. it is more
than one reason the whole damn scene is darker. he was 59. save it,
if you have hard copy. thanx. have a goodnight. continue to get
better. later k --- wrote:
dear keith, didyou catch the write-up rev. pedro got in the

times?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/06/ar...er/06PIET.html

trapped neat stuff from customs and other high dollar crap under all the
WTC stuff . . . neat piece.



Below Ground Zero, Silver and Gold



By JIM DWYER




About two weeks ago, a security team spotted scorch marks
on a basement doorway below 4 World Trade Center, on the
east side of the ruined complex, according to officials.

Even in a place of mass devastation and death, those scorch
marks got fast attention. They had not been noticed by a
patrol team a few hours earlier, and behind the damaged -
but intact - door were nearly a thousand tons of gold and
silver. To security officials, it looked as if someone had
tried to break in.

Within hours, a video surveillance system was installed to
keep at least an electronic eye on the precious metals
until their custodian, the Bank of Nova Scotia, had a
chance to remove them. That work began this week.

A team of 30 firefighters and police officers are helping
to move the metals, a task that can be measured practically
down to the flake but that has been rounded off at 379,036
ounces of gold and 29,942,619 ounces of silver.

As layers of debris are peeled away, recovery workers are
opening gangways to intact portions of a 16- acre basement
that was largely unseen but was a place of spectacular
scope in its own right. Just the basement area of the World
Trade Center enclosed twice as much space as the entire
Empire State Building.

Nearly a quarter of a mile below the spectacular vistas
from the towers was their upside-down attic dropping 70
feet below the ground, a strange world with enough room for
fortunes in gold and silver, for Godiva chocolates, assault
weapons, old furniture, bricks of cocaine, phony taxicabs
and Central Intelligence Agency files. With so many people
still lost, the owners of this stuff have maintained a
discreet silence during the recovery operations. But that
doesn't mean they're not interested.

Beneath the Customs House - 6 World Trade Center - was an
armada of government vehicles, including dozens owned by
the Secret Service, in a fenced-off area. Within that area
was a garage where a single armored limousine was parked
under the tightest security.

The limousine was so long that it needed straight-line
access to the street, because it could not clear tight
corners in the basement.

That car had been used to carry heads of state visiting the
city, said Tony Ball, a spokesman for the Secret Service.
(The president's limousines are stored in Washington and
flown everywhere he visits.)

In the 1993 trade center bombing, an armored Secret Service
limousine was parked about 100 feet from a truck bomb.
Although the bomb crashed through five stories of concrete
and the concussion destroyed cars all over that floor, the
Secret Service limousine "did not even have a broken
windshield," according to a government official on the
scene that day. The condition of the limousine after
September's attack was not known yesterday. "We haven't
gotten anything back yet," Mr. Ball said.

Asked about reports that his agency also kept what looked
like ordinary taxis and telephone company trucks in the
basement, Mr. Ball laughed. "What I would say is that it is
not unusual for law enforcement agencies to have these
kinds of things," he said.

Besides the Secret Service, the building named for the
United States Customs Service also housed an office of the
C.I.A.

That building is now partly collapsed, with a rubble pit 30
feet deep. Somewhere in there are drugs, weapons and
contraband seized by the Customs Service at the region's
airports. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms also
lost two evidence vaults, according to a spokesman for that
agency, Joseph Green. They have not yet been recovered.

"There could be several hundred weapons - somewhere between
200 and 400, ranging from small-caliber semiautomatic
pistols to assault rifles," Mr. Green said, adding that a
few of the guns had been found. Agents plan to be on the
scene when the remains of the building are demolished
sometime in the next two weeks, he said.

"After that, we'll be working at the landfill to search for
any important items that are still missing."

For people who have seen the surface destruction, either in
pictures or in person, it may be hard to imagine that
anything is intact below ground. But engineers and recovery
officials say that large parts of the underground perimeter
are undamaged, even though the buildings above them are
partly collapsed.

One area is below 4 World Trade Center, where more than two
decades ago, Swiss Bank built a huge vault and storage
area. The vault was reached from the Swiss Bank offices by
a private elevator.

To reach the vaults, armored trucks would drive through
what had once been the tunnels for the Hudson and Manhattan
railroad, the predecessor of the PATH system. These tunnels
had run as far east as Church Street, but were not needed
when the trade center was built and the PATH terminal was
set closer to the river.

The western stubs of the original tunnels, ringed with cast
iron, were converted into roadways. These roads ran
directly to a roll-down door in front of the Swiss Bank
vault area. Inside was a loading dock.

By the time of the 1993 bombing, Swiss Bank no longer was
using the vault, and shortly afterward, the bank relocated
its remaining operations.

The next tenant of the vault space was the Bank of Nova
Scotia, which estimated the value of the metals at $200
million.

"We are in the process of relocating the contents of our
vault at World Trade Center building No. 4 to another
secure location, because authorities need to demolish the
building," Pam Agnew, a spokeswoman for the bank, said
yesterday by phone from Toronto.

Some of the metal is owned by the bank, and some by its
customers, she said. She declined to say where the metals
were being taken.

"The contents remain safe and intact," Ms. Agnew said. "The
contents are fully insured. We're working very closely with
local authorities to ensure a safe and secure relocation
effort.

"The removal of the contents was not a priority for us
because we've always known it was safe and secure," Ms.
Agnew said.

Asked about what appeared to be an attempted break-in two
weeks ago, Ms. Agnew said that she was unaware of it.
Later, she called to reiterate that the metals were safe:
"It would be factually incorrect to say there had been any
attempt to steal the contents of our vault."

However, a government official involved in the recovery
efforts said that there had clearly been an attempt within
the last two weeks to enter the vault area. "It looked like
they used a blowtorch, a crowbar," said the official, who
spoke on the condition that neither his name nor his
position be identified. "The Port Authority police began
periodic patrols, and then a closed-circuit television
system was put in."

The bank also engaged Kroll Inc., a security business based
in New York, to supervise the relocation of the gold and
silver, a process that began this week, The Daily News
reported yesterday.

Michael Cherkasky, the president of Kroll, declined to
comment on his company's involvement.

Anyone trying to make off with the gold would not be able
to run very fast: each ingot weighs 70 pounds.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/01/ny...263511&ei=1&en
=7ab56b60c61cea6e

GET OUT

"marika" wrote in message
news
trapped neat stuff from customs and other high dollar crap under all the
WTC stuff . . . neat piece.



Below Ground Zero, Silver and Gold



By JIM DWYER




About two weeks ago, a security team spotted scorch marks
on a basement doorway below 4 World Trade Center, on the
east side of the ruined complex, according to officials.

Even in a place of mass devastation and death, those scorch
marks got fast attention. They had not been noticed by a
patrol team a few hours earlier, and behind the damaged -
but intact - door were nearly a thousand tons of gold and
silver. To security officials, it looked as if someone had
tried to break in.

Within hours, a video surveillance system was installed to
keep at least an electronic eye on the precious metals
until their custodian, the Bank of Nova Scotia, had a
chance to remove them. That work began this week.

A team of 30 firefighters and police officers are helping
to move the metals, a task that can be measured practically
down to the flake but that has been rounded off at 379,036
ounces of gold and 29,942,619 ounces of silver.

As layers of debris are peeled away, recovery workers are
opening gangways to intact portions of a 16- acre basement
that was largely unseen but was a place of spectacular
scope in its own right. Just the basement area of the World
Trade Center enclosed twice as much space as the entire
Empire State Building.

Nearly a quarter of a mile below the spectacular vistas
from the towers was their upside-down attic dropping 70
feet below the ground, a strange world with enough room for
fortunes in gold and silver, for Godiva chocolates, assault
weapons, old furniture, bricks of cocaine, phony taxicabs
and Central Intelligence Agency files. With so many people
still lost, the owners of this stuff have maintained a
discreet silence during the recovery operations. But that
doesn't mean they're not interested.

Beneath the Customs House - 6 World Trade Center - was an
armada of government vehicles, including dozens owned by
the Secret Service, in a fenced-off area. Within that area
was a garage where a single armored limousine was parked
under the tightest security.

The limousine was so long that it needed straight-line
access to the street, because it could not clear tight
corners in the basement.

That car had been used to carry heads of state visiting the
city, said Tony Ball, a spokesman for the Secret Service.
(The president's limousines are stored in Washington and
flown everywhere he visits.)

In the 1993 trade center bombing, an armored Secret Service
limousine was parked about 100 feet from a truck bomb.
Although the bomb crashed through five stories of concrete
and the concussion destroyed cars all over that floor, the
Secret Service limousine "did not even have a broken
windshield," according to a government official on the
scene that day. The condition of the limousine after
September's attack was not known yesterday. "We haven't
gotten anything back yet," Mr. Ball said.

Asked about reports that his agency also kept what looked
like ordinary taxis and telephone company trucks in the
basement, Mr. Ball laughed. "What I would say is that it is
not unusual for law enforcement agencies to have these
kinds of things," he said.

Besides the Secret Service, the building named for the
United States Customs Service also housed an office of the
C.I.A.

That building is now partly collapsed, with a rubble pit 30
feet deep. Somewhere in there are drugs, weapons and
contraband seized by the Customs Service at the region's
airports. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms also
lost two evidence vaults, according to a spokesman for that
agency, Joseph Green. They have not yet been recovered.

"There could be several hundred weapons - somewhere between
200 and 400, ranging from small-caliber semiautomatic
pistols to assault rifles," Mr. Green said, adding that a
few of the guns had been found. Agents plan to be on the
scene when the remains of the building are demolished
sometime in the next two weeks, he said.

"After that, we'll be working at the landfill to search for
any important items that are still missing."

For people who have seen the surface destruction, either in
pictures or in person, it may be hard to imagine that
anything is intact below ground. But engineers and recovery
officials say that large parts of the underground perimeter
are undamaged, even though the buildings above them are
partly collapsed.

One area is below 4 World Trade Center, where more than two
decades ago, Swiss Bank built a huge vault and storage
area. The vault was reached from the Swiss Bank offices by
a private elevator.

To reach the vaults, armored trucks would drive through
what had once been the tunnels for the Hudson and Manhattan
railroad, the predecessor of the PATH system. These tunnels
had run as far east as Church Street, but were not needed
when the trade center was built and the PATH terminal was
set closer to the river.

The western stubs of the original tunnels, ringed with cast
iron, were converted into roadways. These roads ran
directly to a roll-down door in front of the Swiss Bank
vault area. Inside was a loading dock.

By the time of the 1993 bombing, Swiss Bank no longer was
using the vault, and shortly afterward, the bank relocated
its remaining operations.

The next tenant of the vault space was the Bank of Nova
Scotia, which estimated the value of the metals at $200
million.

"We are in the process of relocating the contents of our
vault at World Trade Center building No. 4 to another
secure location, because authorities need to demolish the
building," Pam Agnew, a spokeswoman for the bank, said
yesterday by phone from Toronto.

Some of the metal is owned by the bank, and some by its
customers, she said. She declined to say where the metals
were being taken.

"The contents remain safe and intact," Ms. Agnew said. "The
contents are fully insured. We're working very closely with
local authorities to ensure a safe and secure relocation
effort.

"The removal of the contents was not a priority for us
because we've always known it was safe and secure," Ms.
Agnew said.

Asked about what appeared to be an attempted break-in two
weeks ago, Ms. Agnew said that she was unaware of it.
Later, she called to reiterate that the metals were safe:
"It would be factually incorrect to say there had been any
attempt to steal the contents of our vault."

However, a government official involved in the recovery
efforts said that there had clearly been an attempt within
the last two weeks to enter the vault area. "It looked like
they used a blowtorch, a crowbar," said the official, who
spoke on the condition that neither his name nor his
position be identified. "The Port Authority police began
periodic patrols, and then a closed-circuit television
system was put in."

The bank also engaged Kroll Inc., a security business based
in New York, to supervise the relocation of the gold and
silver, a process that began this week, The Daily News
reported yesterday.

Michael Cherkasky, the president of Kroll, declined to
comment on his company's involvement.

Anyone trying to make off with the gold would not be able
to run very fast: each ingot weighs 70 pounds.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/01/ny...263511&ei=1&en
=7ab56b60c61cea6e