Almost six years after the Twin Towers fell, the attack has claimed two more lives and injured others, but this time the work of terrorists from the Middle East was apparently abetted by good old-fashioned home-grown crime and corruption.
Last Saturday, two Manhattan firefighters died in the partially dismantled Deutsche Bank building that had been damaged beyond repair in the 2001 disaster, and later in the week two more were injured by falling construction equipment.
Now investigators are busy trying to figure out how some of the demolition job got into the hands of companies connected with organized crime and/or no experience tearing down skyscrapers, and the finger-pointing among alphabet-soup titled agencies is likely to go on for a long time.
But then again, it took almost four years for political appointees to start looking for contractors to tear down the structurally dangerous and contaminated building before they found just the right lethally inept people for the job.
Just to add another time-warp dimension to all this, the investigation will be conducted by the office of Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan District Attorney who celebrated his 88th birthday last month. Morgenthau was appointed a U.S. Attorney by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 and forced out (pace Alberto Gonzales) by President Richard Nixon eight years later. Morgenthau ran for Manhattan D.A. in 1974 and has been in that office ever since.
He should know a thing or two about crooked politics by now.
I found you through C&L.
ReplyDeleteIt was a good link.