Hero of 9/11 Won't Stop Speaking Out Against Bush

[deadparrot]

One minute he was going about his business, the next he was looking at a vision from the depths of hell. Still reeling from a blast which rocked the World Trade Center, William Rodriguez could hardly believe what he was seeing."A man came running into the office shouting 'explosion, explosion!'" Mr Rodriguez soon saw a third of his body had been badly burnt by the blast. "When I realised, I started screaming. I looked at his face and it was missing parts."

It was the start of a day that transformed Mr Rodriguez from a maintenance man to the hero of 9/11. He ran back into the crumbling tower three times, and helped save hundreds of people.

In the months that followed, his role would change again, from the "face" of the rescue effort to an outspoken critic of the government.

For Mr Rodriguez, a native of Puerto Rico, swears his ordeal began before the first plane hit the Twin Towers. He claims that the White House failed to act, and accuses the government of being involved in "sponsored terrorism" in a bid to find a motive to invade Iraq. He brought his argument to a Westcountry audience on Wednesday, when he spoke in Torquay as part of the Global Truth movement.

http://www.thisisdevon.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=141529&command=displayContent&sourceNode=141513&contentPK=16094683&moduleName=InternalSearch&formname=sidebarsearch

[magellan]

1. Isn't Mr Rodriguez the guy

...the 9-11 Commission completely failed to take testimony from?

[Flarney]

2. There were lots of people they "failed" to take testimony from...

...as well as plenty of relevant testimony the received but didn't include in their report. I still can't get over the fact that the 9/11 Commission concluded that the source of funding for the attacks is irrelevant. What could be more relevant? The 9/11 Commission was a total sham.

9/11 Press For Truth

[magellan]

3. Indeed

I should have said "one of many people the 9-11 commission completely failed to question". Rodriguez is a hero for his actions that day, but I wonder how many people outside NYC have even heard of him?

The source of funding for the attacks is irrelevant -- when you have the power to make it so. I wish someone with power AND integrity would take a look at things...but they'd probably die a mysteriously convenient death before anything was made public.

Welcome to DU, Flarney!

[newyawker99]

4. Hi Flarney!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Flarney]

6. Thanks, both of you! Glad to be here. n/m

[greyl]

5. No, that's absolutely false. nt

[spillthebeans]

7. behind closed doors and then didn't include it in the report nt

[magellan]

10. Thank you spillthebeans.

I wasn't sure if they'd done that or just gave him a pass, that's why I asked.

[Bolo Boffin]

8. Mr. Rodriguez doesn't know when the plane hit

He was down in the basement. He could not have seen the plane hit.

He heard an explosion below, and then felt one higher than him. He assumes the second one was the plane hitting. It could have been anything. He is not the proof any alternate conspiracy theorist believes him to be.

I repeat: he did not see the plane hit after the basement explosion. He felt and heard something that he assumed was the plane hitting. I contend that the basement explosions masked the actual plane impact for Mr. Rodriguez and then he felt a secondary explosion from somewhere above him in the building.

Mr. Rodriguez is a hero of the day. It doesn't mean that he's not mistaken about something that he didn't see.

[frylock]

11. is there a point to your post?

Are you claiming that no plane hit the tower? Let's discuss the explosion(s) in the sub-basement that Mr. Rodriguez reported. What's your take on that?

[Bolo Boffin]

12. My point is clear.

When Mr. Rodriguez says that an explosion happened in the basement before the plane hit, Mr. Rodriguez is mistaken.

That's what I said. I said it pretty clearly.

How you got "no plane hit the building" out of that, I don't know. Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower. I'm not just claiming it. It happened.

I don't know what the explosions in the basement were, but they were more than likely caused by jet fuel shooting down the elevator shafts. In the absense of any testimony of observed bombs, that's the only thing available TO explode.

[wildbilln864]

13. That's just your opinion bolo...

Mr. Rodriguez is not alone. I suppose all of them are mistaken in your opinion?

[wildbilln864]

14. more...

snip/

"At first he thought it was a generator that had exploded. But the cement walls in the office cracked from the explosion. "When I heard the sound of the explosion, the floor beneath my feet vibrated, the walls started cracking and everything started shaking." said Rodriguez, who was crowded together with fourteen other people in the office including Anthony Saltamachia, supervisor for the American Maintenance Company.

Just seconds later there was another explosion way above which made the building oscillate momentarily. This, he was later told, was a plane hitting the 90th floor. Upon hearing about the plane, he immediately thought of the people up in the restaurant. Then there were other explosions just above B1 and individuals started heading for the loading dock to escape the explosion's resulting rampant fire. When asked later about those first explosions he said: "I would know if an explosion was from the bottom or the top of the building." He heard explosions both before and after the plane hit the tower."

/end snip!

[Bolo Boffin]

16. "This, he was later told, was a plane hitting the 90th floor."

Who told him this?

[frylock]

17. jet fuel shooting down the elevator shafts?!

C'mon now, you can do better than that. Most of the fuel was burned off on the initial impact, and what was left was probaly not enough to go sloshing down any elevator shaft. Moreover, we had a poster who worked on hi-rise construction, on elevators specifically, and he explained in great detail how elevator shafts are sealed off, and the impossibility of jet funneling through them. Your theory also conflicts with MULTIPLE reports of explosions in the basement prior to impact.

[Bolo Boffin]

18. Your poster was wrong.

There are accounts from WTC 1 survivors of jet fuel explosions down the entire length of the elevator shafts. You think that any sealing could have stopped the jet fuel explosions? Tell that to the security guard in the lobby. Oh, you can't. Because he's dead. Actually, he was melted into his chair and his desk when a large jet fuel explosion blew out of the elevator banks and engulfed him.

Your assertion that "most of the fuel was burned off" is completely, utterly wrong. Tell that to the lady in the lobby who was screaming that she was just walking along and suddenly, she was on fire.

The jet fuel explosions ARE the explosions in the basement. They are not prior to impact. You are using Rodriguez's manipulated testimony (he was told "later") to predate all other accounts of explosions before the impact. Nobody else but Rodriguez is saying those explosions happened before the impact, and he has been deceived by people like Christopher "Nazi apologist" Bollyn.

Before you keep yammering on about these events, you might actually want to educate yourself on them.

[wildbilln864]

19. well...

show us the evidence! Your opinion carries little weight when compared to eye witness testimony like I posted earlier. Not saying you're wrong but you just say that he's mistaken, which is your opinion only. Give links or you're just making unfounded assertions! And not some blog or opinion piece.


"There are accounts from WTC 1 survivors of jet fuel explosions down the entire length of the elevator shafts."

By the way, checked out your blog. I agree with alot of it I think though didn't yet get to read a whole lot of it.

[Bolo Boffin]

22. Ok.

For this, I'm going to rely on a post from JREF. It's the best job I've seen of doing this. All witnesses are sourced.

Witnesses to jet fuel explosions all the way down WTC 1 on impact

I think reading through that will give you a good idea of just what happened when the plane hit. Warning, there are some really graphic descriptions that I've already alluded to in this thread.

[Name removed]

25. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[frylock]

20. you might actually want to educate yourself on them..

uhhhhhh.. okay then. FYI, I have an entire shelf of books on 911 that I've read. What research material have you used? Back up your assertion that Rodriguez was the only one to make claims concernining explosions in the sub-basement prior to impact.

[Bolo Boffin]

21. Excuse me, it's your assertation that there were other people.

You produce them.

[William Seger]

26. Seems clear enough to me

Contrary to claims of "numerous" such reports, Rodriguez is the only person who reported an explosion before the plane hit, yet he simply wasn't in a position to know precisely when the plane hit. There's no mystery about why it wasn't included in the 9/11 Report; they didn't consider Rodriquez's perception that the plane hit after the explosion to be significant since it wasn't corroborated by any other witnesses. Neither do I.

[tenseconds]

30. conjecture

The first felt explosion Rodriguez experienced was from below...this we know.

What you suggest is mere conjecture and certainly does not exceed Rodriguez in its provable veracity.

How many elevator shafts extend from the upper floors where the plane's explosion occured to the basement levels,the B2 and B3 floors? Do you know the answer to this?

[Bolo Boffin]

34. Answer: at least one. n/t

[tenseconds]

39. And...

Source?

[Bolo Boffin]

42. You cannot be serious. n/t

[tenseconds]

44. show me

Lets see that freight elevator stopping on one of the floors in the area of the initial explosion. Diagram please. Thank you.

[Bolo Boffin]

45. Are you calling Willie Rodriguez a liar? n/t

[tenseconds]

46. re:liar

Don't obfuscate your responsibilities. Show me an elevator from the basement floors going up to the 80-84th floors.

[Bolo Boffin]

47. "There were also eight service elevators, one of which served all floors."

NIST NCSTAR 1, page 15.

I refer you to the testimonies of jet fuel exploding out of the freight elevator in my post.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/boloboffin/6

Now quit calling Willie Rodriguez a liar. Quit calling Felipe David a liar. Quit calling Jose Sanchez a liar.

[tenseconds]

49. what the ...

I believe the testimony of William Rodriguez. How does that make him a liar?

[John Q. Citizen]

9. I'm glad he's couragous enought to speak the truth. He's a hero.!

[William Seger]

27. Yes, he is courageous, and yes he's a hero...

... and yes I believe he is reporting what he perceived to be the truth -- from his vantage point. However, I think I'll dismiss your innuendo that there are other people who perceived the same thing but lacked the courage to report it.

[FourScore]

15. I would certainly believe

a brave man like Rodriguez over GWB and his cabal. How many people did they rescue that day? Oh, that's right...NONE!

[John Q. Citizen]

23. He certainly knows a lot more about what happened than all the pretenders do!

[William Seger]

28. So do a lot of other people

You just prefer to ignore something over 99% of them.

[wildbilln864]

24. William Rodriguez...

a real hero!?

[HamdenRice]

29. Point of information: I thought no elevator shaft ran length of tower?

Those of you who have been to the WTC will remember this structural detail about the building: you could not take an elevator from the ground to the top floors. I think it had something to do with that length of cable being too heavy and traffic dynamics. The WTC had an "express" and "local" system of elevators. You entered on the ground floor, went about half the way up, and transfered to another elevator to the top.

This being the case, I don't see how an airplane crash near the upper floors of tower 1 could cause an explosion of jet fuel in the basement. Even if the shaft was contiguous all the way down, wouldn't there be several express and local elevators blocking the jet fuels explosion all the way down to the basement?

[dailykoff]

32. Good point.

There were far too many explosions for jet fuel to account for them all anyway, even if it could have a) gotten into the elevator shafts (doubtful), b) exploded in them (also doubtful), or c) gotten as far as the main lobby (apparently impossible).

[dailykoff]

31. Multiple explosions in the elevator shafts are clear evidence of demolition.

The core columns were directly adjacent to elevator shafts and it would take some time to cut up all those huge columns, so the explosions went off in a continuous sequence, just as witnesses describe, for example this one:

There were explosions going off everywhere. I was convinced that there were bombs planted all over the place and someone was sitting at a control panel pushing detonator buttons.

This and many other such accounts of elevator shaft explosions here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=133419&mesg_id=133659

Thanks to bolo for posting this.

[Bolo Boffin]

33. Quit misrepresenting that quote - it's after the South Tower has fallen.

How do you explain the presence of kerosene fumes in the vicinities of all of those explosions?

[dailykoff]

35. It's you who deny what she plainly says, which is that she heard explosions,

LOTS of explosions, in a sequence, exactly as though "there were bombs planted all over the place and someone was sitting at a control panel pushing detonator buttons."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=133419&mesg_id=133659

Once again, thanks for the quote. :thumbsup:

[Bolo Boffin]

36. Are we going to have to do this in every thread?

You take that quote - which is quoted in full in my original post, and points out just exactly how CTists misuse it - and then misuse it in exactly that way.

Then I call you on it.

Then you continue to misuse the quote.

Then I repeat the quote in full, showing exactly how you are misusing it.

Then you continue to misuse the quote.

Are we going to have to do this in every thread?

[dailykoff]

37. She heard explosions, your pointless protestations notwithstanding. (n/t)

[dailykoff]

38. p.s. the fact is that ALL the evidence points to demolition,

no matter how it's spun -- at least the evidence that hasn't been falsified or tampered with.

[Bolo Boffin]

40. Thank you, True Scotsman. n/t

[Bolo Boffin]

41. Nobody said she didn't hear explosions - your strawman argument notwithstanding. n/t

[Big Pappa]

43. How would

she know the explosions sounded like they were being set off via a control panel. I would bet that she has never even been around a controlled detonation.

[dailykoff]

48. Why don't you ask her?

There's a link with a name in Bolo's post, linked above.