William Rodriguez

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Rodriguez & US President George W Bush
Rodriguez & US President George W Bush

William Rodríguez is a former janitor who was at the North Tower of the World Trade Center who pulled several people to safety during the September 11, 2001 attacks.[1] He was honored at the White House five times.[2] He has since become involved with the 9/11 Truth Movement, and alleges governmental involvement and coverup during the attacks.

Contents

[edit] Biography

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[edit] Magicians assistant

When Rodriguez was young, the person known as a "debunker of pseudoscience", The Amazing Randi hired him as an assistant. Rodriguez used the stage name "Roudy" while exposing faith healers and psychics. Rodriguez, as Benjamin Smith explained in a New York Sun article, "proved adroit at insinuating himself into the good graces of Randi's targets and eliciting incriminating information."[3]

In Puerto Rico he had been featured on TV escaping from a chained straightjacket while hanging from a burning rope.[3]

[edit] WTC Janitor

He emigrated to New York from Puerto Rico, and in New York there was a lot more competition which made it harder to get work as a magicians assistant. While struggling to catch on, he took a day job as a custodian at the World Trade Center.[3]

His showbiz aspirations fell by the wayside when his responsibilities expanded to not only caring for the office Governor Cuomo kept at WTC, but organizing his press conferences. After Cuomo left office, keeping the staircases of the North Tower clean became Rodriguez's new assignment. It was a less challenging job, but he gained experiences he used later on.[3]

He was present in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, resulting in him being stuck in one of the elevators and became a high ranking janitor on the building, having worked there for over 20 years.[4]

[edit] 9/11 Attacks

According to his biographer, Rodriguez usually clocked in at eight 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 a half hour late. While checking in at an office on sub-level one, he heard and felt, along with 20 others, a massive explosion — from below. Seconds later, he heard another--from above (Flight 11).[3] In his testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Rodriguez also claimed to have seen a hijacker scoping out the building some months before the attack.[5]

After going out and having understood what had happened, in defiance of the firefighters advice[citation needed], he raced up the stairwells he had maintained for 20 years to unlock doors and help people escape. Credited with saving many lives, he received a National Hero Award from the Senate of Puerto Rico and organized the Hispanic Victims Group.[6]

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[edit] Aftermath of the Attacks

He was involved in the creation of several family support groups, being the head of some of them.[7][4] He was the director of the "911 United Services Group."[8]

In January 31 2002, as the founder and President of the Hispanic Victims Group,[9] he was among the Families Advisory Council for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.[8] He was one of many people including the Jersey Girls who went to congress and asked for a formal investigation, the one which became the 9/11 Commission.

[edit] Doubts

Rodriguez looked forward to his appearance at a closed-door hearing of the 9/11 Commission. "Up to that moment, I was thinking that they were going to do the right thing."[3] He states that he started changing his mind as he saw how the commission did its work, and also when the American media edited out his testimonies about hearing explosions in the buildings, whilst the Spanish media did report it un-edited.[3][4]

Rodriguez was one of the last people to testify to the commission and spoke behind closed doors, unlike other witnesses; also, his testimony was not included in the final report.[4][7] He stated that the commission didn't answer his questions and avoided the issues he was presenting, so for their policy "raised flags." When the administration started to link the 9/11 Attacks with the preparations of the 2003 Iraq war, he felt "manipulated and used."[3]

Rodriguez also sought out the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which was investigating the collapse of the WTC, but was rebuffed. Neither was the FBI interested in his contention that he'd encountered one of the hijackers casing out the buildings several months before 9/11. Rodriguez stated that "You have two options, Stand for the truth or be part of the game. I didn't want to be part of the game."[3]

[edit] RICO lawsuit

In October 2004, Rodriguez filed a civil RICO lawsuit directed against George W. Bush, Richard B. Cheney, Donald H. Rumsfeld and others, including a total of 100 defendants, together with Ellen Mariani and lawyer Phil Berg.[10] The RICO Act is normally used by the government to nail organized crime as a conspiracy, but this time it was used against the government itself, claiming a conspiracy on its part. The government filed a motion to dismiss, or at least transfer, the case on grounds of national security. Berg answered by filing an affidavit that alleged the defendants "had knowledge that the attacks were impending. . . but they failed to [take countermeasures], not by reason of mere negligence, confusion, or ineptitude, but because they affirmatively desired such attacks to occur.[11][3]

Rodriguez has held public speeches that contradict the 9/11 Commission's account, but received limited media reporting.[12] He views the event when his apartment was broken into and his laptop was stolen (amongst other things) as related to his involvement in the movement.[3]

[edit] International travels

In 2005, Rodriguez had a tour of speaking engagements in Europe.[3]

In December 2005, his attorney Berg proposed a 9/11 Petition to the United Nations, which calls for a Resolution to the United Nations General Assembly for an "Independent International September 11th Truth Commission".[13]

In 2006 he accompanied Jimmy Walter in a trip to Venezuela, in which they met with the President of the Assembly and will soon meet with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in anticipation of an official Venezuelan government investigation into 9/11. Both Rodríguez and Jimmy Walter believe that the FBI and federal government aimed at sabotaging this trip, using tactics such as including them on the no-fly list.[7] The FBI requested the guest list of the hotel he was in, and as a result, the Venezuelan government gave him five full-time body guards.[4]

In June of 2006, he appeared at the 9/11 + The Neo-Con Agenda Symposium in Los Angeles, California,[14] organized by Alex Jones,[15] at which Jones complimented him at length for his work in "speaking to members of the Japanese parliament, prime ministers, former prime minister of Malaysia, speaking to the Head of the parliament in Venezuela, getting an investigation with Hugo Chávez…".[16] His personal speech has since appeared on Google Video.[4]

[edit] Other events

Rodriguez has also assisted victims, and their families, of the Madrid bombings, as well as the Paraguay supermarket fire, in which 399 died. During his service, he neglected his own needs and, briefly homeless, actually lived out of his car. He also refused to submit an application to the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund that he himself had helped set up.[3][citation needed]. He converted to Islam in 2006. [17]

[edit] Quote

"I was a magician for thirty years. . . It is very easy to do misdirection, to make you look into one place while you're doing the magic with the other hand." Inferring that in plain sight, the planes struck; out of sight, bombs exploded, "It's just a big magic trick," Rodriguez concludes. "It's an illusion."[3].

[edit] Press coverage and publishings

A long speech by him is included in the movie Loose Change.

[edit] References

Rodriguez & Hillary Clinton
Rodriguez & Hillary Clinton
  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ [2]
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q [3]
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Google video 50:40
  5. ^ Janitor tells 9/11 panel of brush with WTC thug. New York Daily News (June 2004). Retrieved on 2006-12-08.
  6. ^ a b http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0325/p03s01-usgn.htm
  7. ^ a b c http://prisonplanet.tv/audio/300306walter.htm
  8. ^ a b [4]
  9. ^ [5]
  10. ^ [6]
  11. ^ [7]
  12. ^
  13. ^ http://www.indymedia.org/es/2005/12/829390.shtml
  14. ^ [8]
  15. ^ [9]
  16. ^ [10]
  17. ^ [11]
  18. ^ [12]
  19. ^ [13]
  20. ^ [14]
  21. ^ [15] [16]

[edit] External links

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