DAY NINETY-ONE:Dec. 10:
Dang! There's no snow, after all. It's chilly, but not cold: Not winter.
When I left the conference in Chantilly, Virginia I thought the chill was refreshing. The hotel limo took me to Dulles Airport, and en route the driver informed me, after correctly identifying a bizarre postmodern building we passed as a private spy satellite company headquarters, that he had just taken the exams for the CIA. "I'm tired of watching history go by," the driver said. "I want to make some."
Awaiting my flight at Dulles I heard someone playing taps on a solo bugle. I looked up in alarm, goosebumps on the nape of my neck, and realized the sound was coming from a large projector television set, and the bugle was playing for the funeral of a CIA operative killed last week in Afghanistan. Over the weekend my friend, Wendy, who has worked inside the federal government for years, expressed outrage that the CIA had released so much information about the man. Recalling the days when it was CIA policy to neither confirm nor deny any allegations made about the agency or its operatives, Wendy felt that the CIA was stepping outside its proper purview by not only acknowledging the deceased as one of theirs, but also glorifying him.
No doubt such glorification had contributed to the limo driver's decision to suddenly change his life.
The folks in Langely ought to pay attention to what's going on with the phones in downtown Manhattan. Think "Ocean's 11", a breezy new movie I saw yesterday. There is a moment when the thieves decide to knock out all electricity in Las Vegas by creating a single powerful electromagnetic pulse. Years ago the CIA went to Congress to demand special funding aimed at protecting the spy agency's communications systems from such pulses. Well, CIA, pay heed: Tomorrow it will have been three months since the calamitous attack, but many telephones and phones systems are still not functioning, despite the absence of anything as exotic as an electromagnetic pulse. Evening the phones that are "working", are only doing so sporadically, and often with plenty of RF interference and cross talk. The attack took out about 200,000 telephone lines and 3.5 million data delivery systems. And many are still not working, forcing downtown businesses to rely entirely upon cell phones. Hardest hit was the Verizon phone company, which had primary cable systems located beneath the World Trade Center. In order to get customers back on their feet, so to speak, Verizon has strung large black cables from window to window, creating a visual spaghetti downtown that is not only aesthetically offensive, but won't last. The company estimates that putting in new, permanent underground systems will cost $1.9 billion.
And that's just one company's network. Here in New York several phone and cable companies rival for customer loyalty, and every one of them has been affected by the disaster. The good news, optimists say, is that Manhattan has the opportunity to create a truly 21st Century telecommunications infrastructure to service the thousands of businesses that will one day reoccupy Ground Zero and its adjacent neighborhoods.
Well, maybe. But already Larry Silverstein, the real estate billionaire developer who owns the 99-year lease on the World Trade Center, is backing away from his plan to build four 50-story office buildings at the site. It seems only yesterday that he was in our office, trying to win Newsday's support for the scheme. But today the city was buzzing with rumors that the 12 million square feet of office space that existed on the location prior to September 11 might only be replaced with 6 million square feet. Among those said to be counseling Silverstein to think small, on the grounds it will impossible to lure so many businesses back to the area, are fellow billionaires Donald Trump and Mike Fascitelli. Mind you, these fellows didn't get rich by limiting their opportunities to rake in rent money, but they are advising Silverstein to hold back.
Silverstein told AP that he believes the office space must be replaced so that the 100,000 jobs that were lost in the tragedy can be reinstated and $47 billion in gross wages generated in downtown Manhattan can be restored: "We're just putting back what was there, we're not adding to it," he said.
Time is not on Silverstein's side. The longer it takes to restore the buildings, the more difficult it will be to relocate companies. And excavation has slowed down again, due to the seemingly miraculous recovery of six bodies over the last 48 hours. Each recovered body prompts a funeral-like ceremony on the part of the firefighters and demolition workers, stopping all work for about an hour. As of today 232 bodies have been recovered, 10,648 human remains had been found and 503 positive identifications had been made by DNA matching.
I'm sorry to end on a thud, but it's late.
So, be well. Stay safe. Stand defiant.
Laurie Garrett
