9/11: Who Made Money?
The 9/11 Gravy Train
Failure can be very profitable if you are a senior politician in the US. Rudy Giuliani Mayor of New York at the time made far more out of the attacks than his father made in a life time as a minor mafia enforcer. many of the 9/11 losers cum winners are detailed in a long and eye watering report in the Village Voice.
The New York magazine's investigators have traced the personal fortunes made both by those who failed on 9/11 (about USD 20M in the case of Giuliani) as well as the assorted thieves and charlatans who got in on the act afterwards: foundations that pay more to their directors than they ever disbursed, firefighters whose heroic stories change with each well paid lecture, and a memorial park run as a private business with items rescued from Ground Zero up for sale with no questions asked. If Osama bin Laden, a billionaire, had filled his alleged hideout with these trophies, it seems no-one would care much in the 9/11 industry.
The Voice could have added the airport body scanners that have made so much money for Michael Chertoff, the man who blocked the FBI's investigations prior to 9/11 and was rewarded with the Homeland Security job just in time to oversee the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Oh well, it's only money.
