I would be very concerned right now if I worked in London’s Canary Wharf – home to some of the biggest names of world finance.
A Reuters story from last week said the financial center is drawing up plans for a mock evacuation of its 50-story tower following the World Trade Center attacks.
Tenants of the London building include KPMG and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.
Reuters obtained a memo of an Oct. 12 meeting that discloses tenants have agreed to start planning for an emergency. At peak capacity, the building accommodates 7,000 people.
It’s wise to start planning.
In 1996, the Irish Republican Army bombed the tower, killing two and injuring 100. Workers left the building after the Sept. 11 attack, just as a precaution.
“We’re on high alert and we have taken additional measures, but we’re not going to say what they are,” a spokesman told Reuters.
Why is everyone so nervous at Canary Wharf? I’ll tell you why.
On Jan. 17 of this year, Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal sold two-thirds of his shares in Canary Wharf Group for $178 million, more than four times their cost. Five years earlier he paid $65 million, or $1.63 a share, for a 6 percent stake in the company. He sold the shares for $6.69.
“It was too good to be true,” said the prince. “The price was right and we made a tremendous profit.”
I suggest the timing of that sale is somewhat eery.
Oh, I know, you’re going to tell me that the Saudi royal family hates bin Laden as much as we do and that the sale of the property is mere coincidence.
Personally, I’m getting sick of coincidences – like this one.
Maybe you saw this story on WorldNetDaily last week. The web domain of the Saudi Binladin Group (yes, the family company uses an alternative spelling of the name) was registered Sept. 11, 2000 – and it expired, coincidentally, on Sept. 11, 2001.
Why would www.saudi-binladin-group.com be registered exactly one year to the day before the attack? And why would it be allowed to expire on the day of the attack?
The site no longer exists. But, unlike other bin Laden websites that were taken down following the attacks, this one was pre-programmed to expire the day of the attacks. Amazing!
This was no accident, according to a VeriSign technician in Mountain View, Calif., contacted by the Philadelphia City Paper.
“This was timed so it would expire on that date,” says the technician, who identified herself only by her first name, Antonette, and by her employee number, 001. Antonette also verified that the information listed in the “whois” search was accurate and not tampered with by an outside party. Antonette added that VeriSign had already been contacted by law enforcement about other attack-related domain names the company had registered.
There’s more, reports City Paper: “The Binladin website was created by a company called Arq Limited, a U.K. Web design firm. The administrative, technical and billing contact listed on the whois search is a man named Philip Lumsden. After several calls to the U.K., I learned that Arq Limited went out of business, replaced by a company called Active 8 Solutions, which shares the same Bath, England, mailing address and a telephone number that is only one digit off from Arq Limited’s old number.”
And what about Lumsden?
“Mr. Lumsden left a week ago,” a man who answered the phone at Active 8 Solutions told City Paper. “I am not aware of why he left.”
A half-dozen calls Tuesday, Oct. 15, to the Saudi Binladin Group’s headquarters in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, turned up little other than assurances that, if I called back in 20 minutes or a half-hour, then somebody would be able to give me some information about the website.
Each time I called, I explained that I wanted to ask somebody at the company why the website expired on Sept. 11, 2001, a rather significant date in world history. Each time, I was told to call back until, finally, I spoke with someone who could answer my questions.
But not for long.
“You can check with VeriSign,” said a man who did not identify himself. “VeriSign has all the details.”
Is the FBI checking this one out?
“I am not aware of (the website), and I do not know whether the FBI is aware of it, but I can’t speak for the entire FBI,” said Joe Valiquette, spokesman for the FBI’s New York office. “Generally speaking, we would be interested in something like that.”
I would hope so. I hate coincidences.
Don’t miss Joseph Farah’s exclusive report “Jihad in America” in the November issue of Whistleblower magazine, WorldNetDaily’s monthly offline publication. Order your subscription now.
