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The anti-Silverstein cartoon in the
Nationalist website.

Up in smoke

By Sara
Leibovich-Dar

Six weeks before the
terrorist attack in New York, Larry Silverstein leased the
Twin Towers for 99 years, paying $3 billion. Their collapse
was also the collapse of the deal of his life, and since then,
he has been trying to put the pieces back together in the face
of fierce public criticism, some of it anti-Semitic.
His
business dealings in Israel haven't given him much
satisfaction either

Shortly after the events of
September 11, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called Larry
Silverstein, a Jewish real estate magnate in New York, the
owner of the World Trade Center's 110-story Twin Towers and a
close friend, to ask how he was. Since then they have spoken a
few more times. Two former prime ministers - Benjamin
Netanyahu, who this week called Silverstein a "friend," and
Ehud Barak, whom Silverstein in the past offered a job as his
representative in Israel - also called soon after the
disaster. Yaakov Terner, the mayor of Be'er Sheva, sent a
letter of condolence.

Many Israeli politicians are
acquainted in one degree or another with the 70-year-old
Silverstein. For 10 years, he tried to bring about the
establishment of a free-trade zone in the Negev, until the
project fell apart. "This is a tragedy," Silverstein, deeply
disappointed, said then.

Now he has bigger troubles.
The collapse of the Twin Towers after being rammed by
terrorist-piloted planes, in addition to being a full-scale
American tragedy, shattered the dream of Silverstein's
business life, caused him immense losses, and thrust him into
the midst of a public battle over whether to rebuild the
towers.

Six weeks before the events of September 11,
Silverstein leased the Twin Towers and buildings No. 4 and 5
of the WTC complex for 99 years from the Port Authority of New
York and New Jersey. He agreed to pay $3.2 billion for the
properties. Becoming the owner of them, on July 24, was the
high point of his career and marked the end of a grueling
quest.

In February of this year, five days before the
bids in the privatization process were due, Silverstein was
injured in a road accident. In April he was informed that he
had lost the tender. A few weeks later, though, events took a
surprising turn. The winner of the tender dropped out, leaving
Silverstein and his partners in Westfield America, who had
finished second, as the new winners. Worn out but happy,
Silverstein was photographed in the New York sun holding the
symbolic keys to the towers, and spoke of a dream that had
come true.

On September 11, his world lay in a
six-story heap of ruins. Above all, four members of his staff
were killed and he himself was saved only because a meeting he
had scheduled that morning with officials of the Port
Authority on the 88th floor of 1 World Trade Center (the south
tower) was canceled at the last minute.

From his home
on Park Avenue, he watched the results after the first plane
slammed into the north tower. He rushed to his office on Fifth
Avenue, from where he saw the second tower hit. He was
terrified for the fate of his children, Roger and Lisa, who
sometimes worked in his offices at 1 WTC. One of his
employees, a woman, who survived by walking down 88 flights of
stairs, arrived in the Fifth Avenue office covered in dust.
There she found Silverstein shaking in every bone of his body.
I see that you're in worse shape than me, she told him.

In the afternoon of September 11, the Fire Department
informed him that the smaller 7 World Trade Center building,
which he owned, was going to collapse. It did so at 5:30 P.M.,
followed by buildings No. 4 and 5. Silverstein, who only six
weeks earlier had carried out the largest real-estate
transaction in the history of New York, was left with nothing.
It was also the worst timing ever in American history for a
business deal, the press said afterward.

The buyer
continues to pay

The full economic consequences of
the attacks became clear only later. Upon signing the
contract, Silverstein paid the Port Authority $616 million. He
undertook to pay the rest, with the addition of about $100
million in each of the next 10 years, even if something
happened to the buildings. Silverstein is continuing to pay
his debt to the Port Authority, but is no longer receiving
rent from the firms that leased office space there. He told
his friends in Israel not to worry because the insurance
companies would pay. But that is not so simple.

Silverstein insured the towers for a $3.5 billion
against any claim. He maintains that the towers were hit in
two separate incidents, and therefore expects to receive
compensation of $7 billion. The insurance companies maintain
that there was only one event and are ready to pay only $3.5
billion.

In addition, he is threatened by a tidal wave
of lawsuits. Minutes after the first plane rammed the north
tower, the public-address system in the south tower informed
the panic-stricken employees in the south tower to return to
their places and continue to work as usual. Those who obeyed
the directive were killed. Lawyers say that Silverstein, who
was responsible for the buildings' operation, could face
negligence suits.

In the first hour after the attack,
Silverstein was paralyzed with fright. A few hours later, he
issued an emotional statement that ignored the economic
implications of what had happened, focusing on grief and pain
over the loss of life in the terrible tragedy.

Two
days later, the tone had changed. Silverstein's spokesman,
Steve Solomon, told the Reuters news agency that Manhattan is
a world commercial center, and that Silverstein thinks a
business district of the same area as the one that was
destroyed should be rebuilt. From that moment, Silverstein
launched a campaign to restore his property - a campaign that
is generating public opposition and mounting criticism.

In the public debate that is being conducted in the
United States over how to rehabilitate the area that was
ravaged, Silverstein is presenting a clear position. In the
first days after the attack, he said he would build two
identical towers of 110 stories and 3.6 million-square meters.
More recently, he has been talking about building four towers
of 50 stories each, covering the same area as the Twins. If he
builds smaller buildings, his revenues from leasing office
space will be reduced accordingly.

Silverstein is
waging his campaign at full tilt. On the day following the
communique released by his spokesman, he gave an interview to
The Wall Street Journal. It would be the mother of all
tragedies if this part of New York is not rebuilt, he said, it
will give the terrorists the victory they are seeking. The
city is not dead and it won't allow itself to die, he said:
"We owe it to our children and our grandchildren." He also
promised that in the future design, special areas would be set
aside in memory of those who were killed.

In the
meantime, Silverstein found himself in a sensitive legal
situation. In August, a three-month overlap period with the
Port Authority began. Sources in the Port Authority intimated
that even though they were still in the vicinity, Silverstein
was in control. Silverstein, for his part, reminds everyone
that even though the towers belonged to him, the land belongs
to the Port Authority. He wants to build as quickly as
possible.

Raring to go

Silverstein was
brimming with energy at a real estate convention held at the
Waldorf Astoria last week. He intends to start rebuilding 7
WTC within about a year. At this time next year, girders will
already be rising out of the ground, he said. Construction
will be completed within 30 months. Construction of the new
Twin Towers will be completed in another six years. The Port
Authority can't understand why Silverstein is in such a hurry.
The governor of New York State, George Pataki, told reporters
that he is angry at Silverstein for talking publicly about
rebuilding before the state and the Port Authority have
decided what to do. Silverstein has no time. The insurance
companies will pay compensation for the destruction only if he
restores the situation to what it was.

The public
debate over the future of the area is not taking Silverstein's
insurance problems into consideration. Some 6,000 families
regard Ground Zero as a sacred site, Hans Butzer, who designed
the museum in Oklahoma City, told The Chicago Tribune. (On
April 19, 1995, a car bomb exploded in Oklahoma City and
destroyed the Federal Building, killing 168 people. A museum,
which features an exhibition outside consisting of 168 metal
chairs, one in memory of each of the victims, was built at the
site.) All the families will have to be heard before concrete
is poured, Butzer said.

Silverstein told his friends
in Israel that for the next five years, he will be busy
rehabilitating the site. It's the last project of my life, he
explained to an Israeli acquaintance. To advance his project,
Silverstein needs the support of politicians. He has paid
three visits to Washington since September 11. As the largest
private donor to Hillary Clinton, he has an open door to the
office of the junior senator from New York. Other senators who
received hefty donations from Silverstein have said that they
are in favor of the project at Ground Zero.

Silverstein has meanwhile been targeted by
anti-Semitic hate-mongers - particularly on the Internet. The
Nationalist site, run by a racist group that advocates a
"white America" and makes use of neo-Nazi symbols and
terminology, claims that Silverstein is exploiting the
collapse of the Twin Towers in order to extort funds from the
government. A cartoon on the site, captioned "Whose
homeland?", portrays Silverstein in the stereotypical guise of
the hook-nosed Jew extending his hand to President Bush in
order to take money. The frightened Bush agrees but wonders
why Silverstein isn't willing to make do with $100
billion.

An optimist and a gambler

Larry
Silverstein's road to the purchase of the WTC complex and to
his friendship with Israeli prime ministers and American
senators was long and tortuous. He was born in New York and
has lived and worked in the city his whole life. His father
owned a small leasing firm. Silverstein joined the family
business in 1952, after graduating from college. It was hard
to make ends meet, he told Crain's New York Business, an
on-line magazine, in May. They subsisted on the salary of his
wife, Clara, a schoolteacher, who earned $3,200 a year.

The couple had three children: Roger, Sharon and Lisa.
Roger and Lisa work in the family business, Silverstein
Properties. In March of this year, Lisa told The New York
Times that she hoped her daughters, too - they are now eight
and 10 - would work in the company as well.

In 1953,
after Silverstein observed the lawyers in his father's office
sewing up and unraveling business deals, he decided to study
law. At law school in Brooklyn he met Bernie Mendik, who
married his sister, Annette, and became a business partner. At
the end of the 1950s, the Silversteins and Mendik decided to
buy buildings instead of leasing them. With a bank loan, they
bought a loft on 23rd Street and also asked the small
merchants in the area to invest a few dollars in the purchase.
The transaction was successful and the investors asked them to
expand the business.

They continued to buy properties
in various parts of the city. An especially profitable deal
involved 711 Fifth Avenue, which they bought in 1977 from
Columbia Pictures for $11.5 million and sold six years later
to Coca-Cola for $57.6 million. Just when business was
thriving, the Mendiks decided to get a divorce and the
business partnership was dissolved.

After the break,
Silverstein decided to move up a notch. In 1980 he bid
successfully for the construction rights to 7 World Trade
Center, but for the next four years, he had trouble finding
anyone to lease or buy office space in the projected building.
In 1984, he decided to build, even though he had no tenants
lined up. It's not for nothing that others in the profession
call him an incorrigible optimist and a gambler by nature. In
1985 the gamble turned out to be successful. The investment
firm of Solomon Inc. agreed to lease half the office space in
the building. A short time afterward, the company informed
Silverstein that it was canceling the deal.

"I thought
I would die," Silverstein related. His wife, though, told him
it was better that way; that's how it was meant to be.

Bizarre lawsuit

In 1987, Solomon Inc.
decided to lease office space in the building after all, and
signed a contract. Then everything went haywire again. The
slowdown in construction, which had hurt most of the major
entrepreneurs in New York, got to Silverstein, too. He had a
hard time repaying loans and was forced to sell properties.

In 1993, he became entangled in a lawsuit. Harry
Miller, a Vietnam War veteran, sued Silverstein, who owned the
Runway 69 dance club in Queens, for his alleged involvement in
the trafficking of heroin. Also on the list of defendants were
Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Ross Perot and Colin Powell, who
were alleged to have perpetrated acts including serial murder
for 25 years, since the war in Vietnam, as part of a
conspiracy to distribute heroin. In January 1994, a New York
court threw out the suit; an appeal by Miller was later
rejected.

Although the bizarre suit was not reported in
the press, it bothered Silverstein. Information about it
reached Israel. Opponents of the free-trade zone in the Negev
said that Silverstein, who was involved in illicit business in
New York, should not be allowed to be part of the Israeli
project. It was not until the late 1990s that Silverstein
began to recover. The leasing of the WTC properties was to be
the climax of his life.

Why was he so eager to get the
WTC contract, he was asked a week after the terrorist attack
on NBC Television's morning show. Silverstein, tearful,
holding the contract in his hand, replied that it had been his
dream from the moment he completed the construction of 7 WTC.
He looked up at the towers, he recalled, and felt an
uncontrollable urge to own them. In another interview, he said
that the 47-story building No. 7 looked like a peanut next to
the Twin Towers, and he didn't want another peanut.

Free trade in the Negev

Like everything
in his life, the leasing of the towers was also a rough ride
for Silverstein. He made the final preparations for the bid
from his hospital bed, after a drunk driver hit him five days
before the bids were due. Silverstein was positive he would
win: He was close to local politicians, he had donated $15,000
to the campaign of Governor Pataki. His business relations
with the Port Authority were very good. After the car bomb
attack at the Twin Towers, in 1993, Silverstein gave the Port
Authority offices at 7 WTC in place of those that were damaged
in the explosion.

After Silverstein lost and - when
the winning firm backed out - was declared the winner in the
bidding, he ran into problems with the Port Authority. A
bitter argument broke out over the size of the first payment:
The Port Authority wanted $800 million; Silverstein was
willing to fork over no more than $616 million. Some of the
Port Authority directors wondered whether Silverstein, who was
just getting back on his feet after the real-estate crash,
would be capable of operating the WTC properties, and demanded
that the negotiations be broken off.

Finally, to
prevent embarrassment (the Port Authority was afraid of a
public backlash if talks with a second entrepreneur were
broken off immediately after the first debacle), the decision
was made to sign with Silverstein. Silverstein was delighted.
He raised the rent of most of the towers' tenants by 40
percent. Financial analysts said he would reap a profit of $40
million in the very first year. Life seemed better than ever.

His friends in Israel were happy for him. Silverstein
has ties of various kinds in Israel. He is a donor to Tel Aviv
University and to the Tel Aviv development foundation. He held
a few fundraising events at his home in New York for the
foundation with the participation of the then-mayor of Tel
Aviv, Roni Milo. Silverstein is a nice guy and a pleasant
conversationalist, not like most rich Americans, Milo says.

Silverstein is also a member of the joint
American-Israeli commission for housing and community
development, which was established by former president Bill
Clinton. In the early 1990s, he was involved in projects to
build housing for new immigrants. The Israeli political world
got to know Silverstein when he tried to create a free-trade
zone in the country. He became friendly with Yitzhak Rabin,
Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon.

Ahaz
Ben Ari, a former legal adviser in the Prime Minister's Office
and the chairman of the Free-Trade Zones Council, remembers
Silverstein as being "not easy to deal with, a hot-tempered
type who spoke aggressively to the prime minister. He had the
feeling that he was going to save the Negev and the homeland,
but was not getting the response he deserved."

Silverstein conceived the idea of creating the
free-trade zone in 1989. He met with Shimon Peres, who was
then the finance minister, and with his deputy, Yossi Beilin,
and tried to convince them that the project was an urgent
necessity. The idea was that he would be given land in the
Negev and would establish tax-free industries there. The Negev
would benefit by getting new jobs, and Silverstein would
benefit by raking in plenty of money. Peres and Beilin
objected: Free-trade zones of the kind envisaged were usually
created in the Third World and had the reputation of being
slave markets. The local workers earn starvation wages, while
the entrepreneurs enjoy full tax exemption and make high
profits.

Silverstein did not give up. The economic
difficulties he encountered in New York forced him to look for
an additional source of revenues. In September 1992, he met in
New York with the new finance minister in the Rabin
government, Avraham Shochat, and again raised the idea of the
free-trade zone, claiming it would create 20,000 new jobs and
make the Negev flourish. With Silverstein were his partners in
the investment group, Larry Tisch, the owner of CBS, and Sy
Sims, a major New York discount retailer.

"I formed a
very good impression of them," Shochat recalls. The investors,
however, were somewhat less impressed with Shochat. David
Yerushalmi, from the West Bank city of Ma'aleh Adumim, who was
their representative in Israel, writes on his Web site that
Shochat had no understanding of economics, business or free
markets. What impressed him was the fact that a group of
leading Jewish businessmen wanted to invest without asking for
anything in return.

The prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin,
also supported the project, Yerushalmi notes, and he then put
pressure on Shochat. However, Shochat didn't want to make the
decision alone. He set up a commission headed by Yoram Gabai,
the director of the State Revenue Administration, to examine
the implications of establishing a free-trade zone. Gabai was
against the initiative.

"I took a negative view of
creating a zone like this of any kind," he says. "The sponsors
wanted to create an island, which would be free of all the
country's laws. That contradicted our basic approach, which
espoused the homogeneity of the system. We rejected the idea
outright."

Silverstein didn't like Gabai's report and
tried to get it changed.

"One day, I was summoned
urgently to the office of Yitzhak Rabin," Gabai recalls. "I
was wearing a plain shirt - I had no idea I would be called in
to the prime minister. I found a few American investors there,
all wearing suits and ties, who had arrived on a private
flight from New York and were going back that same day. They
wanted to know why I had written what I had written.

"I explained to them that a zone of the kind they
wanted was suitable for backward countries, but not for a
developed country like Israel. I told them that in the end,
the zone would become a money-laundering center and that no
one apart from lawyers would make a profit from
it."

Shochat and Rabin ignored Gabai's report and set
out to enact legislation that would make the Americans'
initiative a reality. In October 1993, the government
submitted a bill to establish free-trade zones in Israel. Its
terms were the fulfillment of every investor's dream. In
countless conversations that Silverstein and his
representatives conducted beforehand with cabinet ministers
and Knesset members, they emphasized that Israel would not
have to invest a cent in the project, but the bill stipulated
that the government would underwrite infrastructure costs up
to the boundary of the free-trade zone, and would also
expropriate land.

No special qualifications were
demanded of the franchisee, apart from the vague requirement
that he be capable of managing the zone. The benefits were
enormous. For 20 years, which could be extended for an
additional 20 years, the franchisee would be exempt from
payment of all taxes, customs and levies. Most of the Israeli
labor laws would not apply to those who worked inside the
free-trade zone. The chairman of the Histadrut federation of
labor, Amir Peretz, who submitted a private bill on the same
subject, supported the initiative, he says, "because they
promised 20,000 new jobs. From the point of view of the Negev,
that could have been a welcome change."

Bowing to
pressure

For about half a year, from the time the
bill was submitted until it was enacted into law in June 1994,
Silverstein and his representatives met with all the relevant
MKs and cabinet ministers. "We fought a major campaign," says
Dafna Barak, director-general of the Free Trade Zones Council.
"We did everything except to lie down in front of the prime
minister's door."

Their efforts produced results. The
bill became law on June 20, 1994. Support for the free-trade
zone cut across political parties. The debate in the Knesset
before the second and final readings was a demonstration of
support for the American millionaire.

Amir Peretz
explained that, "With this track, we have the opportunity to
assist and approach the entrepreneurs in the belief that they
are not out to cheat anyone. We must not take a narrow view of
the sponsors, because only an entrepreneur who makes a profit
is one from whom we can later demand that he improve the
workers' wages."

MK Michael Eitan (Likud): "If these
investors and capitalists make a profit and don't pay taxes on
it, what's wrong with that? It's true that they will make a
profit, but I don't begrudge them that profit."

The
party ended when senior Treasury officials argued that the law
posed a threat to the stability of the economy and set out to
amend it. In the original version, the companies involved
received full tax exemption, whereas in the amended version
only industrial firms were given that sweeping exemption.
Instead of a majority in the regional council, as the original
wording stipulated, under the amendment the representatives of
the franchisees had only one seat on the council.

Silverstein fumed. He wanted the whole package - "but
that would have created serious distortions in the economy and
would have put our reputation at risk and created a tax
haven," says Shochat, who was torn between political pressure
and the good of the economy.

"The initial idea for the
project came from a warm Jewish heart," says Ahaz Ben Ari,
"but when they started making more and more demands, we said
enough, there is a line we mustn't cross, even if the price is
the salvation of the Negev. Anyway, it's far from certain that
the Negev would have been saved."

The assassination of
Yitzhak Rabin gave the American group new hope for their
project. Silverstein asked Colette Avital, then Israel's
consul-general in New York, to set up a meeting for him with
Shimon Peres, who succeeded the slain Rabin as prime minister.

"My ties with Silverstein grew closer when I tried to
get Shochat to give the matter second and third thought, and
to give the free-trade zone a chance," Avital
recalls.

Peres met with Silverstein, but remained
adamant in his objections. Silverstein was furious.

"People barely listened to him, officials insulted
him," Dafna Barak says. "I love the project and what happened
just made me eat my heart."

Close ties with
Netanyahu

The ascension to power of Benjamin
Netanyahu opened a new chapter in the saga. Silverstein is
left-leaning in his political views - he supports the
Democratic Party - but after despairing of Rabin and Peres, he
believed that Netanyahu, whom he called a hero of the free
market, would push the project forward.

The two have
been on friendly terms since Netanyahu's stint as Israel's
ambassador to the United Nations. For years they kept in close
touch. Every Sunday afternoon, New York time, Netanyahu would
call Silverstein. It made no difference what the subject was
or where Netanyahu was, he would always call, Silverstein told
an Israeli acquaintance. Their ties continued after Netanyahu
became prime minister. They met several times and Netanyahu
promised to give the project his support.

The obstacle
was now the new finance minister, Dan Meridor. He met with
Silverstein and told him he was against the idea: "I don't
believe in that system," Meridor says. "If a free-trade zone
is such a great idea, why not do it throughout the country?
And then who will pay taxes?"

Netanyahu succeeded in
bypassing the treasury and getting a decision passed in the
Knesset, according to which the free-trade project would be
under the responsibility of the minister of national
infrastructure. The official reason was that Yaakov Ne'eman,
who had replaced Meridor as finance minister, had previously
been the project's legal adviser, and could not now handle the
matter.

The debate in the Knesset on this transfer of
authority, which took place in July 1997, was an embarrassing
show of capitulation to the demands of the money-man. MK Ze'ev
Boim (Likud) said he thought it was the intelligent step to
take and the right time to do it. The transfer of authority is
a cardinal national matter, said MK Roman Bronfman (then a
member of Yisrael b'Aliyah). MK Shmuel Halpert (United Torah
Judaism) noted that it was especially important for the powers
in question to be placed in the hands of the national
infrastructure minister, Ariel Sharon, who will be able to
contribute enormously to the law's implementation.

Sharon did, in fact, contribute substantially. A few
weeks after the debate in the Knesset, he ordered funds to the
tune of NIS 6 million to be transferred to the project and
promised that another nine million would follow. In April
1999, he proposed that the law be revised again to permit
commercial firms to benefit from the full tax exemption, too,
as Silverstein wanted.

However, Sharon's initiative
was stopped dead in its tracks by the elections of May 1999.
Still, the change of government did not look ominous to
Silverstein - on the contrary. He was friends with the new
prime minister, Ehud Barak, too. In 1995, when Barak left the
army, Silverstein offered him the job of acting as his
representative in Israel, hoping that the former chief of
staff, with his ramified connections, would be able to push
the project through. Barak turned down the offer, but
continued to stay in touch with Silverstein. They met at
various social events and Barak introduced him to some of the
members of his family.

Silverstein had another close
contact in Barak's bureau in the person of Isaac Herzog, who
handled Silverstein's legal affairs along with Yaakov Ne'eman.
"I didn't touch the subject during my period as cabinet
secretary," Herzog says. None of this stopped Barak, after his
election as prime minister, from trying to help Silverstein
advance the project.

"They came to Barak," says
Shochat, who was then the finance minister again. "Barak
examined the subject with all kinds of confidants and also
talked to me about it. I told him that I was vehemently
against it."

Barak drew on the help of Yaakov Terner,
the mayor of Be'er Sheva, the "capital of the Negev," who was
an ardent supporter of the free-trade zone.

"Silverstein gave me speeches from which I understood
that he had better investment potential in other parts of the
world," Terner says. "He presented a Zionist aspect. I
supported the idea because I thought I had to find an opening
anywhere we had an opportunity for thousands of jobs." They
met in New York. "I tried to persuade him not to despair and
to keep the ember burning," Terner recalls.

In May
2000, when his business in New York started to recover and
after he understood that Barak was busy with other things and
wouldn't go the extra mile for him, Silverstein announced that
he was dropping the initiative.

"As a result of this
experience," the tycoon was reported as saying in The
Jerusalem Post (May 18, 2000), "We've learned something: Don't
try to do business in Israel, certainly don't do business with
the government because you'll get killed. I'm never going to
do this again. The sad thing is that this has turned off so
many potential American businessmen from doing business in
Israel. And that's a tragedy."n

Bookmark to del.icio.us

Why he
must go

Israel's
culture of governance can change only after Olmert and his ilk
are gone.

The
cello was proud

Breaking
the Muses' silence during the thunderous days of Winograd is
truly naive.

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