I have read a lot of the "truth about 9/11" stuff and I have tried to keep an open mind tempered with a healthy dose of skepticism, but up to now I have kept quiet. However, the following horse manure demands a response: "Each firefighter had a 10 million dollar life insurance policy, for example, payable to their Union. So the commanders were told to keep cramming their grunts into the bldgs. The payoff saved the Union." That claim is laughably absurd.

Does anyone for a moment believe that every New York City firefighter had a 10 million dollar policy? Even if it were only term insurance the premium on each would be astronomical. Who paid that premium? The individual firefighters? Their union? The city government? And even if the firefighters each had such a policy, why would they make the union the beneficiary, rather than their families? It's insane.

When I used to live in Fort Lee, New Jersey, just across the George Washington Bridge from New York City, I knew many NYC firefighters who lived in that town and the surrounding communities. They were members of the Uniformed Firefighters Association of Greater New York, which is Local 82 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, AFL-CIO. As the certified bargaining agent, that union collected its dues through mandatory payroll deductions. It was not then and is not now in any financial difficulty, and it certainly wasn't about to go belly up. But even if it were in dire fiscal condition, the union leadership never put their brothers (and their tiny handful of sisters) in such jeopardy.

I should also point out that superior officers, from lieutenants all the way up to deputy chiefs, are members of a different union. They belong to the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, which is Local 854 of the IAFF, AFL-CIO. Although both are affiliates of the same parent union, the two locals are entirely separate from one another. In any case, the mysterious higher-ups who supposedly told the commanders to send the firefighters to their doom would have been chiefs or higher, and therefore not part of any union.