Musing about Cantor-Fitzgerald and 9/11.

[Baitball Blogger]

It is funny how, regardless of how ordinary we are, we all have experiences with historical events. Some of us are fortunate enough just to brush by them, rather than being at the epicenter of a calamity. What we see is peripheral, and sometimes, we may have the tendency to amplify the few details that do come our way by those who were close to the tragedy. That's what may be happening with this post as I recollect a conversation I had with a mother who lost her son on 9/11.

He was a relatively new hire at Cantor-Fitzgerald prior to 9/11. A very good looking young man. Would stand out in a crowd. Very kind and considerate. Probably because he was a new hire he had the practice of arriving very early in the morning to begin his day at work. September 11th was no exception. Then the planes hit.

His mom said that she never received a call from him that morning, so the assumption is that he died without ever knowing what was happening. She said that afterwards, she saw the portraits of all the Cantor-Fitzgerald victims -- not sure if the pictures were posted at the special services she went to, or if she saw them compiled in the paper -- but she said she was startled to see that everyone of them was young and remarkably attractive.

This was no exaggeration. I did see their photos in the paper back then and I was left with the same impression. Her comment, "Something must have been going on in that company." It always stuck with me.

I remember wondering whether it's even legal to hire based on an applicant's looks. I have a vague remembrance that they were all Caucasian, but I could be wrong. It's a question I buried a long time ago, and only comes up now that I know that Howard Lutnick was the CEO of that financial company. In lieu of his association with Epstein, it just raises suspicions.

Now it just gives me the creepy feeling that there was just too many different ways for these devils to weave their evil desires. I suspect it was not just beauty pageants and modeling agencies. Maybe they were doing the same thing in financial institutions, where they could sort them out for grooming potential? If not as victims of rape, then potential blackmailing purposes?

[Deep State Witch]

1. I Knew Someone Who Worked There

He apparently had a dentist appointment on that morning, so he wasn't at work. He went on to form his own company and was instrumental in getting Voice over IP going into the mass market. He was fairly young, but average looking. I knew him professionally, so I never really got to talk to him about it. I recently found out that we have mutual friends who are astrologers.

[Walleye]

2. There's no telling what men will do when they are drunk with power

[Bettie]

6. And it starts a cultural shift

where those people will do it when they have power, because they think it is "just the way the business works".

[Nittersing]

3. Doesn't seem a stretch, does it?

I suspect this (insert - madness, unimaginable horrors...) has infiltrated most industries where there is $$$ to burn.

[Baitball Blogger]

8. Isn't it something?

What would have been dismissed as a CT years ago, now is just food for thought.

Everything has changed.

[cbabe]

4. Gelernter stops teaching amid Yale review over his Epstein emails

https://yaledailynews.com/articles/gelernter-stops-teaching-amid-yale-review-caused-by-his-epstein-emails

Gelernter stops teaching amid Yale review over his Epstein emails

Yale computer science professor David Gelernter — who has defended his recently released email correspondence with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — wrote to his students on Tuesday that he was “relieved” of teaching their class.

By Leo Nyberg, Asher Boiskin & Jerry Gao
Staff Reporters
9:15 p.m., February 10, 2026

…

Gelernter and Epstein maintained substantial email correspondence between 2009 and 2015, which the U.S. Department of Justice released in late January among some three million other files related to Epstein. In their exchanges, Gelernter and Epstein planned meetings and discussed art, business and women. Gelernter described an undergraduate as a “v small goodlooking blonde” in an October 2011 email to Epstein that Gelernter has characterized as a recommendation letter.

Gelernter defended that message last week in an email to Jeffrey Brock ’92, the dean of Yale’s School of Engineering & Applied Science, on which Gelernter copied Computer Science department chair Holly Rushmeier. In the email, which Gelernter forwarded to the News, he wrote that he had kept “the potential boss’s habits in mind” — a reference to Epstein — when he sent it.

… more …

[haele]

5. Probably HR was required to put as much emphasis on good looks

As qualifications.
Many "elite" businesses that have a high level of customer facing interactions require attractive people to work for them, and woe betide the employee who starts going casual, getting fat or stops "taking care of themselves"
Also, young people can be paid less, and tend to be naive when asked to do stupid or potentially illegal shit to make the company more profitable. They can be gotten rid of easier than a long term employee. And attractive, eager young employees just makes the boss feel better about being the boss.
Looks and the ability to manipulate to make more money. is more to some corporate leadership than providing service or product.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

7. Howard Lutnick stole most of the 9/11 insurance settlement money for himself and the other senior executives

I have done enough deals with wall street firms to NOT be surprised by the OP. As an undergrad, I was an accounting major but took as many advance economic classes as possible because they were easy and interested me. One of the weaker students who was in one of the advance economics class went to a wall street firm even though he never understood most of the concepts discussed in that class.

I saw this article this morning. It appears that Lutnick stole insurance recoveries from employees

Link to tweet

[Baitball Blogger]

9. I know the person I know was given survivor settlements to the tune of

two or more million.

And with the revelation of the Saudi involvement a year ago, there may have been another lawsuit with possibly another pay out.

Lots of money being transferred after 9/11. Most of it we'll never know about.

[AZJonnie]

12. That tweet is a wild exaggeration of what's actually in the 2016 article the tweeter is quoting there (nt)

[WhiskeyGrinder]

10. People who are conventionally attractive certainly have an advantage in hiring. It's not unique to people connected to

Epstein.

[kimbutgar]

11. I knew a guy there who would come out every year for the SF security Traders conference in Pebble Beach

Great guy with a wife and two daughters. I have pictures of myself and others at the convention in a magazine they would put out after the convention. I knew he worked in the World Trade Center and saw it on tv. My boss who was also friends with him called me that morning and told me to stay home. I watched in horror knowing he was in that building. Whenever I remember the 9-11 I think of what a loss it was for his family and friends. I was a nobody but he was always kind and talked to me.

That said most of the people in the security industry were all quite attractive thinking back on it!

[Baitball Blogger]

13. So many promising people with hopeful futures lost, which may never have happened

if Bush and Cheney had just followed the protocols established in the Clinton Administration.

Sorry about what happened to the person you knew.

[Boomerproud]

14. I was working in the trust department of a bank and part of my job was in the mail/fax room

Getting wire transfers off the faxes and into the mail slots of whoever was responsible for that account. On 9-11 I got 2 faxes from Cantor Fitzgerald 5 minutes before the planes hit. That's my little story.