The Fugitive, His Dead Wife, and the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory That Explains Everything

A few months after working at Ground Zero, Kurt Sonnenfeld became a suspect in the mysterious and high-profile death of his wife. He got off, barely, and started a new life in South America. But when the U.S. tried to bring him back to face charges, Sonnenfeld went to the local media. The Feds didn’t want him for murder, he said. They wanted to put him away because of what he knew about 9/11.

Double Happiness

A woman attempts to find her own closure following losses on 9/11.

"The Rumson police, the Little Silver police, the Middletown police especially insisted, they’d already had funerals of their own and knew what to expect. The roads were cordoned off from the Sea Bright Bridge to the Avenue of Two Rivers and cars parked for a mile all the way down Rumson Road, women in black sling-backs climbing the rutted grass along the road, made the shortcut through the tennis club across the school yard to the gray shingle church, capacity four hundred, someone said a thousand stood inside and out to hear Father Jim say no words could gather the force he needed to say his prayer, they would all join him in silence. Kathleen in the choir loft, alone, sang “Danny Boy” for her brother, for her father, and the thousand beyond prayer, beyond tears, shook and trembled now."

The Rebuilding

Scott Raab’s ongoing reports on the reconstruction at the World Trade Center site.

  1. The Truth About the World Trade Center: A history of boondoggles. (Sep 2012)

  2. The Memorial: How the site came together. (Sep 2011)

  3. Good Days at Ground Zero: One World Trade reaches to the sky. (Oct 2010)

  4. Of Time and the Freedom Tower: Why is construction taking so long? (Sep 2008)

  5. The Steel: Construction begins, six years after 9-11. (Jun 2007)

  6. The Blasters: Getting ready to rebuild. (Sep 2006)

  7. The Engineers: The challenges of the construction site. (Feb 2006)

  8. The Foundation: Larry Silverstein and Governor Pataki play nice, for now. (Sep 2005)

Some Real Shock and Awe: Racially Profiled and Cuffed in Detroit

A first-person account of an arrest:

I stared at the yellow walls and listened to a few officers talk about the overtime they were racking up, and I decided that I hated country music. I hated speedboats and shitty beer in coozies and fat bellies and rednecks. I thought about Abu Ghraib and the horror to which those prisoners were exposed. I thought about my dad and his prescience. I was glad he wasn’t alive to know about what was happening to me. I thought about my kids, and what would have happened if they had been there when I got taken away. I contemplated never flying again. I thought about the incredible waste of taxpayer dollars in conducting an operation like this. I wondered what my rights were, if I had any at all. Mostly, I could not believe I was sitting in some jail cell in some cold, undisclosed building surrounded by “the authorities.”

The Rarely Noticed Casualties of Sept. 11

On the people who were working at Logan Airport when the hijacked flights departed:

They are the rarely noticed casualties of the terrorist attacks: the security guard, the ticket agent, the baggage handler on the ramp. They made it home that night, but with images they couldn’t shake, a pain uncomfortable to voice. They can’t believe it has been 10 years. They can’t believe it has only been 10 years.