Did the World Trade Center towers undergo a deliberate “power-down” on the weekend prior to the 9-11 terrorist attacks? According to Scott Forbes, a senior database administrator for Fiduciary Trust, Inc. – a high-net investment bank which was later acquired by Franklin Templeton – this is precisely what took place. Forbes, who was hired by Fiduciary in 1999 and is now stationed at a U.K. branch office, was working on the weekend of September 8-9, 2001, and said that his company was given three weeks advance notice that New York’s Port Authority would take out power in the South Tower from the 48th floor up. The reason: the Port Authority was performing a cabling upgrade to increase the WTC’s computer bandwidth.

Forbes stated that Fiduciary Trust was one of the WTC’s first occupants after it was erected, and that a “power-down” had never been initiated prior to this occasion. He also stated that his company put forth a huge investment in time and resources to take down their computer systems due to the deliberate power outage. This process, Forbes recalled, began early Saturday morning (September 8th) and continued until mid-Sunday afternoon (September 9th) – approximately 30 hours. As a result of having its electricity cut, the WTC’s security cameras were rendered inoperative, as were its I.D. systems, and elevators to the upper floors.

Forbes did stress, though, that there was power to the WTC’s lower floors, and that there were plenty of engineers going in-and-out of the WTC who had free access throughout the building due to its security system being knocked out. In an e-mail to journalist John Kaminski, author of The Day America Died (Sisyphus Press) and America’s Autopsy Report (Dandelion Books), Forbes wrote: “Without power there were no security cameras, no security locks on doors, and many, many ‘engineers’ coming in and out of the tower.”

Forbes didn’t think much of these occurrences at the time, and said that he worked until Monday morning (September 10th) to get all the computer systems back online. Due to his IT-related duties on Saturday & Sunday, Forbes had Tuesday, September 11th off, and thus watched the World Trade Center towers collapse from his apartment. While doing so, he recalled, “I was convinced immediately that something was happening related to the weekend work.”

In addition, Forbes says there were other peculiarities revolving around this unreported event, including:

1) Fiduciary employees trapped between the 90-97th floors of the South Tower told family members (via cell-phone calls) that they were hearing “bomb-like explosions” throughout the towers.

2) Video cameras positioned atop the World Trade Center which were used to feed daily images to local television stations were inexplicably inoperative that morning.

3) A Fiduciary employee who was on one of the lower floors and escaped immediately after the first (North) tower was struck, reported that he was amazed by the large number of FBI agents that were already on the streets surrounding the WTC complex only minutes after the initial strike.

4) Last but not least, Ann Tatlock, CEO of Fiduciary Trust and now a board member of Franklin Templeton, had just arrived at a conference hosted by Warren Buffet at the Offutt Air Force Base (home of the U.S. Strategic Command Headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska) when the 9-11 attacks took place. Coincidentally, later that day President George W. Bush flew into this very same base on Air Force One for “security reasons.” Even more chilling are the Offutt AFB ties to the CIA’s MK ULTRA experiments, Project Monarch, the Franklin Cover-Up, and the diabolical practices of Michael Aquino. (Type any of these words into a search engine for more information.)

In the end, Forbes says that even though these disclosures could jeopardize his current employment, he has stepped forward because, “I have mailed this information to many people, including the 9/11 Commission, but no one seems to be registering these facts.”

Obviously there are many unanswered questions to this story, and we will keep you updated as more information arrives.