After years of fighting in court, lawyers representing the city, construction companies and more than 10,000 ground zero rescue and recovery workers have agreed to a settlement that could pay up to $657.5 million to responders sickened by dust from the destroyed World Trade Center.

The settlement was announced Thursday evening by the WTC Captive Insurance Co., a special entity established to indemnify the city and its contractors against potential legal action as they moved to clean up the site after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

The deal, which still must be approved by a judge and the workers themselves, would make the city and other companies represented by the insurer liable for a minimum of $575 million, with more money available to the sick if certain conditions are met.

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The charges include the Colombo family’s use of a trucking company they controlled, All Around Trucking  to execute a kickback and extortion scheme for debris removal subcontracting from Testa Corporation, a demolition contractor headquartered near Boston. The Colombo family carried out the scheme at locations including the World Trade Center construction site, and the Newtown Creek wastewater treatment plant on the border between Brooklyn and Queens. Specifically, as detailed in the detention memorandum, Theodore Persico, Jr., Michael Persico, and others agreed that, in exchange for All Around obtaining debris removal subcontracting with Testa, All Around would kickback a portion of its profits as a commercial bribe to a Testa foreman. After All Around secured subcontracting work with Testa, Colombo family associates threatened Testa employees when Testa failed to pay All Around on the timetable set by the crime family. Consensual recordings captured defendant Michael Persico directing Bombino to threaten Testa employees, and captured Bombino reporting back to Michael Persico that, when Bombino made the threats, the Testa employees were “shakin’ in their boots over us.” Other charges in the indictment include an extortion of a furniture store owner, in which Michael Persico forced the furniture store owner to give Bombino control of the store until the owner repaid a loan owed to Colombo family associates.

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Do I know what happened? No. But so many people in our country have bought the official story hook, line and sinker, that they will defend their belief and the government who created that belief to their grave. However, if the official story was the truth, than why are there so many millions of intelligent, bright, well-meaning and honest people around the world still questioning the official story 8 years after the fact? Is it perhaps because there is overwhelming proof and mountains of evidence that the official story is a fabrication of lies and disinformation designed to keep the public from discovering the real orchestrators of the biggest mass murder on American soil in our history? And why is it that whenever anyone asks the questions, they are immediately labeled as a kook, a loon, or simply a crazy "conspiracy theorist"? Good question. What is it "they" have to hide? Why haven't the hundreds of questions been answered? Since when did free speech in America and questioning our government become something with which to attack people? Where did it all go so wrong?

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