On September 11, 2001, the original 7 World Trade Center—WTC 7—was a 47-story office building immediately north of the Twin Towers. It contained financial companies, several federal agencies, a covert CIA office, and New York City’s principal emergency command center.
The most authoritative tenant list is Table 1-1 of NIST’s final WTC 7 report. NIST cautioned that investigators could not recover every lease and had limited information concerning a few smaller occupants.
Confirmed government and intelligence occupants
Floor Agency or facility Function
25 Central Intelligence Agency—CIA Covert intelligence office or station
25 Department of Defense—DOD Defense Department office; the publicly available NIST report does not identify the particular military component
24–25 Internal Revenue Service—IRS Regional Council Federal tax-administration offices
23 New York City Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management—OEM Headquarters and Emergency Operations Center
22 Federal Home Loan Bank of New York Federally chartered regional banking institution—not an intelligence agency
18 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—EEOC Federal civil-rights and employment-discrimination agency
11–13 Securities and Exchange Commission—SEC Federal securities-regulation offices
9–10 United States Secret Service—New York Field Office Protective intelligence, financial-crimes investigations, and electronic-crime investigations
This floor-by-floor placement is documented directly in NIST’s report.
1. Central Intelligence Agency
A secret CIA office was located in WTC 7, reportedly on the 25th floor alongside the Department of Defense and IRS.
Its presence was not publicly acknowledged before 9/11. In November 2001, the Associated Press reported that:
• The office was an undercover CIA station.
• Its destruction seriously disrupted intelligence operations in New York.
• CIA personnel searched the debris for classified documents and intelligence records.
• Some CIA officers working from the location reportedly operated under diplomatic or business cover.
• The CIA’s principal New York office was somewhere else and was not destroyed.
The CIA declined to officially discuss the office, but NIST subsequently listed the CIA as a 25th-floor tenant in its government investigation.
This establishes that the CIA office was real. It does not, by itself, establish that the CIA controlled WTC 7, directed the attacks, operated explosives there, or destroyed evidence.
2. Department of Defense and military presence
NIST identifies the United States Department of Defense as occupying part of the 25th floor.
Important limitations:
• The public NIST tenant table says only “Department of Defense.”
• It does not name the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, or another specific component.
• I have not found authoritative documentation showing that WTC 7 contained a Pentagon-style military command center.
• Claims assigning the office to a particular military intelligence unit should therefore be treated as unverified unless supported by a lease, personnel record, or declassified agency document.
The confirmed fact is a DOD office, not a documented military operational headquarters.
3. United States Secret Service
The Secret Service occupied the entire ninth floor and most of the tenth floor. Its New York Field Office performed:
• Protection-related intelligence work
• Counterfeiting and financial-crime investigations
• Electronic-crime investigations
• Coordination connected with protected officials and visiting dignitaries
A 2003 GAO decision independently confirms that the Secret Service New York Field Office was on the ninth floor. It states that a safe containing $22,646.20 in confidential investigative funds was lost in the building’s destruction.
Shortly after the second plane hit the South Tower, a Secret Service agent reportedly informed OEM officials that additional commercial aircraft remained unaccounted for. OEM’s WTC 7 facility was ordered evacuated at approximately 9:30 a.m.
The Secret Service office was a substantial investigative field office, but available records do not identify it as the national command center for Secret Service operations.
4. New York City emergency command center
The most important command facility in WTC 7 was the New York City Office of Emergency Management Emergency Operations Center, located on the 23rd floor.
It was designed to coordinate citywide responses among organizations including:
• NYPD
• FDNY
• Emergency Medical Services
• Department of Health
• Hospitals
• Port Authority
• State and federal emergency agencies
• Utilities and transportation organizations
At approximately 8:48 a.m. on September 11, OEM began activating the center and calling agencies to send their designated representatives. FEMA was asked to deploy federal Urban Search and Rescue teams. However, the center was evacuated at approximately 9:30 a.m., before outside-agency liaison officers arrived.
The facility is sometimes called:
• The OEM Emergency Operations Center
• The Mayor’s Emergency Command Center
• The WTC 7 bunker
• Giuliani’s “bunker in the sky”
Those names generally describe the same 23rd-floor complex—not several separate command centers.
WTC 7 also contained substantial emergency-generator and diesel-fuel systems serving the building, OEM and its major financial tenant. NIST documented three separate emergency-power systems and multiple storage and day tanks.
5. Securities and Exchange Commission
The SEC occupied floors 11, 12 and part of 13.
These offices reportedly contained substantial quantities of records related to federal securities investigations and enforcement proceedings. Some paper files were destroyed, but the mere loss of records does not demonstrate that WTC 7 was destroyed to eliminate particular investigations. Any such claim must identify:
1. The specific enforcement case
2. The records actually stored in WTC 7
3. Whether duplicates existed elsewhere
4. How destruction materially changed the case
NIST observed that the SEC floors contained unusually large quantities of paper, an important factor in estimating the combustible contents of the offices.
6. IRS, EEOC and Federal Home Loan Bank
Other confirmed government-related occupants were:
• IRS Regional Council—floors 24 and 25
• EEOC—part of floor 18
• Federal Home Loan Bank of New York—floor 22
The Federal Home Loan Bank is part of a congressionally created banking system, but it is better described as a government-sponsored, member-owned financial institution, rather than a military or intelligence agency.
7. Customs Service and Immigration and Naturalization Service
Contemporary reports stated that WTC 7 also housed offices connected with:
• United States Customs Service
• Immigration and Naturalization Service—INS
A report published immediately after 9/11 specifically named Customs, IRS, EEOC and the Secret Service as occupants.
However, Customs and INS do not appear separately in NIST’s simplified final floor table. This could mean that they had smaller offices, shared federal space, had recently relocated, or were omitted because complete lease records could not be recovered. NIST itself acknowledged uncertainty concerning some smaller occupants. Consequently, Customs and INS should be classified as contemporaneously reported occupants, rather than assigned definite floors without stronger documentation.
Was the FBI in Building 7?
I found no authoritative tenant record showing that the FBI maintained a regular office in WTC 7 on September 11.
The confusion probably comes from several facts:
• The CIA office worked jointly with the FBI on counterterrorism matters.
• The FBI’s New York Joint Terrorism Task Force included personnel from multiple agencies.
• FBI agents responded to Ground Zero and led the enormous PENTTBOM investigation.
• The Secret Service—sometimes mistaken for an intelligence service comparable to the FBI—had a large WTC 7 field office.
The FBI was extensively involved in the response and subsequent investigation, but that is different from being a documented WTC 7 tenant. The CIA office reportedly cooperated with the FBI, yet the CIA’s presence does not prove an FBI office was colocated there.
Was MK-ULTRA operating in Building 7?
There is no credible evidence that MK-ULTRA had an office, laboratory, archive, command post, or operational unit in WTC 7.
MK-ULTRA was a historical CIA behavioral-modification and drug-research program begun in 1953. CIA Director Richard Helms ordered many MK-ULTRA files destroyed in 1973, and the program became the subject of congressional investigations during the 1970s.
Therefore:
• CIA office in WTC 7: confirmed.
• MK-ULTRA operation in WTC 7: unsupported.
• MK-ULTRA records deliberately destroyed when WTC 7 fell: unsupported.
• Later CIA behavioral or interrogation programs being identical to MK-ULTRA: an interpretation, not proof that the historical program occupied the building.
The presence of a CIA station does not mean every past CIA project—including MK-ULTRA—was conducted or archived there.
Bottom line
The confirmed national-security presence in WTC 7 consisted of:
1. CIA covert office
2. Department of Defense office
3. United States Secret Service New York Field Office
4. New York City OEM Emergency Operations Center
5. SEC
6. IRS
7. EEOC
8. Federal Home Loan Bank of New York
Customs and INS were also reported by contemporary sources, although their precise locations are uncertain.