THE SILENT VICTIMS OF NINE ELEVEN STILL SCREAM THREE YEARS LATER

GROUND ZERO PLUS 1095 DAYS, (24 HOURS TO GROUND ZERO PLUS THREE YEARS)--New York, NY, Thursday, September 9, 2004--There are thousands of Silent Victims of Nine Eleven wandering about the earth silently screaming over their survival of that day's holocaust. I know, I am one of them.

There are thousands of victims of Nine Eleven silently screaming

On the outside we, the Silent Survivors, bear no obvious scars of the worst attack on American soil since the War of 1812. We don't brandish a Red Badge of Courage soaked with the blood of the thousands who died that day tied around our foreheads. We don't have television cameras thrust into our faces broadcasting to the world the daily and nightly anguish we live with as we witnessed from the ground the horror of our comrades leaping from the Twin Towers, or the fear we suffered when the earth heaved beneath our feet and the Beast of Terror seemed to rise from the bowels New York's subways to threaten our lives and drench us in a cloud of death that most of us were sure would snuff out our lives.

We live within the secret of our silent survivorship. We are the fodder, the backdrop, the landscape to the 2,605 victims who have been recorded dead when American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower and United Fight 175 slammed into the South Tower with 127 passengers, 20 crewmembers and ten Terrorists aboard.

Television cameras do not follow us around, delve into the hollowness of our lives, or record the startling moments when we bolt upright in our beds in the middle of the night screaming, or, capture that frozen, fearful look when we duck as a low-fly jet passes overhead, or, freeze-frame the furrows on our faces as our guts twist into Gordian Knots when we watch Rescue Me and remember the vacuous stare of the dead spearing glassy, lifeless eyes at us and whispering through their defunct souls: "Why Me...Why Not YOU???"

We live on the banks of the River Styx.

We Silent Survivors of Nine Eleven line the banks of the River Styx

In Greek mythology, Styx was a river that formed the boundary between earth and the underworld. When you died, a coin was placed under your tongue as tribute to the ferryman Charon who would oar you from one side to the other. If you didn't have a coin, you were destined to wander for 100 years on the edge of life and death.

In many ways, we, the Silent Survivors of Nine Eleven stand between the living and the dead of that day. We line the banks of the River Styx, shadows of an experience that the world wants to put aside and move on with life after death.

For the Silent Screamers, that isn't as easy as it sounds.

We cannot bury our memories. We cannot bury our helplessness that day when we watched so many die before our eyes, and when we, faced with our own death, prayed to live and did.

I was a few blocks away from the burning buildings, watching the bodies leaping from the towering inferno. I was a solemn witness and part of me died with each person who dove to his or her death.

There is little accounting for the thousands upon thousands who witnessed the death and destruction of Nine Eleven

Watching horror unfold before your powerless eyes is something you do not wish upon anyone, for it opens the soul to a vulnerability that cannot be healed. We were like observers at Auschwitz or Buchenwald, standing at the barbed wire fence watching the rows of humans walking into the furnaces, our ears tuned to their Silent Screams as our own Silent Screams ricocheted within our marrow, escaping only with a dull, lifeless thud as the bodies hit the ground.

According to some statistics, 40,000 people escaped the Twin Towers that bright September morning. But, there is little accounting for the thousands upon thousands who were nearby witnessing the death and destruction.

We were the historical recorders of death's swiftness. It took less than ten seconds for the buildings to collapse from nearly a quarter mile in the sky. When the first tower fell, it was as though the bowels of Hell had erupted.

People stampeded, pushing, shoving. Their eyes were glazed, as the dead, frozen in fear that Terrorism seeks to inject into all its victims. Others couldn't move. The women next to me whimpered: "We're all going to die." I grabbed them and shoved them against a wall to protect them from the debris and said as calmly as I could, "If we're all going to die, then think of something beautiful. Let your last thought be of something beautiful."

But mine was about death. I prayed for a quick death. I was fearful the Terrorists had released some nerve gas and we would writhe in pain and anguish. I asked for a quick death, and then flashed before my eyes my family and loved ones, wanting that last thought to be embossed forever as I wandered the banks of the River Styx, for I was sure I didn't have a coin under my tongue.

I survived.

So did the memories of that day.

I made a vow to never forget the legacy of Nine Eleven, or the Sentinels of Vigilance who gave their lives by default to remind us that Vigilance is the only way we can ward off the Silent Screams of Terrorism.

For three years I have posted daily stories about Vigilance on www.vigilancevoice.com--if for no other reason than to quell the Silent Screams that rage within me.

I cannot forget the death, destruction or the evil that looms over our nation and other nations as a result of Terrorism's assault on our nation and the world. When I think I am walking the banks of the River Styx in futility, Terrorism raises its vile and corrupt head and lashes out with its venomous fangs and claws to remind me that my journey between the life of Vigilance and the death of Terrorism is not in vain.

I let out Silent Screams for those school children and their parents who suffered in Russia last week

Just last week the Beast of Terror attacked hundreds of school children in Russia and wantonly killed them. I let out Silent Screams for those children and their parents, as I do daily for all victims of all forms of Terrorism.

And, I continue to suffer the pain of being a Silent Screamer.

In February of this year after being prodded by my wife and friends who knew me well, I filed with my disability insurance company, MONY, a claim for Ground Zero Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

I was reluctant to do so, for I refused to accept that my financial life had been crippled by Nine Eleven or that I was a "victim." It seemed to me that the true victims had died that day, and to believe I was a "victim" seemed a violation of their memory.

But the facts told me differently. I had become obsessed with my website, spending all my time and energy trying to bring to life the dead, to avenge the horror of Terrorism, to ring the bells of Vigilance and get the world to take my Pledge of Vigilance to protect the children and the Children's Children's Children from future harm.

I created more than two million words on the website, each story focused on forming a Nation of Vigilance to drive away all forms of Terrorism from the Emotional to the Physical. I was bankrupt. My life had been consumed by my mission as the Avenging Angel of Vigilance.

A client of MONY, a major insurance company I had purchased my disability policies with more than thirty years early, I filed a claim for Ground Zero Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

I documented all my symptoms, and presented to the company my website and all its information. I had no funds to see a private doctor to affirm my PTSD, and pleaded with MONY to provide me such. They denied me access.

I went to the VA. I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with an onset date of September 11, 2001.

MONY denied my claim for GZ-PTSD and AXA/MONY gave me the cold shoulder

Wary that MONY might try to deny my claim because the VA relates PTSD to the combat experience of vets, I pleaded for additional private review by MONY and was again denied. I was told by MONY that they would "take care of me."

Nearly three months later MONY denied my claim. They said I did not have Ground Zero Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and if I did have PTSD, it was "war related."

I argued forcefully that I had never had any symptoms of PTSD before September 11, 2001, and never been treated for it. MONY twisted and convoluted my contract to deny me the rights I had paid on for three decades.

They said that a previous claim I had prior to Nine Eleven for depression had not changed, and essentially called me a liar and a fraud for filing for Ground Zero Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Then, they kicked the dog. They offered me a meager settlement in return for surrendering my policies, whose value to my wife were I to exercise all the potential benefits allowed, amounted to at least $550,000.

MONY told me they would pay me $34,000 if I surrendered my policies, signed a release, and never bothered them again.

I screamed foul. I went into a rage, not just over the money, but because they were telling me I was a fraud, a liar, a cheat by trying to claim Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. They refused to accept the symptoms or diagnosis I was given for PTSD. They denied that I had been afflicted with PTSD as a result of Nine Eleven, and that I had no right to claim a concurrent New Benefit as of September 11, 2001.

MONY Terrorists had a box cutter to my financial jugular

My wife, a cancer victim suffering from three different types of cancer, begged me to take the offer. We were thousands of dollars behind in rent being faced with eviction. I felt like the people on the planes that flew into the Twin Towers. The MONY Terrorists had a box cutter to my financial jugular.

They told me if I didn't take their offer I risked getting nothing, and, said that I had no right to a claim anyway, and they were simply doing me a favor by offering me the $34,000 because I was so "upset."

I was horrified.

Terrorism, I realize, comes in many forms. I have written about it many times, including Corporate Terrorism, but now I was the victim. I was on my knees. My wife was begging me to accept. I was screaming into the phone about the unfairness, the unjustness of MONY's icy, cold Terroristic decision after having led me down the rosy path for months on the assumption that my claim was valid.

With a gun to my head, I accepted, signed the release, and took the money. I signed with the blood of the victims of Nine Eleven, for what infuriated me the most about the ugliness of MONY's decision was the insult they slapped to the memories of the people I had served for three years--the Victims of Nine Eleven.

By denying my claim, they denied that my work on the legacy of the Sentinels of Vigilance meant anything. They virtually ignored the fact that I lived daily in the belly of the Beast of Terror.

When I repeatedly requested to be interviewed by MONY's doctors to affirm my Ground Zero PTSD, I was denied those requests. The countless documents I sent to the top executives of MONY, Mr. Michael Roth, Mr. Sam Foti, and Mr. Richard Daddario, were shuffled off to MONY's third-party claims company, a profit-based company that makes money by denying claims and purchasing back policies at discounts, among other things.

Then I found that MONY had been purchased by AXA Financial, a company that manages nearly $1 trillion in financial assets.

I pleaded with AXA Financial for justice, but was given the cold corporate shoulder. AXA Financial had assumed all the liabilities of MONY, ingested its bile as well as its assets, and I was part of that bile.

AXA has refused to respond to any of my requests for fair and just settlement of my dispute. It has ignored my repeated requests I have made to its President, Mr. Kip Condron, and to all the executive officers of AXA Financial.

I think of the horror of Nine Eleven and of being a Silent Screamer

Like the majority of survivors of Nine Eleven, AXA Financial wants to smother my Silent Screams.

We, who suffered so much that day, and live with that suffering, have been cast to the netherland. We are the shadows of Nine Eleven.

As I sit here and think about the horror of Nine Eleven, I think about the horror of being a Silent Screamer.

I have been called a liar, cheat, a scum bag, a violator of my contracts with MONY and AXA by their denial of my claim. They have refused to accept any and all of my claims I am a "victim" of Ground Zero Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

It's like saying I wasn't there. It's like telling me I am nothing more than some beggar standing at their door trying to get something I don't deserve.

I find it sad that the moral and ethical posture of corporations sink so low as to deny a client the right to validate his claim. MONY refused to allow me to seek additional medical authentication of my PTSD, an example of its intent to simply deny my claim.

Had MONY exercised its moral and ethical duties, it would have offered me the opportunity to defend my symptoms and condition rather than summarily denying my claim on the grounds that my symptoms were "war related" or that they were "unchanged" from prior depression.

They simply expunged any possibility that I might have Ground Zero Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and by erasing that possibility, felt justified in crushing my contract and forcing me to accept a pittance settlement under duress.

Victims of Nine Eleven have many symptoms from that day clinging to them like leeches. One of those for me is Corporate Terrorism.

MONY and its parent AXA Financial have chosen to kick, bully, maim and exaggerate the wounds I suffered from Nine Eleven.

I will scream again and again for the Vigilance to stand up to Terrorism

They have "written me off," and a vice president of MONY recently sent me a letter saying, "this case is closed," which is a simple way of saying F_ _ _ Y_ _ And The Nine Eleven Horse You Rode In On."

So, as the last 24 hours before the third anniversary comes to bear, I will scream. I will scream silently again and again, and one day, I hope, my screams will be heard.

I will scream for Vigilance, as I have been. I will scream that we must stand up to Terrorism, whether it be the violence in Russia or the Corporate Terrorism of a MONY and AXA Financial who wantonly attempt to destroy the lives of people who challenge them.