Nine years ago, I stood atop 7 World Trade Center, 740 feet above street level, and almost pissed my pants. I felt my knees start to buckle. My stomach hurt. It was terrifying. It was great.

I mention this because four men were recently arrested and accused of taking part in a BASE jump from the Freedom Tower last September. That news came just a few days after the cops pinched a 16-year-old who'd wandered the tower in the middle of the night -- a daredevil, not a jumper. The kid apparently entered Ground Zero through the same hole in the perimeter fence used by the jumpers -- six months earlier -- walked by a sleeping security guard, got a lift from some moron running the construction elevator, and went undetected by the high-end video security system, because the video security system isn't hooked up yet.

All this makes for an awful embarrassment to the Port Authority of New York vs. New Jersey, the quasi-governmental agency that owns the joint, except for the fact that the PA -- the whipping boy and piggybank of governors, closer of bridge access lanes, entrenched in ineptitude and corruption -- is not capable of embarrassment. Its dismal nonfeasance and malfeasance in this particular chain of events are emblematic of the Port Authority, a multi-billion-dollar outfit that boasts a bigger police force than many American cities, yet somehow depends on a private security firm whose oblivious night watchman was sawing logs on duty defending the world's top terror target, and can't find anybody among its 7,000 or so employees able to find and fix a fking hole in a fking fence.

In its defense, the Port Authority has no business building office towers in the first place. Created to coordinate transportation systems in a small geographic area where more than 20 million people live and work, the PA runs nearly all of the region's major bridges, tunnels, airports, and seaports, and is subject to no meaningful oversight by any actual governmental agency. Its police department has fought the NYPD for years to keep jurisdiction over the 16 acres of Ground Zero -- never mind that that parcel of land is in New York City, or that the NYPD is more experienced and better equipped for the job, or that the PA and the city formally agreed a few years ago that the NYPD would take charge of security at the site. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie shredded that agreement in exchange for the endorsement of the PA police union during his reelection bid.

Truth is, the Port is far more concerned about branding than terrorism. You're never to refer to it as the Freedom Tower; its official name is One World Trade Center. It is the world's most expensive office building, and the PA hasn't found a tenant for its 2.6 million square feet since 2011, when Condé Nast agreed to move 5,000 of its magazine employees into the building, which is scheduled to open later this year. Long before the recent arrests, I heard of fear among those ranks, Condé Nasters whose silken drawers were already growing moist with fear at the thought of going to work every day in a 1776-foot-tall bull's-eye. They'll no doubt find courage in the hope that the Port Authority will somehow manage to wire the tower's security cameras before they arrive.

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