History on Hold: Why Is the 9/11 Museum Still Closed?

Editor's note: Robyn Walensky, news anchor for "The Glenn Beck Show" and reporter for TheBlaze, has been one of the few consistently strong voices reporting on terror attacks in America -- particularly the 1993 and 2001 attacks on New York City's World Trade Center. She was in NYC to cover the first attacks on the WTC and the was there for 9/11.

Now, in an exclusive piece for TheBlaze Magazine titled "History Lessons on Hold," she writes on the disappointment Americans rightfully feel about the still-not-opened 9/11 Museum.

Eleven years after the attack, and we're still waiting. What's the hangup?

Below is a taste of the feature piece from TheBlaze Magazine. Find out all the details and read Robyn's first-hand tour of the unfinished museum that -- hopefully -- will one day serve as a powerful history lesson for the world only in the pages of TheBlaze Magazine.

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Eleven years since the morning radical Islamic terrorists took down the Twin Towers, killing thousands of innocent Americans and shattering our sense of security, 9/11 artifacts are still not available for anyone to see.

“It’s all about the Benjamins, it’s all about the Benjamins,” a Port Authority Police officer tells me on a recent trip to Ground Zero. He shakes his head in absolute disgust and asks me rhetorically, “Can you believe it’s not open because they claim they don’t have enough money? My friends were killed here.”

[...]

An Exclusive Tour of the Tomb of Thousands

It’s a few hours before [a 9/11 memorial] event, I am offered a tour of what someday will be the 9/11 Museum. Walking around the massive 16-acre construction site, I wear the required hard hat, goggles, long-sleeved shirt, pants, work boots and a bright yellow vest. ...

The guide escorts me from street level down 70 feet below ground. There is a maze of unstable steps and muddy ramps covered in grey puddles of concrete and dirty water, I keep thinking, “I am walking down into a dark tomb. … Why in the world is this museum being built all the way down here? … This literally feels like being inside a grave.”

The first thing I notice is the exposed slurry wall that keeps the Hudson River out of lower Manhattan. Then I see the WTC cross—the 20-foot steel beams retrieved from the fiery pile of debris. It’s preserved here, way beneath the city. It ought to be in Central Park serving two purposes; a daily reminder of the true evil that attacked us and a daily reminder of God.

The Importance of the 1993 Attack

My guide escorts me to the exact spot where terrorists set off the bomb on Feb. 26,1993—the first terror attack on the World Trade Center. The tapes in my mind start playing again, and this time I can see the people, scared, covered in soot, and stumbling out in all directions. I was there that horrible February day and night as school kids on a tour were stuck in an elevator on a high floor, and I reported on the attack for months after.

I was in the first pool of reporters allowed back into Tower 1 a week after the bombing. Black soot covered the carpets, and half-filled coffee cups sat exactly where they were left on desks next to open newspapers, a sign of how workers left in a huge hurry. The offices were frozen in time.

The country did not learn its lesson in 1993. President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno classified the bombing as a “crime” not a “terrorist act.” Bill Clinton never came to visit. He never stood on the soot caused by the terrorist bomb. He never promised to go after the people who did this.

So Osama bin Laden laughed in his cave and continued to patiently plot while we sat still as a nation distracted by sex scandals, politics and other nonsense. I covered the federal trial in lower Manhattan of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and Ramzi Yousef. The prosecutor said it was the goal of these two terrorists to “topple the towers.” It never stopped being the goal.

Now, 19 years later, we have a young generation that knows little about 9/11 and even less about the 1993 attack in which six people were killed and hundreds were hurt.

Remembrances Delayed and Buried

Ironically, right near the marking of the 1993 bombing down in the still-unfinished museum is the last ...

Don't settle for just the excerpts -- get the full inside story only in the newest issue of TheBlaze Magazine.