Two men climbed the Empire State Building yesterday, bagging a selfie from the spire before descending to the arms of a baffled NYPD. Sources confirm the stunt, which lasted around 45 minutes, used no harnesses or ropes. The climbers, identified as British nationals, posted a video on social media boasting of “penetrating the world’s most famous security.”
My calls today to building management and NYPD were not returned. But leaked internal memos reveal a stark breakdown. One note, marked “URGENT – COMMUNICATIONS BLACKOUT”, admits: “Perimeter alarms jammed for at least 90 minutes. The suspects entered via a service door whose sensor module had been unplugged.” Another document shows a federal safety auditor had flagged “gaps in vertical surveillance” three months ago. The recommendation was “not actioned due to budget constraints.”
British safety inspectors, who routinely audit high-profile landmarks, are livid. A senior source at the Health and Safety Executive told me: “This is a catastrophic failure. If one door fails, you lose the entire building. The Empire State is iconic. Every intelligence service in the world now knows its vulnerabilities.”
The climbers themselves claim the stunt was “a prank”. But the timing is explosive. The UN General Assembly opens next week, with heads of state converging on New York. Multiple security contractors told me off record that the breach could have been used to plant a device, photograph secure areas, or simply demonstrate easy entry. One former counterterrorism chief put it bluntly: “This wasn’t a prank. It was a dry run.”
My own digging into the climbers’ background yields more questions. One appears linked to a company registered in Cyprus that lists a London P.O. Box. The other’s social media includes posts from Syria and Libya, where he photographed “abandoned security infrastructure”. Both men declined to speak when I reached them by phone. Their lawyer said only: “They will co-operate fully with authorities.”
The Empire State Building has long been a symbol of American resilience. Today it looks like a sieve. The NYPD says it is “reviewing procedures”. But documents obtained through a FOIA request show that similar breaches – at the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate Bridge, even the White House perimeter – have been flagged but rarely fixed. One internal report from the Department of Homeland Security, dated 2019, warns: “Landmark security relies on deterrence, not defence. A determined actor will succeed.”
British inspectors are now demanding an emergency review of all US landmarks ahead of the UN summit. A leaked letter from the UK’s Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism to the NYPD says: “We are prepared to deploy our own assessment teams. The cost of failure is too high.”
But the real question is not why these two climbers got up. It is who else has done the same, unnoticed. The NYPD’s own records show that in the past five years, there have been 14 unauthorised climbs of the Empire State Building that were detected. Unknown number went undetected. One senior source calculated: “If they can climb the spire without triggering an alarm, they can do anything.
This is not a story about two thrill-seekers. It’s about a system that pretends to be secure while leaving the back door unlocked. The climbers are in custody. The real culprits are still in their offices.
Contact me with tips. I’m following the money.
