CNN producers busted trying to prove World Trade Center security lax

Two CNN producers were accused of trying to breach security at the World Trade Center site and were arrested on Tuesday, a day after four men were arrested over a parachute jump off a trade center tower and a week after a teenage boy was accused of an unauthorized climb.

Yon Pomrenze and Connor Fieldman Boals tried to enter a gate leading into the lower Manhattan site on Tuesday afternoon but were stopped by an officer, said Joe Pentangelo, a spokesman for police at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site.

Boals then twice tried to climb a fence near the World Trade Center PATH subway station, Pentangelo said. The men then tried to push their way through a gate and were arrested on criminal trespass and other charges, he said.

A spokeswoman for CNN said the men were in the area to do a story about the recent security breaches and were not asked to sneak onto the site.

Four men — three daredevils and someone accused of being an accomplice — were arrested Monday in connection with the Sept. 30 jumping from 1 World Trade Center, the nation’s tallest building. They were arraigned on charges including felony burglary.

Last week, a 16-year-old boy from Weehawken, N.J., was accused of unlawfully entering the site, eluding an inattentive security guard and spending about two hours atop the 1,776-foot-tall tower. The skyscraper, still under construction, crowns the rebuilt World Trade Center, a project steeped in security concerns.

Associated Press