🚀 go-pugleaf

Ex-EPA Chief Grilled Over 9/11 Response
WASHINGTON, June 25, 2007

(CBS/AP)� The woman who led the top U.S. environmental agency during 
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks confronted critics in Congress on Monday 
about her assurances that the air around the destroyed World Trade 
Center was safe to breathe.

Christie Whitman, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, 
denounced what she called "misinformation, innuendo, and outright 
falsehoods" leveled against her and the agency.

"There are people to blame. They are the terrorists that attacked the 
United States, not the men and women of all levels of government," 
Whitman said.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., accused Whitman of deliberately misleading 
people in New York about the health risks, with devastating results, 
CBS News correspondent Bob Fuss reports.

"The administration has continued to make false, misleading and 
inaccurate statements, and refused to take remedial actions, even in 
the face of overwhelming evidence," said Nadler, whose district 
includes the World Trade Center site.

But Whitman insisted, sometimes angrily, that she never lied to the public.

She said her public assurances about safe air were aimed at those 
living and working near ground zero, not those actually working on the 
toxic pile of debris.

"I and other EPA officials publicly urged rescue and recovery workers 
to wear protective gear that EPA had secured for their use at Ground 
Zero," Whitman said.

Since the attacks, independent government reviews have faulted the 
EPA's handling of the immediate aftermath and the agency's long-term 
cleanup program for nearby buildings. The 9/11 commission found no 
evidence that the EPA was pressured to say the air was safe to permit 
the city's financial markets to reopen.

More than five years after the attacks, researchers are developing 
evidence of the long-term health effects.

A study of more than 20,000 people by Mount Sinai Medical Center in New 
York concluded that since the attacks, 70 percent of ground zero 
workers suffered some sort of respiratory illness.

A separate medical study released last month found that rescue workers 
and firefighters contracted sarcoidosis, a serious lung-scarring 
disease, at a rate more than five times higher than in the years before 
the attacks.

A delegation of activists and Sept. 11 rescue workers boarded a bus in 
Manhattan early Monday to be present for the hearing.

"We are stunned that she's sticking to her story," said community 
activist Kimberly Flynn.


-- 
"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in 
England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after 
all, IT IS THE LEADERS of the country who determine the policy and it 
is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a 
democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist 
dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to 
the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL 
THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of 
patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY 
COUNTRY."
�
--Goering at the Nuremberg Trials