The Freedom Tower

EarthCam is a site well worth the trip to review or track the reconstruction process at Ground Zero.

Go to:

http://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/groundzero/#

The dog and pony show over the air quality in lower Manhattan after 9/11 isn’t as much about the ponies as it is about lying dogs, as I have said before.
Don’t care?
Today, Newsday reports “Reggie Hilaire wasn’t too interested in tuning in to watch ex-EPA chief Christie Whitman testify before a House panel Monday. Don’t blame him. John Feal or Chris Baumann, like me, weren’t that interested in her testimony either. We’ve all heard this before.
Whitman is an icon for an era or lying, not hers, as I have already said, she’s a throw away scapegoat.

The three area residents all worked at or near Ground Zero in the days or months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and each of the men said they didn’t expect to learn anything new from Whitman’s testimony.”
“Baumann, 44, said he was on the scene three minutes after a jet hit the North Tower and was partially blind for more than a year after the attacks. He said his lungs are scarred, there’s a mass between them that doctors are monitoring and he has post-traumatic stress disorder.

Feal, 40, of Nesconset, briefly watched Whitman’s testimony before becoming agitated by her “excuses.” “There’s not a word that comes out of her mouth that I believe,” Feal said.

Feal was a demolition supervisor at Ground Zero from Sept. 12 to Sept. 17, 2001, when a steel beam fell on his left foot, and doctors had to amputate half of it, he said. He now runs the FeelGood Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group for 9/11 responders.”

Alright, already. Beating a dead horse to death, in this case, is a good thing. So, listen up.
Nicole Gelinas of the City Journal, asks the question, will New York’s heroic post-9/11 legacy permanently fracture into ugly accusations?
“You would think that former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christie Todd Whitman was Osama bin Laden, judging from the nasty reaction she reportedly got at Monday’s Congressional hearing on the EPA’s response to 9/11. Whitman faced sharp criticism for her statement, a week after 9/11, that the air downtown—not directly on “the pile,” as the World Trade Center site was called—“was safe to breathe.” Interrogators implied that Whitman was incorrect, at best, and flat-out lying, at worst. An out-of-state representative even attacked Whitman for saying that 9/11 was personal for her, since her son was in 7 World Trade Center that morning.
Then there’s that small band of critics, including some 9/11 survivors, that haunts former mayor Rudolph Giuliani at his New York City campaign appearances, trying to shame him for various perceived 9/11-related infractions. Among other things, they charge that he failed to upgrade first responders’ radios with current technologies long before 9/11, and that he was negligent in not ensuring that recovery workers protected themselves with proper respiratory equipment on the pile and for opening Lower Manhattan to office workers too soon, when the air might not have been safe to breathe.
Was Whitman wrong to say the air downtown—again, not on the pile—was “safe”? Let’s remember that many of the EPA’s air quality tests in Lower Manhattan in the first month after 9/11 showed “slightly elevated” levels of asbestos in Battery Park City, and other tests found “detectable” levels, below what’s considered dangerous, in the Financial District. A few spots revealed higher levels. But the high-powered vacuuming the EPA was doing, both outside and inside, seemed to bring levels down below “concern” amounts.
But let’s say, for argument’s sake, that even “slightly elevated” asbestos levels anywhere in the area made it strictly correct, if one wanted to be 100 percent sure instead of relying on personal judgment in an unprecedented situation, to announce that it wasn’t possible to describe the air downtown as “safe.” Many questions would have followed: when could we have known if the air was safe enough for financial-industry workers and Battery Park City residents to return downtown? Would it have been safe in a month? What about New Year’s? How about by May 2002, when recovery workers finished major operations? What about today? Should the EPA have taken steps to declare Ground Zero a SuperFund site?”

Don’t be fooled by the reporting of Christie Todd Whitman’s testimony before a congressional committee hearing on the EPA’s response to 9/11.
As I said before, yes she said the air down town was safe. She was wrong. There is no difference between the air “downtown,” the same air blowing west to the westside of the Hudson River, sometimes called Jersey, or the air hovering over Ground Zero. No difference at all…
Whitman is no fool and she’s no liar. I’m no patrician apologist nor a damn Republican. The simple truth is that the people she worked for the time are practiced liars.

It just looks like Whitman is lying and the media is pretending to be objective while Whitman looks like both a fool and a liar.
She is neither. Christie Whitman, as EPA chief, reported what she was told … that the air in downtown Manhattan was safe to breathe after 9/11.. It was not safe but Whitman had no way of knowing otherwise. A dupe never does. This does not make her a liar, not even a stupid liar. A dupe is just that, a dupe.
City Journal says “Interrogators implied that Whitman was incorrect, at best, and flat-out lying, at worst. An out-of-state representative even attacked Whitman for saying that 9/11 was personal for her, since her son was in 7 World Trade Center that morning.”
Don’t be fooled by this reporting. While Whitman is the lightening rod, the blame belongs higher up as usual and the press is again missing the point.

Carol Bogart, writing on Bloggernews.net17837, lets Rudy Giuliani have it for his performance as a 9/11 hero.
I don’t like Hillary and I don’t like Rudy and here’s why, she said.
“I think both are opportunists who play fast and loose with the truth.
For example, during the Monica affair, watching the Clintons exit church, Bill with his Bible tucked conspicuously under one arm, Hillary (no stranger to his various infidelities) tucked firmly on the other earned both my permanent contempt.
Rudy Giuliani fell right off his 9-11 “I’m a hero” perch when, during a tour of Ground Zero, he conspicuously removed his surgical mask – as if to say, “Come see our Broadway shows! No dangerous air pollution here!” If EPA’s then-director Christy Whitman ever runs for public office, I wouldn’t vote for her, either. She claimed the air was “safe” when asbestos dust was everywhere.
The former New York mayor now wants to be President. I would never vote for someone who allowed his firefighters to risk their respiratory health by responding to the collapse of the towers without proper equipment – in this case, SCBAs: Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus.
And in fact, 2,000 NYC firefighters have developed serious respiratory illnesses in the aftermath of 9-11.”

A blog called News Inferno.com revives the erroneous statements my by former EPA commissioner about the safety of air and the environment in lower Manhattan after 9/11.
I won’t defend former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman for issuing numerous statements assuring New Yorkers that the air in Lower Manhattan was safe. Since then, several studies have found those claims to be false.
Far from safe, the World Trade Center dust has been found to contain high levels of pulverized glass, cement and toxins such as asbestos. In the years since 9/11, thousands of rescue workers who spent weeks working at Ground Zero with little or no protective gear have reported unusually high incidences of respiratory illnesses. Some researchers fear that the extent of 9/11- related illness will not be known for years.
The GAO report was made public at a Senate subcommittee hearing last Wednesday. The hearing is expected to continue today, with former-EPA head Christine Todd Whitman scheduled to testify. It will be the first time in six years that Whitman has testified under oath about her agency’s response to the World Trade Center attacks.
I will say this though, Whitman was never just the mouth-piece of the administration. That is why she and Colon Power resigned. Each stepped into the breach to defend an administration that has lied, yes I said it, lied, repeatedly, and they had to leave. Each left with the shame of anyone duped into going along. Whitman, like Power, is a politician with immense integrity. This mistake about 9/11 has come back to haunt her but she already knows it was a very big mistake, joining an administration of liars, I mean.
And, this problem is bigger than Whitman or Power. It involves impeachment of liars who are killing out soldiers with their lying, cheating ways.
Can I get a witness, a Congressional witness, at impeachment hearings because I’ve had just about enough of this nonsense. It is criminal. We lock petty criminals like Paris Hilton up. I think we should be casting for bigger fish because there is too much at stake.

The great mind behind the architecture of the Freedom Tower is a busy little mind indeed.
Daniel Libeskind had been busy opening a museum in Toronto. He created designs for residential enclaves around the world after he finished designing the Freedom Tower and now we learn from New York Magazine that Libeskind is working on another building in New York City.
The magazine reports that he is designing a residential building in lower Manhattan – a commission he is being very hush, hush about though.
What he will say about it is this: It comes from a private client, he hopes it will become a landmark by installing a “green” sensibility inside the building and it will go up on an historic site in New York City. Without saying where or when, he promises it will go up within sight of the Statue of Liberty. That might mean it will also go up within sight of his famed Freedom Tower too.
Like the Freedom Tower, we have little choice. We just have to wait and see. Who ever the publicist is handling this project, the campaign to stir the pot has already begun.

Financial giant J.P. Morgan Chase isn’t just moving into Ground Zero, they plan to pay $300 million to occupy a 42 story building at Ground Zero.
The bank says it will donate $10 million to the world Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, according to AM New York. The church was destroyed when the Twin Towers collapsed, destroying the original church. The new church will rise next to the new bank.
Ground Zero landlord, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey released a rendering of the bank’s 32,000 square foot building. The building towers over the church property but and the memorial.
It is unclear how the church will be affected and architects will now craft a scale drawing of the building, the blog said.
“It actually offers some interesting opportunities for lighting and making the church an even more splendid contribution to the community,” said Port Authority Executive Director Anthony Shorris.
Officials at the church did not comment about the plan Thursday.
The building is one of five skyscrapers planned for the trade center site.

The inhabitants of the Twin Towers might have survived the 9/11 attacks long enough to evacuate the buildings had 20,000 gallons of burning jet fuel had not ignighted and sent fire throughout the buildings.
This is the finding of a computer science professor at Purdue who created a computer animation of the attacks to determine, if possible, why the buildings collapsed after two planes were slammed into the structures. Christoph Hoffmann led a team of 10 professors of civil engineers, computer scientists and graduate students.
Their findings can be seen at :
news.uns.purdue.edu/x/2007a/070612HoffmannWTC.html
Hoffmann is a professor of computer science and director of Purdue’s Rosen Center for Advanced Computing, a division of Information Technology at Purdue. He says the animation reveals more information than could be conveyed through a scientific simulation alone.
“Scientific simulations restrict us t showing the things that are absolutely essential to the engineer,” Hoffmann says. “This gives us a simulation that doesn’t deliver much visual information to a layperson. Our animation takes that scientific model and adds back the visual information required to make it a more effective communication tool.”

It can’t be done. Any fool or history buff knows this.
The plot surrounding 9/11 and the aftermath thickens. As the kinks and problems with reconstructing Ground Zero and building the Freedom Tower are ironed out, the way the feds and the city dealt with the public becomes “worser and worser,” as a comedian of my youth once said.
The Government Accountability Office, one of my favorite bureaucracies because it works, says federal environmental officials lied to New Yorkers and misled residents of Lower Manhattan after the Twin Towers collapsed on 9/11.
In a new report, the GAO said the EPA lied about the extent of contamination in thousands of downtown condos and apartments, according to a preliminary report released just yesterday.
This news, no surprise to anyone who has been watching this drama unfold in recent months, was introduced during a Senate subcommittee hearing. The report says the EPA failed to accurately report results of a cleanup program in 2002 and 2003.
According to a story today’s New York Times, the agency failed to explain that findings that suggested that contamination of more than 4,000 residents was minimal was misleading. That statement was based on samples taken after 80 percent of the apartments had been cleaned. This led residents to believe contamination of their homes had been minimal all along.
John Stephenson, head of the natural resources and environmental division of the GAO said this was misleading. Stephenson said the misinformation left downtown residents believing their risks of health related problems were minimal. The EPA finding resulted in just 295 residents opting to take part in a new residential cleanup program. Enrollment in that program ended in March. At least 20,000 apartments had been eligible to participate in a program.
Sen. Hilary Clinton sounded off after the hearings, saying “residents are understandably reluctant to participate in what they consider to be a waste of time,” the New York Senator and presidential candidate said. She said the data in the GAO report presented “a very different picture from what the White House would like us to believe.”
Who would’ve thought?