White House Sway Is Seen in E.P.A. Response to 9/11 - NYT

Well isn't this just fascinating!

<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/09/nyregion/09AIR.html>


White House Sway Is Seen in E.P.A. Response to 9/11
By JENNIFER 8. LEE


WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 — An investigation by the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general into official statements about air quality after the collapse of the World Trade Center has found that White House officials instructed the agency to be less alarming and more reassuring to the public in the first few days after the attack.

The draft of the inspector general's report also says the agency "did not have sufficient data and analyses" to make a "blanket statement" when it announced seven days after the attack that the air around ground zero was safe to breathe. "Competing considerations, such as national security concerns and the desire to reopen Wall Street, also played a role in E.P.A.'s air quality statements," the report said.

The report, which has not yet been made public, is an evaluation of the agency's overall response to the attack on the World Trade Center. One chapter focuses on the role of the White House Council on Environmental Quality in helping to shape the agency's communication after the attack.

"As a result of the White House C.E.Q.'s influence, guidance for cleaning indoor spaces and information about the potential health effects from W.T.C. debris were not included in the E.P.A's issued press releases," said the report, which was made available by people who said it was too harsh. "In addition, based on C.E.Q.'s influence, reassuring information was added to at least one press release and cautionary information was deleted from E.P.A.'s draft version of that press release."

The inspector general is an investigator within the agency who is intended to be impartial and who audits and evaluates its programs, sometimes resulting in political tensions. Officials from the agency and from the White House criticized the report today, saying investigators misunderstood the complexity of the situation after the terror attack.

(con't)....................

Oh, I forgot........she's not Secty of the EPA anymore, is she? Something about needing to live in the same town as her hubby....


Goodness, I remember the days when the way it worked was the presi nominated someone he thought would was qualified to head a cabinet position -- and the WH would just hope and pray that this person would do his biddings.....but so very often that dept head would just do his/her job -- many times at the angst of the WH.

Those days are gone......long gone. Just a bunch of yes men and women for his emperorship...and it just disgusts me!

I even recall Guiliani coming out and saying the air was fine. It was so frickin' obvious that it wasn't, and there was no way they could make such a judgement. Typical--they lie and now, almost two years later, the truth comes out. How many other occasions has something like this happened--lying and then revealing the truth long after the fact so that they think people no longer care? Hmmmm

concern


Come, we go Home Depot, get duck tape

:wtf:

My god if Guilliani can get away with a outrageous lie,
then rally those New Yorkers and sue them to no end!!!!!

We'll keep that Justice System booking!!!!

:argh:

:dem:

(CBS) An investigation by the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general has found that White House officials instructed the agency to be less alarming and more reassuring to the public in the first few days after the Sept. 11 attacks, The New York Times reports in its Saturday editions.

The investigation specifically cites official statements about air quality after the collapse of the World Trade Center.

The agency "did not have sufficient data and analyses" to make a "blanket statement" when it announced seven days after the attack that the air around ground zero was safe to breathe, the Times quotes the report as saying.

"Competing considerations, such as national security concerns and the desire to reopen Wall Street, also played a role in E.P.A.'s air quality statements," the report, which has not yet been made public, said.

more.........................

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/08/09/national/main567489.shtml



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is mighty nice for the Thug Crowd!!!!

who knows what the fuck is going on and how to follow up with some background on current news. Excellent work as usual.

In addition:

Bush Fears Tenacious, Popular Wellstone
Published on Tuesday, April 24, 2001 in the Madison Capital Times by John Nichols
ST. PAUL - U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone had just finished rousing a crowd of 2,000 trade unionists, farmers, environmentalists and students with a fiery condemnation of George W. Bush’s free trade policies, and now he had a problem. He couldn’t get down the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol here to join the march protesting Bush’s Free Trade Area of the Americas scheme.

snip -

Most of them also asked a question: "How come Bush hates you so much?" Let there be no doubt as to the identity of George W. Bush’s least favorite Democratic U.S. senator. It’s Wellstone, the rabble-rousing Progressive who represents not just Minnesota but what remains of the fighting populist spirit of the Upper Midwest. As Wellstone prepares to seek a third term next year, it would be reasonable to assume that he might finally be in for some smooth political sailing. But reasonableness doesn’t figure into the calculations of the Bush White House, where the president himself, Vice President Dick Cheney and political commissar Karl Rove practice the politics of vengeance.

snip -
Other Democratic senators who face re-election contests in 2002 are, according to polls, more vulnerable than Wellstone. But the Bush camp has been focusing highest-level attention on "Plan Wellstone" - its project to silence progressive opposition.

snip -
Last Tuesday as Minnesota House Majority Leader Tim Pawlenty was just hours away from announcing his intention to mount a Republican challenge to Wellstone, he got an urgent call from Rove asking him to step aside for Bush’s preferred candidate, St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman. Then, on Wednesday morning, with just 90 minutes to go before his planned announcement, Pawlenty was driving his kids home from a dental appointment. The car phone rang, and Pawlenty found himself talking to Cheney. The vice president told Pawlenty that Bush did not want Coleman - a party-switching former Democrat who chaired the losing Bush presidential campaign in Minnesota - to face a difficult primary contest from a credible Republican.

More: <http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0424-07.htm>

Interesting stuff. Read it.

surrounding NY city.

Smaller Babies Post WTC Attack?

(AP) Air pollution from the World Trade Center attacks may have resulted in smaller babies among pregnant mothers who were in or near the collapsing towers, preliminary research suggests.

Exposed pregnant women in the study faced double the risk of delivering babies who were up to about a half-pound smaller than babies born to non-exposed women.

The size differences among babies born to women exposed to dirt and soot from the attacks suggest a condition called intrauterine growth restriction, or IUGR, which has been linked with exposure to air pollution.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/08/05/health/main566807.shtml

It was obvious to anyone breathing the air that it was unacceptable air quality.

Too bad Whitman didn't practice deep breathing excercises at ground zero...