BUSH ADMINISTRATION LIED TO NEW YORKERS IN WAKE OF 911

[mburbank]

I think it was Vinth who suggested Condolisa Rice should run for President after W's second term. Why not? Seems like a lot of W's best lies come from her anyway.

EPA Watchdog Rips White House on NYC Air

By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - At the White House's direction, the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) gave New Yorkers misleading assurances that there was no health risk from the debris-laden air after the World Trade Center collapse, according to an internal inquiry.

President Bush's senior environmental adviser on Friday defended the White House involvement, saying it was justified by national security.

The White House "convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones" by having the National Security Council control EPA communications in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, according to a report issued late Thursday by EPA Inspector General Nikki L. Tinsley.

"When EPA made a Sept. 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, the agency did not have sufficient data and analyses to make the statement," the report says, adding that the EPA had yet to adequately monitor air quality for contaminants such as PCBs, soot and dioxin.

In all, the EPA issued five press releases within 10 days of the attacks and four more by the end of 2001 reassuring the public about air quality. But it wasn't until June 2002 that the EPA determined that air quality had returned to pre-Sept. 11 levels — well after respiratory ailments and other problems began to surface in hundreds of workers cleaning dusty offices and apartments.

The day after the attacks, former EPA Deputy Administrator Linda Fisher's chief of staff e-mailed senior EPA officials to say that "all statements to the media should be cleared" first by the National Security Council, which is Bush's main forum for discussing national security and foreign policy matters with his senior aides and Cabinet, the inspector general's report says.

Approval from the NSC, the report says, was arranged through the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which "influenced, through the collaboration process, the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones."

For example, the inspector general found, EPA was convinced to omit guidance for cleaning indoor spaces and tips on potential health effects from airborne dust containing asbestos, lead, glass fibers and concrete.

James Connaughton, chairman of the environmental council, which coordinates federal environmental efforts, said the White House directed the EPA to add and delete information based on how it should be released publicly. He said the EPA did "an incredible job" with the World Trade Center cleanup.

"The White House was involved in making sure that we were getting the most accurate information that was real, on a wide range of activities. That included the NSC — this was a major terrorist incident," Connaughton said.

"In the back and forth during that very intense period of time," he added, "we were making decisions about where the information should be released, what the best way to communicate the information was, so that people could respond responsibly and so that people had a good relative sense of potential risk."

Andy Darrell, New York regional director of Environmental Defense, an advocacy group, said the report is indicative of a pattern of White House interference in EPA affairs. "For EPA to do its job well, it needs to be allowed to make decisions based on the science and the facts," he said.

Marianne L. Horinko, EPA's acting administrator, said the White House's role was mainly to help the EPA sift through an enormous amount of information.

"We put out the best information we had, based on just the best data that we had available at the time," said Horinko, who headed the agency's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, which oversaw the World Trade Center environmental monitoring and cleanup.

"And it was using our best professional judgment; it was not as a result of pressure from the White House," she said. "The White House's role was basically to say, 'Look, we've got data coming in from everywhere. What benchmarks are we going to use, how are we going to communicate this data? We can't have this Tower of Babel on the data.'"

The EPA inspector general recommended that EPA adopt new procedures so its public statements on health risks and environmental quality are supported by data and analysis. Other recommendations include developing better procedures for indoor air cleanups and asbestos handling in large-scale disasters.

[The One and Only...]

How big a deal is this, really? I don't see anywhere on this article where they mention the horrible deaths related to the condition of the air.

[Immortal Goat]

That is not the point at all. The point is that since the Bush administration is capable of blatently lying to our faces about this, what else have they been lying about? Was Iraq really a threat to us at the time of our attack? Were Saddam and the Taliban really connected, as we were led to believe before?

Say what you want about Bush being a decent president, I just don't trust a man who tries to force-feed us bullshit about stuff just to get a second term. I can honestly say that I will not be voting for Bush in the next election.

[El Blanco]

You know, in that second paragraph, I could have sworn you were refering to Clinton.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

How big a deal is this, really? I don't see anywhere on this article where they mention the horrible deaths related to the condition of the air.

And you think such symptoms would show up immediately...?

[Immortal Goat]

You know, in that second paragraph, I could have sworn you were refering to Clinton.

I never said Clinton was a great president. He was better than Bush, but not spectacular.

[Big McLargehuge]

You know, in that second paragraph, I could have sworn you were refering to Clinton.

But clinton's lies were good comedy, while bush's lies were mean and not funny.

[mburbank]

Wow, one and only... I have reserved judgement, but your take on this is so stupid it's beyond belief.

There was no reason at all to lie and say that the air quality had been tested. There was no reason to delay testing for almost year. There was no reason not to diseminate information on how clean-up workers might protect themselves from potential risk, and it was criminal to imply there were no risks. It's more proof this administration lies reflexively, it weakens trust in the government for no gain whatever.

Do you think if you smoke you die of lung cancer within the year? Do you think if your get a lungfull of asbestos you keel over then and there?

I don't blame the administration for the risks New Yorkers were exposed to be inhaling the remains of the twin towers and two jet liners. I blame Al Quaeda for that.

I blame the administration for lying about it. I blame the administration for opening themselves up to countless class action suits the costs of which will surely be passed on to the taxpayers. I blame them for being the sort of scum who tell rescue workers and clean up crews everything is fine without even checking. I blame a commander in chief who plays dress up on an aircraft carier while real heroes die in the desert for his lies and suck up lungfuls of shit in New York City for his lies.

[The One and Only...]

Before you judge me, you have to understand my reasoning.

Before we get into the whole lying argument, let's get down to the health point. This article doesn't provide any information on how dangerous the air actually was. Hence, I think this is a propaganda article, cleverly conceived to look as if an indifferent one.

I mean, if your going to talk about how bad the air was, you should do some comparing and contrasting between pre-sept 11. and post-sept 11. air quality.

Another thing is how do you know when tests were done? Tests could have been made before and were simply deemed unnecessary for the public eye to see. Not because of some big cover-up: just because the air quality wasn't bad enough to warrant it.

On lying: It wasn't really a lie. It was a necessary step to keep things calm. We didn't want to end up with mass paranoia and everyone leaving their homes; especially when it could be over nothing. A few days in even a polluted post-sept 11. wouldn't kill the people, and give the EPA to do some more tests *which would likely only be released if necessary*.

Which is why the info has only been released now, in a propaganda "LIED! LIED!" form.

(For people who support big government, you certainly don't trust it.)

Edit: Whoever said that I thought Bush was an okay president doesn't know me very well. Neo-cons irk me.

[sspadowsky]

OK, OAO, I've read your reasoning, and I'm officially judging you to be stupid.

Years ago, I worked in a steel foundry. There were large amounts of dust, sand, and flakes of metal floating through the air- you could see it. We had to wear air filters on our faces because the air quality was so poor. One of the guys I worked with eventually went on disability because he never wore his air filter, and was constantly exposed to all that crap, on top of having his face directly over sand that was mixed with some pretty horrendous chemicals. Last I heard, he was carting an oxygen tank around with him.

Now, let's think of the air in NYC on 9-11. We all saw the pics. It was about five million times worse than the place I just described. If you don't think that such a scenario might even be vaguely harmful, you're a fucking complete waste and should be sterilized before you can contaminate the gene pool.

But I'll indulge you, in spite of your positively confounding stupidity. Here's a little compare & contrast.

NYC before 9-11: "*sniff* Jesus, that dead bum over there really reeks."
After 9-11: "*CHOKE* *GAG* *SNORT* [reaching for gas mask] *HACK*

I can't believe you'd defend this for even a second.

[mburbank]

I judge you a total idiot. If the government felt dangerous air quality was going to panic people even more than they they already were, well, I think that's stupid, but who's to say. All they had to do was not say anything. Instead, without testing the air quality, they said it was fine. They didn't even say "Hey, lets be on the sfae side, we're trucking in surgical masks." I bought five for a buck and a quarter at the home depot last week.

They said it was fine. Forget ground zero, thousand of people went into buildings in the surrounding neighborhoods and cleaned the dust off their posessions. The government didn't just leave tem on their own, they said the air was fine. The EPA wanted to say it wasn't and Condy rice overruled them.

If you think this isn't an issue, I judge you a fucking moron.

[CaptainBubba]

Is it sad that nothing at all about this suprises me in the least?

If anything I'm suprised that this was eventually leaked to the public. :/

Our government is ubelievably inept at maintaining the saftey of its citizens. The FDA has killed more people than its saved by denying hundreds of thousands medicine thats aleady been approved elsewhere in Europe, and the classes they mandate in schools concerning drugs and sex teach kids that if you smoke marijuana and "do it" you'll probably die or get hurt. :/

I'm becoming something of an aethiest Manichaen. :(

[The One and Only...]

I'm not saying it's not an issue: all I'm saying is that you are pumping it up to be bigger than what it actually is. I can see reasoning in both points. While you are thinking "the air is harmful!", I'm thinking "let's see, if they didn't have enough emergency gas masks for everyone, then fights might ensue in an attempt to get some..."

All I'm asking is for a reference that compares the level of harm/health effects in breathing the air. I don't doubt that it's worse for you than normal; but I somewhat doubt that it is quite as bad as you are hyping it up to be. I just can't quite fathom the Bush administration being that stupid if it was.

[The One and Only...]

Here's something that might float your boat. This comes from a private organization than the government, who was against the claims of safe air (the way I understood it).

"The Environmental Protection Agency, along with the New York City Department of Public Health and others, have released test results for only a few of the better known toxins, such as asbestos, radiation, carbon monoxide, and bacterial/infectious materials. They have ignored most of the components of the smoke and toxins bound to dust particles. When they say the air is "safe," they mean that the chemicals they tested for fall within limits they consider acceptable for the general population. However, it should be emphasized that these "acceptable limits" for hazardous levels of substances are meant to apply to healthy adults, not to children, elderly, or infirm persons."

What this tells me is that the long/short term effects are acceptable, though certainly not the ideal. There must have been some other reason why precautionary masks weren't thrown out to the masses.

http://www.immuneweb.org/911/pr/100801.html

[Protoclown]

u r stoo pid

[The_Rorschach]

I beat you all to that conclusion weeks ago. . . ;)

"When EPA made a Sept. 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, the agency did not have sufficient data and analyses to make the statement. . ."

Now see, expecting one to take responbility over that which one has no authority is an idiocy the likes of which only the military can willingly embrace. Lying, as I have always understood it, is purposeful deception. If it lying can be construed as accidental in nature, then answering a question incorrectly can be viewed as a lie. which is as excessive as it is preposterous. The EPA did not have all the facts, and that would not have been a satisfactory conclusion to present the public with shortly after such a grand mal event. I've read about this in other articles, and from what I understand, they looked over the building materials and did a quick diagnosis of the plane, as well as blood work on the people at ground zero, and decided there were no lethal, cancerous or biological agents floating about. They took that to mean it was relatively safe, although anyone who has used bondo, spackle or plaster of paris can tell you breathing in dust particles isn't healthly.

I don't think this really has much of anything to do with the Bush Administration and certainly doesn't reflect upon the President himself. I understand not many people like the man, but would it be impossible to keep complaints regarding his conduct within the boundaries of reality?

[mburbank]

My reading of the article is that the administration, Ms. Rice in particular, who as far as I know is not a scientist, pressured the EPA to remove language from the EPA's draft.

While its quite possible and I think even likely that Bush himself does not take an interest in this sort of thing, he is President CEO. He himself endorsed legislation that would make CEO's legally liable for the truth of their audit statements. I can only assume that he feels CEO's of companys ought to be more directly responsible than Presidents.

[The_Rorschach]

Well, maybe I'm just getting soft, but I personally think that from a leadership perspective, it was the correct action to take. How much good would it have done the nation to hear that it was unsafe for anyone to go near the twin ruins? Arguably, I think it could have caused an even more wide spread panic, though on the plus side we might not have had to deal with the weeping reporters on CNN, and the Year After segments that popped up so various networks could justify the expendature of footage which never made the air.

I think I might have shared this story before, but the night of the strike, a couple Indian Cruisers approached our location at my last duty station. We saw them coming because hell, what kind of intellegence station would we have been if we hadn't, but aside from my orders to report it to the CO, that information never left the watch floor. We had already recalled everyone with prior NSF training to stand armed watches at various points on the island, and aside from worrying personnel, there wasn't much else that could have been done to resolve the situation. At the time, the ships still unidentified, we were almost certain that they were hostile and were getting ready to destroy our crypto.

In some situations, certain facts should be supressed as they do more harm then good. I think was either Truman or Churchill who said that in times of war, the truth must be protected by a pack of lies. The people who went in there understood there were risks -falling debris, choking hazards, broken glass and whatnot. Do you think the government saying that the existance of possibly harmful inhalants would have really told stopped anyone? Do you think that information was really something they didn't already figure out, considering that every American knows buildings have been built with dangerous materials ranging anywhere from lead paint, asbestos to halon fire suppressant systems?

I don't know, maybe I'm knit picking, but this articles, and those like it, seem like smear press to me, especially as I haven't notice one mention the exact health risks workers WERE exposed to (asbestos and lead paint both having been banned as construction materials long before the towers were built), and what they should be doing about it.

[mburbank]

A.) I don't believe that crap about protecting the truth with lies. I believe in transperency and let the chips fall.

B.) IF I believed in lies protecting truth, the LAST people I'd want as the gaurdians of truth are this pack of treacherous bastards. Even the best of folks find the position of Truth guardian corrupting, and these folks are hrdly the best people.

C.) I'm not talking about heroes rushing into the burning building (as opposed to Presidents flying into hiding and then having their spokespeople lie about it). I'm talking about ordinary citizens a month later clearing the inch and a half of dust out of their apartments and offices, some of whom might actually have believed the government wouldn't lie about something like this and who might have been protected by something as cheap and simple as a professional painters mask.

D.) I don't think this was some carefully crafted lie to protect people. I think this was a damnable tossed off lie that never would have been corrected if these sons of bitches had their druthers. The only thing that might make this matter on a grand scale is if a Republican politician who went to ground zero and isn't a smoker gets lung cancer. Then it will suddenly be a big deal.

[The One and Only...]

Meh. I'm just trying to provide another point of view. In all honesty, I'm moderate at this. I don't think that the people who did this were "evil", I just think it was a blunder or it was done for some unknown reason.

[mburbank]

I don't think they're 'evil' like a comic book supervillian, I don't think their intilligent is evil. I think they're dangerously arrogant, contemptous, in love with power, see themselves as rulers, not public servants and in any given situation, small or large, feel that secrecy is the way to go. I'd be surprised if you could get someone in this administration to tell you the color of their tie under oath.

They COUNT on the vast majority of americans to say "Meh". That's exactly what they expect .

[The One and Only...]

I doubt it. Even if the Dubbya administration is in love with it's money and power (I think the Iraq war was really about them trying to kill his senior), I don't think they would hang back from telling the public a serious health issue for a laugh.

Unless they're all really liberals, messing up on purpose to make conservatives look like idiots...

[The_Rorschach]

I agree with Burbank on this one, to a certain extent, Bush is betting on the disinterest and complacency of the people we supposedly serves. . .I mean come on, how else could he have gotten the balls to publically participate in wartime profiteering?

[Anti-Xocial]

I doubt it. Even if the Dubbya administration is in love with it's money and power (I think the Iraq war was they would hang back from telling the public a serious health issue for a laugh.

:boohoo Do you believe in little pink, flying, elephants as well?

[Immortal Goat]

Hey, that person's theory kinda makes sense...
only, not at all.

However, ANYONE who says that we went to war with Iraq strictly to save the people there from a tyrranical leader is VERY naive.

[kahljorn]

I wish after a big long news article the person posting would instead post a paragraph- or even sentence- long summary. Like, "Bush lied about X, we know this because of Y, this makes me Z".

That would bring me great Z.