Republican Christy Todd Whitman former EPA head, testifies about 9/11 health hazards

[ViolaLee]

First, before she testified today, she had previously refused to testify.

WASHINGTON — The former head of the Environmental Protection Agency is balking at a request by Rep. Jerrold Nadler that she testify before a congressional hearing on the federal response to the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Christine Todd Whitman, the EPA administrator at the time, has declined an invitation to appear before a House subcommittee that Mr. Nadler chairs, an aide to the congressman said yesterday. Mr. Nadler, whose district includes ground zero, is expected to ask Ms. Whitman again before considering whether to seek to compel her testimony with a subpoena, the aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said.

Mr. Nadler and Senator Clinton yesterday announced companion hearings to investigate what they say was the government's failure to respond adequately to the environmental crisis in Lower Manhattan that resulted from the attack on the World Trade Center. Mr. Nadler's hearing is scheduled for May 22; Mrs. Clinton's is set for June 20.

http://www.nysun.com/article/54612

And then this weekend she blamed Guiliani for the 9/11 workers not wearing protective breathing gear.

But at the time, in 2001, 7 days after 9/11, she is documented as saying the air is safe to breathe.

Former Environmental Protection Agency boss Christie Whitman says she urged Ground Zero workers to wear respirators, but then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani blocked her efforts.

She also said city officials didn't want EPA workers wearing haz-mat suits because they "didn't want this image of a city falling apart."

In an interview scheduled to run the day before Whitman testifies in front of Congress on Monday, she told WNBC-TV she warned the city of the risks almost every day.

And she said she believes illnesses killing first responders can be blamed on the city's lack of action.

"I'm not a scientist ... but I do [believe that]," she told WNBC's Brian Thompson.

"I mean, we wouldn't have been saying that the workers should wear respirators if ... we didn't think there might be health consequences."

She said the city had the responsibility to make sure workers wore respirators. But many took them off, complaining of heat. She said workers without respirators were barred from cleanup efforts at the Pentagon.

"We were certainly frustrated at not being able to get people to wear respirators because we thought that was critically important to workers on The Pile," Whitman said.

"Every day, there would be telephone calls, telephone meetings and meetings in person ... with the city when we repeated the message of the necessity of wearing respirators."

But her concern at the time only involved breathing air on The Pile.

Only seven days after the 9/11 attacks, as fires still raged at the site, she said, "I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C., that the air is safe to breathe."

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/06/23/2007-06-23_christie_blasts_rudy_on_wtc_air-1.html

But apparently she changed her mind. Today she testified and she refused to take any blame. Today, instead of blaming Guiliani, she blamed the White House, for changing the text of the EPA's warning. The EPA said it was unsafe, the White House changed the documents to say it was safe.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon workers had to obey the OSHA laws and wear the breathing masks. But at ground zero, the law was broken and the people who cleaned up the WTC disastor are now very sick. 70% of the people who worked there are sick and dying.

Christie Todd Whitman has no remorse whatsoever.

WASHINGTON – Ex-EPA chief Christie Whitman was bombarded by boos and a host of accusations Monday at a hearing into her assurances that it had been safe to breathe the air around the fallen World Trade Center.
The confrontation between the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency and her critics grew heated at times. Some members of the audience shouted in anger, only to be gaveled down by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who chaired the hearing.

For three hours Whitman faced charges from Nadler and others that the Environmental Protection Agency's public statements after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks gave people a false sense of safety.

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 have suffered some sort of respiratory illness. A separate study released last month found that rescue workers and firefighters contracted sarcoidosis, a serious lung-scarring disease, at a rate more than five times as high as in the years before the attacks.

Nadler, a Democrat whose district includes the World Trade Center site, called the hearing after years of criticizing federal officials for what he says was a negligent and incomplete cleanup.

He said the Bush administration “has continued to make false, misleading and inaccurate statements and refused to take remedial actions, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.”

Whitman called such allegations “misinformation, innuendo and downright falsehoods.”

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20070625-1425-attacks-health.html

I'm watching the replay of it now on cSpan. A couple interesting things....this is the very first hearing about it since it happened. During the 6 years of Republican rule, there was no oversite, no hearings, nothing at all. And today, when the Democrats finally hold a hearing, the Republicans didn't even show up. I think a few showed up after a while, but what I'm watching now are all Democrats asking questions. Usually it's Dem, Repub, taking turns. It's all Dems.

So why don't the Republicans care about the people who worked on the "Pile" who breathed in hazardous air against OSHA law? Why don't the Republicans care about the EPA statements being changed by the White House to say the air is safe to breathe? Why don't the Republicans care that 70% of the people who worked on the Pile are sick and dying?

 

[Cancel7]

Because they had to get the financial capital back up and running. Human lives always have been expendable in the name of Capitalism and they always will be.

I feel very sorry for those people, I do. But you had to be some kind of fool to believe that air was safe to breath. Not just any fool, that took a really special kind of fool.