Whitman Finally Responds to 9/11 Charges With Prevarications
On September 11, 2001, two hijacked jet aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center, killing 2,600 people and destroying the twin towers. But there has been a second catastrophe, as well: Extremely high rates of deadly respiratory disease among rescue workers and others who toiled in clouds of toxic dust at Ground Zero that officials claimed was not dangerous to breathe.
Chief among those officials was Christie Todd Whitman, a former New Jersey governor and rising national Republican star. As administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, she asserted in a September 18, 2001, press release, one of many altered by the White House to present a more upbeat picture, that:
“We are very encouraged that the results from our monitoring of air quality and drinking water conditions in both New York and near the Pentagon show that the public in these areas is not being exposed to excessive levels of asbestos or other harmful substances. Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C. that their air is safe to breath and their water is safe to drink.”
As official lies go, this was a whopper because the White House, Whitman and other environmental and health officials suspected and later became aware that there were an array of toxins at Ground Zero and in the surrounding area from the impact of the jetliners and collapse of the towers. These included minute shards of glass and asbestos, PCBs and other poisons.
The findings of a study released last September by Mount Sinai Hospital provides a stunning backdrop to Whitman’s duplicity.
Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House.
19 Responses to “Whitman Finally Responds to 9/11 Charges With Prevarications”
The post would be much stronger if you could quote the federal regulation that gives the EPA primary jurisdiction over workplace airborne hazards.
OSHA is the federal organization that has primary jurisdiction over workplace hazards and most states and especially NY and NYC are the implementers of the OSHA workplace airborne particulate hazards.
If you look at the EPA website is says:
the Asbestos NESHAP relating to demolitions or renovations is a work practice standard.
This means that it does not place specific numerical emission limitations for asbestos fibers on
asbestos demolitions and removals.
If you look at the EPA jurisdiction is says no asbestos release can be made during demolition.
If you look at OSHA Standards is says:
Permissible Exposure Limit: In both general industry and construction, workplace exposure must be limited to 0.2 fibers per cubic centimeter of air (0.2 f/cc), averaged over an eight-hour work shift. The excursion or short-term limit is one fiber per cubic centimeter of air (1 f/cc) averaged over a sampling period of 30 minutes.
Are the activist really arguing that NYC should have evacuated lower Manhatten, tested the air to determine the extent of any possible asbestos exposure, and then covered that area with plastic to present any release.
Nadler is a good example of a nitpicking activist. He attacks the other guy but will never say what he would have done except to say that he was to protect people and the environment.
I wonder what the hidden agenda is for the activist?
The timing of this post seems odd. I suspect it has something to do with the release of “SiCKO.”
[...] Clark Link to Article george w bush Christie Whitman: Vile Hypocrite & Liar » Posted at The [...]
No this post wasn’t timed for anything. All of us write and post our items on TMV independently and find out what’s on the site when we look on the site (including me). And the last time I looked, we didn’t have any grassy knolls manned by members of the RNC, DNC, Michael Moore or Rush Limbaugh.
However, I think that it is a safe assumption that the congressional hearings were timed to go along with SICKO.
To attack the EPA for not doing things that it is not chartered or mandated to do and that another part of the government is responsible for it laughable.
Once again, the nitpicking activist have little credibility unless they are will to say what should have been done on September 12, 2001.
Christie Todd Whitman Is A Vile Hypocrite and a Liar?
So she was charged by Shaun Mullen of the Moderate Voice. I happen to enjoy the blog, so I always note a post that sticks out like a sore thumb, in comparison to the otherwise well written posts.Â
Shaun makes allegations he simply can not back up, o…
she asserted in a September 18, 2001, press release
“We are very encouraged that the results from our monitoring of air quality and drinking water conditions in both New York and near the Pentagon show that the public in these areas is not being exposed to excessive levels of asbestos or other harmful substances.
The stunning evidence?
The Mount Sinai Medical Center today released the findings from the World Trade Center Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program,
The report found that a high proportion of those examined became sick as a result of their World Trade Center work.
She did not say it was safe to work at ground zero which is precisely what this report was screening….ground zero workers.
Those who arrived first at the site suffered the heaviest exposures and had the most frequent respiratory problems. This represents a major public health issue as most of the responders screened by Mount Sinai were heavily exposed, with 70 percent having arrived at the site between September 11 and 13.
99.9 percent of all workers at ground zero had to know it was very dangerous and very caustic working there. If they were above mental retardation they had to know.
This report was directed at the rest of NYC and the Pentagon area in which the people needed to be reassured. Notice that those suffering the worst arrived in the first 2 days. Her report was release a week later in which they claim is made that the air is safe outside of these areas.
The EPA was primary jurisdiction over public exposures. OSHA has primary jurisdiction over workplace exposure. Firemen and other first responsder are a hard category to work with in OSHA because they cannot take the time to assess the situaiton beofre responding.
I heard a talk from the safety manager of the primary contractor who removed the debris from the WTC site. They have to be very innovative in what they did and they still could not comply with all of the workplace safety regulations on NYC and NY state.
[...] writer, and generally, he’s a sharp, critical thinker. That said, I disagree with his take on Christine Todd Whitman, relative to her role at the EPA in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on [...]
Shaun – luckily for you she is a public figure, and you are therefore protected from slander lawsuits, because this was a hatchet job, pure and simple.
For those reading Shaun’s post, please consider my alternative take, linked also in Comment #9, above.
Even liberal Republicans like Whitman aren’t safe from the angrier (more childish) activists.
AustinRoth:
Your unaffectionate comment deserves a serious response.
Working from pretty much the same information, Pete Abel and I arrived at rather different interpretations of Ms. Whitman’s testimony and, most importantly, the events, statements and circumstances leading up to her testimony, which was furnished with great reluctance and under extreme duress.
The late Vince Foster famously remarked to the effect that Washington eats people up and spits them out. I think that Ms. Whitman is a stellar example of someone whom I admired as the leader of a most difficult state to govern who went to Washington with the best of intentions.
But she was used and used despicably by the Bush administration and eventually spat out. Did Ms. Whitman know she was being used? As she notes in her memoirs, she most certainly did. Did she have an obligation to push back against the White House and its handmaiden Council on Environmental Quality? She most certainly did.
Parsing asbestos level definitions, hiding behind micromanaged claims that the airborne toxins in Area A were different from Area B, that the EPA was hamstrung by competing OSHA regs and what the locals did and did not want her agency to do on their turf is not a sufficient defense for her deriliction. In fact, it’s inane.
Christie Whitman could have emerged from 9/11 and her turn in Washington as an admirable exception to the rule. She did not and I think my article, far from being a hatchet job, was a sober and accurate reflection of that unfortunate reality.
In DC there is the term “staying in your lane.” Christine Whiteman stayed in her lane of environmental exposure to asbestos for the general public. If she had stuck in nose in OSHA’s business, she would have been wrong.
Also, there has been since 9/11 a discussion of what kinds of standards apply during emergency situaiton. When the Pentago issue excape respirators to all of the workers in the Pentagon, OSHA wavied the pulmonary function test requirements. Also, what levels should WMD’s be clean up to has been question and even who will pay.
Do you want a possible future terrorist to use our own tight regulations to enhanced the destructive power of any WMD?
DLS- If Whitman was truly a liberal Republican, she never would have accepted a cabinet post from the Bush Administration. IMO, she was more moderate than Bush/Cheney but was used by them in the same way Colin Powell was. Her press releases were sent to the WH and altered when they thought in necessary. They didn’t allow her the independence necessary to do her job correctly. The bottom line is this is another failure for the administration.
Shaun – had you written you article with the tone and balance of your reply to me, I would have had no objection. Reasonable people can disagree, reasonably.
However, your original article was not in that vein. Washington is about covering your ass, and as SD said, staying in your lane. That she was used, as you pointed out in your reply to me, was apparent to her early on.
But what does your article say? “As official lies go, this was a whopper”.
Yo called her a liar, not because she did lie, but because she didn’t comment beyond what was her area. Others have already pointed out her warnings to responders; meanwhile you are taking her words about the general public, and applying them to a different group and context to achieve your goal, smearing another Bush Administration member.
Christ man, they do enough on their own you don’t have to make shit up and distort the record to accomplish that!
K. Ritter:
Really? No Bush administration decision to select a token liberal Republican for a department which they probably didn’t want to accomplish much, anyway?
I’m not sure what Shaun is trying to say. That she was lying purposefully to get rescue workers killed? As mentioned no one there could possibly have thought the air was healthy for them, but implying that Whitman was trying to get people hurt just can’t be right. Whats the motivation? As shitty as I think most in the administration are their motives are greed and power not wanton misery.
Whitman migth have been mistaken in part, but its hardly a botched job and certainly not malicious. Anyone working in those conditions should have been protected and demanded it, there were certainly enough resources on the job.
[...] writer, and generally, he’s a sharp, critical thinker. That said, I disagree with his take on Christine Todd Whitman, relative to her role at the EPA in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on [...]