Rep. Bill Pascrell wants feds who 'cleared air' charged

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/loca...p-366308c.html

BY RUSS BUETTNER and RICHARD T. PIENCIAK
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
7/13/2006

WASHINGTON - Public officials who "cleared the air" in lower Manhattan after 9/11 - assuring New Yorkers that the air was not toxic - should be hauled into court and prosecuted, a New Jersey congressman charged yesterday.

"We know from all the records that [the Environmental Protection Agency] kept on telling us, members of Congress, that everything was just wonderful, yet we now understand what our first responders are going through," said Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J).

"We are here five years later and we still have held no one accountable as to what the response was and what happened in terms of that tragedy," he said. "This is not acceptable and somebody has to pay the price."

"Whoever cleared the air, and the air wasn't clear, that's pretty simple," added Pascrell, whose strong words came during a House oversight subcommittee hearing into 9/11 recovery aid.

Outside the packed hearing room, Pascrell was asked whether he would count Christie Whitman, who was the chief of EPA during 9/11, as among those who had "cleared the air."

"She sure did," Pascrell said. "She was giving this thing a clean bill of health - and it didn't deserve to be given one."

Asked if then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani also qualified for similar criticism, Pascrell said, "He was doing his job. The mayor has to reassure, but the mayor has to reassure based on fact. I don't care who it was. The people deserved the truth, and they deserve answers."

The veteran North Jersey pol recalled that serious concerns were raised about the air quality in lower Manhattan in the days and weeks after 9/11, many by the Daily News.

"There were questions at the time, if you remember, 'Are we sure about this?'" he said. "Now people are coming forth with the symptoms. And now what do we do?"

Neither Giuliani nor Whitman could immediately be reached for comment last night.

But in a News Op-Ed piece published about six weeks after the terror attacks, Whitman sought to reassure the public, writing, "The people of New York deserve all the information available in as useful and complete a form as possible."