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TRANSCRIPT
The “dust lady” photo has become one of the iconic images of 9/11. The image of a woman, shocked and disoriented, completely covered in dust from the demolition of the Twin Towers, brings the nearly incomprehensible events of that day down to a human scale.
But of course the “dust lady” was not the only one to feel the effects of the blanket of dust that descended on Manhattan after the towers fell. In the hours, days, and weeks that followed, thousands upon thousands of victims, first responders, emergency personnel, clean up crews, and residents were subjected to the poisonous stew of asbestos, benzene, mercury, lead, cadmium and other particulates from which many are now dying.
CBS REPORTER: “Dr David Prezant, Chief Medical Officer with the New York Fire Department, spent 7 years examining more than 10,000 fire-fighters. Those who were at the World Trade Center site after 9/11 and those who weren’t.”
DR. DAVID PERZANT: “And we found an increase in all cancers, combined. A 19% increase in cancers compared to the non-exposed World Trade Center group.”
(SOURCE: 9/11 first responders and cancer)
ABBY MARTIN: “Talk about the most pressing medical issues facing 9/11 first responders right now.”
JOHN FEAL: “Cancer. In the beginning, in the first few years it was respiratory but now it’s cancers and this is just the first wave of cancers, the blood cancers, the leukemias, the organ cancers but in 5 or 10 more years you’re going to see the asbestos cancers. There will be another wave of cancers and like I tell everybody, this is a generation long issue and a generation long illness.”
(SOURCE: 9/11 Cancers Killing First Responders | Think Tank)
KEN GEORGE: “Every morning I wake up I gotta take 33 pills within the course of the day. At 47 years old I have lungs of an 80 year old man that would’ve been a smoker. People say you have to forget about 9/11 and I say how could I forget about 9/11 when every morning I gotta take this medication and walk around with an oxygen tank.”
(SOURCE: NYC 9/11 Rescuers Experience Lingering Health Problem)
If the brave men and women who had rushed to the World Trade Center in the chaotic days after 9/11 to help with the search and rescue had done so knowing the risks they were facing, that would be one thing. But of course they did not. They had been given false assurances by Christine Todd Whitman, the EPA administrator who assured the public just days into the clean up that the air was safe to breathe.
CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN: “We know asbestos was in there, was in those buildings. Lead is in the those buildings. There are the VOC’s (Volatile Organic Compounds), however, the concentrations are such that they don’t pose a heath hazard.”
As the weeks and months dragged on, Whitman, the EPA and its officials made statement after statement after statement reaffirming that contaminant levels were “low or non-existent” and that the air quality in Manhattan posed “no public health concern.”
We now know that these reassurances were outright lies. On September 18th, the very same day that Whitman and the EPA were encouraging New Yorkers to return to work, the agency detected sulfur dioxide levels in the air so high that “according to one industrial hygienist, they exceeded the EPA’s standard for a classification of ‘hazardous’.” By that time, first responders were already reporting a range of health problems, including coughing, wheezing, eye irritation and headaches.
The evidence continued to pour in that there were serious health concerns for those in and around Manhattan, but the information was suppressed almost as quickly as it was discovered. When a local lab tested dust samples from near the WTC site and found dangerous concentrations of fiberglass and asbestos, the New York State Department of Health warned local labs that they would lose their licenses if they processed any more “independent sampling.” When US Geological Survey scientists began performing tests on their own dust samples, they were shocked at the “alphabet soup of heavy metals” they found in it. They forwarded this information to the EPA, but the agency continued to assure the public that there was no evidence of long term health risks.
The drama continued to unfold as information poured in about benzene, lead and other environmental toxins. Yet on September 18th the EPA specifically advised the public against wearing respirators outside the World Trade Center restricted area. Then, just two weeks later, the agency distributed respirators to their own staffers at the EPA’s Region 2 building on Broadway Street.
As scientists, industrial hygenists, and even other government officials began to accuse the EPA of covering up the true extent of the problem in New York, the agency continued with its dogged assertion that the air was safe to breathe.
It wasn’t until 2003 that the EPA’s own Inspector General revealed that the White House had been editing the agency’s press releases all along, finding that “the White House Council on Environmental Quality 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.”
When new documents were released to the public in 2011 on the eve of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, it was discovered that this editing was even worse than originally feared.
ANTHONY DePALMA: “There were clear warnings. Specifically on Water Street, which for those people in this area know is not far from Wall Street, that showed that the levels of contaminates in the air was too high people to go back. That (warning) was removed which was bad enough and then replaced with a recommendation that people go back to work. They were urged to go back. Even thought the early samples were showing that there were high-levels of contaminates.”
JUAN GONZALEZ: “And you point out also that in many cases they (EPA) were telling people that is was safe before they had even finished conducting initial tests.”
ANTHONY DePALMA: “In one email exchange that happens on the 13th (of September), so it’s just a day and a half later, the people in Washington at the White House Council on Environmental Quality are telling the people up here “Hey, Christine Whitman is coming up. She’s going to talk to reporters because all of the results so far have been so positive.
“Well, all of the results so far showed almost nothing because there were almost no results and yet they were committed to this message of reassurance despite the facts. And that’s not the way it should happen.”
(SOURCE: 9/11 Debris Linked to Cancer, Details Emerge on How Officials Downplayed Ground Zero Dangers)
Outraged at the fact that they had been lied to and their lives put at risk, residents and workers in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn sued Whitman and the EPA in 2004. In a 2006 ruling allowing the class action lawsuit to proceed, Judge Deborah A. Batts of Federal District Court in Manhattan excoriated Whitman, finding that her baseless assurances that the air was safe “increased, and may have in fact created, the danger” to people living and working in the area. Ruling that the EPA did, in fact, make “misleading statements of safety” about the air quality, Judge Batts said: “The allegations in this case of Whitman’s reassuring and misleading statements of safety after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks are without question conscience-shocking.”
Batts’ decision was overturned by a panel of judges in 2008, who ruled that misleading the public and contributing to the health problems and deaths of untold Ground Zero workers was not conscience shocking enough to override her immunity from prosecution as a federal agent.
If Whitman has a conscience at all, it is evidently not shocked by any of these accusations. She has not only never conceded guilt or even expressed sorrow for the ongoing sickness and deaths that her action helped bring about, she has repeatedly defended the actions of herself and the EPA in general.
CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN: “Statements that EPA officials made after 9/11 were based on the judgement of experienced environmental and health professionals at the EPA, OSHA and the CDC, who had analyzed the test data that 13 different organizations and agencies were collecting in Lower Manhattan.
“I do not recall any EPA scientist or experts responsible for viewing this data ever advising me that the test data from Lower Manhattan showed that the air or water proposed long-term health risks for the general public.”
Whitman’s lies are not just those of another self-serving politician looking to save their job or stay out of jail. They are the lies of someone who has contributed to the deteriorating health and even the death of thousands of innocent men and women.
For the victims of Christine Todd Whitman, the EPA, the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and all of the other agencies and officers who lied to the public about the health risks in New York, 9/11 is not a single day of horror that occurred a decade and a half ago. It is a slowly unfolding nightmare, one that every day brings them one step closer to their grave.
The “dust lady” is one of the icons of the tragedy of that day. Should it be any surprise, then, that she, too, was ravaged by 9/11 related diseases and ultimately died of cancer last year?
She was not the first person to die from the aftermath of 9/11. And, thanks to Christine Todd Whitman and the liars at the EPA who have consigned untold thousands to a similar fate, she will not be the last.
DAVID MILLER: “My name is David Miller. On September 11, 2001, along with hundreds of my fellow troops I went to Ground Zero. No one asked us. No orders were given. We went because our city, our country, our neighbors were under attack and we knew what to do, or at least we thought we did.
“On September 13th we marched back in, in groups of twos and threes at first and then dozens until there must of been more than 200 of us. Carrying ropes, ladders, tools of every kind back into the smoke and the poison and rubble were we reached an intersection with hundreds of civilians cheering us on. Our uniforms were torn and soiled, our resolve was simple. To stay and dig as long as we had any hope to save anybody.
“I want to tell you about how sick some of these brave men and women have become. I want to tell about how the Mayor refused to accept the fact that not dozens, not hundreds but many thousands of us were contaminated, sickened and poisoned by the most toxic combinations of building materials in the history of disaster relief and that for 5 terrible years he ignored that fact. 5 years of our family members watching us drop dead.
“And every time Popular Mechanics calls the people of this movement, nuts, these propagandists—professional liars and tools who can not even by any stretch of the imagination be considered journalists—strike another nail into the coffin of another rescue worker.”
Great Update James ! Can anyone continue to wonder why so many no longer trust the existing system ! I’ve always had great respect for fire fighters, reports like this only increase that level of respect.
My respect is also extended to those police and various civilians who volunteered their efforts with no knowledge of the hazardous conditions in which they were working ! If the hidden agenda that led to this tragedy is ever revealed, I doubt seriously that those individuals will ever be held responsible. This will leave the door open to a repeat performance at some point in the future and we will only have ourselves to blame !
rltmlt,
You are right: “I doubt seriously that those individuals will ever be held responsible.”(criminally)
However, Christine Todd Whitman must lead a paranoid life. Her name is mud. Anywhere she, her husband or her kids go there must be a haunting idea that people recognize her as Miss Hitler 2001.
The alternative media like Corbett Report helps to define “White Hats” and “Black Hats”. In the 1950’s, the Roy Rogers and Lone Ranger westerns made it simple, but naïve.
It is up to us to set standards, to define “good” and “bad”, because the mainstream media certainly does not do it.
JC nails that cold, heartless bitch!
It’s almost certainty that the problem is not psychopathy, but psychopathic behavior.
Acquired psychopathic behavior.
Government institutions, top management of corporations almost produce such a behavior.
There is an excellent lecture by Philip Zimbardo: Lucifer Effect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYre8SlOO_k&index=1&list=PL90F616ED0064DC64
He is talking about Abu Ghraib, Milgram experiment in parts 1 to 4.
In proper circumstances Anyone can become executioner.
In my opinion, this lecture is a Must See!!!
Great stuff James, in certainly shows that statism is not the religion of peace!
Guiliani, Whitman…. you are off to a great start! Thank you for having the courage to do this work.
I recognize that bastard, Philip Zelikow. Not sure who the other two are but can’t wait to find out.
Honourable mentions:
Paul Bremer
Marvin Bush
Wirt Walker III
Jerome Hauer
Craig Stapleton
Steven Friedman
Paul Wolfowitz
Jeffrey Greenburg
Jim Pierce
Joseph Kasputys
Larry Silverstein
Judge Hellerstein
Dov Zakheim
Karl Rove
Shyam Sunker
Lee Hamilton
My dream is to see these and several more locked in bird cages and strung up over the Reflecting Absence memorial in NYC.
Thanks for the highly relevant contribution, alexander. Unfortunately the peer.org news release quoted in that article has been memory holed, but it’s on the Wayback Machine here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150519135732/http://www.peer.org/news/news-releases/2015/04/21/egregious-epa-misconduct-delivers-whistleblower-win/
Well worth a read.
I hope many people are saving these documents, screen caps, videos etc on their own hard drives and other media.
The theory of nuclear demolition should not be discarded https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lec9giab90I
This would fit with the massive amount and variety of cancers of the survivors, the speed with which the materials/rubble were cleared, the fact that the huge buildings fell directly down without resulting in a **massive** pile of rubble, the amount of dust generated (skyscapers are mostly steel), the fact that weeks after the event, incandescent material (steel/rock who knows) was still found tens of meters underneath the rubble. And so on …
No plutonium nor uranium were found, therefore there was no nuclear bomb.
I love this quote from a wonderful writer…
…And now I know that corruption and conspiracy are not to blame so much as the meaner diseases of complacency and conformity. I groan at the prospect of taking on this subject, with which I would much rather have nothing to do.” –Victoria N. Alexander
James,
As always, top notch work. Much respect and continued support.
Maybe this is just the “conspiracy theorist” in me speaking, but I have a concern which I wanted to bring to your attention and to the rest of the community here for that matter.
Having been enticed to “click here for more suspects” at the end of the video and not seeing an actual link here, wanting more I went to check the video on youtube itself to see if the rest of the additional suspects were stashed there in addition to the revolting goole RJ (he sickens me too much to even type out his name in full). Yes, I’ll admit this was foolish to imagine some sort of pre-release videos with the rest of the suspects were for some reason stashed on layaway at youtube prior to their official release here on the website, but perhaps I can hide sheepishly behind the excuse that the quality of the first two “suspect” videos contributed to my irrational behavior 😉
To my immediate lack of surprise no such videos existed. However, to the point I wanted to address I saw a user by the name of George Evans who has posted several of your videos, apparently unchanged except for the generic prefix title “USA News”. My point of suspicion (if you will) is the fact that these are intermingled with a series of what appear to be random generic popular movie review clips. Whether or not this is being done with malicious intent or not, I can’t help looking at this as a means of undermining your work by syphoning off views and in doing so, diluting the effectiveness in reaching a larger audience. Particularly, where low hanging pop culture media fruit is being dangled from the same branch.
I know, as a firm advocate for the concept of open source journalism and media the following idea might go against principal, but please hear me out. As I imagine you’re already aware of Youtube does offer options which allow you to opt to handle the media in different ways, such as monetizing or exercising (at least two that I can think of) forms of copyright control: either blocking duplication of content or informing you when this use occurs. I think at the very least, on the grounds I’ve outlined above, it might be prudent to exercise the later of these two “copyright” options. I’ll refrain from passing judgement on George Evans or any other users here who might have, or continue to post your work in good faith efforts to share it with a wider audience, but in the age of view counts, search engines, and the like, redundancy of content, be it audio or video, ultimately undermines the goal of the content creator who’s posted it somewhere like youtube with the intentions of sharing that work with as many people as possible. Being notified of this duplication would give you the option to contact a George Evans, or whoever else may be doing the same thing, and ask them to kindly take down the duplicate and share the original copy with others (if indeed that’s their primary interest).
Let me be clear: I’m not talking about “copyright infringement” in the sense of using extracts of other work as part of some other form of presentation. I’m talking about examples such as those I mentioned above, where content is essentially being duplicated verbatim, aside from a couple extra words added to the video title. I don’t doubt that this is an issue which has come up before and it’s possible this issue has already been discussed explicitly amongst members here. I know various nefarious tactics which have been employed directly by youtube and elsewhere have been addressed here in podcasts but I think what I’ve mentioned is another form of interference which, whether it’s being carried out by trolls or not, is something that needs to be combated and that there’s no reason this can’t be carried out in a way which remains principled.
~Benny
Also about the asbestos problem, during the build up, pre-9/11 Silverstein bought and insured the WTC even though it was a losing proposition. As the article in the links below state 9/11 was a “solution” to the costly asbestos removal problem…
Asbestos in the WTC
Towers’ Destruction ‘Solved’ Asbestos Problem…
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/asbestos.html
KILLING SEVERAL BIRDS WITH ONE STONE
http://www.newswithviews.com/Spingola/deanna39.htm
Two things covered in this article___
*******The World Trade Center: obsolete and plagued with problems [][][]
*******A lengthy, pre-9/11 legal battle over the WTC’s asbestos problem [][][]
http://www.lookingglassnews.org/viewstory.php?storyid=5659
WTC Buildings – Asbestos Abatement Issues Prior to 9/11…
http://theresearchrabbitwhole9-11edition.blogspot.com/2014/04/wtc-buildings-asbestos-abatement-issues.html
9/11: Larry Silverstein Designed New WTC-7 One Year Before Attacks (video)
http://www.mintpressnews.com/911-larry-silverstein-designed-new-wtc-7-one-year-attacks/214821/
Who Destroyed the WTC?
(Connect the dots)
http://www.serendipity.li/wot/who_destroyed_the_wtc.htmf
Whoops, The last link in the above post is broken, please disregard it.
No doubt PeasLuvandNRK, Silverstein took the idea of unloading toxic assets to a whole different level. Outdoing the banksters on anything conscientiously objectionable certainly requires an extraordinary level of sickness.
Hey, she apologized. Isn’t that big of her? Now she can bring back the dead.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3783450/People-died-mistake-Former-head-Environmental-Protection-Agency-apologizes-bad-information-air-quality-9-11.html
PS, don’t ya think she’s looking like hell?
Thanks for the tip. I’ve tweeted out the news and will follow up on this. Very interesting that her first ever public “apology” comes just days after this report.