Ground Zero Redevelopment

[al-Canine]

Since there are a few of us following the "progress" at the site, I thought it would be good to start a thread dedicated to reports on the redevelopment. I think that all of us who recently viewed the site were a bit dismayed by the lack of progress. Hopefully the issues will be resolved soon, and the memorial plans will begin to take place.


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May 16, 2005

Ground Zero Moves Forth, in Secret

By JOYCE PURNICK

NEW YORKERS are now assured by their governor that the Freedom Tower is back on track, that it will be redesigned and constructed with efficient dispatch.

Maybe, which would be nice (at least for those who want that inevitable magnet for trouble built at all). But think how much nicer it would be if New York had never had to endure the embarrassments of the last several weeks.

How much nicer, still, if New Yorkers who endured Sept. 11 had known what was going on all along.

It's called full disclosure. Transparency. It's the opposite of secrecy, which remains stubbornly popular with public officials and the occasional sympathetic pundit.

Thing about secrecy - it never works in the long run.

You'd think by now that its fans would realize it has a way of backfiring in a democracy, which still values that pesky commodity, truth.

So it is with the problems surrounding the Freedom Tower, the 1,776-foot building that will need a new design to address security issues. The unexpected delay comes 27 months after the selection of Daniel Libeskind's original concept and 17 months after it was redesigned by another architect, David Childs, in contentious partnership with Mr. Libeskind.

It therefore has been known for quite some time that the tower would be 25 feet from a major roadway, posing a potential threat from a truck bomb. That's the New York Police Department's chief concern, expressed in a security assessment that went to officials and the building's developer, Larry A. Silverstein, on April 8.

But that warning was not the first. A great deal is still not known - more secrecy - but it has been established that the Police Department raised doubts significantly earlier.

The public knows that much because the need to finally delay and recast the plan led to finger-pointing. Nothing like the blame game to pry loose information.

State and development officials complained, some in accusing tones, that the Bloomberg administration should have made its Police Department's concerns known earlier.

That prompted the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, to argue in a statement that there had been plenty of notice. Police officials said that in writing and in meetings, Deputy Police Commissioner Michael Sheehan repeatedly warned the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and Mr. Silverstein about the department's concerns beginning last June, two months after a police official said the department received the updated building plans.

IN fact, according to police officials, Mr. Sheehan wrote a letter to the Port Authority in August, met with representatives of the authority and of the developer and wrote another letter in October.

The warnings were ignored or dismissed, those police officials contend. Charges have been flying back and forth about how strong or precise the warnings were and when and how the Port Authority responded.

It remains impossible to know the dynamics of the past 17 months with any certainty because officials involved say little and the Police Department has not released the letters, citing security, though the more sensitive contents of the correspondence could be redacted.

A great deal is still in dispute, including the governor's interest and level of involvement, and whether Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was distracted by his plan for a football stadium on the Far West Side, was marginalized by the governor to begin with, or was so concerned that, one police official said, he drew some sketches for the Freedom Tower and its site himself, to address the security reservations.

Also unclear is the role of the tunnel proposed for West Street and dropped by the governor last month, in part to stop Goldman Sachs from dropping its plan for a headquarters on West Street. The company, an opponent of the tunnel, has tabled its construction plan. Since the tunnel would, it is widely agreed, have reduced the threat of a truck bombing, did the decision against it increase the security risks?

On balance, no, say city and state officials, because while a tunnel would have mitigated one security problem, it would have created others. But where is the public discussion?

And where was it over the past 17 months on the entire subject of security? Here is a novel thought: Maybe the rebuilding process would not be in the quandary it is today if there had been a full, public debate on the security issues.

O.K., unrealistic. But comforting in the mere contemplation.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/nyregion/16matters.html?

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Stories previously published on this subject:

http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showpost.php?p=148081&postcount=15

http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showpost.php?p=151215&postcount=16

http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showpost.php?p=160585&postcount=19

http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showpost.php?p=161523&postcount=20

http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showpost.php?p=168019&postcount=22

[NYer]

THE DONALD STEPS UP



May 17, 2005 -- Donald Trump, like more than a few folks, doesn't care much for the Freedom Tower — so tomorrow he'll unveil what he would like to see replace the World Trade Center: another World Trade Center.

Only built stronger. And a floor taller.

Leave it to The Donald to trump Gov. Pataki and his loony designer, Daniel Libeskind — whose plans for the Freedom Tower so far have gone . . . nowhere.

Certainly, Trump will have an uphill battle in trying to get Pataki to scrap Libeskind's scheme.

And maybe even more of a fight to win approval for anything as tall as 111 stories.

Still, there's no denying that the legendary New York builder has some standing in this debate — and his ideas, buttressed by a fleshed-out plan and architectural model, are welcome.

Remember, Trump has invested billions in this city. And when he talks about putting up 111-story skyscrapers, it's not just talk: The Donald says he'd feel comfortable letting his own family work in such a building — and he's building a 92-story tower in Chicago.

Pataki, meanwhile, is promising that the new plan for the Freedom Tower will be ready in a month. But he also once vowed that the tower's first steel beams would be rising from the ground by now.

Plus, he's said that the NYPD signed off on the new plans. But that's impossible: There are no new plans yet.

Then again, some of the experts, as we've noted, have voiced doubts that the Freedom Tower even can be built, given its technical and financial constraints.

If Donald Trump wants to weigh in with his own plan, how could it hurt?

http://nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/46613.htm

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OPNION

May 29, 2005

Ground Zero Is So Over

By FRANK RICH

IN its not-so-brief and thoroughly unhappy life, ground zero has been a site for many things: tragedy and grief, political campaigns and protests, battling architects and warring cultural institutions, TV commercials and souvenir hustlers. Perhaps it was inevitable we'd end up at pure unadulterated farce.

That's where we are as of this Memorial Day weekend. A 1,776-foot Freedom Tower with no tenants - and no prospect of tenants - has been abruptly sent back to the drawing board after the Marx Brothers-like officials presiding over the chaos acknowledged troubling security concerns about truck bombs. But truck bombs may be the least of the demons scaring away prospective occupants. The simple question that no one could answer the day after 9/11 remains unanswered today: What sane person would want to work in a skyscraper destined to be the most tempting target for aerial assault in the Western world? As if to accentuate this obvious, if frequently suppressed, psychological bottom line, news of the Freedom Tower's latest delay was followed like clockwork by a Cessna's easy penetration of supposedly secure air space near the White House, prompting panicky evacuation scenes out of the 50's horror classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still."

And so ground zero remains a pit, a hole, a void. As The New York Post has noticed, more time has passed since George Pataki first unveiled the "final design" of the Freedom Tower than it took to build the Empire State Building. For New Yorkers this saga is a raucous political narrative whose cast of characters includes a rapacious real-estate developer, a seriously irritating architect with even more irritating designer eyeglasses, a governor with self-delusional presidential ambitions and a mayor obsessed with bringing New York the only target that may rival the Freedom Tower as terrorist bait, the Olympics.

But there is another, national narrative here, too. Bothered as New Yorkers may be by what Charles Schumer has termed the "culture of inertia" surrounding ground zero, that stagnation may accurately reflect most of America's view about the war on terror that began with the slaughter of more than 2,700 at the World Trade Center almost four years ago. Though the vacant site is a poor memorial for those who died there, it's an all too apt symbol for a war on which the country is turning its back.

This is a dramatic change from just a year ago. In the heat of election season, the Bush-Cheney campaign set off a melee by broadcasting ads that featured the shell of the World Trade Center and shrouded remains being borne away by firefighters. Ground zero was hallowed ground, and the outcry against its political exploitation was so fierce that the ensuing Republican National Convention went nowhere near the site that had made New York its cynical choice of venue in the first place. Instead, the prospect of terror and the hot-button-pushing invocations of 9/11 were shoveled into the oratory at Madison Square Garden, where Rudolph Giuliani had a star turn. All the post-election talk of "moral values" notwithstanding, the terrorism card proved the decisive factor in the defeat of John Kerry, a character whose genius for equivocating on just about any issue rendered him a pantywaist against an opponent who had stood with a bullhorn in the smoky wreckage and had promised to round up the bad guys "dead or alive."

But once the election was over, ground zero was tossed aside like a fading mistress. The only time it has figured in national public discourse since was when the president nominated Bernard Kerik director of homeland security. The most damaging of the subsequent allegations against this 9/11 hero - that he had used an apartment for rescue workers overlooking the site as a hot-sheets motel for an extramarital tryst - didn't just end his government career; it effectively downsized ground zero from sacred ground into crude comic fodder for late-night comics. The fallen cultural status of the site in the months since is epitomized by the recent news conference at which Donald Trump thought nothing of showcasing his own stunt plan for ground zero (building replicas of the twin towers, only a story higher) as a promotional tie-in to the season finale of his reality show, "The Apprentice." Though there was some outrage among the 9/11 families, everyone else either giggled or shrugged (and "The Apprentice" was still eviscerated by "CSI").

Such lassitude about the day that was supposed to change everything is visible everywhere. Tom Ridge, now retired as homeland security czar, recently went on "The Daily Show" and joined in the yuks about the color-coded alerts. (He also told USA Today this month that orange alerts were sometimes ordered by the administration - as election year approached, anyway - on flimsy grounds and over his objections.) In February, the Office of Management and Budget found that "only four of the 33 homeland security programs it examined were 'effective,' " according to The Washington Post. The prospect of nuclear terrorism remains minimally addressed; instead we must take heart from Kiefer Sutherland's ability to thwart a nuclear missile hurling toward Los Angeles in the season finale of "24." The penetration of the capital's most restricted air space by that errant Cessna - though deemed a "red alert" - was considered such a nonurgent event by the Secret Service that it didn't bother to tell the president, bicycling in Maryland, until after the coast was clear.

But what has most separated America from the old exigencies of 9/11 - and therefore from the fate of ground zero - is, at long last, the decoupling of the war on terror from the war on Iraq. The myth fostered by the administration that Saddam Hussein conspired in the 9/11 attacks is finally dead and so, apparently, is the parallel myth that Iraqis were among that day's hijackers. Our initial, post-9/11 war against Al Qaeda - the swift and decisive victory over the Taliban - is now seen as both a discrete event and ancient history (as is the hope of nailing Osama bin Laden dead or alive); Afghanistan itself has fallen off the American radar screen except as a site for burgeoning poppy production and the deaths of detainees in American custody. In its place stands only the war in Iraq, which is increasingly seen as an add-on to the war provoked by 9/11 and whose unpopularity grows by the day.

Take a look at any recent poll you choose - NBC/Wall Street Journal, Harris, CNN/Gallup/USA Today - and you find comparable figures of rising majority disapproval of the war. Or ignore the polls and look at those voting with their feet: the Army has missed its recruiting goals three months in a row, and the Marines every month since January, despite reports of scandalous ethical violations including the forging of high-school diplomas and the hoodwinking of the mentally ill by unscrupulous recruiters. Speaking bitterly about the Army's strenuous effort to cover up his son's death by friendly fire, Pat Tillman's father crystallized the crisis in an interview with The Washington Post last week: "They realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a handbasket if the truth about this death got out. They blew up their poster boy."

THE cost of the war is rapidly becoming the routine stuff of mainstream popular culture. July 27 will bring the debut of "Over There," a powerful new weekly TV drama by Steven Bochco ("NYPD Blue") and Chris Gerolmo ("Mississippi Burning") that takes no political stand on the war but dramatizes the ripped torsos, broken homefront lives and unknown expiration date of our Iraq adventure in the unsparing detail that has often been absent from network news. The show is being presented not by some liberal cabal but by the rising cable network that "Nip/Tuck" built - FX - a franchise of Rupert Murdoch. On June 21 FX is also bringing back Denis Leary's jaundiced look at post-9/11 firefighters, "Rescue Me." In the first new episode, the hero throws a bag of "twin-tower cookies" back at the vendor selling them, heaving in anger that those who died that fateful morning have been usurped by kitsch.

Tomorrow, Memorial Day itself, will bring another "Nightline" reading of the names of the fallen: the more than 900 Americans who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since Ted Koppel's previous recitation. When he read 721 names in April 2004, Mr. Koppel was labeled a traitor by the right for daring to call attention to the casualties, and some affiliates even refused to broadcast the show. This time the prospect of a televised roll call of the dead has caused little notice at all. Like the latest setbacks at ground zero, it is a troubling but increasingly distant event to those Americans who, unlike the families and neighbors of the fallen, can and have turned the page.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/29/opinion/29rich.html

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Getting Along Is a Tough Job at Ground Zero

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

As difficult relationships between landlords and tenants go, few can compare with the increasingly thorny pairing of Larry Silverstein, the World Trade Center developer, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the land at ground zero.

The two sides have fought almost since the twin towers fell, and the disputes, which have largely played out behind closed doors, have involved nearly every aspect of the redevelopment effort.

The two sides have haggled over how much each will pay of the $1.5 billion needed for the underground infrastructure at the site, which must go in before the major rebuilding can begin. They have also squabbled over how much space in Mr. Silverstein's buildings will go to the shops and restaurants that the Port Authority wants to build. They have even sparred over how much Mr. Silverstein would charge the Port Authority for the office space its employees might one day occupy at the site where the agency lost scores of workers on Sept. 11.

Sometimes, the mutual suspicion has given rise to some high-stakes confrontations. The agency has long pushed Mr. Silverstein to produce a business plan showing he will be able to carry out the rebuilding of the site's 10 million square feet of office space. But when he produced a financial plan last summer, according to several officials involved in the dealings, the agency dismissed his numbers as unconvincing. Most recently, after security concerns about the giant Freedom Tower office building forced a delay in the project, the developer and the agency were again at odds over who would pay what he estimated as hundreds of millions of dollars in costs incurred because of the setback.

Over the course of the nearly four years of infighting, there has been periodic talk of engineering what would amount to a public divorce, according to officials involved in the redevelopment. Indeed, in recent weeks, Port Authority officials have floated among themselves a rough proposal that would allow the agency, with the building of the Freedom Tower under way, to reclaim some of the ground zero site.

Interviews over the last two weeks with Mr. Silverstein's representatives, Port Authority officials and government officials from the city and state suggest two important truths: that Mr. Silverstein will not be pushed from the redevelopment effort anytime soon, however appealing the prospect is to some at the Port Authority, and that the troubled relationship between the two principals is yet one more unhelpful aspect of a giant civic project that, despite its noble sense of promise in 2001, has suffered from delays and much public criticism.

"Is it complicated?" said Janno Lieber, Mr. Silverstein's project director. "Yes. But everybody recognizes that in order to get this done we're going to have to slog it out and work together."

The uneasy partners came together in July 2001, when Mr. Silverstein sealed a 99-year lease with the Port Authority for the World Trade Center. At the time, many in the real estate industry viewed him as a mid-sized developer who had worked tenaciously to outlast some much larger competitors to forge the deal of a lifetime.

The Port Authority, in contrast, was and is a behemoth among public agencies. Controlled by the governors of New York and New Jersey, it operates the region's three major airports, its commercial port and the PATH trains that run between New Jersey and Manhattan. The authority has a reputation for being big, bureaucratic, and getting its way. And it, after all, had built the Trade Center more than 30 years ago.

No one, then, is shocked that the two parties have struggled to work together since being forced to pick up the pieces at ground zero.

Most fundamentally, according to officials involved in the rebuilding project, the Port Authority has profound doubts about the ability of Mr. Silverstein and his investment partners to keep up their rental payments to the agency, currently at $110 million a year, as the rebuilding unfolds over more than a decade. And the authority questions, according to these officials, whether he can obtain adequate financing to rebuild the 10 million square feet of trade center office space once he has exhausted the $4.6 billion in insurance proceeds he is owed. The insurance money is expected to run out before he has finished the second of five projected buildings.

Last August, after Port Authority officials demanded he show them a financial plan, Mr. Silverstein and consultants from the financial services firm Morgan Stanley made a presentation to the Port Authority's commissioners that was met with deep skepticism from several board members, according to officials at the authority. The commissioners questioned the rents that Mr. Silverstein projected for his new buildings. They also believed that he was overly optimistic in predicting that he would be able to fill the buildings with tenants in a relatively short time, something that would be critical to his ability to pay the agency its rent and secure further financing.

That lingering concern colored the Port Authority's latest exploration of how to reduce Mr. Silverstein's role at ground zero. As the security concerns over the Freedom Tower began percolating this spring, top Port Authority officials, including the executive director, Kenneth J. Ringler, the chairman, Anthony Coscia, and Vice Chairman Charles A. Gargano, discussed an informal proposal to divvy up the site, according to officials at the agency.

The idea, the officials said, would be to have Mr. Silverstein build the Freedom Tower and a second office tower across Greenwich Street. Then, in exchange for a reduction in the developer's lease payments, the Port Authority would get control of the site of two future towers on Church Street, south of the planned PATH train station at Fulton Street, which the agency is building at a cost of more than $2 billion.

That would give the Port Authority more of a free hand in developing the retail component over a large swath of the site. It would also, the officials contend, allow them to build a pair of low buildings to house some of the retail space, bring back street life and ultimately serve as the place holders for office buildings that could be erected when there is more demand for commercial space in Lower Manhattan.

In recent months, officials at the agency have received advice from DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Carey, a Baltimore-based law firm that the agency's commissioners hired in January to consult on legal issues around the trade center site, and in particular to review Mr. Silverstein's lease and evaluate the authority's options in possibly altering its relationship with the developer, according to three officials at the agency. In the first four months of the year, the firm has billed the agency of 437 hours of work, at a cost of $198,671, although it was not clear how much of that was spent on parsing Mr. Silverstein's lease.

Mr. Gargano acknowledged that the impetus for hiring Piper Rudnick was to re-examine Mr. Silverstein's lease. "There were some commissioners who wanted to have more clarity about what the terms of the agreement are and to satisfy them, we did hire outside attorneys to do just that," he said.

But he was careful to say that no action is being contemplated at the moment.

"I believe it's prudent to look at different scenarios but keeping in mind we do have a legal agreement and as long as Larry fulfills the terms of that agreement, we have to not overreact," Mr. Gargano said. The move to seek legal advice did not go beyond the need to "be prepared," he said. "We should not be out there with any threats or anything," Mr. Gargano said.

In interviews about these issues, officials across the board stressed that the Port Authority's priority is to build the Freedom Tower. And they said that ultimately any change to Mr. Silverstein's lease would almost certainly come through negotiation. Any payment to Mr. Silverstein - such as through a condemnation of his lease - would most likely mean less money available for rebuilding, and politicians doubtless would be sensitive to anything that might appear to give the developer a windfall.

"I think it's clear that Larry Silverstein is the developer of the site," said John P. Cahill, New York Governor George E. Pataki's former chief of staff, who has been appointed to take charge of the trade center redevelopment. "He has the legal rights to develop the site. What's more important is that Larry has made numerous commitments to the public and the governor and each time he has been able to meet those commitments."

In a significant way, the recent delays with the Freedom Tower may have strengthened Mr. Silverstein's hand. Mr. Pataki has staked his reputation on the tower project and has stressed the need to move ahead as quickly as possible. The last thing he wants, officials said, is to start from scratch with a new developer.

For his part, Mr. Silverstein has complaints of his own. People close to Mr. Silverstein and his associates say they feel Port Authority officials have little understanding of the physical and financial complexities of the project. They say the authority has caused delays, dragging its feet for months in providing technical data needed to create detailed site drawings for the original Freedom Tower. And, regarding the dispute over how to pay for the site's infrastructure, they say the Port Authority has not been clear about how it estimates the costs and has frequently changed its numbers.

And at least some of the blame for the security crisis over the Freedom Tower, according to a number people involved in the redevelopment, can be laid at the Port Authority's doorstep. The original tower design was created using security criteria approved by the authority and later deemed inadequate by terrorism experts for the New York Police Department.

Despite the difficult relationship, Mr. Silverstein has steadfastly dismissed the idea of reducing his role in the rebuilding. "We're legally obligated under the existing documents to rebuild," his project director, Mr. Lieber, said in a statement. "More important is Larry Silverstein's personal commitment to fully rebuild. He's not going anywhere."

Patrick McGeehan contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/nyregion/05port.html?

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Police Terrorism Officials Are Satisfied With Security Changes in Freedom Tower's Design

By ROBIN SHULMAN

Police counterterrorism officials are satisfied with efforts by the Freedom Tower designers to comply with their recommendations to improve its security, a New York Police Department chief told City Council members yesterday.

"We have positioned ourselves exactly where we should be to ensure that the Freedom Tower is the beautiful, elegant, secure, safe, robustly designed project that we all want it to be," said Deputy Chief John Colgan, who leads the department's counterterrorism unit.

His comments came at a Council hearing into the safety of the Freedom Tower, which is being redesigned because the police said it was vulnerable to attack.

Others at the hearing expressed concerns about whether various city agencies have the legal power to enforce safety standards for the building. New York City building and fire codes do not apply to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site.

This issue has been highly controversial, especially after a mayoral commission formed in response to the Sept. 11 attacks authorized changes to the building code to make structures more resistant to attack, changes that would not be legally binding at the World Trade Center site.

Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority, said the authority had signed a memorandum of understanding with the city in 1993 to "meet or exceed" New York City building and fire codes, although he acknowledged that it was not legally enforceable.

The fact that buildings planned for the site are not legally required to adhere to the city's building codes drew concern at the Council hearing.

"No building in this city should be above the law," J. C. Calderon, an architect, told City Council members.

Similarly, the Police Department created a special unit in 2002 to make recommendations for securing buildings that are potential targets for terrorism. Yet the agency has no legal power to force building owners to adopt its suggestions.

"It's not our place to say yea or nay," Chief Colgan said. The most that police counterterrorism experts can say is, "I don't think so," he said.

The Police Department first expressed concerns with plans for the Freedom Tower in late 2003, Chief Colgan said. In August 2004, Michael A. Sheehan, the department's deputy commissioner of counterterrorism, wrote to the Port Authority saying the design for the Freedom Tower was flawed. In response, Gov. George E. Pataki last month ordered the design changed to reflect the department's security concerns.

Architects are now redesigning the structure to set the building at least twice as far from the street to limit potential blast damage from a car bomb. The structure is not likely to twist as it reaches upward, and windows below 150 feet are likely to be made smaller.

Chief Colgan said that the Police Department now has a "full and equal voice" in discussions of the Freedom Tower's design, and that it might make future recommendations on aspects like heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems and elevator embankments to improve security.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/nyregion/08security.html?

[NYer]

The Great Ground Zero Heist

By DEBRA BURLINGAME
June 7, 2005; Page A14

On Memorial Day weekend, three Marines from the 24th Expeditionary Unit who had been wounded in Iraq were joined by 300 other service members for a wreath-laying ceremony at the empty pit of Ground Zero. The broken pieces of the Twin Towers have long ago been cleared away. There are no faded flags or hand-painted signs of national unity, no simple tokens of remembrance. So why do they come? What do they hope to see?

The World Trade Center Memorial will break ground this year. When those Marines return in 2010, the year it is scheduled to open, no doubt they will expect to see the artifacts that bring those memories to life. They'll want a vantage point that allows them to take in the sheer scope of the destruction, to see the footage and the photographs and hear the personal stories of unbearable heartbreak and unimaginable courage. They will want the memorial to take them back to who they were on that brutal September morning.

Instead, they will get a memorial that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the yearning to return to that day. Rather than a respectful tribute to our individual and collective loss, they will get a slanted history lesson, a didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post-9/11 world. They will be served up a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world.
* * *

The World Trade Center Memorial Cultural Complex will be an imposing edifice wedged in the place where the Twin Towers once stood. It will serve as the primary "gateway" to the underground area where the names of the lost are chiseled into concrete. The organizers of its principal tenant, the International Freedom Center (IFC), have stated that they intend to take us on "a journey through the history of freedom" -- but do not be fooled into thinking that their idea of freedom is the same as that of those Marines. To the IFC's organizers, it is not only history's triumphs that illuminate, but also its failures. The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond. This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona.

The public will be confused at first, and then feel hoodwinked and betrayed. Where, they will ask, do we go to see the September 11 Memorial? The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation will have erected a building whose only connection to September 11 is a strained, intellectual one. While the IFC is getting 300,000 square feet of space to teach us how to think about liberty, the actual Memorial Center on the opposite corner of the site will get a meager 50,000 square feet to exhibit its 9/11 artifacts, all out of sight and underground. Most of the cherished objects which were salvaged from Ground Zero in those first traumatic months will never return to the site. There is simply no room. But the International Freedom Center will have ample space to present us with exhibits about Chinese dissidents and Chilean refugees. These are important subjects, but for somewhere -- anywhere -- else, not the site of the worst attack on American soil in the history of the republic.

More disturbing, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is handing over millions of federal dollars and the keys to that building to some of the very same people who consider the post-9/11 provisions of the Patriot Act more dangerous than the terrorists that they were enacted to apprehend -- people whose inflammatory claims of a deliberate torture policy at Guantanamo Bay are undermining this country's efforts to foster freedom elsewhere in the world.
* * *

The driving force behind the IFC is Tom Bernstein, the dynamic co-founder of the Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment Complex who made a fortune financing Hollywood movies. But his capital ventures appear to have funded his true calling, the pro bono work he has done his entire adult life -- as an activist lawyer in the human rights movement. He has been a proud member of Human Rights First since it was founded -- as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights -- 27 years ago, and has served as its president for the last 12.

The public has a right to know that it was Mr. Bernstein's organization, joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, that filed a lawsuit three months ago against Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was Human Rights First that filed an amicus brief on behalf of alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla, an American citizen who the Justice Department believes is an al Qaeda recruit. It was Human Rights First that has called for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the alleged torture of detainees, complete with budget authority, subpoena power and the ability to demand that witnesses testify under oath.

In fact, the IFC's list of those who are shaping or influencing the content and programming for their Ground Zero exhibit includes a Who's Who of the human rights, Guantanamo-obsessed world:
• Michael Posner, executive director at Human Rights First who is leading the world-wide "Stop Torture Now" campaign focused entirely on the U.S. military. He has stated that Mr. Rumsfeld's refusal to resign in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal is "irresponsible and dishonorable."

• Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, who is pushing IFC organizers for exhibits that showcase how civil liberties in this country have been curtailed since September 11.

• Eric Foner, radical-left history professor at Columbia University who, even as the bodies were being pulled out of a smoldering Ground Zero, wrote, "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." This is the same man who participated in a "teach-in" at Columbia to protest the Iraq war, during which a colleague exhorted students with, "The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military," and called for "a million Mogadishus." The IFC website has posted Mr. Foner's statement warning that future discussions should not be "overwhelmed" by the IFC's location at the World Trade Center site itself.

• George Soros, billionaire founder of Open Society Institute, the nonprofit foundation that helps fund Human Rights First and is an early contributor to the IFC. Mr. Soros has stated that the pictures of Abu Ghraib "hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself."


While Gov. George Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and LMDC are focusing their attention on the economic revival of lower Manhattan, there has been no meaningful oversight with respect to the "cash cow of Ground Zero." Meanwhile, the Freedom Center's organizers are quickly lining up individuals, institutions and university provosts with this arrogant appeal: "The memorial to the victims will be the heart of the site, the IFC will be the brain." Indeed, they have declared the World Trade Center Memorial the perfect "magnet" for the world's "great leaders, thinkers and activists" to participate in lectures and symposiums that examine the "foundations of free and open societies." Put less grandly, these activists and academics are salivating at the prospect of holding forth on the "perfect platform" where the domestic and foreign policy they despise was born.

Less welcome to the Freedom Center are the actual beneficiaries of that policy. According to the New York Times, early renderings of the center's exhibit area created by its Norwegian architectural firm depicted a large mural of an Iraqi voter. That image was replaced by a photograph of Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson when the designs were made public. What does it mean that the "story of humankind's quest for freedom" doesn't include the kind that is fought for with the blood and tears of patriots? It means, I fear, that this is a freedom center which will not use the word "patriot" the way our Founding Fathers did.
* * *

The so-called lessons of September 11 should not be force-fed by ideologues hoping to use the memorial site as nothing more than a powerful visual aid to promote their agenda. Instead of exhibits and symposiums about Internationalism and Global Policy we should hear the story of the courageous young firefighter whose body, cut in half, was found with his legs entwined around the body of a woman. Recovery personnel concluded that because of their positions, the young firefighter was carrying her.

The people who visit Ground Zero in five years will come because they want to pay their respects at the place where heroes died. They will come because they want to remember what they saw that day, because they want a personal connection, to touch the place that touched them, the place that rallied the nation and changed their lives forever. I would wager that, if given a choice, they would rather walk through that dusty hanger at JFK Airport where 1,000 World Trade Center artifacts are stored than be herded through the International Freedom Center's multi-million dollar insult.

Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?

Ms. Burlingame is a member of the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines fight 77, which was crashed at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.


http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111810145819652326,00.html

One correction - the "Million Mogadishus" Columbia professor's name is Nicholas DeGenova.

[NYer]

Suggestion for Soros - Double Down!

George Soros has been taking some hits across the blogosphere for the plan for turning the Ground Zero Memorial into an advertisement for post-modern, pseudo-liberal cant. Debra Burlingame, sister of 9/11 victim Chic Burlingame, is justifiably appalled.

But I have a suggestion for Mr. Soros. When attacked by a hail storm of criticism, do what others do and double-down. Why do this in half measures? Why not turn Ground Zero into something that would really make you proud - A Memorial to the Victims of the American Gulag in Guantanamo? And it wouldn't even put a dent in your billions. All you'd need is some barbed wire, some salsa music and a half-way decent copy of the Mannekin Piss in Brussels.

www.rogerlsimon.com

[NYer]

WTC SHRINE 'HIJACK'

By DAN MANGAN

A World Trade Center Memorial Foundation director is raising a storm over the International Freedom Center planned for Ground Zero, charging that it will slight memories of 9/11 by staging exhibits that have nothing to do with the tragedy.

Debra Burlingame also says that some people involved in the Freedom Center have a blame-America political bent and have undermined the war on terror.

She has raised the specter of the Freedom Center being used to teach about Native American genocide, lynchings in the South, the Holocaust, Chinese dissidents and abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

"I think the American people will be shocked" when the Freedom Center opens its doors in 2010, said Burlingame, whose brother Charles "Chic" Burlingame was the pilot of the American Airlines flight that was flown into the Pentagon on 9/11.

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece on Tuesday, Burlingame raised questions about Freedom Center head Tom Bernstein, who she notes is the president of Human Rights First. The group has sued on behalf of terror detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.

She also cites several academics and others, among the dozens of advisers to the Freedom Center, as a "Who's Who of the human rights, Guantanamo-obsessed world."

Burlingame said she objects to the center conducting a "civics lesson" about freedom in general, instead of specifically memorializing the dead and "the strength and resiliency of the American people" on 9/11.

She also predicted that the Freedom Center would turn Ground Zero into a freewheeling free-speech zone that will "attract wackos from every part of the political spectrum" to debate politicized issues, including what led to the 9/11 attacks.

Burlingame said she is upset that the Freedom Center will take up 300,000 square feet above ground at the trade center site, while the memorial itself — which will exhibit 9/11 artifacts — is allocated just 50,000 square feet, below ground.

"She's right on the money," said Lee Ielpi, Burlingame's colleague on the memorial board and the father of a firefighter killed on 9/11.

But John Bridgeland, a director of the Freedom Center and President Bush's former domestic-policy council director, said he was "mystified" by Burlingame's charges.

"We've have made such a strong effort to keep this nonpartisan," he said.

Memorial Foundation President Gretchen Dykstra said, "We have every confidence that [the Freedom Center] will maintain its neutrality and its impartiality as it helps people reflect on 9/11."

Columbia University history professor and Freedom Center adviser Eric Foner — who was cited in Burlingame's Journal article as a "radical-left history professor" — told The Post yesterday: "I get messages saying, 'I hope you get hit by a bus, you're an enemy of America, we should take care of you.' "

In the article, Burlingame noted that Foner hosted a "teach-in" at Columbia at which another professor called for a "million Mogadishus" to be inflicted on the U.S. military.

"I actually condemned the speaker for those comments," Foner said yesterday. "[Burlingame's] characterization of me is so misleading, it's so partial, it's so obviously political, she just doesn't know what she's talking about when it comes to me and that makes me wonder whether she knows what she's talking about in other things in the piece."

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/24932.htm

[NYer]

NO PLACE FOR POLITICS



June 9, 2005 -- Seemingly terminal reconstruction gridlock may not be the only scandal plaguing the site of the destroyed Twin Towers. Now serious concerns are being raised about the nature of the principal Ground Zero memorial.

The International Freedom Center is to be a 250,000-square-foot museum with a self-professed mission to "harness the power of history and use it a a springboard for contemporary dialogue and debate" on the meaning of freedom.

"Dialogue and debate," huh?

Time to reach for the revolver.

Because odds are that, at the end of the day, this center won't focus on freedom's triumphs, so much as on its failures — particularly those in which America can be painted as the culprit.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, Debra Burlingame, sister of the slain pilot whose plane crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11, charged that Ground Zero is being "stolen, right from under our noses" by a cabal of leftist academics and historians intent on turning the IFC into "a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world."

In its defense, the IFC insists those allegations are overblown. Content planning for the facility, which will not open until 2010, remains very much a work in progress, officials say, with input from a distinguished panel of scholars on both sides of the political spectrum.

It's true that the IFC has included a number of academics aligned with the right, which certainly is welcome.

But we don't see how anything constructive comes from a shrill debate between people with opposing agendas.

We also don't see how any facility located on the ashes of the World Trade Center can include anyone who uses the 9/11 attacks as a political battering ram.

People like Eric Foner, the radical Columbia historian, who wrote — just three weeks after 9/11 — that "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." Foner serves on the IFC's team of "scholars and advisors."

Foner, the IFC responds, is a popular historian who has written the most widely used textbook on American history. Which explains much about the state of American academia.

Others involved in the planning, writes Burlingame, include "some of the very same people who consider the post-9/11 provisions of the Patriot Act more dangerous than the terrorists they were enacted to apprehend."

All of which no doubt should be reassuring to those like The New York Times editorial page, which recently charged that the IFC would be facing "pressure to narrow the scope of the museum down to a paean to this White House and its stated values."

From the beginning, we've been skeptical about plans for extensive memorials at Ground Zero — particularly any that seek to "universalize" the event, the way the IFC appears prepared to do. (Current plans call for a separate — and much smaller — space to feature 9/11 artifacts and focus on the terrorist attacks themselves.)

But if such a facility is going to be built — in the midst of a war against precisely the kind of terror that created the still-gaping hole in the ground — it should celebrate the triumph of freedom, and of America's role in its advancement.

If the IFC moves in an opposite direction, it would be the equivalent, as Burlingame notes, of "building a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona" during the middle of World War II.

Yet, as the Times reported, an early design that featured a photo of an Iraqi woman flashing a victory sign during the recent elections has been replaced by a photo of Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King.

So let's be clear:

America has done more to advance the cause of freedom than any other nation on earth. And nothing less than an unambiguous celebration of American values will be appropriate for this memorial.

The New York Post intends to follow this debate closely, and we will be reporting regularly on its progress.

Count on it.

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/24899.htm

[NYer]

Take Back The Memorial


“Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?”

That is the question Debra Burlingame asked on June 7, 2005. Ms. Burlingame is a member of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation board of directors and the sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines fight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

She asked that question because there are powerful forces in this country that believe Ground Zero should be the forum for their political ideology. They want to take part of that hallowed ground and dedicate it to a “narrative of hope,” part of the International Freedom Center (IFC). Richard Tofel, President of the IFC describes it this way:

Then there will be the Memorial Center, a museum devoted to the events of September 11 itself, with exhibit space roughly equal in size to that at the International Freedom Center. The Memorial Center will tell the stories of the day–of heroism and sacrifice, of rescue and service, of courage and resolution, of memory and loss. It is the Memorial Center that will contain the iconic artifacts of September 11.

That is necessary, but not sufficient.

As envisioned in Daniel Libeskind’s master plan for the site’s redevelopment, the International Freedom Center’s building will serve as a buffer between the sacred Memorial and the hustle and bustle of the surrounding city, including the thousands of people who will move each day in and out of Santiago Calatrava’s spectacular new transit hub.

But the International Freedom Center itself will do much more than that. It will serve as a complement to the Memorial, bringing a universal “narrative of hope” to a place where hope is imperative.

While the IFC’s proposal is draped in flowery language, it does not address some basic questions:

* Why is a memorial alone not sufficient?
* How would a “narrative of hope” be told?
* Why should visitors be greeted with a “we must understand how we brought this on ourselves” exhibit?

Ms. Burlingame has a different view than Richard Tofel, as expressed in her piece in the Wall Street Journal, The Great Ground Zero Heist.

The World Trade Center Memorial will break ground this year. When those Marines return in 2010, the year it is scheduled to open, no doubt they will expect to see the artifacts that bring those memories to life. They’ll want a vantage point that allows them to take in the sheer scope of the destruction, to see the footage and the photographs and hear the personal stories of unbearable heartbreak and unimaginable courage. They will want the memorial to take them back to who they were on that brutal September morning.

Instead, they will get a memorial that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the yearning to return to that day. Rather than a respectful tribute to our individual and collective loss, they will get a slanted history lesson, a didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post-9/11 world. They will be served up a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world.”

Ms. Burlingame continues.

The so-called lessons of September 11 should not be force-fed by ideologues hoping to use the memorial site as nothing more than a powerful visual aid to promote their agenda. Instead of exhibits and symposiums about Internationalism and Global Policy we should hear the story of the courageous young firefighter whose body, cut in half, was found with his legs entwined around the body of a woman. Recovery personnel concluded that because of their positions, the young firefighter was carrying her.

9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America (of which Ms. Burlingame is a co-founder) has this to say:

So tell me, at Ground Zero, should we carve in cement and bury in an underground 50,000 square foot museum the names of the nearly 3,000 people that Islamic terrorists murdered that day? Should visitors to the World Trade Center’s memorial be left to wonder what happened that day and where the artifacts of 9/11 are? Above ground, should we build a park with reflecting pools, a cultural center, and a 300,000 square foot International Freedom Center where visitors can hear lectures and discussions on why they all hated us, what we did to bring 9/11 upon ourselves, and the correct world-view future generations must choose so they won’t hate us and attack us anymore? Why not also discuss all of man’s inhumanities to man, especially those by Americans on Americans and all the other people in the world, since time immortal while we are at it in order to promote our own political agenda? Does this all sound like a good idea to you?

It doesn’t to us. And it doesn’t to the mother of one of our brave soldiers fighting for our freedom in Iraq.

To be clear, we are true supporters of all the concepts of freedom and herald its great history — and mourn its tragic failings. However, the fight of the Czech Republic and such other struggles for democratic rule have no place at such a site. “Ground Zero” truly is hallowed ground to us and most Americans — as sacred as any national cemetery or battle site — and we would no more support this grand scheme were it proposed for Arlington National Cemetery or the Gettysburg Battlefield.

We remain committed to the idea that the entire site of the attack of September 11, 2001 be reserved entirely as a memorial committed to the victims of that attack, the American people and the men and women who have given their lives in this War on Terrorism.

So who are these people trying to use this hallowed ground to push their political agendas? It is a virtual “who’s who” of “blame America first” ideologues.

Michael Posner, executive director at Human Rights First who is leading the world-wide “Stop Torture Now” campaign focused entirely on the U.S. military. He has stated that Mr. Rumsfeld’s refusal to resign in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal is “irresponsible and dishonorable.”

Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, who is pushing IFC organizers for exhibits that showcase how civil liberties in this country have been curtailed since September 11.

Eric Foner, radical-left history professor at Columbia University who, even as the bodies were being pulled out of a smoldering Ground Zero, wrote, “I’m not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House.” This is the same man who participated in a “teach-in” at Columbia to protest the Iraq war, during which a colleague exhorted students with, “The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military,” and called for “a million Mogadishus.” The IFC website has posted Mr. Foner’s statement warning that future discussions should not be “overwhelmed” by the IFC’s location at the World Trade Center site itself.

George Soros, billionaire founder of Open Society Institute, the nonprofit foundation that helps fund Human Rights First and is an early contributor to the IFC. Mr. Soros has stated that the pictures of Abu Ghraib “hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself.”

Do your part. Do not let the memory of those who died on that day fall victim to those that would excuse their murderers. Political points of view have no place on the hallowed ground where so many innocent people were brutally murdered.

http://takebackthememorial.com/
Resources can be found there as well ...

[NYer]

A Misguided Memorial

Thursday, June 16, 2005

By Neil Cavuto

The whole issue of what belongs in the Sept. 11 (search) memorial at New York's "ground zero" forgets this basic fact: It's a Sept. 11 memorial.

It's not an American slavery memorial or "what we've done wrong in the world" memorial.

It's meant to remember people killed on Sept. 11, period — end of story.

There are plenty of museums dedicated to other issues. Let this one focus on "this" issue: nearly 3,000 innocent people slaughtered. Doing anything else disgraces their memory and makes lunacy of their loss.

It would be like asking the Jews to build a museum dedicated to better understanding the Nazis — why they hated them and why they ended up gassing them by the millions.

Stop it and wake the hell up.

You may want to have tea with Charles Manson (search) and understand why Chuck thinks the way he does. But I don't.

Sometimes evil is evil and a monster is a monster.

You might want to get inside Chuck's head. I say, get a grip on your own. You'll no doubt find it's oddly dark up there. So let me spread a little light here:

There's evil out there and it wants to do a lot of evil here. It has no logic, no heart, no reason and no sense.

We should quit apologizing for who we are and start going after the people who want to destroy all we are. Not because they're nice chaps but precisely because they're not.

Watch Neil Cavuto weekdays at 4 p.m. ET on "Your World with Cavuto" and send your comments to cavuto@foxnews.com

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,159696,00.html

[al-Canine]

Just the Facts About Sept. 11: A Visitor Center Is Under Way

By GLENN COLLINS

So much for the homeless-looking character who leads groups of gullible tourists at ground zero, loudly declaiming his completely bogus eyewitness account of the five airplanes that supposedly crashed into the World Trade Center and of the 20,000 people who supposedly died there. (It was two planes, and 2,749 victims.)

Yesterday, construction began on the Tribute Center, a $3 million visitor center at 120 Liberty Street that will try to provide accurate information about the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and will offer daily public tours of the site by qualified guides.

"Right now, millions of people are coming to Lower Manhattan, looking for information about what happened here," Gov. George E. Pataki said at a news conference attended by victims' families, rescue workers, survivors and local residents. "We want people to come here and be told the right story by the right people, who are not trying to make money off it."

The center on Liberty Street - across from the trade center void - is to occupy 6,000 square feet of space in the vacant storefront once occupied by the Liberty Deli at the bottom two floors of a 12-story building. It will open next March, but in November, the tour program will start, drawing on volunteer docents connected to the events of Sept. 11.

The center will be paid for primarily by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, along with Deutsche Bank and the American Express Foundation. Its advisers are members of the nonprofit Sept. 11 Widows' and Victims' Families Association.

"The concept is to take groups and walk around the site and let people ask questions," said Lee Ielpi, the organization's vice president and the father of Jonathan Lee Ielpi, a firefighter who died in the south tower.

Plans for the center, which has been designed by BKSK Architects, a New York City firm, include educational programs, a gallery and "exhibitions that will put a human face on what happened on Sept. 11," said Sally Yerkovich, the center's president.

The governor also announced the construction of a recording booth in the nearby World Trade Center PATH station that will collect audio reminiscences from Sept. 11 family members, friends, survivors, visitors and rescue workers about the trade center attacks of 2001 and 1993.

The booth, to be opened on July 12, will be managed by StoryCorps, an oral-history project that hopes to record thousands of interviews that will be donated to the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. The development corporation has provided $500,000 in financing.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/nyregion/17rebuild.html?

[al-Canine]

Make WTC More Than 9/11 Memorial

BY ALICIA COLON
June 17, 2005

URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/15620

Who can forget that video of Osama bin Laden that emerged in November 2001 and showed the mastermind of the attacks on America chortling with other conspirators about his surprise that the Twin Towers fell down? Who can forget their glee at the unexpected success of their maniacal jihad against our country? Now some readers have angrily complained that the planners of the International Freedom Center, which would look out on the memorial at ground zero, are proposing exhibits on slavery and the Holocaust and have forgotten what 9/11 is all about.

The other day I called Richard Tofel, president and chief operating officer of the Freedom Center, who said the rumors are false. The Freedom Center, he said, is designed to inspire people to put an end to hatred and intolerance. He referred me to its Web site, http://www.ifcwtc.org, for its mission statement:

"The IFC's highest aims are to inspire people and engage them in service. It will tell the stories of Nazism - but also of the Greatest Generation that defeated it; of the Soviet gulag - but also of the courageous dissidents who helped bring it down; of Jim Crow segregation - but also Martin Luther King, who helped stamp it out. Inspiring people through these stories to do freedom's work today is our best long-run defense against more 9/11s."

When I told Mr. Tofel that some of my correspondents suspect the center will somehow be an instrument to blame America for the attacks of September 11, he said: "That's complete nonsense." He explained that the center plans to show that "America is the shining light in the global history of freedom."

While Mr. Tofel may have dispelled my concern about the International Freedom Center, I've always felt the Twin Towers should be rebuilt. That bin Laden video - the transcript is available on the CNN Web site - reveals the enemy we're still facing.

Said Al Qaeda's leader: "We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all.... Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for."

So Osama bin Laden wasn't quite the engineering genius that some of his left-wing admirers have touted him to be. He is merely a madman consumed with hatred for all those who are not true believers in his kind of Islam. Make no mistake: He hates all of us. Here's more of his rant:

"I heard someone on Islamic radio who owns a school in America say: 'We don't have time to keep up with the demands of those who are asking about Islamic books to learn about Islam."

So Islamic schools in America consider 9/11 quite a coup? One of the sheikhs in the room with Osama bin Laden quoted another cleric as saying that this is jihad and the victims at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon "were not innocent people."

"He swore to Allah. ... Thank Allah America came out of its caves," the sheikh said. "We hit her the first hit and the next one will hit her with the hands of the believers, the good believers, the strong believers."

The next one? For those fanatics, attacks like that on the World Trade Center are sources of pride. September 11 is a day to rejoice. In 2002, in a London conference, a Muslim leader, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, was quoted as saying: "The people at this conference look at September 11 like a battle, as a great achievement by the mujahideen against the evil superpower."

How satisfying it must be to these jihadists to see ground zero become a memorial shrine to their feat of madness. I say, rebuild the Twin Towers bigger and stronger. September 11 struck at the heart of our entire nation. It's taking much too long to repair that wound.

Every time the Staten Island Ferry approaches Manhattan, our wounded skyline haunts me. It's nearly four years and I still cannot look at a jet plane flying near the city without remembering that day and waiting for the next shoe to drop.

June 17, 2005 Edition

[al-Canine]

Families of "9/11" Victims Take Matters Into Their Own Hands

There is a new battle over Ground Zero this morning. Families of the "9/11" victims complain they being pushed to accept a memorial that's been taken over by other groups. That's why the families say they're launching a campaign today to take back the memorial.

They lost 3,000 friends and relatives on "9/11" but they say they won't lose this fight.

The campaign was announced Friday, right after Governor Pataki announced plans for a pair of temporary memorials. The governor says the final Ground Zero memorial with fountains and space for contemplation won't be ready until 2009. But organizers of the protest claim the World Trade Center memorial has evolved into a blame America monument that honors no one.

The families strongly oppose what's being called an International Freedom Center at Ground Zero. It would have exhibits on slavery, human rights, the treatment of American Indians and other issues not tied to "9/11".

More than a dozen organizations representing victims' families have organized this protest movement. They say they've spent years negotiating with Governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. All to no avail.

Now they vow to carry on a national campaign to get what they call A proper, fitting and respectful memorial for the thousands who died on "9/11".

They don't want what they describe as "a history lesson about tolerance."

The families say the design of the memorial has become less and less important with time. Even as it's grown to roughly 100,000 feet in size most of it underground. Families say they're launching a campaign today called "Take Back the Memorial."

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/news/print_wabc_062005_groundzerobattle.html

[al-Canine]

RALLY WILL HIT 'BLAME U.S.' EXHIBIT AT GROUND ZERO

By ANDY SOLTIS

Critics of the planned International Freedom Center near the Twin Towers site will rally today to protest what they fear will become a Ground Zero showcase for "blame-America" politics.

Organizers are kicking off a national campaign against what they say will be a forum on issues unrelated to Sept. 11.

The Take Back the Memorial Web site is urging relatives and friends of World Trade Center victims to hold up pictures of lost loved ones at the noon rally at Church and Liberty Streets.

Richard Tofel, the Freedom Center's president, defended its focus in a recent Wall Street Journal article. He said the 9/11 memorial is "necessary but not sufficient," and that the Freedom Center will bring "a universal 'narrative of hope' to a place where hope is imperative."

But critics say the Freedom Center will become a forum for issues ranging from the Abu Ghraib scandal and lynchings in the South to the Holocaust and the plight of refugees.

"We want a proper, fitting, respectful Sept. 11th Memorial for the 3,000 innocent souls who perished that day," the Take Back the Memorial site says. "Not a 'history lesson about tolerance.' "

Debra Burlingame, a director of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, has pointed out what she characterizes as the left-wing tendencies of a number of the center's directors and advisers.

But center supporters retort that there are also conservatives affiliated with the center, as well as several friends of President Bush.

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/48646.htm

[spike]

Put it to a national referendum.

See how many people in the US want the twin towers back, but better, vs. a hand-wringing, misty ode to overblown architects' CAD programs.

[Dora]

Another case of "political correctness" run amuck.

[rectar]

One should curse anybody that wants to build another unholy temple upon the 3000 martyr's site....rectarfy the current world situation instead.....

[al-Canine]

New Design for Freedom Tower Calls for 200-Foot Pedestal

By DAVID W. DUNLAP
and GLENN COLLINS

With one eye on terrorism and another on what has already been lost to terrorists, New York officials unveiled a redesigned Freedom Tower today whose height and proportion, centered antenna and cut-away corners, tall lobbies and pinstripe facade evoke - both deliberately and coincidentally - the sky-piercing twins it is meant to replace.

The new design for the 82-story signature building at the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan calls for an almost impermeable and impregnable 200-foot concrete and steel pedestal, clad in ornamental metalwork and set at least 65 feet away from Route 9A, the heavily trafficked state highway that runs along the west edge of ground zero.

This enormous pedestal would overlook the Sept. 11 memorial. Above it would be a tapering tower of glass - some panes laminated and several layers thick - with 69 office floors topped by a restaurant, indoor and outdoor observation decks and an antenna within a trellis-like sculpture that would bring the structure's total height to 1,776 feet.

That symbolic height is one of the few elements left intact from the building first envisioned in 2002 by the architect Daniel Libeskind, the site's master planner, and designed in 2003 by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Gone are the asymmetrical spire, torqued form, parallelogram floor plan, energy-producing windmills, suspension cables, lacy facade and open-air arcade.

The hurried redesign has pushed the completion date of the Freedom Tower back by one or two years, to 2010. It is unclear what effect it will have on the budget, which has been estimated at $1.5 billion, since the extra security measures will add to costs, while the overall simplification of the structure may cut down on time and money.

The latest transformation was driven by the New York Police Department's insistence that the building be more resistant to attack, particularly from car and truck bombs. It was also intended to preserve as much as possible of the foundation design that had already consumed months of work. This includes threading the tower's underground columns among the looping outbound tracks of the World Trade Center PATH station.

Given those requirements, and the goal of maintaining the building's overall 2.6 million square foot floor area, the redesigned Freedom Tower almost naturally assumed some dimensions of the original twin towers, said David M. Childs of Skidmore, the building's chief architect.

Though uncanny, it was not an unwelcome turn, he said. In fact, adjustments and refinements have been made to underscore the similarities. For example, the altitude of the floor of the rooftop observation deck would be set at 1,362 feet, the height of 2 World Trade Center. The rooftop parapet would reach 1,368 feet, the height of No. 1.

Setting aside his publicly expressed enthusiasm for the first Freedom Tower, Mr. Childs said of the new one, "It is a rare moment when new is better." He added: "I feel better about this than the original. The building is simpler, architecturally. It is unique, yet it subtly recalls, in the sky, the tragedy that has happened here."

The new design for Freedom Tower is scheduled to be presented formally later today at a news conference attended by Gov. George E. Pakati and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, as well as Mr. Childs, Mr. Libeskind and Larry A. Silverstein, the building's developer.

At its base, the Freedom Tower would be 200 feet square, like the twin towers and the two voids that are to be created in their place as part of the Sept. 11 memorial. Mr. Childs said the new building's "most important role is being a marker in the sky of the memorial."

But he did not back away from the notion that it is still intended to be a statement of defiance, strength and resolve in the face of terrorism. Mr. Childs referred to the Freedom Tower several times as a "victory column" and invoked Cleopatra's Needle in Central Park and Nelson's Column at Trafalgar Square in London as precedents.

Like 7 World Trade Center, now under construction across Vesey Street, the Freedom Tower would essentially be two buildings in one: a utility-filled concrete pedestal topped by an office tower with a glass curtain wall.

The first 30 feet of the 200-foot-tall pedestal would be completely solid, with no windows. The next 50 feet would have some openings, allowing light to be brought into the lobby from above. The rest of the base would be occupied by mechanical equipment.

Stainless steel, titanium or aluminum panels would mask the concrete wall at the Freedom Tower, Mr. Childs said, much as a stainless-steel screen by James Carpenter Design Associates covers the base of 7 World Trade Center.

Office tenants would enter the building from the north or south, through lobbies on Fulton and Vesey Streets. Visitors headed to the observation decks would arrive across a plaza on the west side of the building. Diners would approach from a plaza on the east.

Almost four acres of open space would surround the Freedom Tower. It would share the block with the performing arts center being designed by Frank Gehry.

The main shaft of the Freedom Tower would begin as a 200-by-200-foot square. As it rose, the corners would be cut away, creating an octagonal floor plan through the middle of the building. ("And eight corner offices," Mr. Childs noted.) Toward the top, the plan would assume a square shape again, 140 by 140 feet.

Depending on the viewer's perspective, the structure might appear to be as rectangular as the original twin towers. Seen from an oblique angle, however, it would appear to slope like an obelisk. Each of the eight planes in its main facade would be an elongated isosceles triangle that would catch and reflect the light from a different angle.

The only externally visible separation between the window bays would be vertical stainless-steel elements known as mullions. The horizontal floor separations would not be expressed on the facade. This pinstripe effect might also recall the trade center to some.

The unusual shape will "confuse the wind," Mr. Childs said, making the building more structurally sound than if it had been a "large square sail" catching the wind at the top. The tapering corners yield ultimately to a narrower square at the top, 140 feet on each side, which will be the base for the spire and the antenna system.

Mr. Childs emphasized that the 408-foot spire and its setting have yet to be fully designed. But it has been decided that the spire will bring the tower's over-all height to 1,776 feet, the symbolically patriotic height proposed by Mr. Libeskind and insisted upon by Governor Pataki. The spire and its cabled supports will be designed to be "a functional piece of sculpture, a piece of civic art of an unusual scale," Mr. Childs said.

The architects are working on a distinctive, silver-or-white structural wrap for the spire, that would enclose the television antenna elements with fiberglass or carbon, substances that would not interfere with emanating radio waves. Currently, a tusk-shaped spire is being envisioned.

The spire is to be braced with guy wires - also woven from fiberglass or carbon - that would be anchored to a circular crown atop the observatory. The entire structure will be lit from within and programmed with shifting patterns of lights, or even a single heavenward beam.

To Mr. Libeskind, the circular new cable-anchor structure bears similarity to the base of the flame of the Statue of Liberty; others have likened its shape to that of the summit of the Empire State Building.

The architects struggled to unveil the redesigned building only seven weeks after Governor Pataki announced - during a luncheon speech to the Association for a Better New York on May 12 - that the tower would have to be reconfigured, and fortified, to respond to security concerns raised by the New York Police Department.

Mr. Childs said that the tower would meet or exceed the recent building-safety design recommendations announced by a federal panel, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, earlier this month, after an analysis of the factors that caused the collapse of the twin towers in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Elevators, sprinkler systems and electrical conduits in the new structure will all be protected in a central core of 2-foot-thick concrete. And an extra stairway will be provided for rescue workers to enter the building even while tenants are leaving.

But the chief Freedom Tower design change, driving other architectural considerations, was to harden the base of the tower against vehicle-borne explosives, since cars and trucks have proven to be an effective way of delivering large explosive charges. The new building is to have a solid concrete core with walls more than 2 feet thick, and a robustly redundant braced steel frame.

The original standoff, or setback from West Street, was 25 feet, which the police said was inadequate to protect the building from a large truck bomb. The new tower has been moved 65 feet back from West Street at its Fulton Street side, and 125 feet from the highway at Vesey Street.

The 80-foot-high lobby of the new Freedom Tower will be comparable to the World Trade Center lobbies' 79-foot height. The south lobby, facing Fulton Street, will be the main office entrance, since it faces the memorial. It will present a glass, cable-tensioned wall to visitors - similar to the lobby facade of Mr. Childs's Time Warner Center - but confront them with a solid concrete security wall (covered with art) that would have to be circumnavigated by pedestrians to obtain access to the building.

The tower's base would be clad with an intricate pattern of interlocking reflective sheets of titanium, steel or aluminum, "designed to catch and reflect the light," Mr. Childs said. "As the sun moves about it, each facade will be illuminated."

"I hope this can answer those who were worried that this would be a foreboding building," Mr. Childs said of the new security constraints.

Above the base, the glass sheathing of the building will be hardened against explosive overpressures with tempered, multilaminated sheets of blast-resistant plastic, especially on the west facade facing West Street-Route 9A. Thanks to the use of low-iron, water-white glass - panes that minimize the conventional greenish hue - the sections of laminate will be just as transparent as glass on the other facades, "so the building will look the same on all four sides - a continuous glass top," Mr. Childs said.

In the end, Mr. Childs said, the new building represents "the positive element of what was lost," he said. "It takes on its most important role as being the pylon marker for the memorial."


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/29/nyregion/29cnd-tower.html?

[NYer]

9/11 Families Ask Bush, Congress to Squash Plans for Ground Zero Museum
By Devlin Barrett
Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON (AP) - A Sept. 11 family group urged the White House and Congress on Wednesday to squelch plans for a ground zero museum they say would inject political arguments into what should be a solemn memorial.

As Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg trumpeted a new design for the Freedom Tower to rise in place of the fallen World Trade Center, the families accused the two leaders of cheapening the site's meaning.

The museum, to be known as the International Freedom Center, would be in a separate building near the Freedom Tower on the ground zero site, where rebuilding is directed by a board appointed by Pataki and Bloomberg.

In recent weeks, a growing number of Sept. 11 families have publicly railed against the planned IFC. Separate from a sunken memorial featuring exposed bedrock, the museum will offer inspiring stories of mankind's progress toward liberty, according to its planners.

Detractors charge the IFC is being hijacked by left-wing advisers who blame the United States for the world's wrongs.

Mary Fetchet, a Connecticut mom who became an activist when her 24-year-old son died in the trade center, wept as she described what future children from around the world should see when they visit ground zero.

"It should just be pure of heart. It should be a place where our families can go to reflect," she said.

The families are asking for congressional hearings into how taxpayer money will be used to fund the museum, and said they want President Bush to step into the debate on their side.

"President Bush came to ground zero shortly after 9/11," said Jack Lynch, whose firefighter son Michael died responding to the 2001 terror attacks.

"He stood up with a firefighter there on the fire truck and he made a commitment to us ... that he would make sure that we would be taken care of," said Lynch.

"He should now stand up and say this memorial cannot be hijacked, cannot be diluted," Lynch said.

A White House spokesman had no immediate comment.

Roland Betts, a board member for the agency in charge of the project, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., has defended the museum, saying planners always intended to incorporate the arts into the rebuilt site. Betts is a fraternity brother and friend of the president's.

http://info.mgnetwork.com/printthispage.cgi?url=http%3A//ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBH0Y01KAE.html&oaspagename=www.tbo.com/ap/story.htm&image=tbologo80x60.jpg

[al-Canine]

A FORTRESS OF FREEDOM

By TOM TOPOUSIS

Here it is — the safest skyscraper in the world.

Gov. Pataki yesterday unveiled the hastily redesigned Freedom Tower and declared that key changes make the enormous structure so secure, he'd let his own kids work there.

"If one of those giant corporations . . . occupies the top floors and wants to hire one of my kids, I'd be honored to have them working there and be confident in their safety," Pataki said at a press conference announcing the new design.

Sent back to the drawing board two months ago after the Police Department raised concerns about dangers from truck bombs, the new Freedom Tower is set back further from West Street and sits atop a 200-foot-tall base of concrete sheathed in metal.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the new design has addressed all of his department's concerns.

"The new Freedom Tower design incorporates standards the Police Department had sought to protect the building against bomb blasts, which our counterterrorism experts agree present one of the greatest threats to such iconic structures," Kelly said in a statement.

Developer Larry Silverstein, who holds the lease on the World Trade Center site and the right to rebuild 10 million square feet of office space there, said the new Freedom Tower's security is on a par with federal standards for super-secure U.S. embassies overseas.

"When you look at the building from the exterior, you will not see the massiveness of the protection and the structure that is going into the base of this building," Silverstein said, explaining that a steel-reinforced concrete core will rise to the top of the tower.

Inside the 3-foot-thick walls of the core will be all the building's safety features, including wider stairwells than the Twin Towers had and one stairwell to be used by firefighters so they won't have to compete for space with people fleeing in an emergency.

"It is constructed from the standpoint of the core as no other building has been constructed," Silverstein said.

Both Pataki and architect David Childs said the Freedom Tower would be the world's safest high-rise.

The latest 1,776-foot design by Childs departs from the earlier version developed in conjunction with Ground Zero planner Daniel Libeskind in dozens of other ways, including the relocation of an off-center spire to the middle of the building's roof.

Gone is the 400-foot-tall cage of steel and wires at the top of the tower that would have held power-generating wind turbines. The new, more slender tower pushes the same amount of office space higher into the sky.

Childs called it "serendipity" that the new design produced a building with a top floor at the same height of the old Twin Towers, 1,368 feet. The Freedom Tower will rise another 408 feet with its "beacon of light," which will also serve as a TV antenna.

Childs took great pains to defer to Libeskind, whom he fought bitterly over the earlier design, even referring to his old rival yesterday as "Danny."

"We've created a building that I believe that has given us a chance to respond in a meaningful way to the great plan for the memorial, to fill out the objectives of Daniel Libeskind's master plan," Childs said.

The Freedom Tower also copies the Twin Towers by taking up the same-sized footprint on the ground — about 50 feet smaller in width than the original Freedom version, in order to create a wider security buffer from West Street.

Silverstein, who has yet to line up a tenant for his nearly completed tower across the street at 7 World Trade Center, said he's already had some "preliminary" conversations with potential tenants interested in large blocks in the Freedom Tower.

Work will begin with construction of footings for the building early next year. The steel skeleton will begin to rise in 2007, with topping off of the tower expected in 2009. Silverstein said he expects the tower to open in 2010.

Libeskind, who attended the ceremony, credited Childs for coming up with a design that meets security needs but also defers to the memorial slated for Ground Zero. And he gave no hint of the past animosity between the two that landed them in court.

"I think the tower that we have now, after all the efforts, is even a better tower than we had before," Libeskind said, adding later that the new version is actually closer to what he had envisioned when he drew up the site's master plan.

Mayor Bloomberg said the tower "will be a spectacular addition to the city's skyline."

"Its construction will climax the greatest comeback in the history of our city," Bloomberg said, before departing the ceremony early to attend another event.

Pataki said he prefers the new look of the tower.

"I really think this is a better design. I'm not an architectural critic, I'm just a citizen, but I like it better," he said.

http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/pfriendly_new.php

[NYer]

INTERNATIONAL FREEDOM CENTER [John Derbyshire]

Plans to locate the "International Freedom Center" on the site of the destroyed World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan are being quietly abandoned in the face of outraged lobbying by (mainly) victims' families. From America's Newspaper of Record this morning: "Officials are searching for new locations -- some away from Ground Zero -- to house a pair of controversial cultural centers slated for construction next to the 9/11 memorial, it was revealed yesterday."

http://corner.nationalreview.com/

[al-Canine]

September 11, 2005

New Yorkers Want Action at Ground Zero, Poll Shows

By MEGAN THEE and MARJORIE CONNELLY

Stop talking and start building.

That is what a majority of New Yorkers want their politicians to do about the World Trade Center site, according to the latest New York Times Poll.

And most New York City residents think it is fine that plans for the site could include a memorial, office space and residential structures, the poll found.

Four years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, two-thirds of the city's residents are worried about another attack and almost as many are concerned that the city is not prepared for such an event. Still, 61 percent said that there had been enough talk about what should be done at ground zero and that the time had come to start development.

Almost 90 percent of New Yorkers want a permanent memorial to the victims of the terrorist attack at ground zero, but 57 percent also support the construction of office and residential buildings there. Those who said they wanted only a 9/11 memorial weighed in at 29 percent; and 8 percent said it should stay just as it is now: an open hole in the ground surrounded by temporary memorials - at least for the time being.

The views of those who said they lost someone close to them on 9/11 are little different from the opinions of all city residents on what should be done with the trade center site. "I lost several co-workers and friends down there, but I cannot look at the entire ground zero as a memorial," said Perry Catella, a retired emergency medical worker for the Fire Department, in an interview after the survey. "There should be a portion set aside to be a memorial, but the vast majority of that area has to be put to use to help the economy of New York City."

The telephone poll was conducted Aug. 22 to 28 with 931 adults throughout the city. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

City residents are closely divided in their opinion of the plans for the Freedom Tower, with 43 percent saying they like the current design and 40 percent saying they dislike it.

"I'm happy with the new design," said Jeff Traina, an electrician from Howard Beach. "It shows that we're still strong."

Barbara Flanagan, a retired editor who lives in Greenwich Village, is among those who consider the current plans objectionable. "I'd like to see lower rise construction and a lot of greenery," she said. "I think it will be a long time before people go into high-rise buildings again." (In fact, the poll found that 52 percent said they would not be willing to work in one of the higher floors of a new building at the trade center site.)

The terrorist bombings in London's subways earlier this summer made some New Yorkers more anxious: Half of those who ride the city's subways acknowledged feelings of unease after the London attacks, and 37 percent said they were still apprehensive.

And though two-thirds did not consider the city's subway system to be sufficiently secure, only 32 percent said the random searches introduced after the attacks in London provided additional security.

What is the point then? Sixty percent said the searches of bags and packages were simply intended to make riders feel safer.

Fred Backus contributed reporting for this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/nyregion/11poll.html

[al-Canine]

Attack survivors to lead tours

Visits to WTC site are to begin next month under auspices of Tribute Center

By MICHAEL SCHOLL

Survivors of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and others directly impacted, including those who lost loved ones, will be leading guided tours of the World Trade Center site , officials said yesterday.

Veronica Groth of Richmond and other volunteer tour guides will take visitors around the perimeter of the site and will give their personal reflections on the atrocity as they relate information about the attacks, which claimed 2,749 lives and shocked the nation.

"This is my way of giving back and sharing with everybody what it was like on Sept. 11," said Mrs. Groth, who spent several anxious hours that day waiting to learn the fate of her husband, Robert, a lieutenant with the NYPD, and her son Jason, a firefighter with Ladder Co. 16 in Manhattan.

Robert and Jason both responded to the World Trade Center after the attacks. Happily, both survived.

"I was a very lucky woman on Sept. 11," acknowledged Mrs. Groth, who said she wants to tell visitors about how the people of New York City pulled together to help each other in the wake of the awful devastation.

"Everybody was best friends," she said.

The guided tours will begin next month under the auspices of the Tribute Center, an organization set up to give Ground Zero visitors information about the attacks.

"This is the spirit of Sept. 11 being preserved forever and ever, and there can't be anything more important that we can do," said Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor, who joined Gov. George Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) at Ground Zero yesterday to take part in the official launch of the Tribute Center's tour guide program.

The guides, Giuilani said, will help out-of-town tourists and others grasp the magnitude of the disaster and the heroism of those who responded to it.

"I think it's very important for the people who come here to understand what happened, how horrible it was," he said.

Mrs. Groth is one of more than a dozen volunteers who have been trained to be tour guides, according to Tribute Center president Sally Yerkovich. Recruitment of additional volunteers is ongoing and the center hopes to train 20 new guides every month.

The center will offer two tours per day on weekends starting in October. More tours will be added on both weekends and weekdays once additional volunteers are trained.

Guided tours around the perimeter of Ground Zero will continue until the World Trade Center Memorial and Memorial Museum are completed in 2009, Ms. Yerkovich said.

Tickets for the guided tours will cost $10 each for adults and $7.50 each for senior citizens and children.

A schedule of tours and information about purchasing tickets will be made available at a later date on the Tribute Center's Web site, www.tributenyc.org.

Michael Scholl covers City Hall for the Advance. He may be reached at scholl@siadvance.com.

© 2005 Staten Island Advance© 2005 SILive.com All Rights Reserved.

http://www.silive.com/news/advance/index.ssf?/base/news/112635813526510.xml&coll=1

[al-Canine]

Freedom Museum by Trade Center Memorial Is Cancelled

Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Organizers of a planned International Freedom Center called it quits today after New York Governor George Pataki, heeding opposition from some Sept. 11 families, said he would not let the museum be located next to the World Trade Center memorial.

``We do not believe there is a viable alternative place for the IFC at the World Trade Center site,'' said a statement sent by Richard Tofel, its president and chief operating officer. ``We consider our work, therefore, to have been brought to an end.''

Tofel's statement came less than one hour after Pataki's press office put out a release in which the governor said the freedom center had stirred ``too much opposition, too much controversy.'' Pataki said he wanted the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. to find another site for the center away from the 6-1/2 acre memorial area. Tofel said that wouldn't work. ``It is the site for which the IFC was created,'' he said.

The decisions bring to an end three months of conflict, with family members of Sept. 11 victims, firefighter and police unions pitted against the center in an emotional debate over what the memorial area at Ground Zero should be about. The family and union groups, who formed a group called ``Take Back the Memorial,'' said the attacks and its victims were the only proper theme. The center wanted to link the terrorist assault to the history of freedom and democracy.

No Tenants

The freedom center was to occupy a cultural building, designed by Snohetta, a Norwegian architectural firm, that Daniel Libeskind, master planner for the 16-acre site, conceived as a buffer between the memorial around the twin tower footprints and the office towers and stores that are to occupy the outer quadrants.

The center's withdrawal leaves the cultural building without tenants. Another selected occupant, the Drawing Center, said it would look for alternative sites downtown after it encountered opposition from Sept. 11 families who questioned political art works it had exhibited.

Family members said they feared the freedom center's exhibits and speaking programs would detract from solemnity of the memorial and provide a possible forum for messages critical of the U.S.

Debra Burlingame, whose Wall Street Journal essay triggered the campaign, said in a phone interview from Ground Zero that the people killed in the terrorist attack will have their story told ``with no distractions, without controversy, told the way it deserves to be told.'' Her brother was the pilot of the hijacked plane that hit the Pentagon.

Families Disagree

``There's a misconception that all we want is a graveyard,'' said Monica Iken, a Sept. 11 widow and head of the family group September's Mission, one of 15 organizations making up Take Back the Memorial. ``We want a place that projects the goodness of people.''

Family members who favored the freedom center said the program would have complemented the memorial. One of them, Tom Roger, said he believes an opportunity to create something positive out of Sept. 11 has been lost.

``It's going to be a loss for the area,'' said Roger, who was one of seven family members the center selected to serve on a committee that would have helped shape its program. ``They were going to make a tremendous contribution, bringing in lots of very esteemed academics and other institutions.''

The freedom center last week issued a 49-page plan in response to an ultimatum by development agency chairman John Whitehead last month to satisfy the agency's concerns that the exhibits not detract from the solemnity of the memorial.

Bush Friend

Tom Bernstein, a friend of President George W. Bush, created the concept of the center in 2002. It was one of four cultural institutions selected for the site in June 2004 by development and cultural officials who considered 113 proposals. Two other chosen groups, the Signature Theatre, an off-Broadway drama company, and the Joyce International Dance Theatre, are to occupy a performing arts center to be built opposite the Freedom Tower, a 1,776-foot skyscraper to rise on the northwest corner.

Pataki's statement said he still believed the freedom center was a good idea.

``I personally believe that the celebration of freedom is not inconsistent with the goals of memorializing our nearly 3,000 lost heroes,'' he said. ``The creation of an institution that would show the world our unity and our resolve to preserve freedom in the wake of the horrific attacks is a noble pursuit. But freedom should unify us. This center has not.''

The family members who opposed the center were joined in recent weeks by police and firefighter groups and members of Congress including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, and U.S. Representative Peter King, Republican of New York.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in a written statement, said ``Although I understand Governor Pataki's decision, I am disappointed that we were not able to find a way to reconcile the freedoms we hold so dear with the sanctity of the site.'' The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.

Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, in a written statement, said ``the governor has made the right decision.''

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=abX3NJz9CVMM&refer=us

[NYer]

AC, I received the following email ...

WE DID IT!! The IFC Has Been Removed from Ground Zero!

We are very pleased to announce that Governor Pataki has announced the removal of the International Freedom Center (IFC) from Ground Zero. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/28/AR2005092801849.html for details.

Every since June 8, 2005 when Debra Bulingame's op-ed, The Great Ground Zero Heist, appeared in the Wall Street Journal, we have fought together for the preservation of the dignity of Ground Zero. With your help, we have achieved a major victory toward that goal.

We will continue to monitor the plans for Ground Zero to ensure that a fitting and proper memorial is built; one that is respectful of the victims murdered that day, their families, the first responders, and the American people.

A press release on the removal of the IFC from the 15 family member groups is expected in the next 24 hours and we will post it @ www.takebackthememorial.org as soon as it becomes available.

Thank you again for your support, prayers, and dedication. We simply could not have done this without you.

Sincerely,

Robert D. Shurbet
Founder/Web Master
TakeBackTheMemorial.org

[NYer]

Wretchard has more ...

Spitting On Your Grave

The controversial International Freedom Center (IFC), a facility dedicated to articulating a particular view of multiculturalism, was removed from site which it wanted to occupy at the World Trade Center Memorial. According to the Washington Post:

Bowing to pressure from Sept. 11 families, Gov. George Pataki on Wednesday removed a proposed freedom center from the space reserved for it near the planned World Trade Center memorial, saying the museum project had aroused "too much opposition, too much controversy." ... International Freedom Center officials said in a statement that they did not believe there was a viable location for their museum elsewhere at the site. "We consider our work, therefore, to have been brought to an end," they said.

The New York Times was not happy with the outcome, casting it as unreasonable capriciousness on the part of Governor Pataki.

But the notion of a freedom museum was one of the earliest elements considered for ground zero. And it was one the governor endorsed. In an April 2002 blueprint for downtown, the development corporation said one possibility was "a new museum dedicated to American freedom, tolerance and the values that the World Trade Center represented," referring to a proposal by Tom A. Bernstein, the president of Chelsea Piers, and Peter W. Kunhardt, a documentary filmmaker. ...

Now the question is what else in the master plan is open for revision. If ground zero is too hallowed for a freedom museum, how much longer will a performing arts center be considered appropriate? Or a million square feet of retail space? Or four office towers? Especially if one of them is named Freedom.

Nowhere in the article does the NYT say why the September 11 families clamored for revision; it happened after Debra Burlingame, sister of the pilot of one of the hijacked planes and a director of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation

drew attention to behind-the-scenes plans to host exhibitions at the complex devoted to such issues as the genocide of native Americans, the fight against slavery, the Holocaust and the Gulag, instead of the bravery and dignity of nearly 3,000 victims of the Al-Qaeda suicide squads. It will also be the site of academic symposiums on the foundations of freedom, providing a “magnet” to activists and academics to debate the US “domestic and foreign policy they despise”, she said. An early design for the cultural centre included a large mural of an Iraqi voter. But in a sign of things to come, said Burlingame, this was replaced by a photograph of Martin Luther King, the murdered civil rights leader, with President Lyndon Johnson.

According to Michelle Malkin, the moving spirits behind the IFC were Michael Posner, Anthony Romero, Eric Foner and George Soros. If the International Freedom Center had been built it would have been the companion to the Crescent of Embrace, the proposed memorial to the Flight 93 victims in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

The effort illustrates the extraordinary importance that the Left places on the control of symbols. By preference, a good Marxist symbol should represent the very opposite of its counterpart in reality because its foremost goal, in common with unscrupulous Mesmerists, is to emasculate the mind. It was no accident that in Orwell's 1984, that the Ministries of War, Rationing, Propaganda and Repression were called the Ministries of Peace, Plenty, Truth and Love by the Party. Christopher Hitchens, who wrote a book on Orwell, has not forgotten the penchant for inversion. In Anti-War, My Foot, featured in Slate, Hitchens criticized the NYT's characterization of Ramsey Clark and his adherents as "anti-war". If they were anything, they were its opposite.

The name of the reporter on this story was Michael Janofsky. I suppose that it is possible that he has never before come across "International ANSWER," the group run by the "Worker's World" party and fronted by Ramsey Clark, which openly supports Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, Slobodan Milosevic, and the "resistance" in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Clark himself finding extra time to volunteer as attorney for the génocidaires in Rwanda. ...

To be against war and militarism, in the tradition of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, is one thing. But to have a record of consistent support for war and militarism, from the Red Army in Eastern Europe to the [Serb] ethnic cleansers and the Taliban, is quite another. It is really a disgrace that the liberal press refers to such enemies of liberalism as "antiwar" when in reality they are straight-out pro-war, but on the other side. Was there a single placard saying, "No to Jihad"? Of course not. Or a single placard saying, "Yes to Kurdish self-determination" or "We support Afghan women's struggle"? Don't make me laugh.

But that's Hitchens. To the newspaper reader who gets no further than the first paragraph of any story, the recent demonstrations in Washington will forever be about high minded advocates of peace fighting the dark forces of war. Yet it makes one wonder: if inversions are the rule, what then did the International Freedom Center truly wish to memorialize at Ground Zero? Don't make me laugh.

posted by wretchard
www.fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com

[al-Canine]

AC, I received the following email ...

Good riddance to the International Freedom Center.

And good for you, NYer, for supporting the fine folks at takebackthememorial.org! :)

[al-Canine]

9/11 PIECES OF HISTORY

By TOM TOPOUSIS

The heart-wrenching story of 9/11 will be told at Ground Zero's memorial museum with artifacts ranging from monumental chunks of the Twin Towers down to a re-creation of a neighborhood eatery that fed thousands of rescue workers.

New plans for the memorial museum, which are now being circulated, give a detailed look at how the nation will revisit the deadliest terror strike on American soil, with an intimate and admittedly unnerving account of the momentous event.

Planners, who have been working with 9/11 family members, rescue workers, survivors and neighborhood residents, have come up with a list of artifacts that will fill the museum slated for the World Trade Center Memorial site.

A tangled swath of the north tower's steel exterior just below the spot where a hijacked airliner crashed will be part of the exhibit that promises to pull no punches.

"It just looks like sea kelp in the water. It's an amazing thing," Jeff Howard, a consultant hired to design the exhibits, said of the twisted metal.

Crushed rescue vehicles, taxis and police scooters along with twisted steel beams will punctuate the massive nature of the attack.

A 6-ton chunk of melted steel, pulverized concrete and smashed furniture that has been dubbed "the Meteorite" will be trucked from storage at Hangar 17 at JFK Airport, where many of the artifacts are now stored.

Two steel columns will symbolize the rise and fall of the towers — a 5-foot-tall dedication pedestal erected on April 4, 1973, when the complex was completed and a 58-ton beam that was the last removed from the devastation in 2002.

The anguish of the human tragedy will be seen in the reconstruction of the so-called Bellevue Wall, where suffering relatives posted desperate appeals for information about missing loved ones.

And the devoted efforts of rescue workers will be illustrated with a recreation of Nino's, the neighborhood Italian restaurant that fed thousands of the firefighters, cops, paramedics and volunteers who descended on Ground Zero after the attack. Howard said enough of the restaurant, including its bar and outdoor signs, are in storage at the New York State Museum and can be reassembled.

The aftermath and national reaction to the attacks will feature some of the 150 sections of plywood that were used to build a temporary viewing stand overlooking Ground Zero. The boards are covered with signatures of visitors from around the world and inscriptions of their reaction.

"One of our crucial messages to impart to visitors is that this is a defining moment in history," Howard told about 50 downtown residents, family members and planners at a meeting of the Civic Alliance to Rebuild New York this week.

The forums are part of an ongoing attempt to get public input into the project, with ground-breaking on the memorial and museum slated for next year and completion in 2009.

Lower Manhattan Development Corp. President Stefan Pryor said the museum plan will continue to evolve over time.

"All of the content remains malleable, and it will evolve over time based on these kind of public sessions," Pryor said. "These are complex ideas and profound and moving elements to this project, and it takes time to properly present those pieces."

The preliminary plan for the 110,000-square-foot museum that will descend to bedrock around the footprints of the Twin Towers is based on recommendations of a panel of 9/11 families, rescue workers, survivors, neighbors and historians.

One message from family members was not to pull any punches in telling the story of Sept. 11 and the 1993 attack on the Twin Towers in order to convey the full impact of the loss and suffering.

Following that advice, Howard said, means that some of the exhibit will be too difficult for kids and family members to view. They will be able to ride an elevator past the mangled artifacts directly to memorial areas on bedrock, he said.

The museum will also include contemplative areas, including the truncated box-beams that mark each base of the Twin Towers and the slurry wall that rises 60 feet to street level, where an entry pavilion will be located.

Howard said the entry pavilion would have a "touchstone artifact," possibly a section of the trade center concourse exterior that included the signature "trident" shape as the steel columns at the base divided into three vertical columns.

The memorial and museum will be overseen by the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, which has to raise $500 million for the project.

Plans laid out this week do not include possible uses of an above-ground museum building that was going to house the controversial International Freedom Center, which was yanked from Ground Zero last month by Gov. Pataki.

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/53536.htm

[NYer]

Of course if someone other than the present cast of characters had been running the show, the Redevelopment might have been finished already ... Perhaps this man?

http://espn.go.com/media/pg2/2005/0314/photo/wb/w_trump_vt.jpg

[al-Canine]

How about this guy? He seems to get things done...

PUT MIKE IN CHARGE OF GROUND ZERO: NYERS

By STEPHANIE GASKELL

Most New Yorkers think Gov. Pataki isn't doing a good job of rebuilding lower Manhattan and would like to see Mayor Bloomberg take control over the site, a new poll shows.

By a 65-18 percent, New York City voters want their mayor in charge of Ground Zero — not the governor, according to a Quinnipiac poll released yesterday.

In 2002, 78 percent of New Yorkers said they were confident that redevelopment in lower Manhattan was going "very well" or "somewhat well." That number has plummeted to just 47 percent.

"Ignoring the governmental reality that Ground Zero is owned by Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, most New Yorkers would prefer to see Mayor Bloomberg — not Gov. Pataki — in charge," said Maurice Carroll, who conducted the Quinnipiac Poll.

"I think there's a great difference between the public perception and the reality," Pataki said yesterday. "Everything on Ground Zero is operating in accordance with a very aggressive time frame that I laid out two years ago, with the exception of the redesigned Freedom Tower, which has been set back."

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/53533.htm

[al-Canine]

:D Bloomberg Quizzes Trump About Rebuilding the World Trade Center
http://www.bongonews.com/layout1.php?event=90

[NYer]

Nice Knockers!

http://mydivx.lihoman.ru/order/direct/brooks/brooks.frankenstein.jpg

Sorry, had to be said LOL.

[al-Canine]

Oh no! The memorial design is being "watered down" even more! :mad:

BIG CHILL HITS PLAN FOR WTC WATERFALL

By TOM TOPOUSIS

A pair of dramatic waterfalls that are among the signature pieces of Ground Zero's memorial will be a winter washout because of fears that freezing water will spray frigid visitors, memorial officials have decided.

The 30-foot waterfalls that are aligned along the original footprints of the Twin Towers are a key part of Michael Arad's memorial design, "Reflecting Absence."

But months of tests of the waterfalls, at a $175,000 mockup built in Canada, have revealed the potential for problems with the spray blowing out into the galleries below street level in Memorial Hall.

"We expect that the waterfalls may have to be turned off in winter because of the cold weather, like other water fountains around the city," said Lynn Rasic, spokeswoman for the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation.

"We want to make it as comfortable an experience as possible," Rasic said of the memorial, expected to open in September 2009.

Architects also determined that the cost of operating the waterfalls, stretching over 1,600 feet long, would be four to five times more expensive if the water had to be heated to keep it flowing during winter weather.

Shutting the waterfalls is "sensible from an energy conservation standpoint," Rasic said.

Debra Burlingame, a member of the memorial's foundation board, said she was "astounded" to learn of the waterfall's shortcomings.

"It seems to me this is something that should have been worked out before they selected the design," she said.

"It doesn't create confidence that we're this far along and only now determining that we picked a design for a memorial that will not function 30 percent of the time," said Burlingame, whose pilot husband was killed on one of the 9/11 planes.

Jack Lynch, whose firefighter son Michael died at the World Trade Center, said he was disappointed that the waterfall can't run all year.

"It's like an eternal flame and you don't shut off an eternal flame," Lynch said. "These things should have been considered in the beginning."

The waterfalls are supposed to cascade into two pools of water that will fill the footprints of what were the Twin Towers. Names of all the victims of 9/11 and the 1993 trade center bombing will be etched into gallery walls overlooking the pools.

Rasic said that despite the shutting of the waterfalls in winter, the memorial will remain a "powerful and moving experience at any time of the year."

"The water in the voids' pools will be maintained in the winter, but the fact is that most fountains must be turned off because of cold temperatures. It's foreseeable that the waterfalls could be run during warm winter days."

Arad's design was selected in January 2004, from among more than 5,000 submissions, by a 13-member panel. The memorial and a museum built along with it are projected to cost about $500 million.

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/58790.htm

[NYer]

If Trump were running this project, it would already be done ... the tragedy of 9-11 continues ...

[al-Canine]

Memory lapse

By ANTHONY GARDNER and PATRICIA REILLY

Congress and U.S. taxpayers gave the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. $2.78 billion to redevelop the World Trade Center site, entrusting them with the duty of building a magnificent memorial to the victims of Sept. 11, 2001. Just months before construction of the memorial is slated to begin, the LMDC is offering the American public a bargain basement version of Michael Arad's "Reflecting Absence."
The LMDC's latest iteration of Arad's design is one that is 31% smaller than the original, and the central waterfalls - the most powerful design feature - will only operate nine months out of the year. LMDC continues to shrink the memorial despite the fact the original design was too small to accommodate the estimated millions who will make a pilgrimage to the site. The memorial is being built with only one way in and one way out, putting the safety and security of future visitors in peril.

It is insulting that with all of the financial resources at its disposal the LMDC would try to foist an ever-shrinking memorial on the American people and then ask them to pay for it.

The fact that LMDC failed to consider the extra costs involved with heating the memorial's massive waterfalls so they may flow in the winter months reflects its gross mismanagement of the redevelopment. As reported in the Daily News, LMDC has misspent millions in tax dollars on projects completely unrelated to Sept. 11, such as giving $10 million to SoHo's Drawing Center and funding the pet projects of wealthy elites who serve on the LMDC board as they continue to shrink the memorial and refuse to pay heating bills.

Take Back the Memorial, an alliance of major Sept. 11 family groups, began at a time when LMDC's lack of focus nearly led to the placement of the International Freedom Center on sacred ground. Now, to the detriment of future visitors to the memorial, it appears that money has followed LMDC's misplaced priorities as evidenced by the allocation of $50 million to an unrelated cultural facility. Millions have also been spent on the Snohetta building design and we still don't know what it will contain, if it is even built at all.

We would like to be able to say that the WTC Memorial Foundation should take over, but some changes need to be made first. The foundation has said that the memorial is the priority, but actions speak louder than words. Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg, both members of the foundation's board, have yet to make a personal donation to the memorial.

It seems evident that the cultural facilities, not the memorial, are the true priority of some individuals who have been charged with building the memorial. The majority of Sept. 11 families are withholding donations until America gets a memorial design it deserves, one that preserves our national heritage, provides for the safety of visitors and honors the dead by telling their story without distraction.

We want a memorial that isn't crammed into a basement space, hidden from the light of day. We want public access to the physical remains of the twin tower footprints at bedrock.

The WTC Memorial Foundation must focus its attention on the Sept. 11 memorial. Board members whose priority is not the memorial must be replaced. As long as their focus remains on extraneous cultural matters they will continue to have difficulty raising funds.

LMDC, which must get its priorities straight, would benefit from new leadership. If changes aren't made fast in both the LMDC and the WTC Memorial Foundation, they will not only fail to honor those who died at that site on Sept. 11, 2001, but they will continue to fail us all.

Gardner and Reilly, who lost family members in the World Trade Center attack, are co-organizers of the Take Back the Memorial campaign.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/379342p-322171c.html

[al-Canine]

Private room for remains planned for 9/11 memorial

Family members of Sept. 11 victims will be able to enter a private room inside the World Trade Center memorial and look through a glass window at a chamber storing more than 9,000 unidentified remains of their loved ones.

In a contemplation room next door, the public could pay respects to an empty symbolic vessel, development officials said. The officials disclosed more information about the design this week as they sought construction bids for the memorial.

The climate-controlled, low-humidity chamber for the victims' remains will be built on the ground where the trade center's north tower stood, said Anne Papageorge, who oversees memorial development for the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.

Some family members who follow the trade center rebuilding process said they would have preferred that the victims' remains be entombed in the larger contemplation room.

"Why should the public pay tribute to an empty box?" asked Edie Lutnick, whose brother was killed on Sept. 11, 2001.

So far, 1,594 of the 2,749 people who died at the trade center have been identified. The medical examiner's office has said that more sophisticated DNA technology may allow more identifications later. The remains are stored in sealed plastic pouches in refrigerated units at the chief medical examiner's office, spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said. The remains will not be visible in the chamber, Borakove said, but will be in a container with drawers that has not been designed.

There also are plans within the north tower's footprint for a separate office for the medical examiner, another room where family members can reflect privately and exhibition galleries for the memorial museum.

Some family members said the north tower footprint would be cut into too many pieces. Anthony Gardner, a member of a coalition called Take Back the Memorial who has filed suit to completely preserve the Twin Towers' footprints, said the design breaks up the symbolic significance of the land.

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/manhattan/wtc/nyc-nywtc054575629jan05,0,3241273.story?

[al-Canine]

HERO'S SISTER IN 'SLEEP-IN'

By BRIGITTE WILLIAMS

The sister of a city firefighter killed on 9/11 is sleeping across from Ground Zero indefinitely to protest plans for the World Trade Center "underground" memorial.

Since Wednesday, Rosaleen Tallon has been sleeping in front of Engine Co. 10 on Liberty Street - the firehouse where her hero brother Sean worked.

"I will be here each and every night until the underground memorial issue is resolved," said Tallon, 34.

Construction on the memorial is slated to begin over the next few weeks. But families of 9/11 victims have said the memorial design dishonors the dead and is not safe for visitors.

""No one is inspired to go underground," Tallon said.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. has said construction would proceed as scheduled.

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/60793.htm

[NYer]

From Take Back The Memorial:

To All 9/11 Families, Friends and Supporters,

On January 24, 2006 the LMDC Family Advisory Council (FAC) met with LMDC President Stephan Pryor and WTC Memorial Foundation President Gretchen Dykstra as well as several members of their staff. At this meeting numerous issues were discussed including: the proper listing of the Names; putting Artifacts like the sphere and tower facades at the street level of the WTC site; preserving the Footprint remnants at bedrock; moving the Memorial Museum above ground; and the security and safety of visitors to the site. LMDC President Pryor and his representatives were noncommittal in their response to the concerns raised.

On February 27, 2006, the Advocates for a 9/11 Fallen Heroes Memorial with support of the NYPD and FDNY unions held a rally at the WTC site demanding that the LMDC address the issues outlined above as well as the issue of raising the Memorial itself above ground.

A week after the rally and 6 weeks after the FAC meeting, LMDC President Pryor chose to respond to the concerns in a letter addressed to the FAC. Mr. Pryor chose not to tell the FAC that this letter had already been released to the NY Post. Pryor's letter to members of the Families Advisory Council was misleading. Transcripts we have obtained through a Freedom of Information Request belie his assertions.

Despite as he claimed in the letter that the LMDC has always worked in "good faith" this is clearly not good faith. We consider this highly unprofessional act the final straw and will no longer deal with the LMDC. We demand a meeting with Governor Pataki and his Chief of Staff John Cahill.

We are asking each of you to email and/or phone Governor Pataki telling him that the LMDC does not act in good faith and that the Governor and his Chief of Staff must meet with the Take Back the Memorial representatives and historic preservation groups prior to the commencement of construction. Additionally, to increase the pressure, please contact NY State Senators Schumer and Clinton as well as your state representatives asking for their support.

Time is short; on March 13th construction will begin on this seriously flawed Memorial. America deserves more.

Email Governor Pataki: http://www.ny.gov/governor/contact/index.html
Phone Governor Pataki: (518) 474-8390

[al-Canine]

BREAKING GROUND

By LEONARD GREENE and TOM TOPOUSIS

Under the watchful eyes of angry demonstrators, construction crews began the first phase of work yesterday on the long-awaited World Trade Center memorial - against the wishes of some of the families of those being honored.

Nearly 41/2 years after the Twin Towers were leveled in the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, workers began removing debris to make way for a permanent tribute.

"This marks the true beginning," said Gretchen Dykstra, chief executive officer of the WTC Memorial Foundation. "We believe this memorial is important to heal the families' wounds and the wounds of the country."

She said the initial work involved removing gravel and debris, delivering construction material and protecting the box-beam columns of the original towers - a process that has come to be known as preserving the footprints.

But even as engineers in hard hats were busy surveying the land below, protesters outside the fence surrounding the pit were accusing the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. of having betrayed their vision.

As planned, this memorial will not only be unsafe but will desecrate the ground on which our loved ones died, the protesters insisted.

At issue is architect Michael Arad's design, "Reflecting Absence," a memorial featuring two pools of water and cascading waterfalls to mark where each tower stood.

A list of the victims' names and a museum are slated to go underground, below a tree-lined plaza.

The Coalition of 9/11 Families has filed suit seeking an injunction to halt construction. It argues that the LMDC and the Port Authority, the site's owner, failed to consult with the group and to follow proper procedure.

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Shirley Kornreich is to hear arguments starting tomorrow.

"This building would be 70 feet below ground - and bury visitors once again," said Sally Regenhard, whose son, Christian, a probationary firefighter, died on 9/11.

"It's not safe; there is one way in and one way out," she added. "All we want is an aboveground, safe memorial. I couldn't save my son, but I want to save other mothers' sons."

Officials, meanwhile, were still raising money for the memorial. Last night, the project's main developer, Larry Silverstein, was to host a reception for donors at his recently completed 52-story office tower at 7 World Trade Center, overlooking Ground Zero.

That was probably a lot less stressful than his high-stakes talks with the Port Authority and Gov. Pataki's office over Silverstein's future with the project.

Silverstein, who spent much of yesterday in meetings, has until today to convince the Port Authority that he has the resources to quickly build all five proposed towers - including the linchpin Freedom Tower, a 1,776-foot skyscraper due for completion in 2010.

Among the scenarios being discussed is a Port Authority takeover of the Freedom Tower, a 2.2 million-square-foot building that has yet to secure a prospective tenant.

Adding to the mix is a new report that predicts a strong need for office space in lower Manhattan for years to come.

"It is likely that there will be sufficient demand to meet the planned supply of office space citywide over the next 30 years," the city's Independent Budget Office report says.

And Mayor Bloomberg has underlined the need for residential space, urging the developers to set aside one of the Church Street towers for apartments.

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/65239.htm

[al-Canine]

'Survivors' Stairway' Is Marked as Endangered

The last above-ground remnant of the World Trade Center — a battered but still —recognizable staircase down which hundreds fled to safety on 9/11 from the inferno in the north tower — is one of the most endangered historical places in America, the National Trust for Historic Preservation said today.

That is because it stands in the way of an office tower, designed by Norman Foster, that is planned on the same site by the developer Larry A. Silverstein. And neither Mr. Silverstein nor Lord Foster have said yet what they plan to do about the staircase.

"Silverstein Properties has not made a commitment to preserve the staircase and we're urging them to do so," said Richard Moe, the president of the trust, a private, nonprofit organization that uses its considerable influence in place of any actual regulatory power.

"It will be the most dramatic original piece of the site that will have meaning to generations to come," Mr. Moe said. "This obviously has national significance because 9/11 had such a cataclysmic effect."

The decision by the trust to place the "survivors' stairway" on its much-noted annual list of 11 endangered historical places will undoubtedly raise the profile of an overlooked but significant architectural artifact from Sept. 11, 2001.

It may also place Mr. Silverstein in a position that he has thus far managed to avoid: confrontation with victims' relatives, survivors and preservationists.

Janno Lieber of Silverstein Properties said in a February letter to the World Trade Center Survivors' Network that the stairway site is to be excavated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and turned over to Mr. Silverstein for construction.

"We will continue to work with the Port Authority and all of the other government stakeholders to develop the optimal preservation strategy available under the circumstances," Mr. Lieber wrote.

Lord Foster, who is known for weaving existing landmarks into new structures — the Great Court of the British Museum and the Hearst Tower in Manhattan, for example — has said merely that it poses a design challenge and "an issue that has to be addressed."

The Port Authority has said the staircase might be saved, though not necessarily where it stands, on Vesey Street. Charles A. Gargano, the vice chairman of the authority, said last year, "It's certainly a very significant remembrance of what happened that day."

For survivors who escaped down the staircase, scurrying out from the north tower under the protective eaves of the United States Custom House at 6 World Trade Center, the remembrance is excruciatingly vivid.

"They were the path to freedom," said Kayla Bergeron, the chief of public and government affairs at the Port Authority, on a visit to the staircase six months ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/nyregion/10cnd-stair.html?

[NYer]

Five Blunders That Plunged The Memorial Into Crisis. (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/416374p-351807c.html)

UGH!

[al-Canine]

Oh gee whiz, this made me chuckle.

Let FBI, CIA sit at top of tower

Michael Daly | Editorial
Tuesday, September 19th, 2006

With the promise of government tenants filling almost half its many floors, the Freedom Tower now seems certain to rise shining and proud from where so many innocents perished.

Why not make two of those government agencies - the FBI and the CIA - and place them at the soaring tower's uppermost floors?

The guiding principle among bosses at both the FBI and CIA has long been CYA, the C standing for "cover," the Y for "your," the A for what would be in a desk chair 1,000 feet above the street if they were lodged in the tower.

That suddenly would give CYA a more visceral and immediate meaning. A boss thus nested would be considerably less likely ever to lapse into the do-nothing approach of the days leading up to 9/11.

Try rereading the 9/11 commission report and imagine how different the outcome might have been if bosses at the FBI and CIA felt personally at risk.

Since the attack on the World Trade Center, bosses at both agencies have been acting on even the most improbable threat reports, sometimes pulling resources away from what the street agents know to be truly important operations.

"We've gone to the other extreme," an experienced agent reported yesterday.

But if no big attack comes in the next year or two, the bosses will almost certainly lapse into their old, somnolent ways.

"To a degree, that's human nature," the agent said.

That is, unless the backsides the bosses at the FBI and CIA are so dedicated to covering remain suspended at a height that was indelibly measured by the poor souls who leaped from the burning towers on 9/11.

The bosses know that as long as Al Qaeda is out there, it will consider New York its primary target and will be sure to take the tower as a challenge. Every time one of the Bin Laden bunch hears that the tower is a symbol of New York's rebirth he will be scheming that much harder to knock it down.

Nobody should need reminding that we still face a murderous enemy who views the ongoing struggle in terms of decades or even centuries.

And the agencies protecting us have in the past proven liable to lose focus and become entangled in bureaucratic inanities.

The pre-9/11 FBI bosses did nothing when photos of the World Trade Center were found in the apartment of a known terrorist. We can guess how they would respond even five or 10 years from now if a raid produced photos of the tower in whose heights they shuffle paper.

To thus situate the FBI and the CIA was suggested some months ago by a Daily News reader. The notion gains some prominence with word that the federal and state governments have agreed to occupy some 1 million of the tower's 2.6 million square feet.

So far, the feds have talked about housing the U.S. Customs and Border Protection people there. Those agencies could always take the space the FBI presently occupies at Federal Plaza.

And given the site's recent history, nobody is likely to squawk if the FBI and CIA are given a high floor, where a boss need only look down to be reminded of the importance of the fight against terrorism.

The better street agents have always been highly motivated and determined and they no doubt will remain so. They are almost never at their desks, so it matters little what floor those desks are on.

But for those who presume to run the fight against the terrorists from a desk, let them truly make decisions at the highest level.


New York Daily News (http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/453872p-381827c.html)

[al-Canine]

ELIOT SLAMS GROUND ZERO 'GRIDLOCK'

By KENNETH LOVETT Post Correspondent

January 4, 2007 -- ALBANY - Gov. Spitzer yesterday vowed to "revitalize" Ground Zero, saying that under former Gov. George Pataki, it had become a "monument to government gridlock" - and he also raised the idea that the Freedom Tower may be shorter than planned.

Spitzer did not mention his predecessor by name, but made it clear he was disappointed at the pace of the rebuilding.

"Like all of us here today, I cannot accept that more than five years after the attacks of Sept. 11th, progress is only starting to be made," Spitzer said in his first State of the State Address.

"What ought to be a monument to the sacrifice of our heroes and the strength of our economy has instead become a monument to government gridlock," he added.

Spitzer said he will immediately begin working with Mayor Bloomberg and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who he noted "has long been a strong voice for lower Manhattan redevelopment, to revitalize Ground Zero."

At a later press conference, Spitzer would not commit to the current Freedom Tower plan, although construction has already begun.


"You can frequently change the designs," he said. "Once the footings are in and you begin to put the superstructure up, it gets more difficult, but that doesn't mean you have to play it through all the way to the top of the building."

The building is currently planned to rise to a symbolic 1,776 feet.


Bloomberg told The Post that "we're doing fine at Ground Zero and any help he can give us, we need as much help as we can get."

Spitzer also called for the construction of the first segment of the Second Avenue subway and a "plan for the full extension to lower Manhattan" and threw his support behind a plan to connect Long Island and Queens commuters to Grand Central Terminal.


"As my good friend, Mayor Mike Bloomberg, recently noted, we have significantly reduced our focus and investment on major infrastructure projects at a time when they have never been more important," Spitzer said.

"And the few projects that we have invested in, we have been unable to complete."

N Y Post (http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/01042007/news/regionalnews/eliot_slams_ground_zero_gridlock_regionalnews_kenn eth_lovett________post_correspondent.htm)

[al-Canine]

Pros fear new towers at World Trade Center site have security gaps

BY GREG B. SMITH AND DOUGLAS FEIDEN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Sunday, February 24th 2008, 4:00 AM

Law enforcement officials have major concerns about security weaknesses in the planned World Trade Center complex, a Daily News investigation has found.

The potential problems expressed to the Port Authority and others involved in the most high-profile development project in New York City history include:


A row of three mostly glass towers positioned too closely to city streets, increasing their vulnerability to attack.

Difficulties in inspecting some 2,000 delivery trucks and sightseeing buses that will enter or leave the site daily.

A vehicle security center that hasn't been fully designed and relies on vehicle inspection technology that hasn't even been developed yet.

Asked about weaknesses uncovered by The News in the plans for rebuilding Ground Zero, Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne said, "The NYPD has been in talks with the Port Authority, but we don't disclose any information about possible security vulnerabilities for obvious reasons."

Port Authority spokesman Stephen Sigmund said the agency is "very confident that the entire rebuilt WTC site - every building and every square inch - will operate with an unprecedented level of safety and security."

Michael Balboni, Gov. Spitzer's deputy secretary for public safety, emphasized, "At the end of the day, this will be one of the most secure footprints on the globe."

Law enforcement counterterrorism specialists have pinpointed serious flaws in key components of the Trade Center site, including three of the signature office towers projected to open by 2012.

Towers 2, 3 and 4 - which will rise between Greenwich and Church Sts. to 79, 71 and 64 stories, respectively - contain too much glass, sources familiar with the issues said.

They also are not set back far enough from the two streets - where uninspected trucks will whiz by - to meet the most rigorous security standards, the sources said.

"The reimposition of the street grid is an integral part of the plan to bring vibrancy to lower Manhattan," said Avi Schick, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.

"The administration understands the need to balance that goal with legitimate security concerns."

Another concern: The buildings do not meet Department of Defense or Department of Homeland Security blast standards. That means they can withstand certain types of explosions - but not more powerful blasts.

The DOD blast standards - rarely applied to U.S. skyscrapers - are typically used in U.S. embassies and missions abroad, sensitive government facilities and military bases.

Counterterrorism officials contend that because of the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, and Al Qaeda's pattern of repeatedly striking targets, DOD blast standards should be used in the Ground Zero buildings.

"The plans have been out for quite a while on these buildings, and it would have been nice to voice these concerns at the start rather than wait until now," said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who represents lower Manhattan. "The community wants to move forward."

A spokesman for Larry Silverstein, the developer of the three towers, declined to comment on security issues.

Silverstein's buildings - including a 1,270-foot giant that will be taller than the Empire State Building - have been designed with a steel-encased concrete core and engineered with safety systems exceeding the city's building code and the requirements of the Port Authority, his company says.

The Freedom Tower's extra safety measures - including being set back farther from the street, thicker glass and upgraded blast standards - were done after the NYPD raised questions about the building's weaknesses. Similar changes were made to the trade center's transportation hub after issues arose.

Asked about the overall effort to ensure the new trade center is secure, James Kallstrom, the former director of the FBI's New York office and former Gov. George Pataki's homeland security chief, said: "It's complicated. It's a very crowded area. It's not easy ... It's going to require state-of-the-art technology and competent, trained manpower."

The need for screening every single truck entering the area and the difficulties of carefully managing inspections were key issues Kallstrom addressed in a report he completed before leaving government last year.

Kallstrom and Balboni declined to discuss the report's recommendations, though Balboni said most were being implemented.

While inspecting thousands of vehicles a day is tough enough, the problem is more complicated in lower Manhattan because of narrow streets and thick traffic.

"We can't let anything enter the underground in that acreage that could have the potential for certain size devices or bombs without proper screening," Kallstrom said.

All delivery trucks and buses will access the complex through a new Vehicular Security Center, an underground complex with an entrance and exit on Liberty St. that will function as the central security checkpoint.

The $478 million project has been on the drawing boards since 2003 and was to start last April, but all the Port Authority has done is move some utilities and sewer lines.

Delays in demolition of the toxic former Deutsche Bank tower have made it close to impossible for construction of the subterranean project to begin.

Bids for a contractor haven't gone out, and excavation of the so-called south bathtub for the center hasn't begun, the bistate agency confirmed.

"Obviously, the fact that [Deutsche Bank] is not down presents some serious challenges to the VSC," Sigmund said.

There's more: The design and engineering specifications, which the Port Authority said in 2006 were being finalized, are not ready, and the screening technology does not exist.

Nevertheless, the PA said the Vehicular Security Center is set to be finished when the other buildings come on line, by 2011 or 2012.

"We will have the appropriate technology to do the screening when the VSC is completed," Sigmund said, noting the facility will meet DOD and Homeland Security standards.

Sigmund said they would inspect vehicles "off-site or in a holding area if necessary," declining to specify where it would take place.

That's a nightmare scenario for downtown residents, who say they're worried the Sept. 11 museum and other buildings will open before the Vehicular Security Center is completed, compromising security and the quality of life.

Asked if he was troubled the center has fallen behind schedule, Balboni said: "I'm not concerned yet, but that could change. We're watching it very closely."


New York Daily News (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/02/24/2008-02-24_pros_fear_new_towers_at_world_trade_cent.html)

[al-Canine]

Security plan for WTC means army of cops, barriers and traffic hell

BY ALISON GENDAR AND DOUGLAS FEIDEN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Sunday, April 6th 2008

Secret NYPD anti-terror plans would turn Ground Zero into Fort WTC - a bulked-up, battened-down, barricaded Ring of Steel, the Daily News has learned.

Some 25 impregnable barriers and 13 guard booths would encircle the World Trade Center footprint under a draft plan circulated in late February.

At least 24 blocks on eight major streets would be closed or restricted to traffic under the proposal, which has been reviewed in City Hall and at 1 Police Plaza and is still being revised.

Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne wouldn't address any specifics in the draft plan.

"No decision has been made on staffing or other security arrangements," he said.

He called the number of checkpoints and guard booths "outdated," saying they "provide an exaggerated picture of security plans.

"The NYPD is working closely with the Port Authority to provide for a safe, inviting and commercially viable World Trade Center site, not the fortress-like environment you describe," Browne said.

The draft plan is modeled after London's Ring of Steel, a maze of narrowed roads in the city's financial district with limited entry points that force vehicles into chokepoints that cops can easily cordon off.

It represents a breathtaking about-face from the work of post-9/11 planners, who called for restoring the original street grid on the site, reconnecting Greenwich and Fulton streets, and breaking up the superblock where the Trade Center once stood.

If the plan goes through, getting into the Trade Center won't be easy: Tenants, chauffeurs, livery cabbies and tour-bus drivers who need regular access to the complex would have to register with cops and win approval as "trusted drivers," sources familiar with the plan say.

Electronic transponders would be attached to their vehicles to allow constant monitoring - and they'd have access to "trusted vehicle lanes" on Church St. separated from other traffic by "raised island dividers," the draft shows.

Even then, screeners would examine the trunk, interior and undercarriage of all northbound vehicles on Church St. in a bomb-detection effort as surveillance cameras that scan license plates rake the scene, say officials briefed on the plan.

Mayor Bloomberg's spokesman, Stu Loeser, insisted City Hall was working to "make the entire area accessible, open and secure."

Community leaders, who have yet to see the hush-hush plan, were more guarded.

"Safety is the No. 1 concern, but it's got to be managed sensitively. If there are security checkpoints all over lower Manhattan, and residents, workers and visitors can't move about freely, it's a real problem," said Julie Menin, chairwoman of Community Board 1.

Added Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who hasn't been briefed on specifics, "Effective security measures are essential.... However, these measures can - and must - be implemented in a way that supports and enhances our vibrant 24-hour community."

Expect a traffic nightmare if the plan is enacted: Every northbound vehicle on Church St. would first have to clear a "credentialing zone" at Cedar St., then pass through a barrier into a "screening zone" called a "sally port," a secure corral that can be sealed off on both ends. All this simply to drive past the site.

That would play havoc at rush hour because one-way Church St. has historically been the companion to southbound Broadway in moving vehicles in and out of downtown, said Daily News traffic columnist Sam (Gridlock Sam) Schwartz.

"I don't want to second-guess the NYPD, but if you block Church St., you might as well make all of lower Manhattan into a pedestrian mall," he said.

Schwartz said 1,336 northbound vehicles per hour cross the intersection of Church and Dey Sts. during the morning rush hour. In the evening rush, it's 1,154 vehicles per hour.

Coming from the north, buses taking tourists to the Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum and drivers taking passengers to the office towers would experience the same obstacles to reach the inner perimeter.

First they'd have IDs and transponders verified at the "credential checkpoint" north of Barclay St., then they'd enter the sally port for comprehensive vehicle screening.

One more barricade would await on West Broadway before trusted drivers could crawl south on Greenwich St., finally entering the "secure zone," which would be dotted with raised island dividers.

Officials at the Port Authority and the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., agencies responsible for the rebirth of the Trade Center, declined to discuss specifics of the NYPD plan, but both said the Trade Center would be secure.

The emergence of a detailed NYPD draft plan to protect the most vulnerable 16 acres in America comes after The News disclosed March 26 that the NYPD was scrambling to wrest control of all Ground Zero security from the Port Authority.

NYPD officials first called for 1,475 cops on the site, but sources said that number may have been floated as a bargaining chip in talks with the Port Authority over site control.

Police staffing levels have since been scaled back to about 600, sources say.

Under the draft plan, 12 lieutenants, 32 traffic agents, 44 sergeants and 280 police officers would handle screening and checkpoints. About 250 other cops would monitor surveillance cameras and on-site security operations.

The News on Feb. 24 also revealed police concerns about security flaws at the site, including an underground Vehicle Security Center that hasn't been fully designed and three Church St. office towers that have too much glass and are too close to city streets.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/04/06/2008-04-06_security_plan_for_wtc_means_army_of_cops.html

[al-Canine]

Since this is the "discussion" section of news, I will just add my 2 cent opinion that all the security measures detailed in the above post would—ironically—not prevent a replay of 9/11. :sad_01:

[NYer]

The pace of the redevelopment of Ground Zero is a national disgrace.

[NYer]

O God of love, compassion, and healing,
look on us, people of many different faiths
and traditions,
who gather today at this site,
the scene of incredible violence and pain.

We ask you in your goodness
to give eternal light and peace
to all who died here-
the heroic first-responders:
our fire fighters, police officers,
emergency service workers, and
Port Authority personnel,
along with all the innocent men and women
who were victims of this tragedy
simply because their work or service
brought them here on September 11, 2001.

We ask you, in your compassion
to bring healing to those
who, because of their presence here that day,
suffer from injuries and illness.

Heal, too, the pain of still-grieving families
and all who lost loved ones in this tragedy.
Give them strength to continue their lives
with courage and hope.

We are mindful as well
of those who suffered death, injury, and loss
on the same day at the Pentagon and in
Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Our hearts are one with theirs
as our prayer embraces their pain and suffering.

God of peace, bring your peace to our violent world:
peace in the hearts of all men and women
and peace among the nations of the earth.

Turn to your way of love
those whose hearts and minds
are consumed with hatred.

God of understanding,
overwhelmed by the magnitude of this tragedy,
we seek your light and guidance
as we confront such terrible events.
Grant that those whose lives were spared
may live so that the lives lost here
may not have been lost in vain.

Comfort and console us,
strengthen us in hope,
and give us the wisdom and courage
to work tirelessly for a world
where true peace and love reign
among nations and in the hearts of all.

Pope Benedict XVI
4/20/2008

http://www.zenit.org/rssenglish-22285

[al-Canine]

Failure to rebuild WTC site quickly will cost taxpayers

New Yorkers are on the hook to hand over $321 million to Goldman Sachs, America's richest investment bank, because reconstruction of the World Trade Center has fallen way behind schedule.

Under the hidden terms of a deal that then-Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg approved in 2005, the city and state agreed to pay huge penalties to the firm if major portions of Ground Zero redevelopment weren't complete by next year, a target now considered impossible to meet.

Goldman wanted speedy construction because the Wall Street giant is building its own $2.4 billion tower across from the site on West St.

Now, Goldman could snare 64 years of free rent worth $161 million that it's supposed to pay for leasing the state land. Goldman could also recoup an additional $160 million in sales tax payments.

The sweetheart deal okayed by Bloomberg and Pataki also provided $1.65 billion in tax-free

Liberty Bonds and a $115 million incentive package. At the time, the bank was threatening to decamp to New Jersey.

In return for constructing its 43-story office building for 9,000 employees, Goldman. was allowed to put $161 million it owed in rent and $160 million in sales taxes into escrow accounts, documents show. Albany and City Hall agreed that Goldman could keep its cash if two conditions were not met:

* Specific blockbuster transit-and-security projects on the Trade Center footprint had to be finished by the end of next year, when Goldman's tower will be finished. Officials concede that's not going to happen - and that the projects are years behind schedule.

* A comprehensive security plan for downtown had to be "implemented" before 2010. That counterterrorist plan can't be fully "implemented," as the deal requires, until the structures at Ground Zero are in place.

The bottom line: The $321 million bonanza in tax and lease payments could soon revert to the Wall Street powerhouse, which piled up $11.6 billion in profits last year.

Goldman spokeswoman Andrea Raphael declined to comment, but in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing four months ago, the firm made note of the escrow deal and implied it could be pocketing the ground-lease payments.

"Under the terms of the ground lease, we made a lump-sum ground rent payment in June 2007 of $161 million, which was paid into escrow, to be released to the Battery Park City Authority pending performance of specified state and city obligations," it said.

State officials wouldn't discuss specifics - even though the document they refused to discuss can be found on the SEC Web site. City officials think they're off the hook.

"The city is on track to provide a comprehensive security plan for lower Manhattan by the end of 2009 as required by the agreement, and we are working with the Port Authority and Lower Manhattan Development Corp. to help them meet the other deadlines," said Deputy Mayor for Economic. Development Robert. Lieber.

Lawyers are likely to argue this point: How can a security plan for Ground Zero. be "implemented" by 2010 if none of the iconic buildings at the site are wrapped up by that time?

Sources close to the deal said only that the state and city are in preliminary talks with Goldman to win a bit of flexibility.

"The state and Goldman Sachs have and continue to have productive conversations on ensuring that downtown is rebuilt in a manner that is fair to both workers and residents and, of course, all taxpayers," said Avi Schick, chairman of the LMDC.

Among the projects supposed to see ribbon cuttings by 2010:

* The Transportation Hub: With its soaring wings designed to resemble a bird in flight, the PATH terminal was originally planned to open in 2006. A new report says there's less than a 5% chance of the hub being complete before July 2012.

* The Vehicular Security Center under Liberty St.: A centerpiece of security operations, this is the planned $478 million subterranean complex through which delivery trucks and buses will access the 16-acre site. Construction of the high-tech security checkpoint can't even start until the toxic former Deutsche Bank tower above it is finally demolished. The latest estimated opening date is 2011 or 2012.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/05/12/2008-05-12_failure_to_rebuild_wtc_site_quickly_will.html

[al-Canine]

Ground Zero Redevelopment Progresses, Without Time Line

By PETER KIEFER, Staff Reporter of the Sun
June 27, 2008

A highly anticipated progress report on construction at ground zero is expected to focus on a scaled-back redesign of the PATH transit hub, demolition of the Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty St., and difficulties involving work on the no. 1 subway line, according to sources familiar with the report.

To be presented at a board meeting of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on Monday, the report will not include something that had been sought by Governor Paterson: a detailed construction schedule with time lines for the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site.

A construction official involved in the project said there was no purpose in the Port Authority providing unrealistic dates, especially with so many structural questions still unanswered.

"The problem isn't the time, the problem is that the various stakeholders have created this incredible jigsaw puzzle," the source said. "The problem is that people have been delivering dates on their own agenda and not on what needs to get done."

Construction delays at the World Trade Center redevelopment project, which includes five new office towers, a memorial museum, a park, a performing arts center, and a transit hub, have bridged the governorships of Mr. Paterson, Eliot Spitzer, and George Pataki.

On Monday, Christopher Ward, who was appointed executive director of the Port Authority by Mr. Paterson in May, is expected to ask for an extension to sort out stakeholder accountability and gain insight on more than 20 unanswered policy, engineering, and design questions facing the reconstruction. A complete assessment will likely be delivered to Mr. Paterson by the end of summer or early fall, according to sources.

During a reporter's visit to ground zero yesterday, contractors working for the developer Silverstein Properties were busy blasting rock and clearing part of the site to pour concrete for the foundation of towers 3 and 4, office buildings that are scheduled to rise along Church Street. Adjacent to that site, workers for the Port Authority were clearing soil, readying portions of the "eastern bathtub" to prepare for a handover to Mr. Silverstein. The Port Authority recently said it would not be able to make a contractually set deadline of June 30 to hand over of part of the site to Silverstein Properties.

On the northwest corner of the site, some below-ground levels of the Freedom Tower are now visible, and dozens of workers were hauling materials while two cranes were working to push more of that building above street level. Thick steel beams that will support the 1,776-foot-tall Freedom Tower could be seen rising from the foundation.

Anticipation surrounding Monday's meeting has been building since Mr. Paterson asked Mr. Ward for a comprehensive assessment of schedules and budgets for construction at the World Trade Center site to be presented no later than June 30.

"Unrealistic deadlines were set forth years ago," the president of local Community Board 1, Julie Menin, said in an interview. "There was press conference after press conference about how Lower Manhattan would be built stronger than ever. And people just didn't question all of those deadlines."

The most recent failure was announced earlier this month, when the Port Authority acknowledged that it would not be able to meet a June 30 deadline to complete excavation work and hand over the east bathtub, where Tower 2 is set to rise, to Silverstein Properties.

As a penalty, the Port Authority will have to pay $300,000 a day, beginning July 1, until it turns over the fully completed bathtub, which will not occur until sometime in August.

http://www.nysun.com/new-york/ground-zero-redevelopment-progresses-without-time/80814/

[al-Canine]

Port Authority: Forget about 9/11 memorial in 2011

BY ROBERT GEARTY AND BILL HUTCHINSON
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

After years of delays, squabbles and turf wars, officials formally acknowledged the obvious on Monday: Ground Zero construction is way over budget and years behind schedule - including its emotional centerpiece, the 9/11 memorial.

"The memorial will not be fully completed and available for the public in 2011," Port Authority Executive Director Chris Ward said as he delivered a sober assessment of the $16 billion project.

The memorial - estimated to cost $530 million and then revised to $650 million - was slated to open on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center terror attacks that killed 2,750 people.

An earlier 2009 target date was scrapped when it became clear that was too optimistic.

Ward blamed skyrocketing budgets, planning delays, a dismal lack of coordination and rosy projection dates for the mess.

"The schedule and cost estimates of the rebuilding effort that have been communicated to the public are not realistic," Ward told the bistate agency's board of commissioners.

The thrust of Ward's comments means the psychic trauma of rebuilding the complex won't end until the middle of the next decade.

The Daily News reported Sunday that the Port Authority ignored a secret state report completed a year ago that said its timetable was unrealistic and driven by political concerns.

Ward did not address the issue of the PA's refusal to heed the warnings, but said: "It is not surprising that others have shared our concerns in terms of delivery dates, but the important thing we have to recognize is that it's about what we do going forward."

Ward said he had found the following issues that are critical to the overall project were still unresolved:

- Final design of the transportation hub and vehicle security center.

- Demolition of the former Deutsche Bank building.

- Accurate projection of rising construction costs, primarily caused by the country's oil crisis.

- Coordination of more than 100 contractors and subcontractors and 19 government agencies.

- Design and schedule for rebuilding the Cortlandt St. subway station.

Ward offered no new timetables or cost estimates in his review, which was prepared at Gov. Paterson's request.

He said he hoped to do so by September if these critical issues are addressed.

"We're not going to give any phony dates or timetables at this point and then follow it up with phony ribbon cuttings or encouraging words and no followup," said Paterson, who in March became the third governor to tackle the monumental task of rebuilding Ground Zero.

"We are instead going to change the culture of the way the management of this project is working. We are telling the truth about the state that it is in now, and what we expect for the future."

Ward said a big problem was the lack of centralized oversight of the construction. "There is no command and control structure to efficiently manage the myriad of entities involved in the rebuilding process, further complicating the enormously complex construction logistics on the site."

He proposed to oversee construction with a steering committee composed of state agencies, developer Larry Silverstein and City Hall.

"It is very difficult to forecast in such a complex development project any kind of realistic date and cost," Mayor Bloomberg said.

"The cost of steel and cement and labor has gone up faster than anybody had anticipated, and I think the realities of trying to build multilevel, multiagency projects at the same time is daunting."

Paterson appointed Ward to run the Port Authority in the spring. Ward said he was optimistic Ground Zero would be rebuilt.

"The question surrounding the World Trade Center rebuilding is not an 'if' all of the projects will be built, rather [it's] a when and for how much," he said.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/06/30/2008-06-30_port_authority_forget_about_911_memorial.html

[al-Canine]

THE SEVEN BLUNDERS OF GROUND ZERO

By TOM TOPOUSIS | New York Post | July 6, 2008

Problems? They have a few. Here are seven factors that led the Port Authority last week to scrap its timetable for rebuilding Ground Zero - and that may explain why, by 2011, a decade after 9/11, the site could still be a hole in the ground:

1 The design competition: The Lower Manhattan Development Corp.'s first World Trade Center design competition, with six plans culled from thousands of submissions, was a failure, forcing it to start the process all over again.

Not until Feb. 26, 2003, did the agency finally select Daniel Libeskind's plan. The delays in picking a plan added as much as a year to getting the project started.

2 Unrealistic architecture: The Freedom Tower, rising to 1,776 feet, turned out to be one of the most vexing architectural elements of the plan, with more than two years elapsing between its initial design and a final plan.

Designed by Libeskind, and later a collaboration with architect David Childs, the tower - with its off-center spire, rooftop gardens and wind turbines - proved too difficult to build.

By June 2005, prompted by NYPD concerns over security, the entire design was replaced.

Despite the laying of a cornerstone on July 4, 2004, construction of the tower didn't begin until April 2006. Its completion date was last set at 2012.

3 Bickering over the memorial: Once the decision was made on how much space at the WTC would be devoted to a memorial, and following an intense design competition won by architect Michael Arad, costs for the project skyrocketed to $1 billion.

Outraged by the cost overruns, Mayor Bloomberg intervened, and a massive overhaul of the memorial was ordered by Gov. George Pataki to slash the cost to about $510 million.

4 The Silverstein vs. Bloomberg feud: In early 2006, with barely any progress made, open warfare erupted between Ground Zero developer Larry Silverstein and Mayor Bloomberg, who accused Silverstein of being unable to complete the rebuilding.

The feud led to bitter and protracted negotiations, which ultimately shifted principal control of the project back to the WTC's owner, the PA.

Silverstein agreed to retain control of three office towers, while sharing some of his insurance proceeds with the PA.

5 A flawed hub: Designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, the wing-like train station ran into serious trouble last year when the PA announced that the project could exceed its $2.2 billion estimate by more than $1 billion.

Engineers have been working to cut costs, but the delays have affected almost all the other WTC projects.

6 Insurance settlements: Despite court decisions ordering them to pay $4.6 billion to Silverstein, who was the leaseholder on the site, the major insurance carriers dragged their feet for years.

Not until May 2007, following pressure from Gov. Eliot Spitzer, did the insurers finally pay up.

7 Unfinished search for bodies: After the WTC-site cleanup was declared complete in May 2002, construction crews began turning up large quantities of human remains as rebuilding work began in earnest in 2006.

The discovery of remains so long after the cleanup was done slowed rebuilding for months.


http://www.nypost.com/seven/07062008/news/regionalnews/the_seven_blunders_of_ground_zero_118727.htm

[al-Canine]

Ex-Port Authority Chief Sees Possible Ground Zero Crimes

By PETER KIEFER, Staff Reporter of the Sun | July 8, 2008

The construction delays and cost overruns at ground zero may have constituted fraud or other crimes, according to a former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, George Marlin, who is seeking a federal investigation into the redevelopment of the site.

Mr. Marlin said yesterday that the Port Authority may have misled investors about the costs and schedules for the five towers, the memorial, the performing arts center, and the PATH transit station.

He said he plans to ask the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Michael Garcia, to open an investigation into whether there was any criminal wrongdoing.

"We need to determine whether there was waste, fraud, abuse, or any wrongdoing that might be called criminal. Things were said that were blatantly not true," Mr. Marlin said in an interview yesterday. "I think it's time for some outside, independent investigators to get to the truth of why this mess had occurred, and whether there was any wrongdoing."

He said the Port Authority may have breached its fiduciary duty to bondholders by providing misleading statements and misrepresenting the financial state of the bistate agency, which owns the 16-acre site.

A spokesman for the Port Authority, Steve Coleman, declined to comment.

The current executive director of the Port Authority, Christopher Ward, last week said the previous schedules for completion dates were "unrealistic." Mr. Ward will be presenting Governor Paterson with a more detailed scheduling and budget assessment by the end of September. Cost overruns at the site are expected to be in the billions of dollars.

A source with knowledge of the bond financing for the $15 billion World Trade Center redevelopment said he could not imagine that there was any criminal wrongdoing on the part of the Port Authority.

"What would be the benefit for them? They really tried to hit these deadlines, so we are talking more about ineptitude," the source said.

Mr. Marlin was appointed executive director of the Port Authority by Governor Pataki and served in that capacity between 1995 and 1997.

He has since become a frequent critic of the Port Authority.

http://www.nysun.com/new-york/ex-port-authority-chief-sees-possible-ground-zero/81404/