Ground Zero Now a Center of Disunity

As she stood in a pelting rain, holding a picture of her dead son, Rosemary Cain was ready to block traffic and be arrested at ground zero. She and other activists who lost loved ones on Sept. 11 were protesting plans to build shops and a train station where the twin towers stood.

This was sacred ground, they insisted at last week’s demonstration, and New York Gov. George E. Pataki had broken his pledge to protect it from development. “Enough is enough,” said Cain, whose firefighter son, George, died in the collapse of the second World Trade Center tower. “Desperate people have to do desperate things, and we’ve reached that point now in New York.”

As the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks approaches, the sense of solemnity and civility that once colored New York’s approach to Sept. 11 issues is disappearing.

It has been replaced by partisan bickering and grass-roots discord over issues that would have been unthinkable a year ago, when emotions over the terrorist attacks were still raw and the grieving city’s wounds were healing.

Beyond conflicts over ground zero, there are debates over whether President Bush has kept his pledge to provide $21 billion in aid to New York, and over the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent admissions that officials misled the public about air quality in Lower Manhattan after the collapse of the towers.

There is also wrangling over the Republican Party’s decision to hold its presidential convention in New York next summer. GOP officials insist they will not politicize Sept. 11 during the festivities, which are scheduled just before the third anniversary, but activists who oppose the president contend that the party will exploit the backdrop of ground zero to boost Bush’s reelection campaign.

“The intensity of these New York debates has increased in recent months, and it’s largely a spinoff of the national debate over Iraq, which has also gotten more partisan,” said Fred Siegel, a history professor at Cooper Union College in New York. “This trend is going to continue because when it comes to 9/11, the floodgates have opened.”

None of the disputes are new, but they had been greatly muted amid citywide efforts to rally New Yorkers, and by what seemed to be an unspoken agreement among officials to tone down rhetoric on Sept. 11 issues as the city mourned.

Today, New Yorkers remain fearful of terrorism, with 86% saying another attack is possible or likely, according to a New York Daily News poll by Blum and Weprin Associates. But the mood in the city seems more relaxed, either because people are accustomed to the threat or resigned that they can do little about it, pollsters say. And as fears subside, along with the sense of a city under siege, divisiveness has returned.

The attempt by Cain’s group to shut down ground zero with an act of civil disobedience, for example, marked a departure for many family activists, whose activities have been largely confined to closed-door meetings with politicians and redevelopment officials. Although police frustrated the protest by closing the gates to the work site before demonstrators arrived, leaders promised to return to the 16-acre construction area this week with new demonstrations.

Pataki, reacting to the activists’ criticism, told reporters: “My heart goes out to the families. We’re doing everything we can to be as respectful and supportive and understanding of the families’ desires while we continue to move forward.”

At the center of the dispute is the definition of “footprint,” the term used to describe the two unmarked rectangles where the twin towers stood. Pataki has pledged not to allow development on the footprints, but current plans call for reconstruction of a New Jersey PATH train and other infrastructure six to seven stories below ground -- down to the so-called bedrock level.

Family members have said both footprints, reaching down to the bedrock, should be protected because many bodies were found in rubble deep beneath the surface of the World Trade Center. Plans to build below ground in that area were disclosed only recently.

Ground zero is a busy construction site. A new train terminal is rising in the pit, and final adjustments are being made to a blueprint -- approved earlier this year -- calling for massive new office buildings and the world’s largest tower. Later this year, officials with the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. will announce the winner of a design competition for a memorial.

Many of the plans have sparked controversy, including debates over whether emergency and rescue workers should have their own memorial. There are also concerns about whether developer Larry Silverstein, who leased the property from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, will have enough funds on hand to complete the commercial development.

Beyond ground zero, New Yorkers are debating whether Bush will honor his pledge to give the city $21.4 billion for economic recovery. The White House insists it will keep the promise, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, among a host of local, state and federal GOP officials, believes the administration has been good to its word.

Last week, however, New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson released a report contending that the actual figure has been adjusted to $20.8 billion, and that some $3.7 billion is at risk of being lost because it has not been earmarked for specific projects. The shortfall, he said, was “disappointing to all New Yorkers” and had become “a moral issue. America and the president said they would stand with us in our time of need. Now we’re saying we need to make sure we utilize every dollar.”

In a separate letter to Bush, Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Gifford Miller, the Democratic speaker of the New York City Council, suggested that New York City would receive at least $2 billion less than the president had originally promised.

The White House responded quickly -- and bluntly -- to the attacks: “The president made a $20-billion commitment to the people of New York and he has kept that commitment,” said spokesman Ken Lisaius. “Period. Case closed.”

There has been even greater acrimony over recent EPA admissions that officials gave misleading assurances to the public that the air in Lower Manhattan was safe to breathe after the attacks. These assurances were made before the agency had data to back up such claims, and White House officials with the Council on Environmental Quality removed cautionary statements from several EPA news releases, according to an internal study by the agency released last month.

Democratic officials have reacted angrily. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) sent a letter to Bush saying that the reports of White House efforts to tone down environmental warnings, if true, were “galling and beyond comprehension.” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), a longtime EPA critic, told reporters that the action showed “a reckless disregard for human life.” Presidential candidate Howard Dean and others have called for congressional hearings on the issue.

White House spokesmen have referred all comments to the EPA, which has defended its actions. Marianne Lamont Horinko, the acting administrator, said the agency did the best it could under chaotic circumstances in the days after the terrorist attacks.

“The agency was confronted with environmental contamination never seen before and ever-changing and ever-growing data,” she wrote in an op-ed piece for the Daily News. The charges made by Democratic officials show “the depth of cynicism to which [critics] have sunk, to charge this administration and this agency with deliberately lying to the people of New York about the health risks,” Horinko wrote.

There is similar indignation over charges that the White House will attempt to exploit the imagery and memories of Sept. 11 during the 2004 Republican convention in New York. Kieran Mahoney, a veteran GOP consultant in New York, said Republicans will tread carefully to respect the site and steer clear of opportunism.

“Nobody wants to politicize these events,” he said. “But on the other hand, combating terrorism is one of this president’s finest achievements, and it is probably the central question for the next leader of the United States. You can’t avoid it.”

Indeed, when New York City pitched the Republican National Committee to hold its convention here, Bloomberg led a delegation that stressed Bush’s links to ground zero as a selling point: “It was here in New York, with bullhorn in hand, that our president summoned the nation to defend freedom and defeat terrorism,” the mayor said.

Bloomberg has principally stressed the local economic benefits of bringing the Republican convention to New York, and notes that he wooed Democrats just as aggressively. But that hasn’t stopped ground zero activists from questioning GOP motives and vowing to protest against the convention when it comes to town.

“I’m worried that my brother’s death is being exploited for political purposes,” said Andrew Rice, a member of September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. “We are calling on all political leaders to respect the anniversary as a day of mourning and reflection, not a backdrop for their campaigns.”

Siegel, the Cooper Union professor, predicts Republicans and Democrats will be squabbling more in the months to come as the presidential campaign heats up and ground zero protests unfold.

“If you think about it, the Republicans would have probably been criticized if they didn’t bring their convention here, just as they’re being criticized for coming to New York City,” Siegel said. “The whole 9/11 issue here is becoming a political football.”