Sen. Clinton to Stop Bush EPA Nominee

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday she would block President Bush’s choice for a top environmental post, ratcheting up pressure on the White House to answer questions on whether New Yorkers were misled on health risks after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The New York Democrat targeted Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, whom Bush tapped last month to take the helm of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Clinton said she would place a hold on the nomination, a procedural move that would prevent the full Senate from voting on his confirmation though it does not stop committee hearings.

“This is an effort to get the administration that he wants to join to take responsibility,” she said.

Clinton said she would lift the hold only if the White House answered her concerns about the EPA report. “This is a very big issue,” she told a gathering marking the 100th anniversary of the Teamsters union. “It not only has to do with the health and safety of the people I represent. It has to do with the credibility and trust of this entire government.”

“It’s unfortunate that Sen. Clinton would seek to politicize such a qualified nominee as Gov. Leavitt,” White House spokesman Taylor Gross said Saturday. The report, issued by the EPA’s inspector general Aug. 22, said the agency gave New Yorkers misleading assurances that there was no air-quality risk after the Sept. 11 attack that spread debris, smoke and dust across Lower Manhattan.

The White House “convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones” by having the National Security Council control EPA communications after the attack, said the report by EPA Inspector General Nikki L. Tinsley.

Seven days after the attack, the EPA announced that the air near ground zero was safe to breathe, but the agency did not have enough information to make such a guarantee, the report found.

“When they would say, ‘Oh, no, the air is safe,’ there was a great sigh of relief,” Clinton said. “But we know that many of the ground zero workers and volunteers are suffering from the World Trade Center cough, from asthma, from pulmonary respiratory distress.”

Acting EPA Administrator Marianne L. Horinko has said the agency put out “the best information we had, based on just the best data that we had available at the time.”