EPA softened Sept. 11 statements, report finds

By John Heilprin, Associated Press, 8/23/2003

WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency's internal watchdog says that White House officials pressured the agency to prematurely assure the public that the air was safe to breathe a week after the World Trade Center collapse.

The agency's initial statements in the days following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were not supported by proper air quality monitoring data and analysis, the EPA's inspector general, Nikki L. Tinsley, said in a 155-page report released late Thursday.

The report said an e-mail sent just one day after the attacks, from then-EPA deputy administrator Linda Fisher's chief of staff to senior EPA officials, said that "all statements to the media should be cleared" first by the National Security Council. President Bush is chairman of the NSC, which serves as his main forum for discussing national security and foreign policy matters with his senior aides and Cabinet members.

Approval from the NSC was arranged through an official with the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the report said. That council, which coordinates federal environmental efforts, in turn "convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones," the inspector general found.

For example, the report found, the EPA was convinced to omit from its early public statements guidance for cleaning indoor spaces and tips on potential health effects from airborne dust containing asbestos, lead, glass fibers, and concrete.

James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a telephone interview today that the EPA did "an incredible job" with the World Trade Center cleanup.

"The White House was involved in making sure that we were getting the most accurate information that was real, on a wide range of activities," he said. "That included the NSC. This was a major terrorist incident."

The White House directed the EPA to add and delete information, Connaughton said, based on whether it should be released through press statements, online, or by other means.

"In the back-and-forth during that very intense period of time, we were making decisions about . . . what the best way to communicate the information was, so that . . . people had a good relative sense of potential risk," he said. The inspector general recommends the EPA adopt new procedures, so that its public statements on health risks and environmental quality are supported by data and analysis. Other recommendations include developing better indoor air cleanups and ways of handling asbestos in large-scale disasters.