Hillary Clinton grapples with pre- and post-9/11 failures

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Brian Lehrer (1:01)

From WNYC, I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my Daily Politics Podcast. It's Friday, September 11th.

Joining us now is former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was in her first year as Senator from New York on September 11, 2001 She has an article in The Atlantic now called What the Aftermath of 9-11 Taught Me, which is very much about the government hiding the extent of the toxicity of the air near the Trade Center, which of course has been so in the news this week with Mayor Mamdani's release of thousands of city documents about that. Secretary Clinton, we always appreciate that you come on with us from time to time. Thank you for some time on this of all days. Welcome back to WNYC.

Hillary Clinton (1:47)

Well, Brian, it's really wonderful to be back, and I can't thank you enough for your continuing efforts to keep all of us informed about what's going on in our world, from the city to the entire globe. It's great.

Brian Lehrer (2:03)

You're very kind. You recall in the article, a Senate hearing that you held in lower Manhattan five months after the attack. Maybe that's a good point of history to start with. Why a hearing at that place at that time?

Hillary Clinton (2:19)

Well, I was down at ground zero with Senator Schumer, then Governor Pataki, then Mayor Giuliani the day after. And I could literally see the thickness of the air, the soot, the blackness.

And I could feel it in my throat. I could smell it. And every time I went back down and I did that very regularly in the days and weeks, followed, it just was clear to me that we were breathing air that wasn't safe. And every question that I asked, and my focus was on the federal government, and particularly the EPA was pretty much deflected. And we kept getting assurances from the Bush administration, primarily through the EPA, that the air was fine. And I was talking to other experts who were doing their own analysis and readings of what was in the air.

And I really believed we needed to start establishing a record, a historic record, an evidentiary base on which to make the argument about what needed to be done with the air. And so I went to the committee that I was serving on, it was called the Environment and Public Works Committee, and asked them to please hold a hearing. And a Democratic Senator, Joe Lieberman from Connecticut, and a Republican Senator, Senator Voinovich from Ohio, agreed to come to lower Manhattan. And we heard from the official physician of the fire department, Dr. Kelly, we heard from occupational health experts, primarily from Mount Sinai, we heard from residents like Liz Berger, with whom I start the article. And they were all telling a very different story than what we were hearing. Now we know that the city also had information they weren't sharing, but at the time, I was focused on what the federal government wasn't telling us. And it became really frustrating, and a number of my colleagues and I, and then in the Congress, including not only Senator Schumer, but Carolyn Maloney and Jerry Nadler and Peter King, we began to introduce legislation to begin testing, particularly the first responders, to find out what was going on with them, what was called the World Trade Center Cough that so many of them had, for example.

Brian Lehrer (4:49)

One paragraph in your article goes like this. I'll read it for our listeners. The EPA continued to be unhelpful and at times untruthful. The full extent of the deception did not emerge until August 2003

An investigation by the EPA's inspector general found that in the aftermath of the attacks, White House officials instructed the agency to reassure New Yorkers that the air was safe to breathe even though deadly contaminants such as asbestos and lead were present. The agency, quote, did not have sufficient data and analyses, unquote, to back up its statements. The report said, noting that competing considerations, and I find this part, Secretary, very interesting. Competing considerations such as reopening Wall Street played a role in their deception. So I guess my question is, looking back, how much sympathy do you have, or maybe not any, for what might have been the competing public goods that the White House and EPA and the city of New York were grappling with, getting the city back on its feet again versus the imperative of transparency about risks to people's health?