News Release Archive - 2003

JAMES PAUL
Paul is executive director of the Global Policy Forum, which monitors policy-making at the UN.
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PHYLLIS BENNIS
A fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, Bennis is author of the book Before and After: U.S. Foreign Policy and the September 11th Crisis and the recent article “Back to the UN.” She said today: “Still committed to its war drive in Iraq, Washington stands more isolated than ever. Its trade aims were defeated at the World Trade Organization in Cancun. It faces international outrage following its veto of the mildly worded Security Council resolution challenging Israel’s threat to expel or assassinate Yasir Arafat. In response, the General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution virtually identical to what Washington vetoed in the Council….”
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JACQUELINE CABASSO
Cabasso is executive director of the Western States Legal Foundation. She can address weapons proliferation issues raised by Bush.
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DENIS HALLIDAY
Former head of the UN oil-for-food program in Iraq and assistant secretary general of the UN, Halliday said today: “Nuclear proliferation? Does Bush not understand that his military aggression, disregard for the rule of international law and the UN, plus his concept of ‘pre-emptive’ strike is the very cause of proliferation, as countries openly threatened by Washington determine that nuclear capacity is the only defense against American madness?”
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FRANCIS BOYLE
Professor of international law at the University of Illinois and author of the forthcoming Destroying World Order, Boyle said today: “A real and independent UN Peacekeeping Force should be deployed to Iraq under the auspices of the UN General Assembly (not the U.S. co-opted UN Security Council), pursuant to its powers under the Uniting for Peace Resolution (1950)…. This is exactly what happened in the 1956 Middle East ‘war’ when the UN General Assembly deployed the UN Emergency Force to the Sinai in order to facilitate the withdrawal of aggressor military forces by the U.K., France and Israel….”
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STEPHEN ZUNES
After Bush’s address to the UN last fall, Zunes wrote the article “Bush’s UN Speech Unconvincing.” In his address last year, Bush made a series of claims, including, “Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon.” Zunes is professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and author of the forthcoming”We Don’t Need No Stinking Badges: The United States, the United Nations and the Middle East.
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PAUL DAVIS
A representative of the Health GAP coalition, Davis said: “Bush worked hard this month to underfund his own half-step of an AIDS program.” Colleagues of Davis are now in Nairobi at an AIDS conference.
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

PETER HART
Hart, who works with the media watch group FAIR, said today: “A review of his statements before, during and after the war reveals that Clark has taken a range of positions — from expressing doubts about diplomatic and military strategies early on, to celebrating the U.S. ‘victory.'”
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ZOLTAN GROSSMAN
Grossman is assistant professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire and author of the recent article “Was Gen. Clark Also ‘Unprepared’ for the Postwar?” He said today: “Clark waged a war against Yugoslavia that had similarly shaky motives and consequences as the Iraq invasion. Clark has whitewashed the 1999 Kosovo war as a ‘humanitarian’ campaign to rescue Albanians from ‘ethnic cleansing,’ even though it actually helped fuel the forced expulsions. NATO bombed Serbian cities, even though Serbian democrats objected that the bombing undermined their ultimate victory over President Milosevic. Clark claims that the NATO occupation brought ‘peace’ to Kosovo, but he did not lift a finger to stop the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Serbs, Gypsies and Jews that took place on his watch.”
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KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL
Editor of The Nation magazine, Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote in a recent piece: “It’s worth looking back at a forgotten chapter in [Clark’s] military biography that occurred when Clark was Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and Commander In Chief for the U.S. European Command. Call it Clark’s ‘High Noon’ showdown. It’s an incident that deserves scrutiny because Clark’s claim to be an experienced leader in national security matters is tied, in significant part, to his record in the Balkans….”
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CHRIS TOENSING,
CATHERINE COOK
Toensing and Cook are with the Middle East Research and Information Project based in Washington. They said today: “Neither Israel nor the U.S. has any right to dictate to the Palestinians who their leader will be. That the U.S. vetoed the UN resolution criticizing Israel’s decision to ‘remove’ Arafat is not surprising, given its history of vetoing resolutions critical of Israel. However, to do so while espousing the rhetoric of building democracy in the Middle East is yet another sign … of the double-standards in U.S. foreign policy.”
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STEPHEN ZUNES
Associate professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism, Zunes said today: “Over the past three decades, the United States has used its veto power far more than all other Security Council members combined…. The entire House Democratic leadership has taken the unprecedented step of publicly attacking the ‘front-runner’ for its party’s presidential nomination [Howard Dean] — even though he has openly declared that he agrees more with AIPAC than Americans for Peace Now — simply because he suggested that the U.S. should be more even-handed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

President Bush is visiting the Detroit Edison coal-burning power plant in Monroe, Mich., this afternoon to promote his air pollution plan called the “Clear Skies Initiative.” [See: abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20030915_1081.html] The administration is being criticized by public health, environmental, labor and public interest leaders for recent EPA changes to the Clean Air Act. Among those available for interviews are the following:

MEGAN OWENS
Field director of the Public Interest Research Group in Michigan, Owens said today: “The government’s own data show that nearly 300 people a year will die prematurely from this plant’s pollution alone, and thousands will suffer asthma attacks, hospital visits, and lost work days…. This visit comes only days after the administration rolled back an important provision in the Clean Air Act called New Source Review. This rollback not only will allow power plants like the one in Monroe to escape cleaning up, but also would allow them to pollute even more.”
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VICKI LEVENGOOD
Michigan representative of the National Environmental Trust, Levengood said today: “It’s ironic that the president would choose the plant that pumps out more pollution than any other in the state to sell his ‘Clear Skies’ plan…. According to EPA’s own analysis of the president’s Clear Skies plan, the Monroe plant will not reduce its emissions of sulfur dioxide. In 2001, the plant emitted 102,700 tons of sulfur dioxide. EPA’s own analysis of the president’s plan indicates that the Monroe plant will continue to emit 102,700 tons of soot upon full implementation. By contrast, EPA data show that under faithful implementation of the Clean Air Act, Monroe’s emissions of sulfur dioxide in 2020 would be only 10,000 tons — a 90 percent reduction in emissions.”
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TOM JOSEPH
Business manager for the Plumbers and Steamfitters union in Toledo, Ohio — which is 14 miles away from Monroe, Mich. — Joseph said today: “Workers upgraded two of the units at the plant so that they would be cleaner, but then the administration came in and let the plant off the hook so they didn’t have to upgrade and clean up the other two units. That laid off almost 900 workers and gives us dirtier air.”

Dr. KENNETH ROSENMAN
Professor of Medicine, board certified in Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Michigan State University, Rosenman has examined the issues regarding the Monroe plant. He said today: “The new EPA regulations the Bush administration has issued will make our air dirtier and cause an increase in disease and death in Michigan. We know that air pollution causes increased disease and death and these new regulations will reduce the progress in cleaning up the air. They will increase emergency room visits, days lost from school and work, hospitalizations and death in comparison to the EPA continuing on its current course.”

KAY DOERR
Chair of the board of the American Lung Association of Michigan, Doerr said today: “This will mean an increase in lung cancer, asthma, emphysema. What people might save in their electric bills, they will end up spending in their health bills, besides the human suffering.”
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TYSON SLOCUM
Research director for Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program, Slocum said today: “Bush has prioritized giving billions away to an industry [coal] dedicated to polluting Americans’ air. And no one benefits more than energy companies like DTE (parent company of Detroit Edison), which gave $122,000 to Bush and congressional Republicans since 1999…. Bush’s ‘Coal Research Initiative’ will have spent $900 million (from 2002-04) on even more subsidies to the coal industry for coal technologies that are neither ‘new’ nor ‘clean.'”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

ADAM SHAPIRO
Shapiro is an activist and organizer with the International Solidarity Movement based in Washington, D.C. In March, 2002 he entered Yasser Arafat’s presidential compound escorting an ambulance during the Israeli siege of Ramallah and ended up trapped inside under attack with President Arafat and over 300 men by Israeli forces. Shapiro spent the first two years of the current Intifada working with Palestinians using nonviolent resistance to the occupation. Shapiro, who is Jewish, is now barred from entering Israel or the occupied territories. During the month of July, Shapiro was in occupied Iraq working on a documentary.
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WTO in Cancun

The World Trade Organization meetings, continuing the “Doha round,” are proceeding in Cancun, Mexico. On Wednesday, demonstrators disrupted the opening ceremony, and Korean farmer Lee Kyung-Hae committed suicide on the barricades that kept the public out of the WTO meeting site. Large protests are planned for Saturday; the meetings are scheduled to end Sunday night. Information about continuing events in Cancun is available at: www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/cancun.

ANGELA STACH
Originally from Germany, Stach is a media coordinator for Via Campesina, the international group of peasants and farmer organizations which is organizing marches and forums in Cancun. The group issued a statement: “While those inside were discussing the elimination of so-called trade barriers, enormous barriers were being raised to silence the voices of the people affected by policies the WTO has adopted. Our hearts mourn the death of our fellow farmer, Lee Kyung-Hae, who in an act of desperation ended his own life. This act … proves even more that the WTO means death, sorrow, and impotence. One more time we flatly and emphatically demand that the WTO take the Agricultural Agreement out of its agenda….”
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SOREN AMBROSE
JOHN BELL
A senior policy analyst with 50 Years Is Enough, Ambrose is attending the WTO meetings in Cancun. He is in constant contact with analysts and activists from around the world gathering there. Accompanying Ambrose is Bell, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, currently with ACT-UP Philadelphia, who is protesting WTO and U.S. government policies that restrict access to AIDS drugs.
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IRUNGU HOUGHTON
SAM BARRATT
Pan Africa policy advisor for Oxfam International, Houghton is based in his home country of Kenya. Currently in Cancun, he said today: “Two days into the negotiations, developing countries have reduced the traditional U.S.-E.U. axis to a series of early confrontations around the effects of northern subsidies and tariffs on poor people’s livelihoods…” Barratt is Oxfam International’s spokesperson.
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ROBIN HAHNEL
Hahnel is professor of economics at American University and author of Panic Rules! Everything You Need to Know About the Global Economy and The ABCs of Political Economy. He said today: “The first problem is that while the WTO claims to be only about promoting mutually beneficial trade, it is more about compelling Third World countries to agree to enforce international copyrights like drug patents and to promise not to treat international investors in their economies any differently than domestic producers — or else be excluded from world trade altogether. The second problem is the WTO has been much more successful at forcing Third World countries to lower their tariffs than forcing First World countries to lower their tariffs. The third problem is that even if all tariffs and subsidies were eliminated in all countries, contrary to popular opinion this would not create a level playing field since free trade at free market prices systematically distributes the lion’s share of the global efficiency gain from specialization and trade to the more advanced economies, thereby widening the gap between the haves and the havenots.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

On Sept. 11, 1973, a U.S.-backed coup brought down the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile. The coup began a repressive dictatorship under Gen. Augusto Pinochet that lasted until the end of the 1980s.

The following Chileans, living in Northern California, are available for interviews:

HECTOR SALGADO
A few days after the military coup 30 years ago, Salgado — then a high school student in Chile — was abducted by the secret police for three months. After that, Salgado spent three years imprisoned in the concentration camp of Isla Quiriquina in the south of Chile. Today, Salgado is a teacher and a musician. He is currently working on a documentary and a book about his experiences as a political prisoner.
“According to a recent survey in 49 cities all over Chile, 67.5 percent of Chileans aren’t interested in remembering or knowing more about the military coup of 1973,” Salgado said today. “This is important because it is representative of a generation with no memory. It is the sad legacy of 17 years of dictatorship and 13 years of a never-ending transition-to-democracy period, negotiated among the political elite. For me it is very important to remember our recent history — so we do not repeat horrible mistakes and because there is still no justice for the abuses against human rights from those dark years.”

FERNANDO TORRES
Torres was a political prisoner in 1975-76 in the northern Chilean city of Antofagasta. After being abducted by the secret political police, Torres was secretly transferred to the concentration camp of Tres Alamos in Santiago. Torres is currently a freelance journalist and a longtime member of the staff at the La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley, Calif.

“Both Sept. 11s are connected by the many failures of U.S. foreign policy,” Torres said today. “After calling us ‘irresponsible people’ because we elected the socialist Salvador Allende, Henry Kissinger supported and financed the coup that killed thousands of people. He is our own Bin Laden.”

CLAUDIO DURAN
Duran, who is also known as Quique Cruz, was captured by Gen. Pinochet’s secret political police in 1975. After having been “disappeared” for two months in the torture center Villa Grimaldi, Duran was sent to Santiago’s concentration camps Tres Alamos and Puchuncavi. Duran is an author and musician and a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University.

“Let’s put aside the political amnesia for a while and read the reports from the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee,” Duran said today. “Nixon and Kissinger are responsible for terror in our society. They plotted and gave a lot of U.S. taxpayer money to the Chilean terrorists who air-raided and bombed many buildings in September 1973.”

LICHI FUENTES
Fuentes is a Chilean singer who as a student at the Universidad de Chile Conservatory of Music participated in many student public and clandestine events against the military dictatorship during the late 1970s. She left Chile in 1980 and since then has participated as a musician in the U.S.-based Chilean solidarity movement. She is currently finishing her first solo CD recording, “Quien Soy.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

MEG BARTLETT
Bartlett is founder of the group Ground Zero for Peace — First Responders Against War. As an emergency medical technician, she responded to 9/11. She said today: “We do not want our experiences to propagate further violence. No one should have to see what I’ve seen. But people around the world have seen it for years. If our job is to protect life, it doesn’t make sense for us to support violence against anyone. The inside of a body looks the same no matter what continent it’s found on. We’ve begun a letter-writing campaign with people who do the same work in Kosovo, Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories and Afghanistan.”

FEKKAK MAMDOUH
Mamdouh was the primary shop steward for Windows on the World, the restaurant atop the World Trade Center. He knew most of the 73 workers there who were killed on 9/11. He is co-founder of Roc-NY (Restaurants Opportunities Center), which is organizing displaced workers to open co-op restaurants in New York.
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Administration Deceptions, Then and Now

[Donald Rumsfeld spoke Wednesday afternoon at the National Press Club. The New York Times reported (Sept. 27, 2002) that Rumsfeld claimed “American intelligence had ‘bulletproof’ evidence of links between Al Qaeda and the government of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld said that recently declassified intelligence reports about suspected ties between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government … were ‘factual’ and ‘exactly accurate.'” On March 30, 2003, interviewed on ABC Television, Rumsfeld said about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: “We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad.” See: http://traprockpeace.org/nytimes092702rumsfeld.html and www.dod.gov/news/Mar2003/t03302003_t0330sdabcsteph.html]

SHELDON RAMPTON, JOHN STAUBER, [via Kelly Groves]
Rampton and Stauber authored Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq. They said today: “Based largely on the administration’s insinuations, a majority of Americans still mistakenly believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. [See: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32862-2003Sep5.html] This is a lie, and a dangerous lie. The Bush administration has hijacked the war on terror and turned it into a war on Iraq.”
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ROBERT JENSEN
RAHUL MAHAJAN
Jensen and Mahajan wrote a piece that appeared yesterday in the Philadelphia Inquirer, titled “When Will Voters Finally Get Wise to the Shell Game?” They said today: “When the weapons-of-mass-destruction rationale for the invasion was exposed as a lie, the focus moved to the liberation of Iraq. As that soured and resistance to the occupation grew, the president shifted to talk about terrorism in Iraq without even bothering to attempt to explain past lies and distortions.” Jensen is the author of the forthcoming Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity. Rahul Mahajan is the author of Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond.
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STEPHEN ZUNES,
Professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism, Zunes wrote the recent article “The War in Iraq is Not Over and Neither Are the Lies to Justify It.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

JOEL KUPFERMAN
Kupferman is the executive director of the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project. He said today: “On September 19, 2001, one day after the EPA declared that the ‘air was safe to breathe,’ we took samples in lower Manhattan and sent them to two respected labs — the results came back with alarmingly high levels of toxins such as asbestos and fiberglass. We filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the EPA, resulting in 800 pages of raw data which revealed that — in spite of their assurances to the contrary — EPA, OSHA and the various other health and environmental agencies knew of the dangers present at Ground Zero and beyond, on the ground and in the air.” Kupferman said the documents showed that:

* “Analyses prepared for the EPA by scientists were held back from publication, though their findings were highly relevant to health care providers trying to diagnose and treat those with acute symptoms, to say nothing of the public at large, which deserved to know its own risks.”

* “High concentrations of dangerous contaminants remained even three weeks after the towers collapsed — after, at EPA’s urging, people were back in the area, living and working full-time.”

* “In the three weeks following September 11, the agency was testing the ambient air but not releasing the results, and it was not testing settled dust with the highest-scrutiny techniques available — choosing, instead, cheaper and non-aggressive techniques that, predictably, yielded lower results. Nor was it testing air inside offices or apartments near Ground Zero, where people were told it was safe to return within three days of the disaster.”

* “EPA also failed to reveal that, for its own headquarters cleanup, it used a particular type of high-sensitivity sampling method, called micro-vacuum. EPA then took a position that micro-vac testing was unnecessary for schools and residences in lower Manhattan. EPA cleaned up its own headquarters using professional abatement methods while directing residents to follow the city’s Department of Health instructions which recommended using ‘a wet rag or wet mop.’ EPA also actively discounted results obtained when the micro-vac was used independently in the neighborhood.”

Kupferman added: “In April 2002, the Uniformed Firefighters Association, concerned about members’ exposure, asked my organization to conduct testing on fire engines; our testing showed up to 5 percent chrysotile asbestos, five times the level at which the law requires immediate de-contamination, on vehicles that had already been ‘decontaminated’ by a city contractor.”

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TOM BRAZAITIS
Brazaitis, formerly a Cleveland Plain Dealer senior editor, wrote an August 31 column titled “Promises Turn to Toxic Dust.” He said today: “A report released by the Office of the Inspector General of the EPA … [states that] ‘the White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones….’ The National Security Council operatives played a similar role in an earlier scandal involving the false assertion … that Saddam Hussein had tried to acquire uranium in Africa for weapons of mass destruction.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 332-5055 or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

DAVID POTORTI
Potorti is the primary author of the new book September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows: Turning Our Grief into Action for Peace. His brother was killed in the World Trade Center. He said today: “With the worst kind of cynicism, George W. Bush continues the hallucinatory link of Iraq to the deaths of our loved ones on Sept. 11…. Calling the invasion of Iraq ‘one of the swiftest and most humane military campaigns in history’ is not just a lie, but a damned lie. Between 6,000 and 10,000 civilians have been killed — two to three times the number who died on 9/11. To deny the reality of these deaths is not only dishonest to the innocent people of Iraq, but to the Americans in whose name we are waging the ‘war on terror.'” This week about 25 members of the Peaceful Tomorrows organization, including Potorti, are in New York City, where they will participate in a series of events.
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RITA LASAR
Also a member of Peaceful Tomorrows, Lasar lost her brother at the World Trade Center. She is available for a limited number of interviews. She said today: “Bush says he’s doing this to avenge the victims of 9/11 and to make us safer. But with the course he is taking us on, children are not yet born who will be fighting over this. This isn’t about keeping us safe, but because he wants to keep himself and his cronies rich.”

NANCY LESSIN, CANDANCE ROBISON
Members of Military Families Speak Out, both Lessin and Robison are in Washington, D.C., and will speak at a congressional briefing Tuesday afternoon. With several other military families, they watched Bush’s speech last night together.
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WILLIAM HARTUNG
FRIDA BERRIGAN
Hartung is director of the World Policy Institute’s Arms Trade Resource Center; Berrigan is senior researcher with the group. They said today: “Former White House economic advisor Lawrence Lindsay was ridiculed for estimating a year ago that the invasion would end up costing $200 billion. It now looks like it will exceed that. Contrary to the impression given by Bush, the bulk of the $87 billion will go to military-related activities, much of which will profit companies close to his administration.”
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NORMAN SOLOMON
Executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, Solomon is co-author of Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t Tell You. He wrote in an essay published on Sunday by the San Francisco Chronicle: “In a cauldron of media alchemy, the human suffering of Sept. 11 became propaganda gold. Sorrow turned into political capital.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020,; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Two senior specialists with the federal Environmental Protection Agency commented Thursday on emerging information about the White House role in early press releases from the EPA about potential health hazards in lower Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks.

The comments, by Cate Jenkins and Hugh Kaufman, were released by the Institute for Public Accuracy on Sept. 4, a day after an NBC News interview with Nikki Tinsley, the Inspector General for the Environmental Protection Agency. During the NBC interview, in response to a question about whether an EPA news release soon after 9/11 was misleading, Tinsley said: “It was surely not telling all of the truth.” [See: www.msnbc.com/news/961109.asp]

The EPA Inspector General recently issued a report which found that “when the EPA made a September 18 [2001] announcement that the air was ‘safe’ to breathe, it did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement.” The report also concluded that “the White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced … early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones.”

The following two specialists are available for a limited number of interviews. (The views of these individuals differ about motivations for EPA’s actions after 9/11.)

CATE JENKINS
Jenkins is a 22-year specialist with the EPA’s Hazardous Waste Identification Division and the author of a 432-page memo to the EPA’s Inspector General as background documentation for the recently released IG report. She said today: “The White House deleted from EPA press releases the recommendation for professional cleaning, and that resulted in people going into their homes with shovels, brooms and mops — without any protection like HEPA-respirators — to clean up the toxic dust containing asbestos, mercury, dioxin, silica, PCBs, etc. This is a similar risk to being a first responder at Ground Zero — it’s the same dust.”
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HUGH KAUFMAN
Kaufman, who has been with the EPA since its inception in 1971, was the chief investigator for the EPA Ombudsman’s office until he was removed after issuing critical reports. Kaufman sued, and the Labor Department ordered the EPA to reinstate him, determining that Kaufman “had been prohibited from performing [his Ombudsman-related duties] in reprisal for performing a ‘too effective job’ in support of the Ombudsman Program.” In 2002, EPA’s then-Administrator Christine Todd Whitman dissolved the Ombudsman’s office altogether and transferred its duties to the Inspector General. Kaufman said today: “The EPA under Administrator Whitman told us that lower Manhattan was safe and not contaminated. Based on that false information, the insurance companies saved hundreds of millions of dollars — one of those insurance companies was Citigroup, with which Mrs. Whitman’s family has substantial economic ties. Mrs. Whitman’s husband, John Whitman, used to be a Citigroup officer and is now the managing partner of Sycamore Ventures, a $550 million venture capital firm that was spun out of Citigroup but still manages a substantial amount of the company’s money…. The WTC area contains contaminants including asbestos, fine particles, lead, PCBs, dioxin, fiberglass and other hazardous materials. These chemicals have spread throughout lower Manhattan and have landed in apartments, in schools and in office buildings. The EPA itself has done tests and found contaminants and in fact used their own testing as a basis to properly clean up their own regional headquarters building, which is based in lower Manhattan…. The first responders received the major acute problems and of course we’re seeing now that over half of those first responders are sick — it is possible that a large number of them will die early because of cancer and other health effects.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

WENONAH HAUTER
TYSON SLOCUM
Hauter is director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program; Slocum is research director for the group. Hauter said today: “The House blackout hearings today and tomorrow will be nothing more than a high-wire act promoting transmission policies benefiting Enron-esque power marketers at the expense of consumers. That’s because the House proposes sticking consumers with a $100 billion tab for the construction of new transmission lines that big energy companies want but consumers don’t need. Instead of pandering to an electric industry that gave more than $40 million to Congress since 1999 (more than two-thirds to the GOP), the focus of the hearings should be on protecting consumers by re-evaluating the wisdom of deregulation. After all, deregulation is the main factor behind the blackouts. First, America’s transmission system was designed to accommodate local electricity markets, not the large, freewheeling trading of electricity and movement of power over long distances under deregulation. Sending power over a much wider area strains a transmission system designed to serve local utilities. Second, deregulation means utilities are no longer required to reinvest their profits back into the transmission system. That’s why re-investment in wires has fallen by hundreds of millions of dollars since deregulation: energy companies simply aren’t willing to invest their money where there’s no chance of making runaway profits. To make matters worse, President Bush and Tom DeLay want to eliminate the ability of citizens to have any input on the construction of new transmission lines.”
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ENVER MASUD
Masud managed the U.S. National Power Grid Study in 1980 and the National Electric Reliability Study for the U.S. Department of Energy. Since 1987 he has consulted internationally in the electric power sector. He set up and directed the Operations Review Division at the Iowa Commerce Commission which, among other things, persuaded Iowa utilities to better coordinate operations for savings of $50 million annually. He said today: “President Bush claims that the blackout was due to ‘antiquated transmission’ — a result of not having a fully competitive market. Not true — the blackout was a failure of system protection schemes. The ‘antiquated transmission’ is yet another outcome of failed utility restructuring and the promotion of ‘competition’ which provided independent power producers an opportunity for greater profits than under traditional utility regulation.”
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HARVEY WASSERMAN
Wasserman, who lives in Ohio, is author of The Last Energy War: The Battle Over Utility Deregulation. He said today: “The barons of electric power, like FirstEnergy, based here in Ohio, claimed deregulation would bring lower prices and increased reliability, but the opposite is twice true. With no one minding the store, FirstEnergy has operated the Davis-Besse nuclear plant with a hole in its head, has spent $400 million to bring it on line without ever consulting the public, and has set off the unprecedented blackout of 50 million people, all while raising rates and swallowing other utilities. When it was deregulated by the Ohio legislature … FirstEnergy took nearly $9 billion in ‘stranded cost’ subsidies from the ratepayers, allegedly to help bring about competition. Because FirstEnergy and its president, Anthony Alexander, have raised huge amounts of money for George W. Bush, they are above the law, and will not be prosecuted…”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167