The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 216

How is it that the New York Times arrives at asking questions about the backstory on Cesar Borja weeks after his plight first came to light courtesy of the New York Daily News? Borja died on the same day his son was attending the State of the Union Address in Washington, D.C. as a guest of Sen. Hillary Clinton who wanted to spotlight the medical issues of 9/11 responders.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote to President Bush seeking more federal money to care for the workers and citing Officer Borja’s months of “16-hour shifts” at the disaster site. The priest at his funeral in Queens pointed out that Officer Borja had worked as a volunteer in the recovery and cleanup efforts.

It was a powerful story, one that brought the officer’s eloquent son to the State of the Union address in Washington on Jan. 23, the day of his father’s death. The son later met with President Bush, and afterward Mr. Bush, in discussing more aid for rescue workers, said he was eager to see money directed to “first responders,” those first on the scene in the days and weeks after the attacks. “If they were on that pile and if they were first responders, they need to get help,” he said.

It turns out, though, that very few of the most dramatic aspects of Officer Borja’s powerful story appear to be fully accurate. Government records and detailed interviews with Officer Borja’s family indicate that he did not rush to the disaster site, and that he did not work a formal shift there until late December 2001, after substantial parts of the site had been cleared and the fire in the remaining pile had been declared out.

Officer Borja worked traffic and security posts on the streets around the site, according to his own memo book, and there is no record of his working 16 hours in a shift. He worked a total of 17 days, according to his records, and did not work as a volunteer there. He signed up for the traffic duty, his wife said, at least in part as a way to increase his overtime earnings as he prepared to retire.

“It’s not true,” Eva R. Borja, the officer’s wife, said of the Daily News account of his rushing there shortly after the collapse of the trade center. In two extensive interviews, Mrs. Borja displayed her husband’s memo book, where he kept detailed notes about his work across his career. The first entry for working at ground zero is Dec. 24, 2001. Almost all the rest come in February, March and April 2002, five or more months after the attacks.

Mrs. Borja said she still believed her husband was sickened in his work around the site. Shown his father’s memo book, Ceasar Borja, who had become something of a spokesman for ailing 9/11 workers, said it was the first time he understood what his father had actually done. “They kept saying my dad’s a first responder,” he said of the newspaper accounts. “I honestly never knew if he was a first responder.” Asked why he had not corrected the seemingly erroneous or unconfirmed public accounts, he said, “The reason I never tried to correct that impression is I never knew the truth of whether my father was there or not. It was always a mystery for me. I never thought of correcting them because I honestly believed it myself.”

It is hard to determine precisely how the apparent misinformation about Mr. Borja’s work at ground zero came to be reflected in newspapers, as well as in television and radio broadcasts. The family says it was not the source of the claims about working on the smoking pile. A spokeswoman for The Daily News insisted the paper had never explicitly said Officer Borja had rushed there soon after Sept. 11, only that at some point he had rushed there. Despite a number of articles and editorials that referred to him working amid the rubble and within a cloud of glass and concrete, she said the paper never actually reported his arriving there before December.

The spokeswoman, Jennifer Mauer, continued to maintain that Officer Borja had worked “200 hours on the pile.”

Other newspaper accounts repeated the account of Officer Borja’s work on the rubble without attributing it to anyone.

Very curious. There are quite a few troubling details that need to be addressed by the media and medical researchers. There are the factual details that need to be verified about Borja's condition including exposures to materials at Ground Zero. If he wasn't in the vicinity of Ground Zero during the relevant periods, then his illness may not have been due to exposure to Ground Zero materials. That's a job for the medical detectives, though the politicians, including Clinton, were quick to latch on to the story to get additional aid for Ground Zero workers. I don't put it past politicians for playing fast and loose with the facts to get more money for Ground Zero workers and it would seem that the ends justify the means here, but that shouldn't be the case.

There are real questions about ailments due to exposure at Ground Zero that need to be addressed, and tacking a controversy on Borja's background only complicates matters further.

The FDNY is providing free medication to firefighters to treat conditions related to Ground Zero work.

On the construction side of matters relating to Ground Zero, it seems that Gov. Spitzer has come around to realize that the economy is more than strong enough to support the full build out of the Freedom Tower. That's not surprising given that I've been noting the strong economic conditions in Lower Manhattan for quite some time now.

Mr. Spitzer is expected to make an announcement about the Freedom Tower before a Feb. 22 meeting of the authority, which plans to vote on $460 million in contracts for concrete and electrical and plumbing work on the building. Next month, there will be another $300 million in contracts for curtain walls, elevators and escalators.

A spokeswoman for the governor, Christine Anderson, declined to comment.

The Port Authority, however, was buoyant about both the downtown real estate market and the tower. “While we are pleased that the market conditions continue to be strong and that the building is on schedule and on budget,” said Stephen Sigmund, a spokesman for the authority, “we have not reached any final conclusions or moved to final authorization.”

The officials said that the governor’s change of heart is not an indication that corporations are suddenly lining up to lease space in the Freedom Tower, which some potential tenants fear is a possible terrorist target. Yet some authority executives say those anxieties are subsiding as the city’s economy improves.

Indeed, a state official and two senior executives at the authority say the authority has received unsolicited inquiries from hedge funds and investment banks about buying the tower, but officials have not taken any formal steps down that road. In the last year, the city has been awash with investors eager to invest billions in real estate, be it office towers or large residential complexes. For example, Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, adjoining apartment complexes in Manhattan, sold for a record-breaking $5.4 billion in November.

There is a bit of confusion over cause and effect. Interest in space at Ground Zero will pick up as construction gets underway and businesses know that the buildings will be going up. If they see continued delays, they will inquire about space elsewhere. Putting the Freedom Tower on hold will only undermine the strength in the Lower Manhattan market.

Mayor Bloomberg isn't on the same page as others as he's not quite willing to save the survivors staircase. The staircase is where Tower 2 is designated to be built.