Clinton calls for hearings on EPA's 9/11 report
New York Democrat: 'They didn't tell us the truth'
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This photograph shows the remains of the World Trade Center two months after the collapse.
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NEW YORK (CNN) -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton called Tuesday for Senate hearings on a recently released Environmental Protection Agency inspector general's report that says the agency prematurely asserted that the air was safe to breathe after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Clinton, a New York Democrat, said the report, released Friday by the EPA"s inspector general, shows the agency was under White House pressure to assure the public, even though it wasn't clear what potential toxins might be in the air.
"I don't think any of us ever expected to find out ... that our government would knowingly deceive us about something as sacred as the air we breathe, outdoors and indoors," she said in a speech on the steps of City Hall.
"They knew and they didn't tell us the truth, and the White House told them not to tell us the truth," Clinton said, adding that she wants to find out who was responsible for pressuring the EPA.
New York's World Trade Center towers collapsed September 11 in a cascade of cement, glass and metal after being hit by hijacked jetliners, killing about 2,800 people and sending a dark, billowing cloud over the metropolitan area.
"On Friday, through a report released by the inspector general of the EPA, we learned that the EPA chose to reassure the public about the safety of the air outside the perimeter of Ground Zero without the data and evidence to justify those assurances and despite contrary evidence -- as well as personal experience, for those of us who were down there breathing it, feeling it, seeing it -- that there were deadly contaminants in the debris," Clinton said.
