On Sept. 11 I was working for Pacifica Network News. WBAI Radio, 99.5 FM, is one of the network’s flagship stations. At the time, it was located at 120 Wall Street — just blocks away from the World Trade Center. Back then, filing remotely required an ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) line, and I was able to file from my home in New Jersey that day, and over the days and sleepless nights that followed.
As the descendant of Welsh coal miners singing as angels with black lung, I avoided the smoldering pile that was left by the terrorist attack. Like my colleague, former Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez, I never trusted then-Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Todd Whitman when she proclaimed the air in lower Manhattan was “safe to breathe.” As a 2003 EPA inspector general report documented, that fraudulent “all clear” from Whitman was traced back to the Bush White House that wanted Wall Street open at any price.
