Dems focusing on accountability

Well, at least it is a start....

Democrats ask for Whitman probe on 9/11 - Yahoo! News:

WASHINGTON - Democrats from New York and New Jersey asked on Wednesday for an investigation that could lead to criminal charges against former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Christie Whitman for breathing problems suffered by thousands after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Whitman told The Associated Press that she and the EPA 'agreed then and I reiterate now that the air on the WTC site was not clean, the consequence of millions of tons of burned debris from the most horrific attack in our nation's history.

'We were emphatic that workers needed to wear respirators, a message I repeated frequently.'

At hearings last week in New York, Whitman was the most frequent target of lawmakers who charged that ground zero workers were not protected as they worked to clear the pile of toxic debris.

Whitman, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, declared in the days after Sept. 11 that the air in lower Manhattan was safe for workers and residents. But she has said she and the EPA always differentiated between the air quality in lower Manhattan and at ground zero.