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The long campaign for respectful burial of unidentified remains at Fresh Kills may have taken a large step forward this week with the announcement of a possible compromise. WTC Families for Proper Burial has offered a proposal to relocate the more than 1.5 million tons of World Trade Center material buried on a former Fresh Kills landfill trash mound to a pristine section of the Fresh Kills property. A 16-acre memorial would be created at the top of the new burial site so family members and others could visit to pay respects to those who perished on 9/11. The proposal has the backing of Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro.

WTC Families for Proper Burial founder Diane Horning said, “"Our goal, ultimately, is to get them off the trash. If this is the only way we could do that, we will make this a decent, respectful cemetery. It is appealing because it could be done quickly," in a Staten Island Advance article. The new plan is also far less costly—running about 80 million dollars—than alternate proposals to relocate the remains. The low cost makes the plan much more acceptable to the City of New York, the Port Authority and other agencies that would foot the bill.

The proposed site to relocate the remains is a 26-acre parcel in an area called "The Point” that has never been used as landfill. Once filled in with the World Trade Center material, the memorial park would reach to a height of 60 feet, allowing visitors a direct view of Lower Manhattan. The proposal, if implemented, would only take nine to 12 months to complete, which appeals to families seeking closure after a long struggle to remove the remains from a garbage dump.
The relocated burial area would contain a memorial with grave markers for each of the 2,749 people killed in the attacks. Flags from each victim's native country would also surround the memorial, according to a rendering prepared by Albany-based Clough Harbour & Associates LLP for Taylor Recycling, a company working with WTC Families for Proper Burial on the proposal.

According to Diane Horning, the plan is “a logical, moral and sensible solution." The proposal also has the early support of some City officials, though NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg has yet to weigh in. Bloomberg has called previous relocation plans, some with price tags up to $1 billion, infeasible for the City. Hopefully VOICES E-newsletter will have more encouraging news on the proposal to report soon.

The NYPD Property Clerk's Office has catalogued roughly 135,000 personal items recovered from Ground Zero and Fresh Kills landfill, and so far, 113,400 have been returned to the victim's families, officials said, according to the New York Post. Of the 1,779 pieces of jewelry found — including wedding bands, watches and necklaces — only 430 remain unclaimed. Beginning in Families filled out an electronic claim form developed with the help of Tiffany & Co. which asked for detailed descriptions of the missing jewelry. The claims were cross-checked and returned to family members after a positive ID. Recovering the personal objects of loved ones is very important to 9/11 families. In an Associated Press article, Jay Winuk, who lost his brother Glenn on 9/11 and recently received his brother’s wristwatch from the Property Clerk explains, “To be able to connect with something my brother was wearing that day is hard to describe. ... It closes the loop in some way."

However, some family members have had difficulty recovering items, and call the Property Clerk's procedures unnecessarily complex and daunting.

A top administrator from the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. has been chosen as the new Director of the 9/11 Memorial Museum planned for the WTC site. This week, the LMDC and WTC Memorial foundation tapped Alice M. Greenwald, who has worked at the Holocaust Museum since 1996 and served as a member of the original design team for the museum's permanent exhibition.

Greenwald says she looks forward to working with 9/11 family members in creating the Memorial Museum, "They have to have a privileged voice in the process,” she said, adding "By the same token, you have to create a narrative that allows your visitor to come in and understand what happened. It's a partnership," as quoted in a New York Times article with details on the appointment.

The death-penalty phase of the trial of Zacharias Moussaoui began this week in Federal Court in Alexandria, Virginia. Moussaoui admits to being a member of al-Qaeda, and on April 22nd, 2005 pled guilty to six terrorism-related crimes [read a 2005 New York Times Article] stemming from a plot to fly a hijacked airliner into the White House. However, Moussaoui maintains that his plot was distinct from the 9/11 attacks, and that he was not the “20th hijacker” as some US officials have charged.

Moussaoui was behind bars on September 11th after being arrested on immigration charges and suspicious activity related to flying lessons he took in Minnesota. In the penalty phase of his trial, which begins with opening statements on March 6, the US Government will argue that Moussaoui withheld information on the 9/11 plot when he was interrogated repeatedly over four weeks before the attacks. Because he did not inform interrogators of the imminent attacks, prosecutors will argue, he showed a “reckless disregard for human life" and lied to FBI interrogators "in an especially heinous, cruel and depraved manner," that justifies the death penalty under Federal law, according to a comprehensive Los Angeles Times article.

First, jurors first must determine whether Moussaoui intentionally lied to the FBI in interviews before September 11 about his knowledge of the plan to hijack planes. If the jury decides he did lie, preventing the government from possibly stopping the attacks, another phase of the trial will be held to see whether Moussaoui should be given the death penalty or life in prison. If the jury finds he did not lie, he faces a sentence of life in prison because of his 2005 guilty plea for conspiracy to commit terrorism.

Though Moussaoui does not deny that he plotted against the United States, he does not wish to be executed and plans to vigorously defend his case in the penalty phase. Well-known for his bizarre courtroom antics, Moussaoui has repeatedly petitioned the court to act as his own attorney and rejected the counsel of his appointed defense lawyers. At the opening of jury selection Monday, Moussaoui was removed from the courtroom after an outburst where he claimed his lawyers would not defend his rights, saying, “They are not my lawyers. I don't want them to represent me. I'm al Qaeda, they are Americans, they are my enemies,” as quoted in a Reuter's article. His lawyers maintain that Moussaoui’s frequent outbursts are evidence of mental illness, possibly schizophrenia, that should mitigate his crimes and keep him out of the gas chamber, according to a UPI article from January.

Are You Planning to Participate in, Attend, or Watch the Moussaoui Trial?
VOICES would like to know so we can serve you better

Please email VOICES to let us know if and how you plan to be involved in the upcoming penalty phase of the Zacharias Moussaoui trial. Some family members will travel to the courtroom to attend the trial or offer victim's impact statements, an important part of all death penalty trials. In addition, about 1,000 family members have told the Justice Department that they plan to watch the proceedings on closed-circuit television at one of five satellite locations set up at courthouses in Boston, Manhattan, Newark, Philadelphia and Long Island, N.Y., according to a recent Washington Post article.

Providing us information on your planned level of involvement in the trial will help us design mental health and support programs to better fit your needs. Thanks in advance for keeping us informed.

VOICES To Distribute Handbook for Federal Death Penalty Cases

VOICES is distributing copies of "Victims and Survivors: Finding Your Way Through Court Proceedings in Federal Death Penalty Cases." The 80 page handbook, compiled by the Institute for Justice and Peacebuilding in Harrisonburg, Virginia, is full of information to help laypeople navigate the complicated process of a Federal death penalty case. It has a step-by-step outline of trial proceedings and a helpful glossary of arcane legal terms. "Finding Your Way" is easy to read and a valuable resource for all 9/11 families as the Moussaoui penalty phase approaches. Please email VOICES or call us at (203) 966-3911 and toll-free at (866) 505-3911 to request a copy today at no cost to you.

The Department of Homeland Security this week unveiled their new website to provide information and resources to young people on personal and community preparedness, “Ready Kids.” The website features Rex the Mountain Lion, an animated readiness maven who helps children learn more about the importance of preparing for natural disasters and terrorist attacks. DHS hopes Rex will be as popular and iconic as previous animals used to market government initiatives, such as forest-fire fighter Smokey the Bear and McGruff the Crime Dog, who encourages kids to “take a bite out of crime.”

“Preparedness is not just a government challenge,” DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a ceremony in Chicago to kick off the program. “We must all have a plan, as well as capabilities and resources,” Chertoff added, as quoted in a Medill News Service article. Ready Kids materials already have been distributed to 135,000 middle-school teachers in the 25 largest U.S. cities. However, the schools have significant leeway in how to integrate the campaign into their curriculum.

The $2.77 trillion 2007 budget request President Bush sent to Capitol Hill this week asks for a sizeable increase in homeland security funding. In the President’s budget proposal, the Department of Homeland Security budget would increase by $2.4 billion to $35.6 billion in 2007. However, the President is proposing deep cuts in first-responder programs to help underwrite the 7 percent funding increase. Instead of stepping-up disaster response capabilities, the new funding would support a major boost in border security, including 1,500 new border agents, according to a news analysis in Congressional Quarterly. But much of President Bush’s planned increase in DHS appropriations would require doubling the airline passenger security ticket fee from $2.50 to $5. Last year the president proposed the same increase and was rejected by Congress. Lawmakers are likely to reject the increase again, especially in an election year.

Environmental Protection Agency head Christie Todd Whitman made "misleading statements of safety" about the air quality near the World Trade Center in the days after the Sept. 11 attack and may have put the public in danger, a federal judge found last Friday. The judge, Deborah A. Batts, ruled that a 2004 class action lawsuit filed by lower Manhattan and Brooklyn residents against Whitman, other EPA officials and the agency itself should be heard in federal court. The lawsuit charges that the EPA failed to warn people of dangerous materials in the air and then failed to carry out an adequate cleanup. The plaintiffs are seeking monetary damages and want the judge to order a thorough cleaning, according to a recent New York Times article. Judge Batts ruled that Whitman knew the air near Ground Zero was unsafe, and by encouraging people to return to their homes and jobs in the area as early as September 13th, "increased, and may have in fact created, the danger" to the public’s health.

Whitman responded to the Judge’s ruling on Monday with a statement claiming, "Every action taken by the EPA during the response to this horrific event was designed to provide the most comprehensive protection and the most accurate information to the residents of Manhattan," as detailed in a Newark Star-Ledger article. Some lower Manhattan residents, however, consider Whitman’s statement to be false. “Everybody knew it wasn't good," said Mike Keane, owner of O'Hara's Pub & Restaurant on Cedar Street in lower Manhattan, about the dust-laden atmosphere. "She was lying through her teeth," he is quoted in a recent NY Newsday article.

An editorial in Wednesday’s Press of Atlantic City lays out the issues in question in the lawsuit and offers a widely-held view regarding Whitman’s motivations in the days after the attacks: “The EPA's own inspector general concluded in 2003 that the agency did not have sufficient data to say the air was safe and that the misleading reassurances were made at the insistence of the White House. Yes, Christie Whitman got caught in the middle, as she did almost constantly during her tenure at EPA. The facts and the science pulled her one way; the White House apparently pulled her another way.” However, Whitman is the highest-ranking Bush Administration official named as a defendant in the case. VOICES will continue to update you on the progress of this important case.

A Link Forged by Tragedy -- People in Shanksville, PA have a poignant connection to the Pittsburgh Steelers that stems from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. (New York Times)

On the Bookshelf: How to prepare your family for a disaster -- A new book from the director of NYC School security on 9/11 tells ordinary folks what they can do to get ready for a potential catastrophe. (Interview with author Gregory Thomas in US News and World Report)

9/11 kin courting justice -- While lawyers began picking the jurors who will decide whether Zacarias Moussaoui lives or dies, relatives of the Sept. 11 victims were eager yesterday to see the only terrorist charged in the attack get some American justice. (NY Daily News)

Click for a list of ongoing medical offerings for Ground Zero workers