The incident began when several hundred firefighters joined a demonstration called by union officials November 2. The action was to oppose an announcement by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani that the city was reducing the number of firefighters assigned to the cleanup operation at the World Trade Center from 64 to 25. There were 343 firefighters killed when the towers collapsed. Officials of the firefighters union charged that these cutbacks would turn what had previously been declared as a recovery operation into a "scoop and dump" operation.

After a rally firemen marched to the site, pushed aside a steel fence on West Street, then marched to a second barricade surrounding the cleanup site. Police, at first taken back, responded with force, and a brief fight ensued. A dozen firefighters were arrested and five cops were injured in the confrontation.

The city has now filed criminal trespass charges against Peter Gorman, president of the 2,500-member Uniformed Fire Officers Association, and Kevin Gallagher, president of the 9,000-member Uniformed Firefighters Association. Both were released without bail. Other arrested firefighters faced additional charges including inciting to riot, second degree assault, and obstruction of governmental administration.

"I've known from the beginning from the first night that it [the World Trade Center site] would be a burial ground," stated Giuliani November 2, and that "the majority or vast majority of people would disappear because they would evaporate."

However, as a New York Times articles notes, if the mayor knew this from Day 1, "he kept it to himself. From the day the towers toppled into a vast pile of rubble, he described the scene as a rescue operation and hewed to that description for nearly a month.... Indeed, emergency room employees stood eerily idle from the first hour on."

Other developments that indicate this trend include:

* A report filed by Michael Ellison in the October 26 Guardian, a London-based paper, said the number killed in the attack "might have been overestimated by 2,000 people.... New York city officials say 4,964 are dead or missing," while figures compiled by the Times, USA Today, and the Associated Press put the figure at between 2,625 and 2,950.

* In the weeks following the attack news reports and statements by public officials added to the national hysteria by citing figures of as many as 10,000 orphans in need of a home. The New York State Office of Children and Family Services said they were swamped with calls of people offering to adopt a "World Trade Center" orphan. The facts? There are none. "Not a single documented case of a child who lost both parents," admitted an October 26 Times article.

* Among those on the missing list, however, are several top executives of First Equity Enterprises, which had offices on the 15th floor of 2 World Trade Center. It turns out these executives vanished September 11, but not in the rubble. They checked out with $105 million of funds invested with the company by 1,400 people in 14 countries.

* The Red Cross has had a number of bad moments lately, as its eagerness to cash in on the attacks has not fit the image the outfit seeks to portray.

At the end of October they announced they were suspending any further fund-raising for victims of the September 11 attack, already having hauled in $547 million--nearly half of the $1.2 billion pledged to all charities collecting funds. (Using the 3,000 figure as the approximate number of people killed, this averages out to about $400,000 for each victim.) Red Cross officials finally admitted that they had raised so much money that they planned to hold as much as $247 million in reserve, for use around future terrorist attacks. A number of other charities said the announcement should have come earlier, as the Red Cross's extensive network dominated the field, making it hard for them to solicit funds too.

Several days earlier, Dr. Bernandine Healy, said at an emotional press conference that she was being forced to quit her $450,000-a-year job as president of the Red Cross. Among the issues in dispute between Healy and the organization's board was her handling of blood donations. According to a Times article, "She had been so aggressive in appealing for blood that was not needed that some red blood cells had expired." The plasma was apparently salvaged for other uses.

* Continental became the second airline company to post a third-quarter profit this year, thanks to a $243 million infusion received from the federal government. Northwest said last week it raked in $19 million; Continental reported a $3 million haul despite a 15 percent drop in revenues. The government handout was part of a $15 billion package the airline bosses received in the aftermath of September 11.  
 
 
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