Keeping Our Lungs Safe

NY Post (of all newspapers):

Condoleezza Rice’s office gave final approval to the infamous Environmental Protection Agency press releases days after 9/11 claiming the air around Ground Zero was “safe to breathe,” internal documents show.
Now Secretary of State, Rice was then head of the National Security Council – “the final decision maker” on EPA statements about lower Manhattan air quality, the documents say.
. . .
Early tests known to the EPA at the time had already found high asbestos levels, the notes say. But those results were omitted from the press releases because of “competing priorities” such as national security and “opening Wall Street,” according to a report by the EPA’s inspector general.

Of course we now know that the air around Ground Zero was anything but safe after the towers collapsed. And hundreds of rescuers are now paying the price with long-term respiratory ailments.
The obvious question here is why the NSC director, with a background in Russian studies, had the “final” call on whether or not air was “safe”? At any rate, where there’s a conflict between business and environmental concerns, it’s no mystery which side is going to win in this White House. I hope the people we were rushing back to lower Manhattan didn’t have to breathe very often.