The desecration of Ground Zero
Michelle Malkin
June 8, 2005

Most Americans have not been paying attention to the bureaucratic wrangling and political jockeying that has plagued the construction of the World Trade Center Memorial at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. But it’s not just New Yorkers and developers and 9/11 families who should care.

A good portion of the project is federally subsidized. All of us have not only a financial stake, but also a moral stake, in protecting the honor of the victims­ and the dignity of our country.
A Blame America Monument is not what we need or deserve. But it looks like one is already in the works.

In a startling op-ed printed in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Debra Burlingame exposed the “Great Ground Zero Heist.” Burlingame is on the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines fight 77, which terrorists crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. She reports that the World Trade Center memorial will encompass a “cultural complex” whose primary tenant will be something called the “International Freedom Center.”

According to an IFC fact sheet, the project “will be an integral part of humanity’s response to September 11.” An educational and cultural center will host exhibits, lectures, debates, and films “that will nurture a global conversation on freedom in our world today.” Tellingly though, as Burlingame notes, early plans for the center that included a large mural of an Iraqi voter were scratched in favor of a photograph of Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson when the designs went public. So much for nurturing that global conversation. The center’s “civic engagement network” will connect visitors to “service” opportunities. Translation: Left-wing activist recruitment center. As the fact sheet notes, “leading NGOs (non governmental organizations) will be offered outposts at the Center to reach out to its visitors.”

On its face, the project may seem fairly unobjectionable enough (putting aside how far afield it all seems from the task of remembering the victims and heroes of 9/11)­until, that is, you take a closer look at the chief movers and shakers behind the project.

Tom Bernstein, a deep-pocketed Hollywood financier and real estate mogul, is the primary driver behind the IFC. Bernstein’s longtime friendship and business partnership with Yale classmate George W. Bush gives cover to his radical activism as president of Human Rights First. The group opposed Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez over the administration’s preventive detention policies and has joined with the ACLU in mau-mauing the Pentagon over alleged prisoner abuse.

Among the many supposedly respectable scholars consulted on the project is Eric Foner. He’s the unhinged Columbia University professor who reacted to 9/11 by griping: "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." The IFC’s list of scholars and advisors also includes left-leaning elites such as Henry Louis Gates at Harvard University; Stephen B. Heintz, IFC secretary and president of the Rockefeller Bros. Fund; Walter Isaacson, CEO of the Aspen Institute; and Michael Posner, Executive Director of Human Rights First. Burlingame also reports that Anthony Romero, ACLU executive director, “is pushing IFC organizers for exhibits that showcase how civil liberties in this country have been curtailed since September 11.” Then there’s billionaire Bush-basher George Soros, who Burlingame reports is an early funder and supporter of the IFC and whose spirit infuses this grievance-mongering enterprise.

Do we really want Ground Zero to be the playground of anti-war financiers, moral equivalence peddlers, and Guantanamo Bay alarmists? As Burlingame told me yesterday, “Ground Zero belongs to all the American people. If Ground Zero is lost, whether through negligence or malfeasance, it will be a loss that is felt for generations to come.”

Richard Tofel, IFC president, is minimizing dissenters. In a statement, he told me that “we understand that a few do not” agree with the project’s stated mission of promoting the “cause of freedom.” The question is not whether most Americans support a monument to freedom, but whether they will stand by while saboteurs convert it into The Ultimate Guilt Complex.

Critics Call for Boycott of Memorial Fund-Raising

Critics Call for Boycott of Memorial Fund-Raising

By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: July 26, 2005

In the ever fiercer fight over a year-old plan to build a home for the Drawing Center and the International Freedom Center alongside the World Trade Center memorial, some relatives of 9/11 victims called yesterday for a fund-raising boycott.
"We urge you to not donate to the World Trade Center memorial until the I.F.C. and the Drawing Center are eliminated from the memorial plans," said "An Open Letter to the American People." The letter appeared on a Web site, Take Back the Memorial, until questions arose over how many of the 14 relatives' groups that were signed to the letter had approved the use of their names.
Despite that withdrawal, critics of the cultural plan - including two members of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, which is charged with soliciting contributions - said the freedom center had to be removed before they would support the use of public money for the overall project. Opponents have objected in advance to what they say will be an anti-American bias to the center's offerings, a charge that the center has just as strongly rejected.
"We owe it to the American people or anyone else who wants to donate to tell them what they're paying for and not mislead them," said Debra Burlingame, a foundation board member and one of the letter's authors. She said financing for the memorial would be intermingled with that for the building at Fulton and Greenwich Streets that is intended to house the International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center.
The assertion was disputed by Lynn Rasic, the vice president for public affairs at the foundation. "The first fund-raising efforts are devoted to the memorial and the museum dedicated to Sept. 11," she said.
"It's unfortunate and wrong to block efforts to make sure that our nation and the world remember those we lost during the attacks," Ms. Rasic said.
Asked whether it was a conflict of interest for board members to urge prospective donors to withhold support, Ms. Rasic said any potential conflicts would be reviewed by the governance committee.
Monica Iken, a board member and the founder of September's Mission, which supports the development of a memorial, said she had not approved the use of her group's name on the letter. "I never signed off on anything like that," she said yesterday.
"I have an obligation to fund-raise for the memorial," she added.
But Ms. Burlingame said her objections were in line with her fiduciary responsibilities as a board member. "You can't go out to the public and say, 'We're raising $500 million,' and not tell them they're building on the same site a building so large it will dwarf the memorial," she said.
Lee Ielpi, another member of the foundation board, is also vice president of the September 11th Families Association, which was listed as supporting the open letter.
"I'm fully comfortable asking Americans who shared our sorrow and came to help us in the worst of times to help us honor our dead and the sacrifice they made," he said. "I am not comfortable asking them to play a role in a political, economic or ideological passion play whose ending has yet to be written. I believe the freedom center is a bad idea."
Robert D. Shurbet, the founder of Take Back the Memorial (takebackthememorial.org), said that the open letter was a draft that had been "posted prematurely" and that the link to it was removed "pending final approval" by the relatives' groups.
As to the larger issue of the cultural organizations, Stefan Pryor, the president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, said officials were having "continuing conversations with the two institutions regarding their response" to concerns raised by Gov. George E. Pataki. On June 24, the governor asked for an "absolute guarantee" that programs on the site not denigrate America or offend victims' families.
Eric Foner, the DeWitt Clinton professor of history at Columbia University, resigned from the freedom center's committee of scholars and advisers this month, after a letter from the center to Mr. Pryor that tried to address those concerns. News of his resignation was reported on Saturday in The New York Post.
Alternative locations for the Drawing Center on and off the trade center site are already being explored.

9-11 Memorial Fundraising Drive

9-11 memorial fundraising drive seeks big cash and small change
BY DOUGLAS FEIDENNew York Daily News

NEW YORK - (KRT) - Reach for your wallets and tell your kids to crack open their piggy banks: The $500 million campaign to build a world-class memorial at ground zero has begun.
Students and stockbrokers, firefighters and financiers, baseball fans and business barons will all be asked to pony up in one of the greatest fundraising challenges in New York City history.
The goal: during the next four years, raise $300 million from corporations and fat-cat donors and $200 million from the general public for the World Trade Center memorial and museum.
By reaching out to working people as well as the megarich, organizers are mounting a grassroots appeal that hasn't been seen since 1885 - when city schoolchildren gave their nickels and dimes to pay for the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty.
"The task is to tap into that classic, uniquely American vein of generosity to tell the story of 9-11 - the story of those who died, those who helped and those who cared," said Gretchen Dykstra, president of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation.
Moneymaking plans include an effort to get the biggest Wall Street companies to donate a portion of their trading profits on Sept. 11, 2006, the five-year commemoration of the attacks, the New York Daily News has learned.
"We want to honor, remember and respect all the innocent people we lost, and we need to be directly involved in the memorial," said Marc Lackritz, president of the Securities Industry Association, whose member companies lost 749 employees on Sept. 11. "It's under discussion."
A possible marketing partnership with Major League Baseball also is being explored, insiders say.
Pegged to the World Series, it would get the foundation's Web site _www.wtcmemorialfoundation.org - splashed across national television and build on a $1 million gift that MLB and the Baseball Players Association gave the memorial last year.
The National Football League and other professional sports leagues also have held preliminary talks about promotional alliances.
"Fundraising opportunities are endless at sporting events," said NYC & Co. Chairman Jonathan Tisch, who is raising cash for the memorial. He ought to know - his family owns 50 percent of the New York Giants.
"I don't know if we'd pass the hat, but revenues could be derived on everything from receptacles for loose change to sales at vending stands," Tisch added.
The street-corner bell-ringers of the Salvation Army also will be asked to solicit funds on future anniversaries of Sept. 11, according to one initiative.
And the proud Internet geeks at EchoDitto Inc., who ran Howard Dean's hugely successful online fundraising campaign in 2004, will be Web masters for the memorial. Planners hope to collect $100 million in cyberspace, based on an average gift of $100 from a projected 1 million donors.
"The Dean campaign showed that citizens could organize and raise significant small-dollar contributions online," said Nicco Mele, chief executive of EchoDitto.
"But the online response to the tsunami - $1 billion in 30 days - showed how the Internet can spur enormous charitable giving globally, and that's the model for the memorial."
In addition, dozens of potentially lucrative marketing tie-ins are being sought - with NASCAR, the Country Music Association Awards, unions in both the public and private sector, and the 165,000 volunteer firefighters in New York, organizers say.
Also on the wish list: the sale of Lance Armstrong-style bracelets - forget-me-nots that would be funded by Avon or its foundation - with proceeds donated to the memorial.
"Some 500,000 people volunteered their time after 9-11, and they all made America proud," Dykstra said. "The challenge now is how to tap into that spirit."
At stake is Reflecting Absence, the World Trade Center Memorial to the nearly 3,000 slaughtered innocents that will be the heart and soul of ground zero, and the Memorial Museum, which will show 9-11 artifacts and relate the horrors of that day. Both are expected to open in 2009.
Located in a forest of soaring oak trees, the memorial's centerpiece will be two voids ringed by a curtain of water that cascades into reflecting pools below. It includes a tomb for unidentified remains, a contemplation room for family members and a Memorial Gallery lined with the names of the dead.
The 6-acre "memorial quadrant" also will include a 110,000-square-foot, 70-foot-high subterranean museum between the footprints of the twin towers, providing access to both the bedrock and the original slurry wall.
The memorial complex, along with the more controversial cultural facilities, the International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center, yards away on ground zero, are expected to cost $800 million.
New York Gov. George Pataki has directed $300 million in federal funds to the memorial project, which leaves a half-billion dollars in private funds still to be raised.
Meanwhile, a bill sponsored by Rep. Vito Fossella, R-N.Y., would let federal taxpayers donate $1 to the memorial by checking a box on their income taxes. If it becomes law, and if a mere 20 percent of 120 million tax filers gave a buck a year, it would generate a $24 million annual windfall.
"It's an opportunity for the American people to step up to the plate and get directly involved in the future of Ground Zero," Fossella said.
A similar measure pushed by Pataki would create a memorial checkoff box on New York state tax returns.
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Dissent at Ground Zero

Dissent at Ground Zero Sunday, July 31, 2005 By MIKE KELLY

THINK AHEAD.It's 2011, 10 years after that terrible September day when four jetliners were hijacked and the world changed. You decide to make a pilgrimage to Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan. Here is what you might find:
A dance performance. Poetry readings. A multi-media exhibit on the horrors of slavery. Paintings by Zen monks. Children's drawings about bigotry.
And 9/11?
Well, yes, there may be a memorial and a museum by 2011. But to find it, you'll have to go below ground. Get the picture?
Ground Zero is a mess right now. Almost four years after the Twin Towers fell, there is still no agreement on what the place should look like. If there is a modern Tower of Babel, this may be it.
There are too many agendas, too many egos - probably too many planners, architects, artists, organizers, lawyers, PR flacks and politicians, too. But there is something else now, something as undeniable as the memory of what happened there. There is bitterness at Ground Zero.
We saw this coming, didn't we? The Twin Towers were still smoking when pols and planners started imagining what to do.
A memorial to the dead? Of course. That was an easy call. Everybody wanted a memorial. Some parts of the memorial plan still need fine tuning, but the deepening bitterness now clouding Ground Zero comes from an unexpected source - the cultural center.
Cultural center?
Maybe you missed it. Don't be shocked if you did.
The idea to integrate art, music and dance into the plans for a revived Ground Zero seemed to slip under the political and social radar. But by spring, names of organizers and concepts emerged and it didn't take long for the skirmishing to begin.
At the core of the fight are two components of the cultural center, the International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center. The IFC would showcase exhibits highlighting the search for freedom; the drawing center would display artwork.
That seemed like a fine idea until the IFC revealed that some exhibits might focus on slavery and genocide, and art patrons happened to notice that the Drawing Center's gallery in SoHo was showing paintings denigrating President Bush.
"To IFC's organizers, it is not only history's triumphs that illuminate, but also its failures," wrote Debra Burlingame, sister of a pilot on the hijacked jetliner that struck the Pentagon on 9/11 and a board member of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation. She suggested that the "public will come to see 9/11" at Ground Zero, but "will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond."
Burlingame's charges set off a series of political explosions that threaten to evolve into a full-blown culture war. Critics suggested there was nothing wrong with studying history. But at Ground Zero?
It turns lot that IFC Chairman Tom Bernstein may have once been a partner with President Bush in running the Texas Rangers baseball team. But Bernstein's affiliation with Human Rights First, which is now suing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for abuses of detained suspected terrorists, has turned him into a lighting rod.
But Burlingame was hardly neutral either. Besides her vocal support for the Iraq war, she spoke last year at the Republican National Convention, and campaigned with President Bush.
Burlingame's politics have made her a favorite target of liberals. Likewise, conservatives took aim at Bernstein, the IFC and the Drawing Center. Within weeks, New York's Gov. George Pataki demanded that the Drawing Center and IFC give "an absolute guarantee" that exhibits and lectures will not be anti-American.
Bernstein responded with a 6-page letter, promising that IFC programs "will not blame America or attack champions of freedom." The Drawing Center drew a line in the artistic sand, proclaiming that it "would never be able to accept censorship."
And there it stands. A noble notion of a cultural center has become a fight over anti-Americanism, partisan politics and censorship.
Pataki and others are trying desperately to work out a peaceful compromise. But the poisonous seeds are already scattered.
Ground Zero is now just like the rest of America. People are fighting over hearts and minds and souls. And what was supposed to be a memorial to a tragedy has become just another tragedy.
Record Columnist Mike Kelly can be contacted at kellym@northjersey.com. Send comments about this column to oped@northjersey.com.