Justice for the victims of 9/12, 9/13, 9/14...

Out of the Bush administration’s many disgraceful moments, I’ve always felt this was one of the worst: Just after 9/11, the White House rewrote EPA press releases to tell citizens that the air near the World Trade Center was safe to breathe, with no evidence to support that and significant evidence to the contrary.

We will never know how many people -- including and especially first responders -- will die in the coming years because they believed what the Bush administration told them.

I doubt George W. Bush will ever be held accountable for this, but perhaps his EPA administrator, Christie Todd Whitman might be:

A federal judge blasted former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman on Thursday for reassuring New Yorkers soon after the Sept. 11 attacks that it was safe to return to their homes and offices while toxic dust was polluting the neighborhood.

U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts refused to grant Whitman immunity against a class-action lawsuit brought in 2004 by residents, students and workers in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn who said they were exposed to hazardous materials from the collapse of the World Trade Center.

"No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan, while knowing that such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws," the judge said.

She called Whitman's actions "conscience-shocking," saying the EPA chief knew that the fall of the twin towers released tons of hazardous materials into the air.

...Quoting a ruling in an earlier case, the judge said a public official cannot be held personally liable for putting the public in harm's way unless the conduct was so egregious as "to shock the contemporary conscience." Given her role in protecting the health and environment for Americans, Whitman's reassurances after Sept. 11 were "without question conscience-shocking," Batts said.