The Drawing Center, meanwhile, will not be moving to the site, Whitehead said. After weeks of discussion with the LMDC, Whitehead said, the museum was "finding it difficult to comply with the requirements."

The Freedom Center and the Drawing Center are parts of cultural space long planned at the World Trade Center site, which also would include a performing arts complex. But in recent months family members have waged a campaign to remove the two institutions from the site, saying they could include anti-American exhibits and distract attention from a planned memorial museum.

Debra Burlingame, the sister of an American Airlines pilot who died in the Sept. 11 attacks, applauded the Drawing Center's decision not to build on the site but said there is little point in continuing discussions with the Freedom Center.

"They're not telling the story of 9/11," she said. "They're going to have controversial programming that they cannot guarantee in perpetuity will be respectful."

The positive thing about the 9/11 survivors is they kept heat on the authorities when no one else could for fear of seeming unpatriotic (although the commission was still a whitewash). The downside is they "own" the site and get to be art critics. I say--it's Silverstein's property, tainted by his money grubbing. Let him build his fake freedom tower and have his fake culture exhibits. Everyone in the know will know it's Soviet-style propaganda.
- tom moody 8-11-2005 8:52 pm [add a comment]

• Bill - I said this to you in an email, but I thought I'd post it as well. I feel fairly confident that there would have been more grassroots support for the DC had they tried to coordinate it just the tiniest bit. I know when the "scandal" first broke, an awful lot of people contacted me to ask me what to do to help. I told them to contact the DC so we could all coordinate and be on the same page and follow their lead. I'm sure they had their reasons - although I don't know what they were - but the DC never responded to those people in a timely or coordinated manner, or with a list of things that we could do to help them out. I know a lot of the people who wanted to help - myself included - were worried about stepping on the DC's toes, doing anything that accidentally would make the situation worse. I personally felt pretty secure that they were going to come up with a strategy at any moment that they would inform us all of... but then they didn't.
  
  (A perfect example of this is that I know a woman who is the director of a museum in NYC. She emailed the Drawing Center as soon as she heard about all this and asked them what she could do to help. Now, bear in mind - she's a fairly big name, I would think it would be helpful to have her as a co-signer on a letter or that sort of thing. They never responded to her email. Eventually, through mutual friends, she tracked *me* down and asked me what she should do. I recommended she write to the editors of the various papers and to send copies to Pataki et al, but I felt rather uncomfortable advising her. Did the Drawing Center want me to do this? Did they want her input, her help? I have no idea - it would seem under normal circumstances that they would, but then why would they ignore her email?)
  
  Situations such as this one need to be handled swiftly and in an organized fashion. I absolutely expected the DC to email their entire mailing list a list of addresses to write to, protests to attend, etc, the day that the Daily News article appeared. They never did this. This leads me to believe that they didn't want grassroots support for some reason.
  
  I know that when the NY Press wrote that awful article about me, I sent a panicked email out to a bunch of friends begging them to write to the editor and complain. About a dozen did - and you figure, this is only from an email I sent to my friends. People *wanted* to help - and they came to my defense when I asked them to. Had the DC done the same thing, I firmly believe that they would have gotten dozens, if not hundreds, of letters written on their behalf. But it's hard to stick your neck out for someone who doesn't seem to want your help.
  
  I suspect that there was some sort of negotiations going on where the DC was assured that all of this would die down quickly and it would be better for them to not get a lot of people involved. If this is the case, in retrospect it must look like bad advice. Maybe they feared that pitting a group of artists vs. the 9/11 families would have resulted in an all out culture war, above and beyond anything we've ever seen. I don't know - and I suspect we'll never really know what was going on.
  
  To me, the clearest indication that the DC never especially wanted our help was the fact that I first found out about the "scandal" via a friend who emailed me to alert me to it. You realize how odd that is, right? Normally when your work is written about in the press, your gallery calls you to let you know. I can't imagine showing anywhere else and having my work reproduced in two front page tabloid articles and not having the gallery pick up the phone... unless they just really wanted to pretend the story didn't exist. So, something weird was going on, and we still don't know what that is. I tend to think we'll never really know.
  
  
  - amy (guest) 8-20-2005 7:20 am [add a comment] [edit]




• Usually when an artist is mentioned in the press the gallery doesn't know about it and if they do, the artist is the last person they tell. My sense of the Drawing Center is that they're a typical white shoe, blue blood operation despite their "public" mission. They are part of an elite machinery, a feeder to other blue blood, white shoe galleries and musuems and with such people, it's all about not making a fuss or rocking the boat, because then wealthy patrons get nervous and start pulling support. I realize this sounds like class resentment but it's really just disgust that in our culture, elite really does mean effete. Fearing to offend or be unseemly means very little interesting happens in this sphere any more.
  - tom moody 8-20-2005 7:48 am [add a comment]




• thanks a million amy and tom. im a little bit worried about how GD co-opted everything is getting. i always thought that its wildly obvious that there are strings attached to nea grants compromising the work process and should therefore be avoided. in the 60's earth works implied an out side the system alternative but those folks (smithson, heizer, etc.) had mostly been historically validated in advance of their departure from the studio. amy and i were talking about how much debt the later generations of art school grads have entering the commercial fine art system. that cant be good for autonomy of thought and action following toms "not rocking the boat" line of thinking. im afraid these institutions are driven by fear of scandal which leaves them (and us if we throw in with their lot) in an incredibly vulnerable place.
  - bill 8-21-2005 7:58 pm [add a comment]

In last month's letter to the LMDC, the Freedom Center's directors invoked the spirit of Thomas Jefferson. That would be the same Thomas Jefferson who made a Faust.ian bargain by accepting the continuation of slavery as the price of having the Constitution ratified. Would pointing that out in an exhibit constitute America-bashing?

When an institution dedicated to the understanding of freedom pledges never to "blame America," it has already demoted itself to a timid promoter of platitudes. Either the International Freedom Center pledges to interpret all future controversies in a light that favors whoever happens to be in the White House, or it risks breaking its vow. There is no legalese ironclad enough to distinguish a legitimate critique of government policy from unpatriotic slander.

Even the staunchest patriot would have to acknowledge that once in a while the United States deserves some blame. To refuse to acknowledge this is a form of self-inflicted intellectual imprisonment.

There are now only two solutions. The first, and least likely, is that the LMDC grows some instant backbone and tells the victims' families that they do not have the power to control two museums. The second is that the officials cave in and give the families what they really want: a memorial quadrant given over to the contemplation of those two terrible hours in September. Instead of regenerating through culture, Ground Zero will remain a city of the dead.

Freedom Center's Place at Ground Zero in Question

By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: August 12, 2005
The International Freedom Center was all but shown the door yesterday by state officials, who demanded that the fledgling institution undergo a new round of vetting - by relatives of 9/11 victims, among others - before it can claim the spot it was assigned last year in the World Trade Center's cultural building.

John C. Whitehead, the chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, said the Freedom Center had been asked to develop "specific plans, program and governance structure" by Sept. 23, which would then be presented to the public. "If at the end of this process, the L.M.D.C. is not satisfied with the I.F.C.'s proposal, we will find another use or tenant," he said at yesterday's board meeting.

The building itself, designed by the Norwegian firm Snohetta, will end up about 30 percent smaller than the version unveiled in May, Mr. Whitehead said. It will certainly contain a visitors' center but may lose its other designated tenant, the Drawing Center, which Mr. Whitehead said was "finding it difficult to comply with the requirements that have been laid down that they would never present anything that might be offensive to the families" of 9/11 victims.

Richard J. Tofel, the president and chief operating officer of the International Freedom Center, which describes itself as an institution concerned with the history and role of freedom, said, "We look forward to the opportunity to further detail our plans for content and governance, and will do so." He said the center was "fully and enthusiastically committed" to staying in the Snohetta cultural building.

In order to remain, however, the Freedom Center will have to clear hurdles that have no evident dimensions. It is not clear - and Mr. Whitehead declined to elaborate - what criteria the corporation would use to judge the center's plans, what standards would satisfy the corporation or what the exact vetting procedure would be, other than that it would involve discussions, presentations and Web sites. Mr. Whitehead would not even say whether the Freedom Center would have to meet the test of offering no programs that might offend victims' relatives.

It is also unclear how many board members endorsed this new review procedure, since the measure was not voted on, though Mr. Whitehead said he believed his statement reflected a consensus.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff immediately objected to the manner in which the review procedure was adopted, contrasting it with the master planning to date.

"We decided to have cultural institutions and picked these cultural institutions through a deliberative process that tried to involve all parts of the community with all different kinds of input," the mayor said, "and Dan and I both think that the L.M.D.C. erred in trying to change that without going through another inclusive process."

Plainly, what began two years ago as the search for cultural tenants to enrich the new World Trade Center has turned into a significant dilemma for Gov. George E. Pataki as he explores a run for the presidency.

If the governor defends the initial selection of the Freedom Center, he faces growing opposition by victims' relatives like Debra Burlingame, who say they fear that the center might be used as a forum for anti-American debate and want nothing in the memorial area that is not related directly to the terrorist attacks.

If Mr. Pataki tries to eject the center himself, he can expect objections that he is repudiating a master plan he once embraced, buckling to political pressure and denying a place for free speech at a site that is supposed to embody American values.

Leaving the matter in the corporation's hands would insulate Mr. Pataki from having to make the choice personally. On the other hand, the board itself might split on the issue, since many of its members already support the Freedom Center and would be reluctant to upend the process under which it was selected last year.

Ms. Burlingame, who attended yesterday's board meeting, said both the Freedom Center and Drawing Center should be removed from the memorial area, though she endorsed the Snohetta building if it can be "redesigned to be filled with the story of 9/11."

"The magnitude of that story would fill several Snohetta buildings," she added.

Frances Beatty Adler, the chairwoman of the Drawing Center, a museum in SoHo, acknowledged that it was looking at alternative locations in Lower Manhattan. She added that "no one has said that we're not in the Snohetta building" and said the center was "working cooperatively with the L.M.D.C. to restore cultural life downtown."

As evidence of the corporation's commitment to cultural programs at the trade center site, Mr. Whitehead also announced yesterday that it would earmark $50 million for the creation of a performing arts center across Fulton Street from the Snohetta building, for the Joyce Theater Foundation and Signature Theater Company.

Moments after Mr. Whitehead finished reading his statement, and before he could adjourn the meeting, Mr. Doctoroff - who sits at the board table as the mayor's representative, just three seats from the chairman - raised his hand to make his disappointment known about the Freedom Center review procedure.

"To reach this conclusion without a significant amount - particularly within this body - of debate and public comment leading up to the debate is disappointing," Mr. Doctoroff said.

they are doing the happy dance over at "take back the memorial." to its credit the nyt has described (on their editorial page) content on the TBTM website as "sounding un-american". note their red, white and blue themed website design. HA!



nyt profiles "take back" "activist debra burlingame :

Fighting for the Underlying Meaning of Ground Zero

By ROBIN FINN for nyt
Published: August 12, 2005 for nyt


HER paper-strewn home office in Westchester is, Debra Burlingame admits as she leaves the pristine living room and plunks herself, sandaled feet and all, atop a floral sofa, a pigsty, "but it's my pigsty."


Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
"To me, they're treating 9/11 like a 3,000-person car crash." Debra Burlingame
It is also a shrine to her dead brother, Charles F. Burlingame III, the pilot of the hijacked American Airlines jet that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, but she insists she does not want family memorabilia photographed. Not the shadow box holding a shell casing from the 21-gun salute at his burial at Arlington National Cemetery. Not the poster-size photo of him at 6, proudly displaying a plane he built from scrap lumber.

Nor does she want her hometown revealed. She has enemies, or at least her opinion about the proper destiny of ground zero has enemies. She and other bereaved relatives believe only a memorial and a museum dedicated to telling the story of 9/11, untainted by political or artistic commentary the way they fear the proposed International Freedom Center and Drawing Center might be, are appropriate. There is a brand new computer on her desk, she says, because she suspects someone sabotaged the last one.

Three tart opinion articles she wrote recently for The Wall Street Journal - aside from an irate letter to the editor of Glamour magazine while she was a lawyer representing foster care parents, they are her first published bylines - question the Lower Manhattan Development Commission's intentions at ground zero, which she characterizes as real estate and commerce driven.

"To me, they're treating 9/11 like a 3,000-person car crash," says Ms. Burlingame, whose voice carries all the more clout for her being on the board of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation. "They're trying to hijack the meaning of 9/11; we're trying to rescue it. It's not just a story of death and loss. It's a love story of human decency triumphing over human depravity."

Her public statements, and a Take Back the Memorial Web site campaign, also critique the very officials who endorsed her board appointment, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Gov. George E. Pataki. Yesterday, over the mayor's objection, but apparently with the governor's O.K., the commission threw the Freedom Center's tenancy into doubt: its curriculum will undergo further scrutiny next month. The Drawing Center is expected to move elsewhere.

"I feel like Mike Bloomberg could commit to the idea of turning ground zero into a playground for culture and art, put up a plaque with 3,000 names, and call that the memorial," she complains. "So I'm a thorn in their side."

Anyone expecting apologies from Ms. Burlingame, who plays a starring role (fitting for a Neighborhood Playhouse alumna) in the drama over the removal of the Freedom Center and Drawing Center, is in for a long wait.

"We're not saying boycott the memorial; we're saying, fill it with the story of 9/11, or get it off the site," she says. "Remember, there were 20,000 body parts strewn over this site." She believes she was recruited for the board expressly because her brother's body parts were not among them; thus, she would be more cooperative.

"You can imagine how they must regret that," she says. "Everything I've done in my life has prepared me for this. My acting made me comfortable with public speaking. Seven years as a flight attendant helped me understand what went on inside those planes. My legal background has been helpful all along, and it's going to be helpful when they try to kick me off the board!"

She graduated from Cardozo, practiced law for two years, and spent five years at Court TV before moving to Los Angeles to start a production company. She moved back to New York after 9/11 and in 2003 married Robert Fraina, a friend she had not seen in 20 years but reconnected with after he sent her a sympathy card.

Ms. Burlingame, 51, comes by her convictions the hard way: her idolized oldest brother murdered in the cockpit of his plane as it streaked toward the Pentagon, and later hearing a sickening replay on the flight's data recorder. Her brother, a Navy pilot for 8 years and a reservist for 17 more, would have turned 51 on Sept. 12, 2001, and had planned to celebrate his birthday eve at an Angels baseball game. Having spent their teenage years in Anaheim, Calif., the Burlingames were Angels fans.

It remains inconceivable that she is now older than he will ever be.

After her brother's death, Ms. Burlingame, who has a grown daughter from her first marriage, and her family lobbied hard, and publicly, to have him buried at Arlington, a courtesy denied them because he had retired as a reservist and was under 60. When the Army, which operates Arlington, turned them down, they took on the Pentagon with backup from Senator John Warner of Virginia.

"He warned us that we were taking on the Pentagon, the 800-pound gorilla, and we said, 'Bring it on,' " says Ms. Burlingame, brandishing a neatly manicured fist. "Not fighting for that honor would have been like letting the terrorists determine where he was going to be buried. When I talk to the 9/11 families about this battle we're in at the site, I tell them we're supposed to be fighting, and sometimes you have to walk the really hard road, but in the end, the outcome is sweeter than if it had just been green-lighted the whole way. This isn't about us; it's about doing the right thing."

"But this is not really a campaign about money or space. It is a campaign about political purity - about how people remember 9/11 and about how we choose to read its aftermath, including the Iraq war. On their Web site, www.takebackthememorial.org, critics of the cultural plan at ground zero offer a resolution called Campaign America. It says that ground zero must contain no facilities "that house controversial debate, dialogue, artistic impressions, or exhibits referring to extraneous historical events." This, to us, sounds un-American."

here is an excerpt from a recent post at TBTM website :

"The First Amendment issues which plagued the Drawing Center still apply to the International Freedom Center, however. The IFC plans to host controversial debates and sponsor inappropriate programming involving the Tribeca Film Festival. On June 24, Gov. George Pataki directed the LMDC to obtain an “absolute guarantee” from cultural institutions located at the memorial site, ordering that they “respect the sanctity of that site,” adding that if they could not comply then “they shouldn’t be there.”

I think Klinkenborg has writen three pieces total on this in the editorial pages. But no letters of support. And he seems to be the only voice over there at the Times.
- selma 8-17-2005 2:02 am [add a comment]

today the firefighters union came out officially against the freedom center. i have no idea what the freedom foundation represents but they have allowed their opposition to define them with terms like "un-american". it seems only bloombergs office is still into the public process. editorials laud the drawing center for choosing to drop out and are faulting the freedom center for caving in to a lifetime of what ever turns out to be the families definition of respect. to me the drawing center wimped out. they never even sat down with amy wilson to discuss her matter. who the hell knows anything about these mysterious family groups? shouldnt there be an official coalition representing all the individual families grouped or otherwise? shouldnt the opinions of all the families be represented? why has veto power been given to the noisy conservative ones. i dont think they are speaking for the "jersey girls" for instance. the relationship between burlingame and whitehead of the lmdc really needs to be looked into. when and why was the public process scrapped for burlingame and her crew?
- bill 8-17-2005 3:27 am [add a comment]

• The old squeakywheelgetsthegrease rule in effect maybe?
  - steve 8-17-2005 9:44 am [add a comment]

here are the two burlingame WSJ essays:

june 22, 2004 "divided we fall"
october 2, 2004 "right war, right place"


and some interesting board chatter here.


- bill 8-17-2005 5:39 am [add a comment]

sorry for just picking up on this now but burlingame just hit my radar. it looks like she was set up to take back the families identity after kristen breitweiser and the other jersey girls stole the post 9/11 show by lighting a hot foot to the 9/11 commission and then endorsing john kerry for president. thank god they're still at it.


- bill 8-17-2005 6:00 am [add a comment]

additional information on taking back the "families" identity.

june 29, 05 videotape

from the tooney bin :

If you read the whole interview, you'll see some familiar themes that folks like Karen Hughes were using to defend the ads after the furor erupted. Sure, you can argue that Burlingame was speaking from the gut and that she picked up the "it's been done before" defense from television or radio, but it's not a stretch of the imagination to wonder if she got a call from someone on the right side of the aisle to come to Duh-bya's aid when you look back a few years:

"The U.S. Army has agreed to give Charles Frank Burlingame, the pilot of the American Airlines jet that crashed into the Pentagon Sept. 11, a hero's burial in his own plot at Arlington National Cemetery, Sens. John Warner and George Allen announced Friday. "The secretary of the Army, the administration found enough space in their heart to make the right decision. And that right decision is to allow Captain Burlingame to be buried in his own plot," said Allen."

...

"Friday's announcement by Warner and Allen came after days of efforts by lawmakers and negotiations between the military and Burlingame's family. Warner, who introduced legislation to waive the age requirement that had prevented the Navy reservist from getting his own burial plot, said the secretary of the Army informed him of the Pentagon's reversal Friday afternoon."

...

"A history of freedom around the world"? This is something perhaps the right and the left can agree is...stupid. Not that freedom is stupid, of course, but no one likes having platitudes shoved at them.
- tom moody 8-17-2005 4:55 pm [add a comment]

no one should be afraid of freedom...

"To reach this conclusion without a significant amount - particularly within this body - of debate and public comment leading up to the debate is disappointing," Mr. Doctoroff said."

hey selma, again from the NYT editorial page 8/16/05 :

The Governor's Proxy


For the past few weeks, Gov. George Pataki has been putting pressure on the founders of the International Freedom Center, hoping to force them to decide - as if on their own - to abandon their plans to be part of the ground zero development. This is a fight over far more than the future of one proposed institution. It is a battle to determine whether the area where the World Trade Center towers once stood will become a vibrant tribute to the American spirit or a place of grief only, a public cemetery with no possibility of renewal or regeneration and no vital connection to the city around it.


Mr. Pataki, who is clearly terrified of offending a vocal cadre of families of 9/11 victims, has totally abdicated his role as a leader in this controversy. Remarkably, the public official who has shown that he has the spine to say the right thing is Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Even though Mr. Bloomberg is engaged in a re-election fight, he has been the one who has not been afraid to say the obvious: both the victims and the survivors of the terrorist attack are best served by making Lower Manhattan a place that honors the dead but belongs to the living.

Mr. Pataki has not been able to force the founders of the Freedom Center to back out, but he has managed to talk the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which includes several staunch defenders of the center, into establishing a new six-week process for approving its plans.

There is nothing wrong with asking the Freedom Center to provide more detail about how it intends to govern itself and what programs it intends to create. And everyone presumes that a center so close to the memorial for the victims of 9/11 will be sensitive to its location. But this new appraisal of the center's plans may mean little more than subjecting them, essentially, to the veto of Debra Burlingame, the family member who began the Take Back the Memorial movement.

No one questions the emotional legitimacy of Ms. Burlingame's cause, or the fact that for most families of victims, ground zero will never be anything but the place where their loved ones died. The relatives have rightfully been the central voice in the planning of the memorial that will be built on the site. But neither Ms. Burlingame nor her followers can be allowed to dictate the future of the entire area. That has a place in the heart of the nation as a whole, and its use must reflect not only the nation's spirit, but its commitment to its basic principles.

At the core of the attack on the Freedom Center is the assumption that any debate or dissent near ground zero will dishonor the dead. One of the concerns about the center's plans, for instance, is whether it will include an auditorium - in other words, a place where people will be able to engage in free speech. To us, this attempt to stifle discussion at the site of the 9/11 attacks is utterly at odds with the spirit that should be embodied in this sacred place. It also ignores the fact that the memorial itself, with or without the center, will inevitably become a locus of debate and even protest. The Take Back the Memorial group seeks to void the public process that led to the current master plan for ground zero.

There is no strength or affirmation in forbidding debate and discussion, not even in the name of honoring the dead. There is only weakness and denial. Governor Pataki may believe that he is doing the right thing by giving Ms. Burlingame his proxy. But the governor's job is to represent the interests of the public. It would have been possible, even a few weeks ago, for Mr. Pataki to have acknowledged the dissent of some 9/11 families, and yet to have stood up for Daniel Libeskind's master plan and with it the rebirth of Lower Manhattan, the quintessentially American principle of free speech and the role of culture, in this most cultural of cities, in helping us understand 9/11. But when it comes to the International Freedom Center at ground zero, Mr. Pataki has sacrificed any illusion of leadership.

• I think this is the third, yes, klinkenborg again.
  - selma 8-17-2005 8:06 pm [add a comment]

burlingame~gotham gazette~august 24, 2005 "International Freedom Center at Ground Zero -- Pro and Con"

More disturbing, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is handing over millions of federal dollars and the keys to that building to some of the very same people who consider the post-9/11 provisions of the Patriot Act more dangerous than the terrorists that they were enacted to apprehend -- people whose inflammatory claims of a deliberate torture policy at Guantanamo Bay are undermining this country's efforts to foster freedom elsewhere in the world.

downtown express 8/5 - 11 / freedom requires standing up to 9/11 family leaders

A movement has been launched by 9/11 victims’ families to halt progress at the W.T.C. and to expand the memorial. This challenge unites interests that pose a real threat to the W.T.C. site plan selected based on public input. The banner for this movement is “Take Back the Memorial.” The strategy is to create controversy over cultural institutions, to force them off the site. But various statements by the group regarding retail, cultural and memorial components indicate a broader objective. This is an incarnation of the 16-acre memorial movement supported by a rightwing that is fear mongering about leftwing anti-Americans.

“Take Back the Memorial” is claiming censorship authority over site. I predict that it will not stop with this building. This censorship will inevitably kill all cultural initiatives. The same strategy could well be used to oppose retail and perhaps, components of commercial and transportation facilities. Under the philosophy of “all 9/11 all the time,” advocates will try to restrict pedestrian access to the memorial area to 9/11 tourists.

from buzzkill:

Who can forget the words of Dorothy Rabinowitz, printed in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, about Kristen Breitweiser and the other "Jersey Girls" who demanded accountability from leaders in Washington? After deriding what these women had to say (including "wisdom mind-numbingly obvious, or obviously false and irrelevant"), Rabinowitz opined:

DOROTHY RABINOWITZ'S MEDIA LOG [for the WSJ]

The 9/11 Widows
Americans are beginning to tire of them.

Wednesday, April 14, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

"I watched my husband murdered live on TV. . . . At any point in time the casualties could have been lessened, and it seems to me there wasn't even an attempt made."

--Monica Gabrielle

"Three thousand people were murdered on George Bush's watch."

-- Kristin Breitweiser


No one by now needs briefings on the identities of the commentators quoted above. The core group of widows led by the foursome known as "The Jersey Girls," credited with bringing the 9/11 Commission into being, are by now world famous. Their already established status in the media, as a small but heroically determined band of sisters speaking truth to power, reached ever greater heights last week, when National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice made her appearance at a commission session--an event that would not have taken place, it was understood, without the pressure from the widows. Television interviewers everywhere scrambled to land these guests--a far cry from the time, last June, when group leader Kristin Breitweiser spoke of her disappointment in the press, complaining to one journalist, "I've been scheduled to go on 'Meet the Press' and 'Hardball' so many times, and I'm always canceled."
No one is canceling her these days. The night of Ms. Rice's appearance, the Jersey Girls appeared on "Hardball," to charge that the national security adviser had failed to do her job, that the government failed to provide a timely military response, that the president had spent time reading to schoolchildren after learning of the attack, that intelligence agencies had failed to connect the dots. Others who had lost family to the terrorists' assault commanded little to no interest from TV interviewers. Debra Burlingame--lifelong Democrat, sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, captain of American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, did manage to land an interview after Ms. Rice's appearance. When she had finished airing her views critical of the accusatory tone and tactics of the Jersey Girls, her interviewer, ABC congressional reporter Linda Douglass marveled, "This is the first time I've heard this point of view."

i lifted this from the W.H. website :

Q Ari, can you tell us -- you said that Andy Card called the Pentagon. Can you tell us who he called regarding Captain Burlingame? And also, you said he didn't make any request. But is the administration suggesting to the Army that it reverse its decision and -- because the family is quite angry, and allow the Captain to be buried in his own grave?

MR. FLEISCHER: No, the administration has the same message for the Army as well as for the Burlingame family, and that is, we understand the deep sensitivities involved here. As I indicated yesterday, this is not the first time that there has been controversy about who has burial rights at Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington National Cemetery is the final resting spot for a countless number of people who have served our nation with valor. And many people seek to be buried there.

Arlington is also running out of space. And so, it is one of the most difficult decisions for the Pentagon to make about who is allowed and who is not allowed. And therefore, they have promulgated and put in place a series of rules and regulations that are widely known about who can be in and who cannot. Most of those were done -- all of those were done -- in public and in lengthy, lengthy discussions with the families and people in the various branches of the Armed Services.

It always presents difficult issues anytime somebody seeks a waiver from the way procedures are. And that is why these are so difficult matters -- such difficult matters. And they involve a nation's emotions after the attack on our country and a family that is affected by it, the Burlingames.

Andy Card called the Pentagon yesterday and again today so that the White House could be informed about the status of the talks with the family, what the Pentagon was doing, and to be apprised of the family's reactions. So the talks between the Pentagon and the family continue, and the White House will continue to receive status reports.

Q A quick follow-up on that. Is the President ruling out, if there can't be a resolution here, a presidential waiver to allow the family --

MR. FLEISCHER: The President hopes that the family and the Pentagon will be able to come to an amicable agreement.

Q But he could intervene if he wanted to? He has the power to do that, doesn't he?

MR. FLEISCHER: Presidents have that authority, but the President's message is that he hopes that the family and the Department of Defense will be able to work this out amicably. He thinks that's the best route to proceed, but --

Q So he doesn't want to intervene?

MR. FLEISCHER: Again, the President hopes that it can be worked out amicably.

Q Would he support congressional legislation, some lawmakers talking about some legislation that might change the age for Reservists, or something else that would allow Captain Burlingame to be buried in his own grave?

MR. FLEISCHER: Again, the President hopes it can be worked out amicably. But the White House is going to continue to listen and to monitor and to receive status reports.

Q Ari, has the President responded in any way to the requests from Senator Allen on behalf of the Burlingame family? And what's the President's message to any Reservist who is serving now with military missions overseas on their own desires, if something happened to them, to be buried at Arlington? This rule would preclude them from having --

MR. FLEISCHER: Everybody who serves our nation knows that national cemeteries, Arlington included, have a series of regulations that have been promulgated over a considerable period of time that try to address the concerns of so many who seek to be buried at Arlington, with a recognition that it's a final resting place that's running out of space.

And so those regulations are in place. And I think the servicemen and women know those regulations and understand them. And I have nothing further to go beyond that. The President is keenly aware of the congressional interest in the matter, and of the family's sensitivities in the matter. And he's also aware that there will be other sensitivities from other families in the future, as well, that also have to be taken into consideration, as regulations are looked into.

Q So the message is no exemptions for anyone? And if you could let me know what he thought about Senator Allen's particular request.

MR. FLEISCHER: The President's reaction is that he hopes that the Pentagon and the family will be able to come to an amicable agreement. He's aware of the congressional interest.

"We're not really done," were her first words--the Freedom Center may have gone, but it was still not certain what would take its place. She wanted the recognition of her victory to be restrained, not raucous, and her voice betrayed some of the fatigue that can so often set in as soon as a battle of attrition is over. I suggested that we meet the next morning, to talk about the turn events had taken.
"Oh no!" she protested, "Not in the morning! I look horrible in the morning!" This last assertion turns out to be the only thing I've heard her say that is open to refutation.

At 10 a.m. the next day, I found her outside her home in Pelham, N.Y., in prosperous Westchester County, looking the very picture of blond, suburban poise: neat hair, pearly teeth, understated jewelry, crisp white cotton shirt, laundered blue jeans, blue flip-flops, pink toenails. She was hauling empty garbage cans off the sidewalk and back onto her drive, where her SUV was parked. Two dogs barked their greetings as we stepped into a house so immaculate that it was hard to believe it was kept not by a Full-time Homemaker, but by a Full-time Activist.

" 'Activist'. . . I'm not entirely happy with the term," she said to me with mild reproof. "I'm a citizen." We were seated in her small office--a place where Mexican oil paintings vied for space with pictures of her brother and a collage of yellow Post-it Notes on the wall. This was, in fact, the one part of her house that was less than perfectly ordered; I confess that I was reassured by this--Ms. Burlingame, disconcertingly, can come across as a seemingly flawless person on a seemingly flawless mission.