April 6, 2007

Dear Ms. Cohen,

It has been five months since we submitted our formal complaint to the Attorney General’s Office. We heard from Mr. McCann in January, subsequent to a message we had left for you. He explained that due to the election cycle the review of the matter had been delayed, but that it was underway.

More than three months later we have heard nothing further. We delivered a substantive 67-page formal complaint to the Attorney General’s Office at the end of October. It referenced names and heartfelt comments from over 1000 Metro New Yorkers. That number constitutes a larger sampling than is used in many national polls. In it we asked the Attorney General to seek an injunction against further development on our behalf, as “The People’s Lawyer,” until the true facts were sorted out.

Attorney General Spitzer hardly needed to be convinced of the former administration’s wrongdoing, since he had already called the LMDC proceedings an Enron-style debacle. We thought that once he was in the Governor’s Mansion we would see some of the famous Spitzer-style justice.

The unavoidable truth is that Gov. Pataki set out to deceive the public regarding his intentions for Ground Zero and irrevocably twisted the outcome. He oversaw an elaborately misleading process that gave the appearance of inclusiveness, but was nothing of the sort. If he had not devised this smokescreen and had instead stated how he intended to proceed, the citizens would never have permitted it. Therefore, everything that followed is illegitimate. If that is not an offense that merits the intercession of the Public Integrity Unit then what would?

We can and will back up what we say and make it stick. The offense is only compounded by the lack of cooperation we have received from other members of the government, who had no part in the deception and therefore had no clear reason for dragging their feet in this matter.

Our question is simple: When will the politics end and the justice begin? We look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

Margaret Donovan
for The Twin Towers Alliance

Cc:   Gov. Eliot Spitzer

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