Part of 9/11 Workers' Suit
Ex-Detective Still Feels Fallout

By ARI PAUL

Former NYPD Detective John Walcott will never be the same.

SAYS 9/11 COMPENSATION WITHHELD: Former Detective John Walcott is one of the first-responders suffering from illnesses related to recovery work at Ground Zero who is suing Mayor Bloomberg and the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company. They claim the city and the company are holding money owed to sick workers.

Like other first-responders, he spent the first three weeks after 9/11 searching buildings and helping people back into their homes around the World Trade Center site without a respirator. Then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani assured the public the air was safe to breathe. Mr. Walcott eventually received a respirator, but then he learned that the filters were inadequate. Then the symptoms started.

'Hacking and Coughing'

"Your pillow and shower and your sink would be like a barbeque pit," Mr. Walcott recalled. "You'd just be hacking and coughing and puking for months."

He was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia in early 2003. He went through six months of chemotherapy and spent two weeks on an ice mattress because his body temperature was too high. There was bleeding from all of his orifices, he recalled: from his mouth, his nose and even his eyes. The thing that ultimately saved his life was a stem-cell transplant in November of 2003 from an unrelated donor in Germany, whom he plans to visit and thank personally.

MARC JAY BERN: Should pay workers.

Mr. Walcott is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan July 17 claiming that the $1 billion granted to the city by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to give to workers suffering respiratory illnesses and injuries as a result of working on Ground Zero has been kept from these workers. Marc Jay Bern, the attorney for the workers, explained that the city put the money with the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company, which along with Mayor Bloomberg is a named defendant in the lawsuit.

'Holding Money Hostage'

"Mayor Bloomberg and the Captive Insurance Company have refused to release the money," said Mr. Bern. "It's unfortunate that it's called a captive, because that's what it's doing with this money. Mayor Bloomberg is holding the money hostage."

The company roundly rejected the lawsuit's claims.

"The fact is that Captive has been and continues to faithfully fulfill the mandate set for it by the Federal Government at the time of its formation, which was and is to insure the City of New York and the scores of contractors and subcontractors the City engaged against claims arising from their respective roles in the rescue, recovery and debris-removal work that began immediately after the collapse of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center of September 11, 2001," the firm said in a statement. "Any suggestion that we have departed from that mandate or have not faithfully performed our duties under it is, in our view, completely without basis in fact."

The lawsuit claims that use of the money to pay workers who had become sick is outlined by correspondence between FEMA and 30 members of the U.S. House of Representatives dated May 24, 2002 supporting the city's application for the grant.

Reopen Victims' Fund?

The Captive reiterated that Congress could reopen the old Victim Compensation Fund, to which workers harmed in cleaning up Ground Zero would have access.

"If such legislation were enacted and were to provide an alternative to litigation, it would presumably call for the $1 billion FEMA grant with which the WTC Captive Insurance Company was funded to be reallocated to a reinstituted Post 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, an outcome the Captive would expect to support," the firm's statement said.

The city claimed it is doing what it can to get more money for injured workers.

"The policy was not intended to be a Victim Compensation Fund, and the WTC Captive is appropriately addressing claims made against its insureds," Lawrence S. Kahn, the Law Department's Chief Litigating Assistant, said in a statement. "The city needs a victims' compensation fund, and has called on the Federal Government to reopen the old fund."

10,000 Join Suit

Mr. Walcott said he was shocked to know that there were 10,000 afflicted first-responders who have not been given medical treatment whom Mr. Bern's firm is also representing in court. In addition, the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a report July 24 saying the Federal Government did not offer enough health services for Ground Zero workers.

"New York City failed to give them a safe place to work," said Mr. Bern.

While construction work at Ground Zero six years after the attacks resembles the routine at any other work site in the city except that visitors snap photos of what has become a tourist attraction, Mr. Walcott knows no such normality.

"I have no feeling in my hands," he said. "Every day I wake up, it's like I was in a bad car accident. I've had a tumor on my back removed now. I just got diagnosed with sleep apnea. I'm probably going to have to get my tonsils removed."

And like so many other sick first-responders, his medical costs have compromised his family's financial situation.

Take Aim At Giuliani

The issue of whether the air was safe to breathe around Ground Zero has aroused union officials as well as community groups. Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steve Cassidy promised to raise the fact that firefighters on the scene were not given respirators to try to damage Mr. Giuliani's presidential campaign, and called on the former Mayor to testify before the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

Former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman testified before that committee June 25, but a spokesman for its chair, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, said there is no plan to ask Mr. Giuliani to testify.

Some residents' groups around the World Trade Center have asserted that the tainted air has affected them.

"There are people who are getting sick," said Tom Goodkind, who serves on the WTC Redevelopment Committee of Community Board 1 in lower Manhattan. "Right after 9/11, we were told to move into our apartments. For months, toxic fumes were burning inside our lungs."

'Why Did They Lie?'

While Mr. Walcott, like the other plaintiffs in the case, is suing for compensatory damages, he said that there is not a dollar amount that could compensate him for the suffering he went through, the fact that he missed his baby daughter's first steps while he was in isolation at a hospital, or the permanent damage that has been done to his body. But for him, winning the suit might finally point the finger at Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Whitman, who told workers and residents alike that the air in the area was safe to breathe.

"Why would the Mayor of New York and Christie Todd Whitman lie to the American people?" Mr. Walcott asked. "They led us into a gas chamber."