Hillary Clinton says White House hid New York toxins risk

Senator Hillary Clinton has put herself at the forefront of an attack on the Bush administration, threatening to block a key political appointment until the White House explains why it failed to issue accurate warnings about air quality in Manhattan after the World Trade Centre collapse.

The former first lady said she would use her position on the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee to prevent Mike Leavitt, the outgoing governor of Utah, being confirmed as the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Although she has no particular problem with Mr Leavitt, Mrs Clinton made clear that she was furious with the White House for failing to explain why air quality reports were toned down in the days after the 11 September 2001 attacks and why cautionary language directed at elderly people, children and others was edited out of news releases.

"This is a really serious issue that has long-lasting consequences not only for New York, but also for the quality of our environment and the trust in our government,'' Senator Clinton told The New York Times. "I can see no other way to get the administration's attention.'' Two weeks ago, the EPA's inspector general reported that the White House's Council on Environmental Quality had intervened to "add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones'' from official assessments of toxins swirling in the air following the twin towers' collapse.

A news release issued on 18 September 2001 left out a line raising health concerns both for rescue workers digging through the rubble at ground zero and for Wall Street employees nearby. Instead of noting the presence of deadly contaminants, the release said that the air was generally safe to breathe.

According to Nikki Tinsley, the EPA's acting inspector general, official eagerness to get Wall Street up and running took precedence over providing the fullest information available.

"That was wrong. That was inexcusable," Mrs Clinton said. "I want to know exactly what happened.'' Mrs Clinton and another influential Democratic senator, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, wrote to the White House 10 days ago demanding a "thorough and expeditious accounting" of what happened by the end of last week. But the White House was silent, accusing Mrs Clinton of exploiting the issue for political gain.

The former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman has defended herself vigorously against charges of impropriety. "There's no way in hell - excuse my language - that I would ever, ever play games with this kind of information,'' she said last week.

Mrs Clinton's sights are set not on Ms Whitman but on the President's immediate entourage. "I know a little bit about how White Houses work," she said. "I know somebody picked up a phone, somebody got on a computer, somebody sent an e-mail, somebody called for a meeting, somebody in that White House probably under instructions from somebody further up the chain told the EPA, 'Don't tell the people of New York the truth'. And I want to know who that is.''