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9/11 survivors call for renewed probe as 8th anniversary approaches
By Bob Braun
August 09, 2009, 9:06PM
Noah K. Murray/The star-LedgerLorie Van Auken in a 2006 Star-Ledger file photo. The eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is a month away and some survivors of those lost believe it's a good time to renew an investigation into the events of that disastrous day. New York City disagrees.
"We know we never have learned the truth, it's as simple as that,'' says Lorie Van Auken of East Brunswick, one of the most ardent supporters of the creation of the 9/11 commission in 2002. It was headed by former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean.
"Members and staff of the 9/11 commission have said many of the questions raised by the attacks have never been answered.''
Van Auken was a founding member of Sept. 11 Advocates, originally a group of four New Jersey widows whose husbands were killed that day. The group, informally called "the Jersey girls,'' successfully lobbied for the creation of the commission.
The four women formed the core of a "steering committee" that was loosely attached to the panel, and then became lobbyists for enactment of the commission's recommendations and critics of many of its findings after the panel's report was published almost exactly five years ago.
Van Auken is now affiliated with an organization called NYC-CAN -- New York City Coalition for Accountability Now -- that has spent the last few months collecting signatures on a petition designed to require New York's city council to place the creation of an investigating commission on the November ballot.
9/11 survivors call for renewed probe as 8th anniversary approaches | Bob Braun - NJ.com
villagevoice...9/11 survivors call for renewed probe as 8th anniversary approaches
By Bob Braun
August 09, 2009, 9:06PM
After two presidential runs in one year, former Senator Mike Gravel is setting his sites on New York City politics, specifically a grassroots effort to have New York City citizens vote to establish a new September 11th investigation commission.
The petition drive needs at least 30,000 residents to give their signatures in order to place a potential amendment to the city charter on the November ballot. The former Alaska senator and lifelong political loose cannon threw his weight behind the effort to establish a second, privately funded investigation into the events of September 11th, in response to what he called a fatally flawed 9/11 Commission report.
New York - Runnin' Scared - Former Senator Gravel Backs NYC 9/11 Commission