Why didn't they warn us, asks 9/11 hero

BY MICHAEL McAULIFF
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Tuesday, June 26th 2007, 4:00 AM

WASHINGTON - For Lt. William Gleason, Christie Whitman has only brought pain.

Yesterday, the disabled Fire Department paramedic came to Washington to hear Whitman explain why she didn't warn him and thousands of other 9/11 responders that Ground Zero was more dangerous than they thought.

He was not satisfied.

"The sad part is, she tried to blame everyone else," said Gleason, who retired from the FDNY in 2004 as nodules started growing on his scarred lungs and his breathing deteriorated. "She was not open and honest."

Gleason, who worked out of Elmhurst Hospital Center, drove to Ground Zero on a "Gator" - a six-wheeled golf cart used to move bodies - because that was the only way to get there on Sept. 11, 2001.

He spent much of the next three days there, searching for survivors and treating some of the wounded. But there were relatively few of those, and he and fellow Emergency Medical Service officers ended up on a grim detail of combing through the dust and debris to recover and catalogue the body parts.

"It was find it, put it in the red bag and put in the container, write it up," he said. He carried a clean American flag on his cart every day in case he found one of the 141 friends he had lost.

"I'm not gonna put them under a dirty flag," he said.

That sense of loyalty and patriotism is what drove him in those days. He doesn't think Whitman gave it back.

"We just went in there to do our jobs, and we didn't ask too many questions," Gleason said. "You rely on the people above to watch your back, and they didn't."

Still, if he could, he'd rush to Ground Zero again, knowing the risks. "I would," he said. "But I'd protect myself."

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/06/26/2007-06-26_why_didnt_they_warn_us_asks_911_hero.html