Mark Twain famously said that “there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” The World Trade Center is being built on all three. News of the Science Channel series on the woebegone project sounds exciting enough, if one isn’t aware of the true facts. But once they are known, the impediments will be evident to anyone with even a half-open mind.

Anyone who serves the public in an official capacity is derelict if they don’t ask themselves if they would stand alone and proudly certify that the current project should be built, once they have read the inconvenient details. If the answer is no, what are they going to do about it?

Maybe most will think they can get away with doing nothing, but we believe that someone will say that enough is enough — it only takes one — and the rest will be history. In fact, that’s just the sort of story Steven Spielberg tells the best.

In the days ahead, we will be contacting the individual offices of members of the Senate Finance Committee, so that when HR 4213, the “Tax Extenders” bill, which includes the Liberty Zone reauthorization, is considered, it will be evident that the request to add a cost/benefit analysis rider to the reauthorization is eminently reasonable and deserving of support.

If the current project is a responsible use of public funds and an appropriate response to a national tragedy, then the many structural irregularities and improprieties must be explained.

Glossing over this request might have been standard procedure in years past, but the massive failure of the Washington establishment to govern responsibly and protect the public’s best interests makes this narrative worthy of careful attention and principled action.

In addition to the immediate relief requested in relation to the Liberty Zone program, we also intend to canvas Congress in February for sponsors of a bill to make the World Trade Center a national holding, because there is a strong case to be made that state and local officials have forfeited the right to manage the property.

Its national iconic character is being compromised and it is being heavily subsidized by the American people. So what conceivable reason can there be to make the future of our recovery from the attacks of 9/11 hostage to petty New York and New Jersey politics — particularly when both states are badly in need of the revenue that the sale of the property will bring in. That may sound radical and even absurd at face value, but we are confident that what follows will register with some lawmakers.

• The World Trade Center is public property. It was built with public funds and is being built with public funds once more. It continued to be a public holding after Larry Silverstein leased the buildings in 2001. The contract Mr. Silversein signed required him to rebuild the premises if they were ever destroyed. The public slaughter of 2,751 citizens who paid the ultimate price for being Americans (or honorary Americans) made the public’s claim irrevocable.
• The Pataki competition never included new Twin Towers, even though they were the overwhelming favorite, so the process was neither democratic or inclusive. Smug critics can’t change the fact that the Twin Towers had the hearts of the people before they were destroyed and always will. In an MSNBC poll in 2009, over 90% voted to replace the current project with the “Twin Towers II” plan.
• The current plan to rebuild the World Trade Center is the result of a fraudulent process. Of the two semi-finalists, the public chose “neither,” the LMDC chose the twin-towered THINK design, and former Gov. Pataki revealed on national television in February, 2009, that he and Michael Bloomberg decided on the Libeskind plan instead — even though it was essentially the same site plan as one that had been rejected in the first round of designs.
• Officials have a duty to protect the public’s investment. Where is the accounting for upwards of 20 billion tax dollars? Why should the government promise to lease half of a building that investors wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole when the markets were strong? How would officials bypass the “Twin Towers II” plan without first evaluating claims that it can save billions of dollars in construction costs and years of time? Whose money do they think they’re spending?
• The current dispiriting plan begins with a windowless wonder and spirals down to a giant drain. The bizarrely expensive, bizarrely inappropriate memorial is the pet project of Michael Bloomberg, but neither the 9/11 families nor the American people deserve a memorial that above all memorializes the success of the attacks by glorifying the empty footprints and giving Al Qaeda a world-class trophy.