t/s:decency vs. depravity

By DAVID W. DUNLAP
After a summer of furious and steadily rising criticism, Gov. George E. Pataki announced today that he was evicting the proposed International Freedom Center museum from its place next to the World Trade Center memorial site. With that, the center declared itself to be out of business.

"The I.F.C. cannot be located on the memorial quadrant," Mr. Pataki said in a statement issued shortly before 5 p.m. That quadrant, at the southwest corner of the trade center site, contains the footprints of the twin towers. It is regarded by many as sacred ground, too hallowed for a museum dealing with 9/11 in the context of greater geopolitics and social history.

"There remains too much opposition, too much controversy over the programming of the I.F.C.," the governor said, "and we must move forward with our first priority, the creation of an inspiring memorial." Mr. Pataki said he had instructed the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to "work with the I.F.C. to explore other locations."

But 42 minutes later, the center said in its own statement that there was no other location to explore, since the memorial quadrant was "the site for which the I.F.C. was created, at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation's request, and as an integral part of Daniel Libeskind's master site plan."

"We do not believe there is a viable alternative place for the I.F.C. at the World Trade Center site," the center's executives, Tom A. Bernstein, Peter W. Kunhardt and Richard J. Tofel, said in the statement. "We consider our work, therefore, to have been brought to an end." The Freedom Center was designated for the site in June 2004.

The surprising tumble of events raises new questions around the redevelopment of ground zero: What will go into the cultural building, designed by the firm Snohetta, on the memorial quadrant? (The Drawing Center, its other designated tenant, is already looking for other space.) Will the cultural building be constructed at all? How will that affect plans for an underground 9/11 museum?

What sort of future awaits the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation board, when its three-year planning process can be undone in a stroke by the governor?

And what kind of divisions might emerge at the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation board? Its members include Freedom Center executives and Robert De Niro, whose Tribeca Film Institute was to have been part of the center, as well as Debra Burlingame, who led the opposition to the center, beginning with an article in The Wall Street Journal, "The Great Ground Zero Heist," on June 9.

Ms. Burlingame's brother, Charles F. Burlingame III, was the pilot of the hijacked airliner that was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

"I congratulate Governor Pataki," Ms. Burlingame said, "for recognizing that the International Freedom Center was an obstacle not simply for the families, the first responders and all those who were personally affected by the events of Sept. 11, but for all Americans who will be coming to the World Trade Center memorial to hear the story of 9/11 and that story only.

"And I believe that story will be able to convey all the core values that Governor Pataki so eloquently enunciated again in his statement," she said, adding that "9/11 is not only a story of loss, it's an uplifting story of decency triumphing over depravity."