Pleasure of chatting for a few minutes with elizabeth, the anthropologist, lecturer at Harvard University and the author of a very important new book battle for ground zero inside the political struggle to rebuild the World Trade Center. This battle was not about al qaeda and its not about the 9 11 terrorist attacks directly. But it is about is a social, anthropological study of the various political, social and other pressures that went into the decision surrounding the site at the World Trade Center. Why, when, with the problems were. Elizabeth, welcome to after words. What were the underlying reasons that you decided to focus on the struggle to reconstruct the World Trade Center . Guest in the fall of 2001i was a graduate student studying anthropology so i was studying cities and i was becoming very interested in how the citys reconstructed themselves after the destruction i was thinking about a project in berlin and studying with the city had done in the 90s after the wall came down there were fascinating walls to mark these different moments in history and i was putting together an independent study with a professor that fall and then 9 11 happened. Its incredibly powerful event. It was clear that so many things are going to be changing from that moment on. The domestic foreign policy. But right away, within weeks everyone starts asking what do we rebuild . How do we capture the feelings that youre having is a country in space what kind of architecture what we imagine so they started playing out in the oped pages and newspapers on tv about the space and how we can put something here to mark this. So i started reading about this in the peter and i thought i couldnt possibly just continue forward with my graduate plan when the things im interested in and the questions are now playing out right here in new york city. Host how much of the research you did in the early effort that you engaged in in trying to fashion the sort of a thesis of the battle to ground zero helm much of this was your evaluation of political pressures, economic pressures, pressures of emotional human nature . Guest it was all those things and i think that is what is so interesting and why this is important because it country concentrates a 16acre piece of land you have the little pressure, people running for office, you have politicians involved to care about this place and need something to happen. You have people that are leasing the billions and you have millions of dollars at stake in rebuilding the commercial space and you have new yorkers that lives around the area and family members and family members that lost loved ones, 3,000 people were killed to the you have americans and people from around the world who saw what happened and they also feel connected. So you have so many different interests all coming together who to me it felt like a question of ownership of of the time. Who owns this piece of land and there were lots of ways you could answer that question. There was the legal answer that this was the belief in the Port Authority. They own the land. But for a lot of people that was a completely inadequate answer because they thought americans own a piece of land this is american patriotism now or where the tragedy happened that we have to commemorate. Host you talk about the battle for ground zero. What were the major conflict in forces that would add to each other that rye is to your metaphor the battle for ground zero . Guest there are the main attention is this one between the public sphere but many groups and people within from architect to new yorkers to the family members and the tourists coming together on the street who want to say who are turning out a public hearing to voice their concerns. Then you have the private side, the developer that owns the land, you have the Port Authority and then you have the Port Authority that is the institution in new york that owns the land and they are very interested and believe in building a memorial but they also want to make sure that all the office space is the story rebuilt with 10 million square feet of office space which is quite a bit. And so almost every conflict of some level is a clash between the public and private forces to figure out with the balance is because everyone believes there should some believe could be a mixture between the public and private filleted. Host how much role in the battle did the families themselves whos all the land in the World Trade Center area has almost sacred land, how much aside from the developers, the insurance companies, the politicians, the number crunchers how much of the battle involved this psychological and aversion to doing anything in the property of their than declaring it as a some sort of holy land . Guest many families thought of it as a battleground because the pictures were killed and something thats important to think of they were not just killed their. They were never found its a pretty shocking violence where people were just literally decimate it. For the families they were not able to have a body or any kind of fragment of bone to very. The Burial Ground especially early on the first years after nine alevin that nothing should happen many new yorkers and Many Americans didnt necessarily share that point of view because a lot of people wanted something for instance to kind of rise on the skyline again to fill in the hole in the sky that the trend powers used to fill. We should treat this land carefully and we should commemorate, but we shouldnt i think there wasnt a consensus or and open space but a lot of families worked very hard to make sure that some portion of land was put aside for a very substantial memorial. There is a kind of giveandtake in the process people have to make compromises and that was a big one for many families that they knew that something would be built and that would be developed when they wanted nothing. Host in most battles that we study in history there are the winners and losers and there are heroes and villains. In your book who do you focus on at the end of the day that turn out to be the hero in resolving this battle and who do you in one way or another focus on as a , not enemies but those who were obstacles to a successful getting to yes on the resolution of the battle . Guest its a hard question. This process took so long and was so dysfunctional that there is almost no hero because Everyone Wants it entered in and it was kind of tarnished at a point. I think some people believe that mayor bloomberg is something of a hero. Its everything they left in 2006 and that opened up room for the mayor to get involved. They helped to bring the Port Authority and Larry Silverstein, the developer to start making some compromise is to lead i talked to a lot of people that fought alex bluebird the battles will still be going on that he helped other people make some key compromises and decisions. But i talked to just as many people who continue to be serious with the kind of agenda that they saw, the city and the mayors office. So certainly one person, chris who took over the Port Authority leader on in 2008 is another kind of that helped write a around 2010 is when things started to move forward to the host that is nine years after the attack. Why a nine year war of attrition in your book as to actually implement the plan . Guest that is the question. Part of it was the debate sometimes there were words that protested ground zero called the International Freedom center and the Manhattan Development corporation had picked. So a small growth families many disagreed with demobilized and got this museum defeated and so that takes time. But a lot of the battles or between Larry Silverstein and the Port Authority because the partners in the Publicprivate Partnership because it was kind of an unprecedented situation there were no guidelines on how they were supposed to Work Together when their property was destroyed in such a historic fashion. So they brought in the letters and had arbitration and it took years. Host lets focus on the two battles of the overall war. Lets focus on to battles that you mentioned and discussed in the book. You mentioned one of them today. Explain to the viewers what the battle entailed. Take for example the very reasonable it seemed idea for the International Museum. What was the genesis of that idea, what was the constraint and why did a founder what was there about a wellintentioned noble idea of a and International Museum why did it fail . Guest it was the Freedom Center and then they made it the International Freedom center for. The idea stemmed it was actually another developer in new york who happened to know, he had been involved in politics and he thought that this was host who is this . Guest tom bernstein. Host yes, very well in ten did the very sound public citizen. Guest he had this idea pretty good after 9 11. As he says in the book and in an interview it was a vague idea dedicated to the concept of freedom. But he wanted to talk about freedom historically, struggles for freedom over time in different parts of the world including in the United States where there was a struggle for freedom here. He wanted to talk about hot spots. That was a part of the museum is the hot spot battle for freedom and struggle for human rights playing. It was unclear but he wanted to have a public intellectual and professor involved and he signed up. They signed up to be involved. As a he was getting important and wellestablished people on board. But there was always a push in the rebuilding effort on how things are moving forward very quickly. And so they put together a set of plans that in hindsight some that were involved told me that it was too fast and they were not ready to be putting together these guidelines. Host there was too much emotionalism in the air. Guest they were not sure what would be in the p. M. The there was going to be a Public Service area they were going to be inviting people to sign that to volunteer for the human rights efforts in different parts of the world. Again, well intentioned but what does that really mean and what exactly does that look like . People dont know. The Aspen Institute was great to be involved. So there were lots of partners for exactly what the exhibits would look like. That was still left to be decided and there was still time others in the public wanted to see blueprints. So they released the sprints for the time and wrote a big story on the museum and it was clear that okay this sounds interesting but its not quite sure what its going to be. Host you make it sound as if the idea ultimately foundered over its absence of clarity or just timing and life as everything and it came along at a time before what, the emotionalism and the attacks that settled or what . Guest one important part is that 9 11 wasnt specifically addressed. It was going to be mentioned up front but it raza and really a museum about my nell irvin and that ends up being a big reason people to protesting against the museum but i think that i needed me has been a part of that and i do think the lack of clarity. I think it sounded abstract and freedom is a big idea and what exactly does that have to do with 9 11. You have to make an intellectual case for it and it is hard to do in these little blue prints that they are publishing out of line and people are reading. And so people before a couple people found out about this. One was deborah who was a board member of the foundation. And she started asking questions to fit what is the Freedom Center and what will that be. And so there are two primary problems with of the museum. Her brother was a pilot on a plane that crashed in the pentagon. The second is she believed the number of people who were involved were progressive liberals of a certain sense who had been critical of the Bush Administration and she felt they were going to be bringing their politics in the museum and using it as a place to advance their political. So from those ends, she put a Grassroots Organization together that is just one out and successfully defeated this museum, but it was a huge incredible controversy and chaos for a number of months that got the pages involved and got really nasty. Host the one extent when you have the date that gets really nasty and is played out in the New York Times and the wall street journal to what extent is it inevitable that when you have that degree of controversy it may take awhile, but sooner or later the idea is dead. The mere controversy itself on an idea that was noble and wellintentioned guarantees ultimately its failure even if it is going to take awhile to kill it. Guest that is a good point. When it comes to this place, that has definitely been the pattern. People dont the leaders in charge want things to move forward. So any controversy host with consensus boe. Guest anything that looks like it is coming to be a problem is gone. That is what happened here. So at first people were on board with it. Supportive. Mayor giuliani at least on paper was supportive and then what happens is burlingames group gets to Hillary Clinton and everyone is planning on running for president. Politics is a big part of this. They convinced her happenstance effort to say she is against the museum. They write a press release and publicize Hillary Clinton is against this, its like boom, boom, boom. As soon as it becomes a controversy like that and publicly it is not sustainable on gone. You have to look at another major controversy at ground zero that was following in the same foot steps. You had people getting a really emotional, lots of protests on the street, the oped pages, the blogosphere, but different results. Certain politicians said it should be moved but others called for it to stay one of whom was mayor bloomberg who said this was a mistake and so they kind of rode out the controversy. Host lets take another example of the battle that falls over the battle for ground zero. We are talking with Elizabeth Greenspan, the author of an important book battle for grumman zero inside the political struggle to rebuild the World Trade Center. Palgrave macmillan is the publisher. Lets focus on another battle, which to some was more existential but very real and that was the architectural plan. The competition, the results, and sure enough a very polarizing battle over what exactly architecturally should be done with this important piece of land in manhattan. Of what was that about . Guest this was the first. Early on we said okay we have a 16acre piece of land. We have to put some things on it or maybe not. It was openended what do we do with it. Everyone wanted a say in that. So very quickly the leaders publish the process to receive input to generate a master plan. At the same time that was going on like i said before you have Larry Silverstein who had the least the office space and you have the Port Authority and they really believe in the importance of the commercial space that was destroyed the but they wanted to make sure that Lower Manhattan remained in International Financial hub and they believed was an order for it to remain that reputation they had to rebuild all of the commercial space. There was a very controversial point early on when a lot of people thought about the land as a Burial Ground. They were not sure that it would be difficult like a regular new york piece of real estate. So they went ahead and decided we would rebuild the office space. There was no discussion. No public debate. Later that summer in the summer of 2002 there was a huge Public Statement where 5,000 people turned out into the center in new york to help the side with the World Trade Center will be. A democracy in action. Nobody knew they made a lot of decisions already. They made the decision that this would be a heavily commercial piece of land the but also have a memorial and a train station but a lot of commercial realestate. And so they laid out they gave us with a hearing, the plans that they had already worked on the and we were supposed to pick one of the five. But they were all very similar because they all had the same program of commercial space for the memorial. And people rejected that out right. They said these are terrible. There is too much office space. They said the developer Larry Silverstein house too much power over the effort because of the belief so we need to start over. This cant be a regular rebuilding effort. This cant be a regular piece of land. We need something monumental people wanted to see something exciting and innovative. Like something that had never been done before. They wanted something symbolic. They wanted me be an ice scraper to fill in the skylines but they didnt want just a regular old office building. So this presented a problem to those in charge because he had a lease that entitle him to rebuild the spaces that he wanted and yet the people, the public was calling for that to be broken and do not define this land. What they did is opened up an International Design competition to be the architects from around the world making these plans with really fantastical buildings. But these preexisting claims they decided on like 10 million square feet of office space. That remained intact. They carried that over into the competition. But now looking at them. It was in the fin