HOW HE SEES IT Is there corruption at ground zero?

By DEROY MURDOCK
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
NEW YORK -- On July 4, New York Gov. George Pataki will break ground on architect Daniel Libeskind's "Freedom Tower" at the World Trade Center site. Instead, Pataki should dig a hole and bury Libeskind's design. As a new book explains, this would be a fitting conclusion to an urban development scam seemingly of Pataki's own making.
"The Ground Zero Rebuilding Scandal" is the work of Justin Berzon, a recent graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Berzon is a freshly minted writer with a nose for news and the single-mindedness of a police bloodhound pursuing an elusive suspect. His book is excerpted at justinberzon.com. (Full disclosure: I have befriended Berzon as a fellow advocate for restoring the Twin Towers. His volume discusses our journalistic collaboration.)
Berzon wondered "how a man like George Pataki had any idea Daniel Libeskind existed in the first place." Libeskind was not a world-famous architect like Frank Gehry or I.M Pei. In fact, this Polish-born son of Holocaust survivors never built a skyscraper, never constructed anything other than three low-rise, European museums, and was not even a licensed U.S. architect until July 2003.
Libeskind did have a prominent booster named Ron Lauder. While the Estee Lauder cosmetics heir served as its chairman, New York's Museum of Modern Art sponsored a 2001 exhibit of Libeskind's theoretical sketches.
That year, Lauder attended the VIP opening of Libeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin. He also supports Jewish, Holocaust-related and Eastern European concerns.
Consulting fee
Lauder had Pataki's ear. He chaired the governor's privatization commission in 1995. Pataki's wife, Libby, earns a reported $100,000 annually as a consultant to Lauder. According to the Village Voice, between 1994 and 1998, Lauder gave the state GOP $201,980 while the governor earned some $70,000 speaking to groups affiliated with Lauder.
According to New York's State Board of Elections, Ron Lauder gave Friends of Pataki $30,000 on Sept. 26, 2002. Lauder's wife, Jo, also donated $28,000 to Pataki that day. Somehow, their daughter, Jane, contributed $10,000 to Friends of Pataki that day, too. Amazingly enough, on Sept. 26, 2002, the Pataki-controlled Lower Manhattan Development Corporation secretly narrowed the 407 entries (due just 10 days earlier) to seven semi-finalists in its Innovative Design Study.
Daniel Libeskind was among them.
Neither Pataki's nor Lauder's offices, nor those of the Empire State GOP, returned calls to explain how this happened.
The public widely panned what I call Switchblade Park, Libeskind's jagged, angular building complex. Among the IDS' nine competing plans, Libeskind's never ranked above second with 16.7 percent support, in one online survey. Among 1,003 people the New York Times polled in January 2003, only 17, or 1.7 percent, favored Libeskind.
Pataki's veto
The competition finally came down to a run-off between Libeskind's plan and a pair of latticework towers crafted by an ad hoc group of architects called THINK. While Pataki's hand-picked selection committee of friends and allies reportedly selected THINK, Pataki overruled them.
The Dec. 9, 2003, New York Post revealed that Team Libeskind encouraged its allies to call THINK's plan "The Skeleton." Pataki complied.
The Pataki-Libeskind Freedom Tower would be "Earth's tallest building" only if one includes the hollow windmill farm and broadcast antenna that will top its 70 stories of occupied office space. "The Westin Hotel in Atlanta has 73" floors, Berzon writes. "Imagine that -- the World Trade Center having fewer floors than a Georgia Hotel."
So, Pataki used his considerable authority to help a key donor's pet artist and appear to "do something" at ground zero. While the Freedom Tower isn't pretty, Pataki might not have to look at it much longer if his naked ambition takes him to Washington.
Where the Twin Towers once climbed majestically, there now festers a pattern of deception, cronyism and inside dealing. This reeks like week-old anchovies. New York attorney general Elliott Spitzer should investigate whether George Pataki has done the unthinkable: turn a scene of mass murder into a high-rise Tammany Hall.
X New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service.