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CNN Live Event/Special

Giuliani Holds Press Conference

Aired November 17, 2001 - 15:18   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MAYOR RUDY GIULIANI, NEW YORK: ... there were at least a dozen today of police officers, firefighters, Port Authority police officers. I want to thank the people of the New York area for responding to them. I went to two in Suffolk County and one in Nassau County, and they were very, very heavily attended by members of the community, and I want to thank them for showing up. One was in Seaford and one was in Patchogue, and there were large numbers of people that showed up. And the first one was in Deer Park. So I thank people for doing that.

As you know, we did tests on the subways, and at least some of those findings are back today. They're not totally complete yet, and I'll have Dr. Cohen describe them in more detail in a few minutes, but so far, none of the tests has shown any indication of anthrax. But it will take several more days for the cultures and the growths to all be examined. But so far, they look safe.

There is a memorial tomorrow in Rockaway. It will involve people, who lost loved ones, and as well as members of the community in Belle Harbor and Rockaway. The idea is pray together. I said memorial service. It's not a memorial service. It's a prayer service. The memorial service will happen later.

The reason for the distinction, similar to what we did with the World Trade Center, is at this point, people are still in the process of trying to be reunited with their loved ones, and we're trying to help them do that, and it's going to take some time to complete that process.

But this is a wonderful opportunity to pray together for the losses that so many people are now feeling and experiencing. The people of Rockaway, it was the World Trade Center, and the people they lost in the crash. And then the people from the Dominican community, in particular from Washington Heights, who will have an opportunity to go out there and pray, and also get an opportunity to see the site, where they lost their loved ones. And hopefully, this will help them along the way in the grieving process.

I also want to thank the Internal Revenue Service, because I really believe this is a great victory for the victims of the World Trade Center, in order to be able to get the money that was raised for them. There were barriers to doing that, and some charities felt that they couldn't distribute the money. We went ahead and distributed the money anyway and pushed for the idea that you should distribute all of your money to the victims.

The Internal Revenue Service issued a ruling yesterday, in which the Service says, accordingly -- in order for it to be an official ruling, you have to write "accordingly" in it. It says: "Accordingly, the Service will treat such payments made by a charity to individuals and their families as related to the charity's exempt purpose, provided that the payments are made in good faith, using objective standards."

So let me remind you of what we've done with the Twin Towers charity, because this is really a good example of what the other charities should do. First of all, we've committed ourselves to distributing all of the money to the people for whom the money was intended, and not to create some other purpose for the donations. We went ahead and a week ago, we mailed out $8,320,000 in distribution. That was to the 73 families that, at that point, we had all the paperwork on. It was 11 Port Authority, seven New York Police Department, 54 New York City Fire Department and EMS and one court officer.

There was an article in "The Times" last week raising questions about our doing this on the theory that maybe the Internal Revenue Service would oppose it, and that's why I'm very glad the Internal Revenue Service issued this ruling clarifying and approving, in essence, the process that we followed.

The second mailing went out over the weekend. It's actually in the process of going on now. I finished signing all of the letters yesterday. This will be an additional 197 families that will receive an additional $24.4 million; 15 Port Authority, 11 NYPD, 171 fire department and EMS, and in this particular distribution, there were no court officers.

So right now, we have distributed to 270 different families, still not the full number. Hopefully, we'll get that done before Thanksgiving. There is still more to go, but we're in the process of verifying it. But we've sent checks out to 26 Port Authority, 18 NYPD, 225 FDNY and EMS and 1 court officer.

And the way the distribution works, these are the objective standards that are used. It's $75,000 for the surviving spouse, $10,000 to the surviving spouse to ease the transition from salary to pension. So, in essence, it's $85,000, with the $10,000 being a payment to deal with the interim period that takes place between the time that the salary ends and the pension begins, when a family would get no money. $25,000 for each child aged 23 or younger, and $10,000 for adult children aged 24 and older.

CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: We've been listening to New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was giving us at the beginning of this news conference an update on the investigation into the anthrax death of 61-year-old Kathy Nguyen, who was the only victim, so far, known not to have a connection to the post office, at least no connection has been discovered yet.

What is known about Kathy Nguyen was that she used the subway just about every day of her life. She would leave her Bronx apartment and walk down and take MTA's (ph) 6th train, which runs through some of the city's poorest and richest neighborhoods there in New York City.

The CDC has done extensive testing now on that subway, looking for any traces of anthrax. The mayor saying that no traces have been found so far in the testing, but still, results are coming in. We will, of course, continue to follow that story as it develops.

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