Survivors and family members of the victims were the most vocal and persistent in the call for the creation of an independent commission to investigate the 9/11 attacks.
"[1] Kean became the Commission's Chairman after Henry Kissinger resigned the position; according to Peter Lance, "The Jersey Girls could take some of the credit for his hasty departure."
"[3] The eventual appointment of Philip D. Zelikow to the position of Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission was also troubling to the Jersey Girls who demanded his resignation.
They cited close personal ties with the Bush family and the National Security Advisor as conflicts of interest.
Joe Conason wrote that the widows "fear that even with the best of intentions, Zelikow's connections to the Bush White House will 'taint the validity' of the commission's final report.
'We respectfully disagree with them,' replied Al Felzenberg, the commission's press spokesman, who said Zelikow was chosen 'for his scholarly credentials and his knowledge of national security issues.'
"[4] As part of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee they helped form, the Jersey Girls monitored and often criticized the 9/11 Commission after they lobbied successfully for its creation.
In 2004, Frank Rich wrote in the New York Times: The phenomenon has sufficiently alarmed the White House that earlier in the month its media allies tried to discredit the 9/11 families, particularly the so-called 'Jersey Girls,' the four telegenic suburban widows who have forced the administration to reverse its stonewalling of the 9/11 commission at nearly every juncture.
[8]In her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism (2006), conservative commentator Ann Coulter created a firestorm of controversy with her remarks about the Jersey Girls.
Coulter wrote: They first came together to complain that the $1.6 million average settlement to be paid to 9/11 victims' families by the government was not large enough ...
Kristen Breitweiser stated: "I'd like her to meet my daughter and tell her how anyone could enjoy their father's death ... She sounds like a very disturbed, unraveled person."
Lorie Van Auken said she "was stunned by the vitriol"; and "Having my husband burn alive in a building brought me no joy.
I think it's one of the ugliest things the left has done ... this idea that you need some sort of personal authenticity in order to make a political point ...[13]The New York Daily News reported that the Jersey Girls "tried to stay above the name-calling fray" by emphasizing that the nation shouldn't focus on Coulter's words but on security problems like porous borders, wasteful Homeland Security funding and intelligence agencies that don't work together.
'[14] And Senator Hillary Clinton found it "unimaginable that anyone in the public eye could launch a vicious, mean-spirited attack on people whom I've known over the last four and a half years to be concerned deeply about the safety and security of our country.
"[16] As the 2004 election neared, the widows criticized Bush for the failure to enact the recommendations of the commission; many interpreted this as an endorsement of Bush's opponent John Kerry; the New York Times reported, "In a statement clearly meant to influence voters in next week's election, the group did not explicitly endorse Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, but said Mr. Bush had 'allowed members of his own party to derail the legislative process.
For example, Debra Burlingame, whose brother flew in the plane that was crashed into the Pentagon, responded to the widows: "The Jersey Girls criticized President Bush because he wasn't rounding up Arabs in airport lounges before Sept. 11.