Iranian Leader Is Barred From 9/11 Site
New York Police Cite Safety Concerns in Rejecting Ahmadinejad's Request

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 21, 2007

NEW YORK, Sept. 20 -- Iran's president has defied the United Nations Security Council and snubbed the Bush administration, but there is one authority he can't ignore: the New York Police Department.

The NYPD announced Thursday that it had turned down a request by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to lay a wreath at the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. The Iranian leader is to arrive in New York on Sunday for the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.

The request to visit Ground Zero sparked outrage from city officials, presidential candidates and, more graphically, New York's tabloids. The Daily News ran a front-page photo of Ahmadinejad, declaring: "If you even think of setting foot near Ground Zero, you can GO TO HELL!" Not to be outdone, the New York Post ran with: "ZERO CHANCE: City nixes evil Iran prez bid to tour 9/11 site."

President Bush, who has spent years trying to stop Iran's nuclear program, welcomed the decision to scuttle the visit. "I can understand why they would not want somebody who is running a country who is a state sponsor of terror down there at the site," he said at a news conference Thursday.

Four White House hopefuls, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R), rushed to congratulate the NYPD for stopping Ahmadinejad.

"This is a man who has made threats against America and Israel, is harboring [Osama] bin Laden's son and other al-Qaeda leaders, is shipping arms to Iraqi insurgents and is pursuing the development of nuclear weapons. Assisting Ahmadinejad in touring Ground Zero -- hallowed ground for all Americans -- is outrageous," Giuliani said in a statement from London.

Mitt Romney (R), the former governor of Massachusetts, borrowed from Yiddish when he told a group of Florida retirees that Ahmadinejad had "the chutzpah to suggest he would visit Ground Zero."

In a public letter to Bush last year, the Iranian leader wrote that the Sept. 11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, mostly at the World Trade Center, could not have been the work of al-Qaeda alone. Ahmadinejad suggested that the U.S. government is concealing the truth about the real perpetrators.

Ahmadinejad will be in New York to address the U.N. gathering on Tuesday. Iran is facing the possibility of economic sanctions for violating U.N. resolutions to halt its nuclear program. Iran says the program is designed to produce nuclear energy, not bombs.

New York Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said police believed that a visit to Lower Manhattan by the Iranian leader would "adversely impact" public safety in the area. The department said the decision was made in consultation with the Secret Service, which will provide security details for world leaders during the U.N. summit.

"We are concerned about President Ahmadinejad's safety and the safety of others who may be attracted down there, maybe issues that arise from his visit, that would cause significant public safety concerns," Kelly said at a news conference.

In an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes," to be broadcast Sunday, the Iranian leader said he would respect Kelly's decision. "Local officials need to make the necessary coordinations," he said, according to excerpts released by "60 Minutes." "If they can't do that, I won't insist" on going.

New York officials showed no concern, however, about Ahmadinejad's planned visit uptown. The Iranian leader will speak to students and faculty at Columbia University on Monday. In a statement, university President Lee Bollinger said Ahmadinejad had agreed to a number of conditions, including a pledge to divide his time equally between his remarks and answering questions.

Bollinger also said he had told Iranian officials that he will open the discussion by noting Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust, his public call for the destruction of Israel and his government's imprisonment of several Iranian American scholars, including Kian Tajbakhsh, who earned a PhD and a master of philosophy at Columbia.

Iran announced Thursday that Tajbakhsh is being released after four months in prison.

John Coatsworth, the interim dean of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, said the announcement came "within hours of the final communication between Columbia and the Iranian government, in which we told them we would publicly announce the president's visit. We brought up his case consistently in our conversations with them, but we will never know whether this had an effect or not on his situation."

Columbia first invited Ahmadinejad to speak at the school last year but rescinded the invitation over logistical concerns. Thursday evening, the Bloomberg news agency confused last year's cancellation with next week's invitation and reported that Columbia had again canceled the visit. The erroneous report prompted a congratulatory statement from major Jewish organizations, which called off protests that had been scheduled for the campus.

Coatsworth said he has heard very little dissent inside the university. But New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn wrote to Columbia urging the school to cancel the visit, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) issued a statement condemning the engagement.

"A man who is directing the maiming and killing of [American] troops should not be given an invitation to speak at an American university," McCain said in a statement.

Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.