At last month’s congressional hearing on future funding for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, it was Jon Stewart who got the press attention. Stewart, onetime host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central, raised his voice, waved his arms, and shrewdly chose to direct his ire at, among others, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. A few days later, on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the CBS late-night show starring his former Comedy Central colleague, Stewart got a standing ovation from the audience with a series of jokes at the Kentucky Republican’s expense.
Which is too bad, for the most compelling witness at the House Judiciary subcommittee hearing that day was not Stewart but Luis Gustavo Alvarez, a 53-year-old retired New York City police detective from Queens who, immediately after the 9/11 attacks, spent three months sifting through debris from the World Trade Center, searching at first for survivors and later for the remains of fellow officers and other first responders.
Alvarez, a burly Marine veteran who, at one time, had switched from undercover detective work to a “less stressful assignment” on the bomb squad, was diagnosed three years ago with liver and colorectal cancer caused by exposure to dust and detritus at ground zero. By the time he appeared before Congress in June, Alvarez was painfully gaunt, severely weakened by the ravages of disease and chemotherapy.
“I’m no one special,” he told the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties in a low, rasping voice, “and I did what all the other guys did. … [But] you made me come here the day before my 69th round of chemo. I’m going to make sure that you never forget to take care of the 9/11 responders.”
That round of chemotherapy never materialized: The day after his testimony, Alvarez became disoriented, and his liver began to fail. A week later, he entered hospice care in Long Island and died on June 29.
The source of Alvarez’s concern was not misplaced. The $7.3 billion Victim Compensation Fund, established by Congress in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, was expanded a decade later to include first responders, such as Alvarez, who have suffered from exposure to toxins and carcinogens released by the collapse of the Twin Towers and the subsequent cleanup. Thus far, some 21,000 claimants have been compensated by the fund. But thousands of applications remain pending and, as Alvarez’s case indicates, future claims for financial assistance and healthcare are inevitable.
“I’m lucky to have the healthcare that I’ve got,” Alvarez told an interviewer after his testimony, “but there are guys out there who don’t have it.”
The issue for Congress is essentially a technical one, aggravated by the deliberate speed of legislation. Five billion dollars has already been spent, and the Victim Compensation Fund is expected to exhaust its reserve sometime late next year. McConnell has always indicated that the fund will be replenished, but some benefits have already been cut back as the fund is depleted, and first responders such as Alvarez have felt a sense of urgency now shared by McConnell himself, who has since pledged Senate passage before the August recess of a House bill ensuring that the fund pays benefits, as needed, for 70 years.
As, indeed, it should. In that sense, a dying witness, gathering his weakened self before Congress to speak his last words on behalf of ailing comrades, personified the commitment this country has always felt, in the famous words of Lincoln’s second inaugural address, “to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.” Alvarez was born in Havana, came to America with his immigrant parents, served in the Marines before joining the New York Police Department, and lived a full life of sacrifice and service. “I did not want to be anywhere else but ground zero when I was there,” he told Congress.
Philip Terzian, a former writer and editor at the Weekly Standard, is the author of Architects of Power: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and the American Century.
