Cesar Borja Jr. and his mother, Eva, said they are “upset and angry” about reports that New York Police Officer Cesar A. Borja “did not do as much work at Ground Zero as published in news reports.”
Borja’s son and his widow were reacting to a New York Times article on Tuesday [February 13], saying that the late officer was not at the World Trade Center site until December 2001 and doubts on what exactly he did at Ground Zero.
“What matters to me is that my husband passed away from a lung problem I know was caused by the fallen WTC,” Eva Borja told reporters.
Borja Jr., 21, said it’s irrelevant if his father was there in September or December.
“Beginning, middle or end, no matter what role you played in aiding other victims of the tragedy, you are a hero no matter what,” he said.
In a lengthy article, The Times stated that the widely reported accounts of Borja’s work after the WTC collapse were not “fully accurate.”
Media reports placed Borja at Ground Zero right after the 9/11 attack.
But NYPD overtime records said that Borja served at Ground Zero for at least 200 hours in 17 days starting December 24, 2001.
In a 2,849-word article, The Times credited the The Filipino Reporter with first publishing the hospitalization of Borja at Mount Sinai Medical Center for a lung disease he believed he contracted while working at Ground Zero.
“Officer Borja had been assigned to security duty immediately after September 11, and that he had done that work for months,” The Times quoted the Reporter as writing in a story published in its January 5-11, 2007 issue, bylined by news staffer Edmund M. Silvestre.
“The Reporter quoted one family member as saying that Officer Borja had believed the air to be safe,” The Times said.
Borja indicated this to Silvestre in the exclusive Reporter interview from his hospital bed at Mount Sinai Medical Center. Silvestre was the only journalist to have talked to Borja before he died last month of pulmonary fibrosis.
This was acknowledged by the NY Daily News on Wednesday when it wrote, “The only account given by Cesar Borja himself was provided by the Filipino Reporter, a New York weekly that quoted Borja – by then hospitalized at Mount Sinai Medical Center – as saying he worked at Ground Zero immediately following the attacks.”
This account, the News said, was backed by his brother and nephew, who also served on the NYPD. They told the News they distinctly remembered him talking about going to Ground Zero in the first few days after 9/11.
Shortly after The Times story came out Tuesday, NY1, a city TV station, called the Reporter’s office for a statement about its report that Borja was “assigned to security duty at Ground Zero for over five months.”
“We stand by our story, which is based on our interview with Borja himself and members of his family,” Reporter publisher and editor Bert Pelayo told NY1.
“Our main concern is to draw attention to the deteriorating health of Officer Borja, whose only hope to survive is to have a lung transplant,” Pelayo added.
Borja Jr. gained national attention when he was invited by New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address at the Capitol.
Borja Jr. also had a one-on-one meeting with the President during his visit to New York. Mr. Bush then said he would budget $25 million for WTC health care.
Eva Borja said she never thought about correcting inaccurate accounts. “First of all I didn’t have any time to correct at the time because that was when my husband was very sick, and then he passed away. And now I’m grieving. I didn’t know that somebody wants correction. Who cares for correction?”
She says what matters now is that $25 million is coming and people who need help will get it.
Eva Borja says the only thing that is inaccurate about the news stories about her husband’s work at Ground Zero is that he wasn’t there on September 11. She said she never claimed her husband was a first responder.
“When he started working there, I don’t know. What I do know is that he worked there for a lot of hours after that,” she said.
She added what is important is that he was exposed to the toxic dust and he passed away.
Borja Jr. says it’s true his father directed traffic around the perimeter of Ground Zero, but he says the fact is he also worked on the debris pile. He said police officers at his father’s wake told him so.
“They told me that when my father found something, fingers or body parts, my father was really sensitive about taking care of it,” he said.
