The results are in from the FBI screening that checked 60,000 police officers, firefighters, and other September 11 responders against the terrorism watch list before they could claim medical benefits. Surprise: No terrorists, The Wall Street Journal reports! The requirement was Florida congressman Cliff Stearns’s doing, as part of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health And Compensation Law, which sufficiently pissed off nearly every New Yorker at the time it was announced. No one is much happier now: “It was shameful, and it put a cloud over extraordinarily good people for no reason,” said Representative Peter King, and the fact that the whole check came back clean “shows what a waste of time this was from the beginning.” Stearns sounded slightly defensive in a statement and said, “I am encouraged that so far there have been no matches to the watch list.” So far! This guy. It’s almost like he’s hoping they find one.
