Christine Todd Whitman, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at the time of the 2001 attacks, says in Sunday's edition of the "60 Minutes" CBS television program that former New York mayor Giuliani's officials failed to make rescuers wear respirators.

Five years after the attacks, the EPA is still the target of a lawsuit for having declared the air in New York safe shortly after the disaster.

A health study released this week showed that some 60 percent of rescuers who helped clear rubble from the site of the collapsed World Trade Center had suffered respiratory problems from airborne dust and fine toxic particles.

In Sunday's programme, Whitman says that city officials were warned of the dangerous air at Ground Zero and that her agency lacked the authority to enforce the use of respirators -- something she says the city should have done.

"We did everything we could to protect people from that environment and we did it in the best way that we could, which was to communicate with those people who had the responsibility for enforcing," says Whitman.

"We didn't have the authority to do that enforcement, but we communicated (the need to wear respirators) to the people who did," she adds.

"Really the city was the primary responder," Whitman says.

Giuliani, who is expected to be one of the leading candidates for the Republican nomination in the 2008 presidential election, declined to be interviewed by "60 Minutes", according to the programme.

An estimated 40,000 people helped clear debris from the site of the World Trade Center in late 2001 and early 2002, many of whom did not wear face masks.

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