The chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, John Whitehead, is quoted by the New York Times complaining of the New York police’s warnings about the plans for a skyscraper at ground zero, “I don’t want to say the police have been irresponsible, but where were they until this month? I wish they had called attention to the seriousness of the problems earlier, rather than at this late stage.”

Well, hold your cinderblocks here. The question is, where has Mr. Whitehead been? Our November 19, 2004, front page carried a dispatch under the headline “Freedom Tower Security Issues Worry Police” that quoted an LMDC board member, Madelyn Wils, as saying, “The police have some concerns that the building would be only 25 feet, rather than 50 feet, from the roadway.”

It certainly sounds like Commissioner Kelly did his job and Mr. Whitehead and the LMDC board defaulted on theirs. Which is ironic, since many had hoped the LMDC would be an efficient way to streamline the normally convoluted bureaucratic route that real estate developers must navigate. This latest complication is just the latest in a series of lessons of why, when it comes to real estate, politicians belong on the sidelines.

While Governor Pataki may be in earnest in trying to see this project through, the LMDC is lagging. In November, Mr. Pataki announced that the tower’s foundation would begin to be laid in February and that steel and other materials would be delivered in April. Yet, from our vantage of the site, there is neither foundation nor materials. More recently, Goldman Sachs, which had been planning to build a 40-story headquarters adjacent to the site, has temporarily pulled out, citing unresolved traffic and security concerns. As for Mayor Bloomberg’s chief real estate endeavor, the West Side stadium, it’s currently fending off four different lawsuits.

Meanwhile, in an unsavory bit of irony, we learn that even if the “Freedom Tower” is somehow completed as planned and on schedule, it still will not live up to its much hyped promise of being the world’s tallest building. Instead, according to press reports, that distinction will be achieved by none other than the family of Osama bin Laden, who run the contracting company the Bin Laden Group, which operates in the United Arab Emirates. There, in Dubai, they are scheduled to complete a tower in December 2008. Its exact height is being kept secret, but one can guess they intend to retain the record height past 2009, when the LMDC hopes to unveil the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower.

Before September 11, Mr. Pataki proudly handed the keys to the World Trade Center over to private hands, with Larry Silverstein, as the winning bidder, purchasing the 99-year lease. But the property itself is still owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, to whom Mr. Silverstein’s lease payments are due. Were this a genuinely private endeavor, the site of the tower and its design and the pace of its construction would be determined not by the governor or by the police or by Mr. Whitehead, but by a private owner, who would be in the best position to judge the risks and rewards.