It was the feel-good story of the day out of earthquake-ravaged Haiti, butGov. Ed Rendell’s airplane rescue mission of 53 orphans might have cracked open a logistical, procedural and philosophical question about who Haitian relief will serve and how.

During his CNN broadcast from Port-au-Prince on Monday night, anchor Anderson Cooper implied that the overwhelming task of helping Haiti’s victims might be being compromised by ad-hoc rescue missions launched through political channels.

Cooper was talking about Rendell — a well-connected deal-maker who, with a few calls to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s office and to the ambassador to Haiti, extracted 53 orphans from the rubble to snowy Pittsburgh.

All in about 22 hours.

Rendell returned to the state Capitol on Tuesday with not only a compelling rescue story, but what could be a dramatic chapter of his forthcoming autobiography, including Cooper’s assertion.

“Again, I just don’t understand that decision, and allowing [a] Democratic governor of a state to fly out a group of orphans who weren’t severely injured, but, you know, who God knows deserved to go to the United States and be united with parents,” Cooper said on air Monday.

At that time, Rendell, U.S. Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa., and 23 medical personnel from Pennsylvania were in the middle of their rescue mission.

Cooper was one of the first anchors to hit the ground after the quake that caused hellish devastation to Haiti’s capital city and had witnessed agonizing scenes of suffering. He and CNN’s chief medical reporter, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, were visibly agitated about the lack of medical supplies and “stupid deaths” taking place.

But upon his return Tuesday, Rendell said there was no equation to be drawn between American officials pulling strings to rescue healthy children and the thousands still in need of aid and care.

Rendell said he was drawn to action after two Pittsburgh-area sisters, Jamie and Ali McMurtrie, who run the Haitian orphanage, used Twitter and Facebook to plead for help in evacuating the children.

“Anderson Cooper was mistaken and wasn’t equipped with the facts. CNN was mistaken. He said we had 28 kids. We had 53. He did not know that we were carrying 2½ tons of medical supplies, more than Doctors Without Borders,” Rendell said.

Read the full Patriot-News article here

Tags: Ed Rendell

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