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2ND RUDY AIDE HAD A 'WTC' DISEASE
By DAVID SEIFMAN, City Hall Bureau Chief
September 9, 2006 -- A second senior aide to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani has come down with a serious illness he says is linked to the time he spent at Ground Zero.
Joe Lhota, a former deputy mayor, said he was diagnosed with the illness in February and recovered after several months of treatments.
He declined to go into further detail about his medical condition, which friends have known about for months.
But Lhota said he's convinced the life-threatening ailment was contracted at the World Trade Center site, where he rushed after the terrorist attacks and where he returned repeatedly in the days that followed.
"I do believe that, but I can't prove it," Lhota told WNBC/Channel 4.
Too many others have fallen ill for it to be a coincidence, he added.
Four months ago, The Post reported that another deputy mayor, Rudy Washington, had filed for worker's- compensation benefits for a respiratory illness also tied to the long hours he devoted at Ground Zero.
The Bloomberg administration initially fought the claim, but relented after The Post's story appeared.
Lhota criticized the administration at the time as "callous."
Lawyer David Worby, who is suing the city on behalf of 8,000 rescue and recovery workers, said he's not surprised that Lhota was stricken.
"We have the greatest concentration of immuno-suppressed diseases because of 9/11," Worby said.
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