Those innocents killed at the World Trade Center may be 9/11 victims "in our memory," as Mike Pride says in his column (Sunday Monitor, May 27), but they will not be identified as such at the $500 million, federally funded memorial at the World Trade Center site. In fact, recently Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, chairman of the WTC Memorial Foundation, told several thousand 9/11 family members that the victims cannot be identified with any reference to 9/11 "because the memorial is not just for the families, but for America."

So there can be no reference to the 9/11 attacks upon America at America's memorial. And there won't be. As per the foundation, there can be no history or evidence of 9/11 anywhere on the site "in order to preserve the integrity of the memorial."

Nothing of what we remember 9/11 by will be restored to the site: the towers' façade, the Koenig Sphere, the crushed fire trucks or even an American flag. That, we are told, "would be telling us what to think."

Former governor Pataki of New York may be right; the 9/11 memorial will be the most visited memorial in the nation. And everybody will be coming for just what Mr. Pride and his wife came for: 9/11. That's exactly, by design - and Pataki is well aware of this - what they will not find there.

The WTC Memorial Foundation is planning a nationwide tour to "engage" Americans in contributing toward building this non-9/11 memorial at the World Trace Center site.

It will use all the images of 9/11 that we, the people, already embraced as commemorating 9/11. None of that will be part of the memorial. They are selling one thing and delivering another. Do not give. For more info, see captbillyburke.blog.com

Note: On 9/11, at the WTC, my brother, FDNY Capt. William F. Burke Jr., of Engine Co. 21 gave his life. I served on the family advisory committee to the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and the advisory committee to the memorial and museum center.

MICHAEL BURKE

Bronx