Where The Towers Stood, Delays And Disagreements Mount

The skyline will be made whole again," Giuliani said. And as a sign of the city's resilience, initial plans called for the rebuilding to be complete by 2011 -- the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

Eight years later, the site known as Ground Zero remains mostly a giant hole in the ground. A projected completion date has been pushed back years, if not decades. The project has been beset by repeated delays, changing designs, billions of dollars in cost overruns, and feuding among the various parties involved in the complex undertaking.

"It's just one big political nightmare," said Jim Riches, a retired New York deputy fire chief, who lost his firefighter son, Jimmy, on 9/11 and who has attended meetings on the progress of the construction. "I think it's a national disgrace," he said. "I really think it's horrible. We can put a man on the moon, but we can't get all the politicians in New York . . . to build the World Trade Center back up again."

What happened over the past eight years is a story of grandiose plans clashing with practical realities; of the flush of early emotions giving way to cold, financial calculus; of public officials fighting with a private developer; and of bureaucrats battling one another at almost every level with no one really in charge.

"Nobody wants to accept responsibility," said former New York mayor Edward I. Koch. He joined others in laying blame before two chief agencies: the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the land, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which was created to channel all federal aid pouring in. "It's shameful that they have failed in their responsibility to build this in a measured and responsible way," Koch said.