by CRAIG GORDON
WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush will start Monday's 9/11 anniversary with breakfast at a Lower East Side firehouse and close it with a prime-time Oval Office address. Bush and first lady Laura Bush are to sit down for breakfast with 75 firefighters and police officers at "Fort Pitt," the home of Ladder 18 and other companies on Pitt Street. They will stay for a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m., marking the start of the attacks five years ago, and a ceremony with police, fire and Port Authority chaplains at the firehouse, before leaving New York. Along the way, Bush will be rubbing elbows with firefighters who were among the first to respond to the 9/11 disaster, along with New York police representing each of the commands that lost someone that day, city officials said. The White House denied any political motive for Bush in surrounding himself Monday with first responders, as he did on his first visit to Ground Zero just three days after the attack, when his popularity was at its peak. "It's not to try to draw on some atavistic sense of nostalgia about the date. I think what you do is you reflect on what it means to the country," Bush spokesman Tony Snow said. Bush also will travel to the other 9/11 sites, Shanksville, Pa., and the Pentagon, for wreath-laying ceremonies before returning to the White House. The 9 p.m. speech - Bush's fifth in 11 days on the war on terror - comes as both parties are trying to convince voters they can keep the United States safer heading into close midterm elections this fall. Bush arrives in New York Sunday afternoon, when he will participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at Ground Zero and a prayer service at nearby St. Paul's Chapel.
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