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NEW YORK, NY July 23, 2004 — The 9/11 Commission's final report wasn't just announced in the chambers of Washington yesterday. It also hit the bookstore. WNYC's Beth Fertig has this report on what New Yorkers had to say as they picked up copies near Ground Zero.

Visitors to the Borders Bookstore in Lower Manhattan couldn't miss the release of the 9-11 Commission's report. It was the first thing they saw as they walked through the store's double doors on Broadway.

Thumbing through pages of the thick paperback book, customers seemed quiet and reflective. Twenty two year old Scott Minataur said he was evacuated from the World Trade Center on 9-11. He paused when asked to describe how he was feeling about the report's release.

MINATAUR: Comforting. Comforting to feel that - and hopeful to feel that something good can come out of what happened.

But the report was also greeted with a lot of skepticism. Over at the caf , 21 year old Lucy Lee sat at a table with the book by her side. She was less certain about what its release would accomplish.

LEE: I think the only thing this report does is to make people more aware of what's going on. Maybe intelligence agencies will be more careful. Maybe the city departments, all the agencies will be more careful now. I don't think it's going to come out with any information we don't already know.

GETSOFF: The question that nobody knows is will this produce changes that prevent this from happening in the future?

Steven Getsoff is an attorney who works downtown.

GETSOFF: I expect it to provide a lot of facts and a lot of details that a lot of people aren't aware of. I don't' necessarily expect an answer to the ultimate question of whether good common sense would have prevented this.

Getsoff was also in Lower Manhattan on September 11th. He and many other New Yorkers eager to read the report said they didn't want it to become a political football. Jonathan Moran of Staten Island wondered about those who served on the bipartisan commission.

MORAN: I hope that partisan politics don't play a part in their findings, I hope they really took a balanced look at info avail to them and to the government before attacks and what they come out with in report will help make our nation safer.

For New Yorkers, this report is personal. The government's account is one last chance to set the record straight about a day that changed the city and their lives. Carl DeCordova of Brooklyn lost his job in the financial sector after the terrorist attacks rocked his industry.

DECORDOVA: What happened on 9/11 tremendously affected my life, my family as well, as my career. So this is the reason why I want to know. I want to know what happened, how it happened, who's accountable for what happened.

So many questions. A woman named Fanya from Brooklyn came into the store just to buy the Commission's report. She didn't want to give her full name. But she she'd seen Michael Moore's movie Farenheit Nine Eleven.

FANYA: I want to know what really happened. There were a lot of untruths published and movie makers. So I want to know whether Mike Moore was right or wrong because I'm going to vote and I want to know for whom to vote.

After all, she said, if I can't trust the government's commission, I don't know who I trust. For WNYC I'm Beth Fertig.

WNYC's Kathleen Horan was a contributing reporter for this story