The MYTH of GIULIANI AND 9/11

The MYTH of GIULIANI AND 9/11:

When Rudy Giuliani emerged from the toxic dust of the World Trade Center the

national media caught a quick case of amnesia, preferring the iconic image

of a "hero" over reality. They quickly forgot Giuliani's dismal tenure in

mayoral office, his life-costing failures to address the threat of

terrorism, and his sorry performance on the morning of September 11, 2001.

By the time his ship came in on 9/11, Giuliani's approval rating among his

constituency, according to a Quinnipiac University poll, had hit a Bush-like

37 percent. In desperation to recover his plummeting popularity, Giuliani

seized upon any and every opportunity to appear the "hero." Despite ordering

a crackdown on speeding, his car and entourage were seen and reported in the

press as greatly exceeding the speed limit in racing to locations of

newsworthy events so he could appear there in front of the media cameras.

Desperate to become the "hero," he broke the laws he demanded that others

obey.

Prior to 9/11, Giuliani's most criminally negligent if not malevolent

pretense to heroism came with his West Nile Virus hoax. This usually mild,

mosquito-borne disease is not contagious person to person and is far less

dangerous than common influenza, but Giuliani had the media play it up as an

impending disaster, and came on like a knight in shining armor with a

solution. His cure was far worse than the disease, and no doubt has caused

and will cause many illnesses and deaths, as did his post-9/11 assurances

that the Ground Zero air was safe to breathe. He had all of New York City

repeatedly sprayed from the air with Malathion, a highly toxic insecticide,

and completely disregarded the manufacturer's advised safety precautions in

doing so. Note that malicious intent is far harder to prove in

environmental poisoning cases than as when Giuliani ordered the police to

falsely arrest someone, or tacitly encouraged them to brutally beat or shoot

suspects to death - all among the many incidents that led to his plummeting

popularity before 9/11.

Giuliani himself was actually responsible for the alleged West Nile Virus

threat. He had disbanded New York's Pest Control Unit, whose job was to find

and eradicate pools of stagnant water where mosquitoes breed. Thus he set

the stage for his "heroic" response to this "crisis."

Today, Giuliani lives and breathes a 9/11 mantra, and as he desired is

portrayed as an iconic American hero - the "leader" we needed when George W.

Bush was otherwise occupied on September 11, 2001. But was Giuliani REALLY a

hero on or after that infamous day of horror?

As with Bush, Giuliani's failing political career was rescued by the

terrorists that attacked New York on 9/11. Some believe these terrorists

had help from within the US government, and even that some within the

government itself were the actual terrorists. To find criminals, one must

consider who most benefited from the crime. It is strange if not truly

sinister that Giuliani stated to Peter Jennings in an interview that on 9/11

he had prior knowledge of the World Trade Center collapses, but subsequently

he denied and continues to deny that he said this. Here Giuliani is caught

in a direct lie - you can hear it at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hNmf76GUCw More documentation can be found

at: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wtc_giuliani.html

Regarding the Ground Zero air and the many now dead and dying therefrom,

former EPA Secretary Christine Whitman has stated that she urged Ground Zero

workers to wear respirators, but that Giuliani blocked her efforts, and also

that the Giuliani administration appeared to be more concerned with its

image than the safety and speedy response of EPA employees in the wake of

the subsequent anthrax scare.

Administration documents and thousands of pages of legal testimony filed in

a lawsuit against New York City show the Giuliani administration never

meaningfully enforced federal requirements that those at the site wear

respirators. At the same time, the administration warned companies working

on the toxic pile that they would face penalties or be fired if work slowed.

Giuliani said in the first month after the attacks, "The air quality is safe

and acceptable." However, in the weeks after the attacks, the United States

Geological Survey identified hundreds of asbestos hot spots of debris dust

that remained on buildings. By the end of the month the USGS reported that

the toxicity of the debris was akin to that of drain cleaner. It would

eventually be determined that a wide swath of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn

had been heavily contaminated by highly caustic and toxic materials. The

city's health agencies, such as the Department of Environmental Protection,

failed to supervise or issue guidelines for the testing and cleanup of

private buildings, leaving this responsibility to building owners.

"The city ran a generally slipshod, haphazard, uncoordinated, unfocused

response to environmental concerns," said David Newman, an industrial

hygienist with the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health.

On 9/11 New York was left without an emergency command center because

Giuliani, going against the advice of both the police and fire departments,

decided to locate the center conveniently near City Hall in World Trade

Center building 7, along with tanks containing tens of thousands of gallons

of deisel fuel - in direct violation of New York City fire laws. This was

despite the 1993 WTC bombing that proved it to be the number one terrorism

target. It was this decision that put him on the street on 9/11 instead of

inside a command center coordinating operations. Ironically, this also put

him in front of hundreds of media cameras, sparking his image transformation

into a "hero."

While our "hero" was posing for the cameras, however, there was no

communication possible between the police department and the fire

department, whose REAL heroes were rushing to their deaths inside the

towers. And there was likewise no communication between the police officers

who identified an open stairway for escape from above the fire zone and the

911 phone operators who were telling soon-to-be-dead office workers to stay

put and wait for the firefighters. Giuliani had been aware of the

inadequacy of the emergency services' communications equipment for many

years, but did absolutely nothing about it. This criminal negligence also

doomed hundreds of firefighters that were unable to hear orders to evacuate

the north tower prior to collapse.

Whatever possibility existed for communication between the police and fire

departments, whose radios operated on different frequencies, evaporated when

Giuliani visited a makeshift fire/police command center that had formed in

his absence. There he ORDERED THE POLICE BRASS TO LEAVE and accompany him

uptown. This "heroic leadership" effectively put the fire department and

police department commanders in different physical locations with no

communication possible between them.

Present Police Commissioner Ray Kelly stated that he doesn't have any idea

who was in charge on 9/11 because Bernie Kerik and all the top chiefs in the

police department basically acted as bodyguards to Giuliani and no one was

running the shop.

Firefighters finally took to the streets to protest Giuliani's decision to

limit the number of uniformed firefighters and police officers sifting

through the rubble for remains, and the "scoop-and-dump" haste of the

cleanup. They accused the administration of rushing the cleanup at the cost

of trashing the remains of victims. [And, it is pointed out by 9/11

conspiracy theorists, to quickly dispose of any incriminating evidence. The

steel, some claim bearing evidence of demolition explosives, was shipped to

China and quickly melted down.] At the firefighters' demonstration Giuliani,

in signature style, ordered Peter Gorman, head of the Uniformed Fire

Officers Association, and Kevin Gallagher, head of the Uniformed

Firefighters Association, to be ARRESTED at the protest site! A

spokesperson for Gallagher told the media "The mayor fails to realize that

New York City is not a dictatorship." Gorman went a step further, joining

the multitudes of New Yorkers calling the mayor a "fascist" - an often-heard

charge that dogged Giuliani throughout his mayoral tenure.

The fact is that Giuliani's switch to a scoop-and-dump cleanup coincided

with the removal of millions of dollars in gold, silver, and other assets of

the Bank of Nova Scotia that were buried beneath the towers' debris. Once

the money was out, Giuliani sided with the developers that opposed a lengthy

recovery effort, ordering the scoop-and-dump operation so they could proceed

with redevelopment. Harold Schaitberger of the International Association of

Firefighters (IAFF), the nation's largest firefighters' organization,

assailed Giuliani, detailing how the mayor ditched body-recovery efforts

only 24 hours after recovering the $230 million. "He found the gold on

October 31, and November 1 is when he issued the order to remove the

firefighters from their recovery mode."

President Steve Cassidy of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, which

represents about 9,000 firefighters, recently told The NY Post that the UFA

"will never be with Rudy Giuliani - we will make it known that he is not

qualified to lead."

Cassidy's blunt assessments stemmed from the "poor preparations" Giuliani

made to protect the city and first-responders in the wake of the 1993 WTC

bombing that killed six. "For someone running for the highest office in the

country and claiming to be a leader on terrorism, Giuliani's track record

stinks," Cassidy declared. 9/11 Commission member John Lehman likewise said

that New York City's disaster planning was "not worthy of the Boy Scouts,

let alone this great city."

"All he was doing was wandering around the city, and he wasn't able to make

sure firefighters and police could communicate. Serious mistakes, crucial

mistakes were made," Cassidy fumed, pointing to the faulty radios that had

failed in 1993 and failed again in 2001, preventing hundreds of firefighters

from hearing orders to evacuate the north tower. "On the heroic memory of

343 dead firefighters, he wants to run for president of the United States!

It's a disgrace."

"Rudy Giuliani did not have New York City prepared for a second terror

attack, and prior to September 11th his poll numbers reflected that he

couldn't get elected to any significant position," the UFA head stated.

"What did he do, in the weeks and months after 9/11, except claim he was the

guiding light?" He also lashed out at Giuliani for campaigning on

"revisionist history," and excoriated him for "not lifting one finger" to

help sick Ground Zero workers who had to push Albany legislators to pass

9/11 health-care bills after hundreds of first responders fell ill.

A relevant video documentary, "Rudy Giuliani: Urban Legend," can be viewed

at

"This image of Rudy Giuliani as America's mayor, it's a myth," states

Cassidy. Denying charges of political motivation for opposing Giuliani,

Cassidy said his union supported George Bush in the last election and had

supported George Pataki for governor of New York. "It's not about

Republicans, it's about THIS Republican," he said.

Jerome Hauer was the city's emergency management director from 1996 to 2000,

and is recognized as a leading expert on biological and chemical terrorism.

"Rudy would make a terrible president and that is why I am speaking now," Mr

Hauer told London's The Sunday Telegraph. "He's a control freak who

micro-manages decisions, he has a confrontational character trait and picks

fights just to score points. He's the last thing this country needs as

president." Mr Hauer also accused Mr Giuliani of failing to sort out turf

battles between the city's police and fire departments, and of appointing

inexperienced cronies to key positions.

INTERVIEW: Wayne Barrett by Williams Cole

http://brooklynrail.org/2006/9/local/wayne-barrett

Wayne Barrett, a Senior Editor at the Village Voice, is an icon of New York

City journalism, resulting from exhaustively researched investigative

reporting that led to his classic books City for Sale: Ed Koch and the

Betrayal of New York, and Rudy! An Investigative Biography. Rudy! reveals

shocking new information about Giuliani's past and was instrumental in

researching Giuliani Time, a recent feature documentary about Giuliani and

New York City. Barrett's new book (co-written with Dan Collins) is Grand

Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11. - W. Cole

Williams Cole (Brooklyn Rail): In writing and researching the book, what was

the most shocking thing you found out about Giuliani and 9/11 for you, a

Giuliani expert?

Wayne Barrett: I was really surprised at how the 1993 World Trade Center

bombing had absolutely no effect on his consciousness. Six people died, but

so many more could have and we show in four or five different ways how a

much bigger catastrophe was only narrowly averted. It was a dramatic

announcement of the arrival of terrorism in this country and in this city.

Then in June of '93 the FBI and the NYPD busted terrorists in Queens who

were a week away from blowing up the Holland Tunnel, the United Nations, a

whole series of targets. So 1993 was the peak year of terrorism in this

country and in this city prior to 9/11, yet it did not register in any way

in the Giuliani mind. We did many interviews with people that were in high

levels within the Giuliani administration, who interviewed for the police

commissioner in 1993 and the panel that Giuliani appointed for choosing the

police commissioner. All of them say that the question of the '93 bombings,

the question of terrorism generally, absolutely never came up. The mayor

never raised it, top advisors never raised it, it was nowhere on the screen,

it was nowhere. It was much the same two years later when Giuliani created

the Office of Emergency Management which, retroactively, he claimed was the

best sign that he understood the terrorist threat. But as we establish in

the book, terrorism had nothing to do with the OEM. Again, we interviewed

the panel that picked the first OEM director, we interviewed the candidates,

even Jerry Hauer who got the job, and terrorism had almost nothing to do

with the creation of the OEM. So what I was really shocked about, and

surprised about, was how clear it was that terrorism was something that

Giuliani never fixated on.

Brooklyn Rail: But now he pitches himself as an expert on terrorism.

Barrett: Yes, but it's not just Rudy who postures himself as a terrorism

expert. Why is it that after every event, the media immediately asks him to

come on, and the media positions him as an expert on terrorism? It is

obviously a consequence of the belief that because he was roaming the

canyons of lower Manhattan on 9/11, that somehow that is an indication that

he is a leader in the fight against terrorism, when actually he wouldn't

have been in the canyons of lower Manhattan if he had located his command

center where Mike Bloomberg has now and where his own top security people

recommended he locate it in the '90s - namely in downtown Brooklyn,

underneath the ground. If the command center had been there, Rudy wouldn't

have been roaming the canyons of lower Manhattan and he wouldn't be the icon

of 9/11. But somehow that visual has insinuated itself in the American

media mindset, that he's the expert on terrorism because he faced it down

that morning. He should have been operating less inspirationally and more

effectively in a command center in a responsible location, rather than at a

most vulnerable location. And he should have been with his top chiefs, the

fire department, police department, emergency management; he should have

been making solid judgments about how to respond to this. Instead, he was

walking the streets of lower Manhattan, making bad decisions down there as

well.

Rail: And it's pretty clear that the comments on security and terrorism are

going to be one of his defining roles should he run for president.

Barrett: Absolutely, I think the rationale for his presidential candidacy is

five years of spin about him as the leader on 9/11 and as the terrorism

prophet. I think he made some terrible mistakes that morning in terms of

strategic response, but as far as an inspirational figure goes, he said all

the right things. Even on 9/11 itself he was circumspect enough to say

let's not blame a community for this attack - he was urging tolerance.

After seven-and-a-half years of his mayoralty, the last thing we would

expect from him is empathy and tolerance. But beyond that voice was seven

years of miserable preparation for any attack, and even critical mistakes

that day. For example, he left the makeshift command post set up at the

World Trade Center - essentially a table set up by the fire department -

with all the police brass, in total violation of his own protocol. If he

had left even one of the top police commanders with the fire chiefs, if he

had observed even one iota of his own protocol, then the fire chiefs would

have known what the police brass believed, which was that the towers were

going to collapse. But because he didn't leave anybody there, because he

didn't insist on a unified command post, but instead split the command post

himself, then the malfunctioning of the radios proved to be very much more

deadly because you couldn't have communication. If you had a police chief

standing next to a fire chief at the command post, they would have been able

to exchange vital information. There were critical failings, even on that

terrible morning.

Rail: Talk a little more about the radio situation.

Barrett: I think we have major, shocking revelations about the relationship

between the Giuliani Administration and Motorola. There is such travesty in

the fact that firefighters wound up with the same radios in their hands that

malfunctioned at the '93 bombing. We have one chapter devoted exclusively

to tracking the narrative of why it was that no change occurred on the radio

front, and that there are all kinds of relationships. A pivotal person at

the city's information agency had a sister who worked for Motorola in a high

capacity, and this was the woman who steered the city, in large measure,

toward the new radios that were purchased. But even so, the city waited

until March of 2001 to actually put new radios in firefighters hands, and

then those radios malfunctioned within a week. The Giuliani Administration

could have easily reconfigured those radios, the new radios, and put them

back in fire houses in the intervening months between then and 9/11.

Instead, as a lame duck administration, it didn't do anything to put those

radios back out. We detailed a whole story of the nexus of the

relationships between Motorola and the Giuliani Administration and I think

it's certainly one of the reasons that so many firefighters died that day -

because of how bad radio communications were. I think we make that case

very strongly.

Rail: Who went on the record for the book and were you surprised by some of

the people that did?

Barrett: Some of the most interesting quotes in the book come from the staff

of the 9/11 Commission itself. We talked to almost everybody who worked on

chapter nine of the 9/11 Commission report that deals specifically with the

city's response. I think some of the most interesting quotations come from

people like Don Farmer, who was one of the top counsels in the Commission in

charge of chapter nine, and Sam Caspersen who is top assistant. Both of

them said some pretty remarkable things in the book. Don Farmer, for

example, says that there's no question, had the command center been located

at a responsible site where the city could've functioned that day, that in

his mind there's no question that the number of casualties would have been

greatly reduced. The current Police Commissioner Ray Kelly says that he

doesn't have any idea who was in charge on 9/11 because Bernie Kerik and all

the top chiefs in the police department basically acted as bodyguards to

Giuliani and no one was running the shop. They didn't even open the

emergency command center at the police department until an hour into the

incident. Louis Anemone, the highest-ranking officer throughout most of the

Giuliani era, said he worked for more than a year developing what he called

the vulnerability list, defining the most vulnerable sites for terrorists in

New York. But when he made his presentation to the mayor about it, Anemone

said the mayor glazed over, he was totally uninterested. And of course, the

World Trade Center was at the top of his vulnerability list. So some of the

people who did talk for the record are pretty remarkable. It's a sign of

the fact that, in New York at least, people are willing to come to grips

with the failings that cost lives that day.

Rail: I wonder if you could comment, after writing two books now about

Giuliani, how you would sum up his personality? Does he calculate things

politically, is he an opportunist? What is the essence there? Can he admit

mistakes?

Barrett: He's never really admitted any mistakes about 9/11. It's

astonishing to me. I don't think he's a very reflective man about these

kinds of things. Rudy is a spinmeister, he is an extraordinary, flexible

public personality in the sense that he now champions virtually any

Republican. He was campaigning for Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, who

likened gay people, black and gay people, to animals. Yet the night of 9/11

Rudy went to the house of Howard Koeppel, his gay friend, where he had been

staying because of his marital difficulties, and where he continued to stay.

He was living with two gay men on the night of 9/11 and now he's campaigning

for Rick Santorum who is likening them to animals. That's Rudy's

ever-flexible political mind. The last time he ran for public office was in

1997. People tend to forget how long ago it was, and then he was very

consciously projecting himself as this very non-partisan manager who was

only sort of accidentally a Republican. He used to do everything to

distance himself from his years of service to Ronald Reagan when he ran for

mayor of New York in 1989 and 1993. He consciously did that, and explicitly

did it. Now, he invokes Ronald Reagan all the time. Recently he was

campaigning for Ralph Reed and he was invoking Jesus in Florida. He is

certainly calculated. It's this elastic politics, this ability to be

whatever he needs to be to make it to the next goal. It's so striking. I

don't think there's any core there.

RECOMMENDED READING:

Giuliani: Nasty Man - by Edward I. Koch, former NYC mayor.

Giuliani Time (DVD) - with David Dinkins, Ron Kuby, Wayne Barrett, Rudolph

W. Giuliani, Kevin Keating.

Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11 - by Wayne

Barrett and Dan Collins.

"Rudy Giuliani: Urban Legend" can be viewed at