Giuliani Feeling The Heat Over 9/11 Radios

By now, it is fairly well known that on 9/11 the New York City Fire Department's radios simply did not work. In fact, it was the same exact equipment that had malfunctioned in the 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center. Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films have the most definitive summary of this.

The fact that no radio upgrade was made in the eight-year interim is something of an albatross for Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign, considering he was mayor of the New York during that very time period.

And on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos the topic came up yet again. Only this time, Giuliani absolved himself by claiming it would have been "impossible" to give the FDNY working radios.

STEPHANOPOULOS: They make two main charges. Number one, that those firefighters in the north tower, many of them lost their lives because their radios didn't work. They also say you ended the recovery efforts too soon.

GIULIANI: Well, the radios that you're talking about weren't put online for three, four, five years after. So, it would have been impossible for me to have those radios ready. It took the city two or three more years...

STEPHANOPOULOS: But they had malfunctioned in 1993.

GIULIANI: But even with the new equipment, it took another two or three years for those radios to be put online. So it would have been impossible for us to have gotten them online before that, given the fact that it took so long afterwards.

Ok. So, Giuliani seems to be saying that after the city purchased the new equipment, it took at least three years for it to be operational. Hence, the FDNY could never have gotten the new radios in time anyways and Giuliani deserves no blame.

Of course, there were eight years between the two attacks on the Twin Towers. Whatever.

But according to Wayne Barrett's book "Grand Illusion", the real problem was not that there wasn't enough time to make the radios operational. Pre-bidding conferences were being held in 1997 after all. Rather, the problem was that the city was blindly dependent on Motorola to outfit the FDNY with the most modern version, even if it took longer (which it did) and the equipment was untested (which it was). As Barrett, a Giuliani critic, writes:

Under Giuliani's watch, the Fire Department had tried to equip its firefighters with portable radios from Motorola that didn't actually exist when the FDNY took the first steps to order them. The radios were so 'undeveloped' according to a subsequent investigation, that the company didn't even put them on its sales list until months after the order was placed in 1999. When the biggest potential fire department customer in America asked for samples, Motorola couldn't send them even a preproduction model for three months. It took three years for Motorola and the department to actually put the first of the 3,818 new radios in a firefighter's hands. Then they boomeranged instantly, failing to communicate a half dozen 'maydays' from a trapped firefighter.

Unlike the handie-talkies the Fire Department had used since the 1960s, these new digital radios, the XTS 3500R, were actually computers that turned the familiar real-life voices of firefighters into urgency-deaf monotones that had a prerecorded and often indecipherable quality to them. No large fire department in this country or anywhere else had or would ever purchase them. The contract for them appeared so wired that only one other company, General Electric/Ericson, showed up at the 1997 pre-bid conference, and FDNY officials decided it was ineligible to participate.

GE/Ericsson's protest letter to city officials, including Giuliani himself, went unanswered. Warren Stogner, the salesman for Ericsson, charged in the letter that "only Motorola can meet the specifications" because language in the bid specified their product and required radio features proprietary to the company. No one heard him then, but years later, Alan Hevesi, the independently elected city comptroller, examined the process and concluded that there was "a willful attempt to circumvent the contract system," withholding over $8 million still due to Motorola. Tom Von Essen, the commissioner who issued the XTS 3500s, was forced by the unheard 'maydays' to pull them out of the firehouses and conceded that there were 'problems' with them that had to be corrected. Yet Giuliani attacked the motives of the Democratic comptroller as 'political,' defended his friend and commissioner, called the radios 'state of the art,' and insisted there was nothing irregular about the contract.

Comments

[navalvet]

Mr. Stein,

For clarity, I think you meant to write about New York Cit "Fire Department" radios in the first sentence, not "Police Department." I believe that the police actually had functioning radios, which could not communicate with the firemen.

This scandal is one of the reasons that most New Yorkers who know the record of this mayor will not support him. He has always been the product of favorable media misrepresentation as a "can do" mayor.

[ptarantino]

I hope Alan Keys beats Rudy in Iowa.

[patreillys]

It's about the firefighters. Climbing up as everyone else was leaving. Shame on those who failed them.

[ParacleteofKavorka]

First. Stephanopoulos should be fired for letting him off so easy, especially the discrepancy about the time involved to get the radios working.

Second. Rudy not only needs to lose the nomination but lose it big, say 3rd or 4th.

I got a knot in my stomach watching Rudy lie.

[brently]

Going after Rudy for the bad radios is like going after John Gotti for wearing brown shoes with a black belt. If you want to get Rudy, ask him how he knew the towers were going to collapse. He has changed his story every 6 months or so.

[LoRiseAntlers]

Rudy's a thug,nothing more,nothing less.I.m amazed that he's beginning to slip so much in the polls.The Repukes love them some bully boys.

[Rog49Thomas]

One of Rude E's campaign postures is that he is a candidate with one very large set of cojones.

I think this shows exactly how big when he can with a straight face engage in rhetoric so divorced from reality.

The rhetoric is pretty clear - tough on crime and even tougher on terrorism.
(If you don't believe that, please just ask him and he will set you straight.)

However, the record is a bit different.
Against wise counsel, he put the City's disaster center in a known terrorist target.

For some other reason his administration rigged the process so a vendor with a not-yet-ready radio was favored.

[sconset]

Guiliani does not have a conscience that it why he is able to look at people and lie his head off.

I wouldn't vote for him if he was the last man on earth--he is despicable and a thug who dresses in Brioni and bespoke shoes. He and Judy are a couple of phonies who are nouveau riche.

[batguano]

Add to this utter failure and excuplatory gibberish and lies from "Rudy" regarding the complete lack of critical thinking or planning regarding FDNY radio communication, his possible part in the 9/11 conspiracy itself and his role in quickly selling off MORE THAN 99% of the twin towers steel columns as scrap! That was critical evidence and was caused to be removed and destroyed by Rudy, either alone or in concert with others! He also failed miserably to protect the workers and all N Yorkers exposed to the toxic carcinogenic brew that was the WTC site and the dust covering more of the city. He lied along with Christine Todd Whitman, the then Bush mouthpiece who proclaimed the air "safe"; more lies by the Bush/Republican machine, and they all now deny critical healthcare to those dying and ill from their heroism!
"Guiliani was appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in 1983. “So he knew a thing or two about criminal investigation procedures,” Torin adds. Knowing that, one has to wonder why he “sent more than 99% of the steel from the WTC to China and Korea in violation of proper chain of evidence.” Not only that, it was sent overseas at a price undercutting a New Jersey company. A company in New Jersey offered to pay $0.56 per ton, but it was sent out of the country to be smelted before experts could analyze the steel for signs of explosives for $0.50 per ton. Guiliani is clearly one of the perpetrators behind the crimes of 9/11, and he was confronted recently by a truth squad led by Luke Rudkowski. They wanted to know why his story has changed five times about his activities on the morning of 9/11".***
I wonder who is investigating the conspiracy to give Motorola the contract for crap radios that did not work or delivered in a timely manner?

***PLEASE see this entire very informative piece @ http://www.oregontruthalliance.org/?q=node/351
Rudolph is no hero, but a self aggrandizing fascist oriented shill!

[drblack]

Having a working two way radio system was just impossible in 2001.
This amazing and almost magical technology of two way radios has only been available since after JulieAnnie left office.
This guy is a great neoCON....lying is the one and only qualification for the neoCON-job.

[Galvestonians for Dr. Ron Paul]

You can bet this asshole had a radio that worked as he was running FROM the WTC, on 9/11.