This week saw a barrage of interviews in which Rudy Giuliani eagerly criticized President Obama for his handling of the December 25th terrorist incident on Northwest Airlines Flight 253. Giuliani, as he has been doing since the tragic events of September 11th, 2001, has held himself out as an "expert" on terror. He gives paid speeches all over the country touting his leadership after September 11th and his expertise in dealing with terrorism, and thus appeared on a plethora of morning shows this past week condemning Obama's handling of the recent terrorist attempt.
While some in the press fixated on Giuliani's comment on Good Morning America that "We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We've had one under Obama" (an obvious fallacy given the events of September 11th), there is a bigger problem with Giuliani's statements than factual omissions or errors. His actions as Mayor both before September 11th, on that tragic day and in its aftermath, directly contradicted any so-called expertise in combating terrorism and actually put more New Yorkers lives in danger. As someone who has represented the Lower Manhattan district for the past four and half years as Chairperson of Community Board 1, I can say first hand how many people I have met whose lives he directly put in danger. Indeed the very strength that he tries to project of being "America's Mayor", is exactly his weakness--that his leadership before, on and after that fateful day, exacerbated an already horrific situation.
First, his decision well before the September 11th attacks, to place the city's Emergency Command Center on the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade Center, directly across from the site of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing shows an utter lack of understanding of the enormous terrorist risk posed by that Lower Manhattan site. Rather than house the command center in the Metro Tech Center in Brooklyn, as many including the New York Police Department had suggested, Giuliani overruled the NYPD as he wanted a site close to City Hall that he could walk to as Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins write in their book, "Giuliani: The Grand Illusion." The foolish decision to put the command center next to the top terrorist target in the city meant that there could not be coordination between the Police and Fire Departments on that day, jeopardizing the lives of first responders. The decision by Giuliani to put the command center at 7 WTC, rather than the Brooklyn Metro Tech Center which the NYPD had recommended, reveals how little Giuliani really understood about the terrorist risks posed by the World Trade Center site. Moreover, thousands of gallons of diesel fuel were housed at 7 World Trade Center in order to power the command center, which many believe fueled the fire that caused 7 WTC to collapse on September 11th. http://www.nytimes.com?2001/11/29/nyregion/29TOWE.html?ex=1150344000&en=4b37ef8397f96b88&ei+5070.
Equally damning, the Giuliani Administration failed to replace the antiquated radios that firefighters used, which had been the subject of blistering attacks for years by firefighters, yet the city continued to ignore this despite the fact that these same radios had failed to function in the 1993 WTC bombing.
As a result, the radios did not work and firefighters who were trapped in the burning towers had no way to communicate.
Equally troubling, immediately after the attacks, Giuliani made the decision to stay with his police commanders rather than join the temporary command center set up by the Fire Department, thus preventing proper communication between the Police and Fire departments. http://www.villagevoice.com/2007-10-16/news/rudy-s-pants-on-fire
In addition, the city had no city wide community notification program in place, despite the fact that many cities throughout the country had adopted such programs years earlier. Thus there was mass confusion even days after the attacks where many residents, including those in my own building, were not told to evacuate for three days after September 11th despite the fact that surrounding buildings were swaying and not stable. At the urging of Community Board 1, we asked the Bloomberg Administration to adopt a city wide notification program using cell phone, reverse 9/11 and email through which the city could quickly notify residents about an emergency and how they should respond. This system has now been adopted in all five boroughs in New York City.
Another notable failure was the Giuliani Administration's lack of enforcement of safety standards that responders must wear safety masks at the site, in the aftermath of the attacks. As a critical editorial in the Daily News on September 6, 2006, noted, Giuliani and the city "failed miserably" to enforce federal safety rules at the site. For weeks after the attacks, the city failed to ensure that all workers utilized proper respirators and decontamination equipment - which federal inspectors blasted in an extremely critical report on Oct. 6, 2001. In addition, in the days and weeks following the attacks, Giuliani repeatedly told New Yorkers that the air was safe, despite the fact that the early testing from the City's Department of Environmental Protection after the attacks showed that 27 of the agency's 38 tests detected asbestos. We see all too often at our community board meetings, first responders who have come down with grave cancers that they believe to be related to 9/11 or children who live near the site whose asthma has became uncontrollable in the years following 9/11.
The bottom line is that for Rudy Giuliani to now be attacking the Obama Administration for its handling of terrorist issues, begs the question of a thorough examination of Giuliani's own record in this regard. If Giuliani really wanted New York to be safe, he should use his bully pulpit to argue that all the recommendations of the bipartisan September 11th Commission should be adopted including checking all vessels that come into New York's ports, using more advanced full body screeners at airports and increasing the lines of communications between various government agencies that deal with security. Many of the most important of the Commission's recommendations have not been adopted and that is what "America's Mayor" should be talking about.
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