Giuliani and the 9/11 Attacks: the attacks on him, that is

National Review, Nov 5, 2007 by Byron York

RUDY GIULIANI has been leading the national polls in the Republican presidential race for months now, yet no one is entirely sure how much the voters know about him. Are they really aware of his positions on social issues? Do they know the full extent of his record in cleaning up crime and welfare in New York City? What about his views on guns? Whatever Republicans know about those issues, there's one thing all GOP voters--all voters of any stripe, for that matter--know about Giuliani: He is the hero of September 11, 2001.

At this stage in the race, Giuliani's September 11 record remains his best-known and perhaps strongest qualification to lead the Republican field. And as the possibility of his winning the Republican nomination becomes more likely, it's not surprising that Democrats are beginning to attack that record. Discredit Giuliani's 9/11 record, and you've discredited Giuliani himself.

So there is this, from the Democratic National Committee: "Poor 9/11 Decisions Raise Serious Questions about Rudy's So-Called Leadership Credentials." And this, from the head of the International Association of Firefighters: "Rudy has used the horrible events of September 11 to create a persona that is an elaborate fabrication." And this, from a former top Giuliani emergency-management official, now helping raise money for Hillary Rodham Clinton: Parts of Giuliani's 9/11 account are a "flat-out lie."

These charges could not be more serious. For the critics, the issue is not whether Giuliani has profited from 9/11, or whether he has made unseemly use of it in his campaign--although they charge him with doing both. Instead, they allege that Giuliani so mishandled events leading up to 9/11 that hundreds of people died needlessly.

They make three basic accusations. The first is that Giuliani foolishly located New York's emergency command center in the World Trade Center complex, where it was destroyed along with the Twin Towers on September 11; without that command center, the criticism goes, the city's response was disjointed, and people died as a result. The second charge is that Giuliani allowed the New York fire department to use a radio system that didn't work well in high-rise emergencies and could not communicate with police radios, and people died as a result. And the third is that Giuliani was woefully unprepared for a terrorist attack--and people died as a result.

The critics include a number of people with political motivations to attack Giuliani. But they also include some 9/11 families, heartbroken relatives who blame Giuliani for the deaths of their loved ones. Right now, their feud with the former mayor is playing out on the fringes of the presidential race. But if Giuliani continues to do well on the campaign trail, it might well move to center stage. And the questions will deserve an answer.

'THIS COLOSSAL MISTAKE'?

Perhaps the most serious and oft-repeated charge against Giuliani concerns his decision to place the city's emergency command center within the World Trade Center. "He made this colossal mistake of locating the command center in the only complex that had already been attacked by Islamic fundamentalists and that they vowed to return to," says Wayne Barrett, a writer with The Village Voice who has been a persistent critic of Giuliani for more than a decade and whose book, Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11, has become a guide for those who question Giuliani's performance that day. To evaluate the validity of his critique, you have to go back a few years.

Before Rudy Giuliani, New York City had no emergency command center. For that matter, it had no centralized office of emergency management, or OEM. Giuliani created both in 1996 for the purpose of dealing with all varieties of catastrophe: snowstorms, floods, fires, chemical-weapon attacks, explosions, hurricanes, epidemics--you name it. But New York is a big place, and with the new center came a new question: Where would it be located?

A long search came down to two possibilities: a city facility in Brooklyn known as Metro Tech, or some location--there were a number of candidates--in Lower Manhattan. In February 1996, Jerome Hauer, Giuliani's head of OEM, wrote a memo discussing the pros and cons of going to Brooklyn. Space could be made available quickly, he wrote; Metro Tech was "secure and not as visible a target as buildings in lower Manhattan"; it had backup phone, power, and water service. On the other hand, Hauer said, it would take some time for the mayor to travel to Metro Tech in the event of an emergency; it might be difficult to get to in case of a blizzard or some other disruptive incident; and the building was deemed vulnerable to truck-bomb attack. "Metro Tech has as many pros as cons," Hauer concluded.

The deciding factor, Hauer later said, was that Giuliani wanted a location within walking distance from City Hall, and that meant Lower Manhattan. This stipulation created some requirements of its own; an underground location, for example, would be out of the question because the area is low-lying and might flood. After much discussion, the search focused on 7 World Trade Center, in the Twin Towers complex. It had good security--the Secret Service and CIA already had facilities there--and could be significantly upgraded. Alarge office on the 23rd floor was selected. It was made virtually hurricane-proof and energy self-sufficient, and was packed with the latest technology. The center opened in June 1999.