On MSNBC, author Barrett responded to O'Donnell's assertion that "you can't honestly say" Giuliani "could have predicted that" the World Trade Center "would have been attacked?"
SUMMARY: Discussing former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's performance before, during, and after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with author Wayne Barrett, Norah O'Donnell asked Barrett: "[Y]ou can't honestly say he [Giuliani] could have predicted that that area [the World Trade Center complex] would have been attacked?" In response, Barrett pointed out that the World Trade Center complex "was at the top of the vulnerability list that [Giuliani's] own police department prepared."
During the September 1 edition of MSNBC News Live, anchor and MSNBC chief Washington correspondent Norah O'Donnell -- discussing former New York City Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani's performance before, during, and after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- asked Village Voice senior editor Wayne Barrett, "[Y]ou can't honestly say he [Giuliani] could have predicted that that area [the World Trade Center (WTC) complex] would have been attacked?" In response, Barrett, who was on to discuss his new book (written with CBSNews.com senior producer Dan Collins), Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11 (HarperCollins, August 2006), told O'Donnell that the WTC complex "was at the top of the vulnerability list that [Giuliani's] own police department prepared. His own police commissioner, Howard Safir at the time, went to a meeting of the top officials of the Giuliani administration and called it ground zero. He did that in 1997 and '98 because it had already been attacked."
The attack Barrett alluded to is the 1993 WTC bombing by Ramzi Yousef and several other terrorists. The final report of the 9-11 commission similarly noted that the New York City Office of Emergency Management's "headquarters was located at 7 WTC. Some questioned locating it both so close to a previous terrorist target and on the 23rd floor of a building (difficult to access should elevators become inoperable). There was no backup site."
Later in the interview, O'Donnell asserted that "Giuliani is widely popular across the United States, as you know, he is known as 'America's Mayor' " and asked Barrett to "name two qualities or reasons why you think Giuliani on the national stage can or can't be president?"
From the 11 a.m. ET September 1 edition of MSNBC News Live:
O'DONNELL: Just 10 days from now, Americans will mark the fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. On that day, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani took his place in the minds of many Americans as a hero. He was called "America's Mayor." But was he really? The new book Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11, asked that very question. With me now is one of the book's authors, Wayne Barrett. Thanks for joining us, Wayne.
BARRETT: Glad to be here.
O'DONNELL: According to your book, you say that Rudy Giuliani failed both in his seven and a half years leading up to 9-11 and in the aftermath of the tragedy. How so?
BARRETT: Well, we even say he failed on that day. He made some critical misjudgments on that day, but the seven-and-a-half-year lead-up to it is really the most potent part of the book. We examine all of the failings in terms of the fire radios, we examine the location of the bunker, the decision to put it in the World Trade Center complex, and how that affected the response that day, and we examine the command and control protocols that were really turned to shreds that day when the mayor himself went to the command post that the fire chiefs had set up on West Street and brought all the police chiefs with them, and then left with all the police chiefs, effectively dividing the command on that day, when unified command and his own protocols called for them to be in the same command post. So we kind of examine, over the course of those seven and a half years, the considerable evidence that the Giuliani administration was basically asleep at the switch in terms of a terrorist attack on the city, even though the city had been attacked while Rudy Giuliani was running for mayor in 1993.
O'DONNELL: I understand that you criticize Mayor Giuliani for having the command center in the World Trade Center complex, which he had received some criticism for at the time because many people thought it was expensive, etc. But you can't honestly say he could have predicted that that area would have been attacked?
BARRETT: Well, it was at the top of the vulnerability list that his own police department prepared. His own police commissioner, Howard Safir at the time, went to a meeting of the top officials of the Giuliani administration and called it ground zero. He did that in 1997 and '98 because it had already been attacked. And he -- you know, there was tremendous resistance within the police department. Lou Anemone, the highest-ranking police officer at the time, uniformed police officer at the time, resisted it tremendously with the mayor. The great deal of advice that he got -- but he insisted it had to be within walking distance of City Hall. His own head of the emergency management office that he set up wanted it in downtown Brooklyn at the MetroTech Center, which it's just a block from now. That's where [current New York City] Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg [R] put it.
O'DONNELL: Wayne, I understand your book is, of course, very critical, it is coming out at a time timed to the 9-11 anniversary. However, Giuliani is widely popular across the United States, as you know, he is known as "America's Mayor," and in fact, in some polls, he is at the top of the list as a Republican candidate in 2008. In your opinion, name two qualities or reasons why you think Giuliani on the national stage can or can't be president?
BARRETT: Well, look, we say in the book he said all the right things. We think he hit precisely the right chords that day. We think he hit precisely the right chords at the funerals that followed. He certainly carried himself magnificently. What we're saying is, that he was not the prophet of terrorism that he portrays himself as, that he prepared the city badly, and that he dealt with the aftermath at Ground Zero, where thousands of firefighters and construction workers now are haunted by the respiratory consequences of Ground Zero -- he handled the aftermath and he handled the preparation badly. So that he does have a reputation, a deserved reputation from the powerful visuals of that day as someone who led us in a remarkable way, but he prepared us badly and he dealt with the aftermath badly.
O'DONNELL: All right, Wayne Barrett, thank you very much for joining us.
BARRETT: Thank you.
In your opinion, name two qualities or reasons why you think Giuliani on the national stage can or can't be president?
Abortion and adultery.
Actually, Rudy quickly found a backup site.
He used a public school, as it had no value to him whatsoever. After all, his kids had never set foot in such places.
Thank goodness someone finally had the balls to question the heor image that the mainstream edia heaped upon Giuliani and all of us. He happened to e the Mayor when 9/11 happened, and he made speaches any mayor would make. The guy was a gutless punk-out byatch who avoided service in Vietnam like the rest of the chickenhawk cons. He wasn't a hero: he only played one on TV.
As far as his qualities for being president, it will sure seem strange to the hillbillies and rubes when they hear how much Giuliani and his pal Kerik like the ladies. So much that Kerik got the city to pay for his love nest so he could cheat on his long time girlfriend (while he was cheating n his long time wife) all under the guise that it was being used by the "folk" who were doing the clean-up at ground zero. WEASEL.
Mr. G was good on the theatrics, and criminal in his post 9/11 actions (or lack thereof).
In other words: A Great politician for our age!
" . . . you can't honestly say that he could have predicted the area would have been attacked . . ."
"I don't think anyone could have anticipated the breech of levees."
"I don't think anyone could have predicted the length of the insurgency."
...on the title "America's Mayor?" It was dumb in the fall of 2001, its even dumber now, almost five years after he left office.
Second, I think its just absolutely mind-boggling the number of people who think that Guliani would be great on "security issues" because....well....um...oh yeah, because his city was attacked on 9/11. This Guliani-worship has never made any sense to me- it seems based entirely on the fact that Guliani didnt wet his pants on 9/11.
I wonder, if the 9/11 hijackers had hit Boston instead, would Mayor Menino today be considered "America's Mayor" and a frontrunner for the 2008 Dem. nomination?
This is just garbage. Guliani's fifteen minutes of fame- totally unearned- have long since expired.
It defies logical explaination: Rudy happened to be mayor on 9/11 and made some speeches . . . Bush continued to sit and read fiction to some elementary-schoolers while someone told him we were being attacked . . .
And who does the rightwing noise machine say 9/11 was the fault of? CLINTON.
Wayne Barrett is doing God's work. Giuliani was losing favor as mayor before 911. Like George W. Bush, his performance in the aftermath of America's and New York's darkest hour buoyed his political career. However, the mantle of infallibility for both is wearing out. Giuliani has recently made an ass of himself by stumping for both Ralph Reed and Rick Santorum. Consummate opportunists that they are, they chose to ignore Giuliani's tolerance of gays (he lived with a gay couple during his separation from his ex-wife while he pursued an affair) and his tolerance of abortion rights; consummate opportunist that he is, Giuliani returned the favor by ignoring behavior that he would once have gleefully indicted them for. I believe he has taken the wheels off his own bandwagon before it gets out of the garage, but just in case he hasn't, Mr. Barrett and his co-author have provided Giuliani's opponents with with wonderful material for what looks like a vicious campaign season. Thanks, Wayne.
Please remember that St. Rudy kept quiet as GWB's puppet head of the EPA Christie Whitman declared that the air in lower Manhatten after the towers fell was not harmful.
And why would anyone ever try to defend GWB by passing blame onto the troops that are actually doing the dying in Iraq. In case anyone forgot, here is what Rudy said about the tons of missing explosives at a munitions dump found, but not secured while our military was on their way to Baghdad.
"No matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there," Giuliani said on NBC's "Today" show. "Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?"
Giuliani is, to me, the lowest piece of filth that the republicans have thrown our way.
the "nobody could have predicted" or "they couldn't possibly have known" explanations for incompetence, I try to imagine little scenarios at my job where I use this.
Something fairly predictable, something I was warned about, some event that should have been taken into consideration actually happens and I didn't prepare for it. In my little movie, I tell the boss and everyone else that I couldn't have possibly known.
It doesn't go over too well, and I'm directing the scene.
I've said it before, but it bears repeating:
America's Mayor, America's schmayor . . . he beat Dinkins in '93 with 49% to 46% - so he was barely NYC's mayor.
While in office,
- proved he cared little about minorities, as he unhesitatingly took the side of the police in the Diallo shooting and Louima sodomizing cases.
- proved he cared little about the lower- or middle-class, as he willingly displaced thousands of them to give land to corporations for redevelopment, in Times Square and elsewhere.
- proved he's a political opportunist - 9/11 was the date of the NYC mayoral primary; it was automatically delayed 2 weeks, but Giuliani sought to have his term, due to expire Jan. 1, extended 3 months, and was planning to challenge the law imposing term limits for NYC mayors. The State legislature said no, and the election and inauguration proceeded as scheduled.
So, to recap:
doesn't care about minorities + favors big business over working people + willing to exploit a national tragedy for political gain = the perfect GOP presidential candidate
{That adultery thing? So what . . . didn't hurt Bill Clinton . . .}
I say Pllleeeeeeeaaaaaassssssseeeeeeeee put Giuilani on the ticket in '08.
The Sex, the Lies, The Scoundrels, and Common Crooks this man has cozied up to makes him a movie mini series for TV the likes of Dallas.
When he gets done rolling in the World Trade Center debris, he's got that juicy wife & squeeze thing going on in the Mayor's Mansion all the while he's trying to make like nothing going on.
I' m sure after the mid-terms, a Democratic Congress starts up the hearings, and investigations, any ideas Giuliani has for Presidential Pads for his next romantic concern will be a bubble birst.
But, just think of it happening after he takes the nomination?? That would be the biggest bubble burst in American History. I relish these moments realization of Republicans falling into their own traps of rhetoric, and base behavior.
Happy Thoughts;
Dan Grady