Rudy Giuliani: A Failure On 9/11 and A Failure Now

Rudy Giuliani: A Failure On 9/11 and A Failure Now

James Boyce
Posted January 29, 2008 | 11:41 PM (EST)

Never in the history of American politics has someone as so fundamentally, personally, morally and ethically flawed as Rudy Giuliani attempted to run for the White House.

And hats off to everyone who helped deflate the bubble that was the Giuliani campaign, from the firefighters to the film producers to the bloggers, everyone who chipped away at the veneer of credibility only to expose the arrogant incompetence that rages within Giuliani.

How could Republicans vote for a man who annulled his marriage to his cousin on the grounds that he thought she was his third cousin not second cousin?

How could Republicans vote for a man that announced his divorce to a second wife at a news conference?

And then there's the third wife, and a tiara, and a security detail.

And there's Bernie Kerik, and the unsavory clients at Giuliani partners, and the $100,000 speaking fees for charitable events.

But above all, today is a victory for all those who suffered loss on 9/11. This is a victory for the truth about 9/11 and the truth hasn't had many victories from that day.

On 9/11, New York firefighters died because of Rudy Giuliani's incompetence. They died because they didn't have radios that worked. They died because Rudy Giuliani built the Command and Control Center, against the expert's advice, in World Trade Center Building Number Seven.

You're in charge of building mission control for New York City and you build it in the shadow of the only building attacked in the mainland United States by foreign terrorists -- the 1993 World Trade Center attack.

Rudy on 9/11 was running around facing cameras because his command center was destroyed.

After 9/11, Rudy Giuliani fought AGAINST the 9/11 Commission, another shocking move of hypocrisy and arrogance. He knew the Commission would find fault with his leadership and they did.

Remarkably, Rudy Giuliani was supposed to be on that Commission, but his speaking engagements and money-grubbing got in the way.

Giuliani kept going, fleecing countries and corporations of of millions of dollars through Giuliani Partners. He raised tens of millions of dollars from those easily parted from their money.

I never worried about Rudy Giuliani winning, not for one single second. In fact, months ago, I declared him dead and buried -- even my friend Chris Bowers thought I had early called it.
Because even in a country where so often, our media fails to call black black and white white, in a country where so many don't vote and don't pay attention,
in a political system where legends are created out of frauds,
I knew that once a touch of light was shined on Giuliani, the light would destroy him.
And it did.

Rest in hell Rudy -- but at least you'll be there with all your friends.

Giuliani Scrubs Facts To Defend His Risky Placement Of NYC’s Emergency Command Center

Giuliani Scrubs Facts To Defend His Risky Placement Of NYC’s Emergency Command Center

On CNN’s American Morning today, host John Roberts asked former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani about recent revelations by the New York Times that said as mayor he ignored a “1998 police department memo” saying that it would be a bad idea to place the New York City emergency command center at Seven World Trade Center. The memo called the location — which collapsed on 9/11 — “a poor choice” with “significant points of vulnerability.”

Giuliani defended himself, saying he made the “choice,” but adding that “there were pros and cons for all of the sites”:

Each site had a series of pros, a series of cons. And the reality is, 7 World Trade Center was also the home of the CIA, the Secret Service, it was a logical place to put it for the transfer of information.

Watch it:

Giuliani’s invocation of the CIA and the Secret Service is cynically misleading. In fact, as the New York Times article cited by Roberts makes clear, the 1998 police memo explicitly pointed out that the “presence” of those other agencies “made the building a more likely target“:

Mr. Giuliani has said in the past that one of the reasons for choosing the location was that several federal agencies with which city officials needed to be in contact during emergencies, including the Secret Service, had their offices there. Other federal agencies in the building included the Defense Department and the C.I.A.

But the Police Department took the opposite position in the memo, saying the presence of those agencies made the building a more likely target.

As Media Matters has pointed out, “Giuliani ‘overruled’ warnings from former police commissioner Howard Safir and NYPD chief operating officer Lou Anemone not to locate” the command center at Seven World Trade Center because he wanted it “within walking distance of City Hall.”

Firefighter: Giuliani 'ran like a coward on 9/11'

Firefighter: Giuliani 'ran like a coward on 9/11'

David Edwards and Adam Doster Published: Tuesday January 22, 2008 |

Families of firefighters killed in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center rallied in Orlando Tuesday in anticipation of the state's upcoming Republican primary. Unfortunately for Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, the firefighters are not in his corner.

"We want America to know that [the Giuliani campaign] is lying to America and to the American pubic," said Jim Riches, a deputy chief in the New York Fire Department, "telling all of Florida that the New York City Fire Department backs him, when that's another lie."

Firefighters and their families vowed to dog the former New York mayor at all of his Florida campaign stops because the state figures prominently in Giuliani's big-state primary strategy. The protesters think that Giuliani was aware that firefighters who responded to the World Trade Center attack were carrying defective radios and did not hear the order to evacuate.

"He didn't prepare us before, during, or after," says Riches.

Giuliani has campaigned strongly on his leadership during the attacks on New York, claiming he is the best suited to prevent an "Islamic terrorist war against us." But the firefighters were quick to question that courage.

"Yeah, the decision he made was, which direction he was going to run," says Riches. "And he ran north, and that's all he did."

The Giuliani campaign labeled the display a misleading, partisan attack. The former mayor is also emphasizing his ability to deal with the economy, distancing himself from the 9/11 pitch.

This video is from CNN.com, broadcast January 22, 2008.

Rudy Giuliani jets to campaign stops using casino kingpin's plane

By DAVID SALTONSTALL
DAILY NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT

Sunday, November 18th 2007, 5:42 PM

Sheinwald/Bloomberg

Gulf Stream G-IV, like the one provided by Sands casino executive for Rudy Giuliani's use.

Drake/Bloomberg

Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson (above) shares politics — and plane — with Rudy Giuliani (below).

Smialowski/Getty

Rudy Giuliani is jetting around the country wooing Bible-thumping conservatives, but his plane is often provided by a king of Sin City.

The Republican presidential hopeful anted up more than $122,000 last summer alone for jets traceable to casino kingpin Sheldon Adelson, whose Las Vegas Sands empire has made him the third-richest American, a Daily News review of campaign records shows.

Last quarter, The Sands' innocuously named Interface Operations LLC was the top provider of corporate jets to the frequently flying Giuliani, who was whisked around the country on the casino's plush Gulfstream G-IV in late August and early September, records show.

"You have to follow the money and ask, 'Why is Sheldon Adelson partnering with Rudy Giuliani?'" asked Stacey Cargill, an anti-gambling and Republican Party activist in Iowa, where the nation's first presidential caucus is set for Jan. 3.

Cargill, who views even legal gambling as a magnet for crime and vice, said, "If Rudy Giuliani wants to be the crimefighting candidate, why is he partnering with a large and growing gambling empire?"

Until eight weeks ago, candidates could hop aboard private corporate jets at a fraction of their actual cost, reimbursing benefactors only for the price of a first-class commercial ticket between the same two points.

Critics long viewed the formula as a back-door way for corporations to donate to campaigns. Congress agreed, and on Sept. 14, the Federal Election Commission changed the rules to require presidential campaigns to pay fair-market prices for corporate planes.

Giuliani certainly took advantage of the bargain rates before they went away, as did some of his competitors. Fellow Republicans Mitt Romney and John McCain use corporate aircraft to varying degrees, as does Democrat John Edwards, records show.

Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama accept no corporate aircraft, choosing instead to rent planes at full market cost to avoid the appearance of a conflict.

Some even rub elbows with the common folk: Democrats Christopher Dodd and Dennis Kucinich were spotted flying commercial to last week's Las Vegas debate.

In addition to the Las Vegas Sands, Giuliani's fleet of corporate connections includes more than a dozen big-moneyed interests, among them:

Giuliani's campaign aides insist corporate plane providers are not promised anything in return and the campaign follows all applicable laws.

"The bottom line is we have always fully complied with Federal Election Commission rules and regulations," said Giuliani spokeswoman Maria Comella.

Campaign watchdogs - while generally pleased by the new, stricter rules - nevertheless believe planes will remain a valuable perk corporations will use to build goodwill. They can also provide critical access, since CEOs often find a way to share flights with candidates, they note.

"What money buys you in politics these days is access, and that's the case regardless of the rule changes," said Meredith McGehee, policy director of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.

"For a busy presidential candidate, being able to fly on your own schedule and not have to stand in line to take off your shoes - it's an extreme personal convenience."

Adelson - a former City College kid - made his real money when the Chinese government allowed him to build a casino on the island of Macao in 2004. That launched him to the No. 3 slot on Forbes' list of America's richest men, with a fortune estimated at $28 billion.

He has developed a solid relationship with Giuliani.

The two share many ideological views, most notably a vigorous commitment to maintaining the security of Israel. Last month, Adelson - who did not return calls for comment - held a Giuliani fund-raiser at his Venetian casino in Las Vegas.

High-rollers who agreed to raise $25,000 for Giuliani's presidential bid got a special treat - cigars with the former mayor.

dsaltonstall@nydailynews.com

World Gone Wrong: Giuliani Names FEMA Flunky Joe Allbaugh Senior Adviser On Homeland Security

Posted November 2, 2007 | 10:14 AM (EST)

---

This news snuck by on Halloween, and it's a real nightmare. The Giuliani campaign has hired Joe Allbaugh as its senior adviser on "general strategy and homeland security."

Joe Allbaugh? The guy who was George Bush's lackey when he was Governor of Texas? The guy who Bush put in charge of FEMA, with zero experience, after becoming President? The guy who hired his pal "Heck of a job, Brownie" as #2 at FEMA and then saw to it that Brownie succeeded him when Joe left in 2003 to get rich on Iraq, leaving Brownie in charge when hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast?

Yes, that Joe Allbaugh.

Rudy's got some track record when it comes to homeland security. He talked Bush into naming his own lackey Bernie Kerik as the first chief of the Homeland Security department when it was created, but that nomination went down in flames amid charges that Bernie was nothing more than a sleaze and a crook.

Back to Joe Allbaugh. In addition to his disastrous tenure at FEMA, he's also the guy who was knee deep in Bush's National Guard records saga back in 1997. A team was ordered to rifle through the old files, and Bush confidante Karen Hughes would later claim - get this - that Bush merely wanted to refresh fond memories of his National Guard days for the book she was writing for him ("A Charge To Keep"), but it's now clear that the purpose was to purge the files of any evidence documenting Bush's military malfeasance and, as the Boston Globe and others reported, subsequent AWOL Guard year back in the early 1970s.

The future president had been a first class flake, and the photo-op of him prancing around in a flight suit on the deck of an aircraft carrier after 9/11 was meant to blunt that cold hard fact.

Indeed, even though the infamous Dan Rather memos were never fully verified as originals, the 86-year old retired secretary of Bush's commanding officer told Rather that all of the damaging information in those memos was absolutely accurate because she was the one who'd typed them back then. Case closed.

But again, back to Joe Allbaugh. After he left government service (term used loosely) and was replaced at FEMA by his favored #2 Michael Brown, Joe set up a company based on nothing more than his relationship with Bush. His outfit facilitated business in Iraq for contractors who wanted to get their hands on all that war money the Congress keeps funding with taxpayer dollars, more than half a trillion now.

The man who labored to cover Bush's rear end (Rove handled the brain), and who brought us the Katrina-era FEMA and "Brownie," is now the Giuliani senior adviser on protecting America.

This would be a terrible joke, except it's real.

Giuliani: tax cuts + tax cuts = balance

Giuliani: tax cuts + tax cuts = balance

By: Steve Benen @ 6:31 PM - PDT

Once in a while, Rudy Giuliani appears so confused, one really has to wonder why he’s even running for president.

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said Friday that the alternative minimum tax — which is expected to generate as much as $1 trillion over the next 10 years — could be eliminated over the long term by balancing it out with even more tax cuts.

Giuliani’s remarks prompted a bewildered response from his audience of technology executives. Both Republicans and Democrats said they assumed that the candidate must have misspoke as he responded to a question about the tax and its affect the middle class.

This reflects the sophistication of a small child who picked up a copy of the Weekly Standard, and hoped to make sense of what he didn’t understand. Eliminating the AMT would cost billions. Additional tax cuts would cost billions more. Trying to strike a “balance” this way is like trying to put out a fire with kerosene.

As Kevin Drum put it, we’re apparently dealing with a “buffoon.”

Giuliani walks fine line on 9/11 in White House bid

By Michelle NicholsMon Sep 10, 5:47 PM ET

Rudy Giuliani rose to national fame in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, but experts say his moment as "America's mayor" is both the biggest asset and potential liability in his White House bid.

On the eve of the sixth anniversary of the World Trade Center attack, experts warned there was a fine line between Giuliani emphasizing his 9/11 leadership as mayor of New York and politicizing the al Qaeda strike that killed 2,750 people in the city.

"This is America's mayor trying to become America's president," Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, said of Giuliani, who is leading public opinion polls for the Republican 2008 presidential nomination.

"When he was first running it was largely a plus ... but if he is going to have front-runner status everything is under the microscope," Miringoff said. "Some people are finding his comments about everything he did as mayor as a bit of a reach."

Giuliani, known for his brash style and hot temper when he was mayor, is focusing on issues of national security and strong leadership as he woos voters across the country.

Critics say that while Giuliani was a reassuring presence on September 11, he made mistakes preparing the city for an emergency prior to the attacks.

They accuse him of ignoring advice of police and emergency management experts by putting the city's emergency command center in the World Trade Center complex, which had been bombed in 1993 and was a presumed target.

The command center had to be abandoned on September 11, 2001, after the attack and as a result, police and fire commanders could not coordinate search and rescue efforts. The National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded in a 2005 report that emergency responder lives likely were lost at the trade center because of the lack of communication.

While Giuliani has attended the previous September 11 memorial services, several groups representing some firefighters and families of victims do not want him to speak at Tuesday's commemoration.

"He's running for president of the United States on the back of my dead son," said Jim Riches, a deputy chief of the New York Fire Department whose firefighter son Jimmy, 29, died when the Twin Towers collapsed.

"His legacy from 9/11 should be all the sick and dying firefighters and first responders, construction workers and everybody else, because he was too busy running around giving speeches and making tens of millions of dollars," he said.

Thousands of rescue workers who combed through the debris of the collapsed World Trade Center have developed health problems from breathing the dust and fumes of the buildings.

Riches, who spent several weeks in a coma in 2005 after suffering respiratory failure that he says was a result of working at Ground Zero, vowed he and other 9/11 families would "get the word out about Rudy Giuliani and how he failed us."

Last month Giuliani formed a "first responders" support group to defend his record as mayor, but he told a Republican candidate debate last week that he is not "running on what I did on September 11."

"I'm running on the fact that I was mayor of the largest city in the country, the third-largest government in the country," he said.

Tony Carbonetti, a Giuliani aide, said in a statement on Monday the former mayor would never politicize 9/11.

Steven Cohen, a public administration professor at Columbia University in New York, said Giuliani was a good mayor, but that he also alienated a lot of people during his eight years at City Hall.

"The few days after 9/11 were really days where he was an exemplary leader. He helped build confidence in the city again and really helped people get back on their feet," Cohen said. "He was certainly not a consensus builder in this city and is probably exaggerating his claims of being a super mayor."

(Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner)

Meet Giuliani's Gold Digger .. er .. Wife

Meet Giuliani's Gold Digger .. er .. Wife

Judy Bachrach - Vanity Fair - Aug 2nd, 2007

Giuliani's current wife used to call her ex-husband "'a kike,' when I couldn't afford something; 'a rich little kike,' … 'Jew boy' ...more

Onetime Giuliani Insider Is Now a Critic From Outside

Onetime Giuliani Insider Is Now a Critic From Outside
By RUSS BUETTNER

As Rudolph W. Giuliani runs for president, his image as a chief executive who steered New York through the disaster of Sept. 11 has become a pillar of his campaign. But one former member of his inner circle keeps surfacing to revisit that history in ways that are unflattering to Mr. Giuliani: Jerome M. Hauer, New York City’s first emergency management director.

In recent days, Mr. Hauer has challenged Mr. Giuliani’s recollection that he had little role as mayor in placing the city’s emergency command center at the ill-fated World Trade Center.
Mr. Hauer has also disputed the claim by the Giuliani campaign that the mayor’s wife, Judith Giuliani, had coordinated a help center for families after the attack.

And he has contradicted Mr. Giuliani’s assertions that the city’s emergency response was well coordinated that day, a point he made most notably to the authors of “Grand Illusion,” a book that depicts Mr. Giuliani’s antiterrorism efforts as deeply flawed.

Mr. Hauer does not disparage Mr. Giuliani’s overall effort at emergency preparedness or appear to have actively sought out a role as a Giuliani scold. But he has emerged as one in several settings where his frank, often blunt, answers to questions have offered a rare view inside the often-insular Giuliani administration.

Mr. Hauer was once part of the coterie of high school chums, fellow former prosecutors and City Hall aides who remain the nucleus of Mr. Giuliani’s tight-knit set of advisers. From that perch, he helped Mr. Giuliani confront some of New York City’s most disquieting predicaments, like the West Nile virus and a potential millennium meltdown.

He emerged from four years of service to Mr. Giuliani as one of the country’s better known emergency preparedness experts and a frequent guest on television news programs.
But in recent years, Mr. Hauer and Mr. Giuliani have had a falling out, though they disagree on just why.

Now from a distance, Mr. Hauer offers views of Mr. Giuliani’s management style, ones that depict him not only as highly competent and exceptionally hands-on, but also as insensitive and retaliatory at times.

Mr. Hauer, for example, recalls a conversation he had with Mr. Giuliani in 2001 when he had decided to endorse a Democrat, Mark Green, for New York City mayor over Mr. Giuliani’s own choice for a successor, Michael R. Bloomberg, a Republican. Mr. Hauer said Mr. Giuliani, upset, called up to say his disloyalty was unforgivable.

“He was shouting, ‘If you do this, you’re done ... I’m going to end your career,’ or something along those lines,” Mr. Hauer said.

Joseph J. Lhota, a former deputy mayor, remembered the endorsement debate differently, suggesting that Mr. Hauer had put politics over principles in a way that “put his whole credibility in question.”

Fred Siegel, the author of “The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life” (Encounter Books, 2005), said the trust that members of Mr. Giuliani’s inner circle invested in each other was the reason no one apart from Mr. Hauer had ever emerged as even an occasional critic.

“The core of the administration was that these guys would always pull together,” said Mr. Siegel, who once served as speechwriter for Mr. Giuliani. “Once a decision was made, that was it. There wouldn’t be any second-guessing.”

Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Hauer began their relationship in January 1996 when Mr. Hauer was hired to lead the new Office of Emergency Management, created to coordinate the city’s response to crises. Mr. Hauer, who was little known before he became a Giuliani aide, had previously run emergency management programs for the State of Indiana and IBM.

In his book, Mr. Siegel describes Mr. Hauer, who is 6-foot-5, as “a big, plain-spoken and knowledgeable man” who “won wide-spread cooperation.”

One of Mr. Hauer’s first tasks was to find a home for an emergency command center to replace the inadequate facilities at police headquarters. Mr. Hauer suggested an office complex in downtown Brooklyn as a “good alternative” in a memorandum.

But Mr. Hauer said the mayor insisted instead on a site within walking distance of City Hall. Given that concern and others, Mr. Hauer said he decided that offices on the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade Center, next to the twin towers and just a few blocks from City Hall, seemed the best choice.

The site was immediately controversial because it was part of the trade center, which had already been the location of a truck bomb attack in 1993. City officials, though, including Mr. Hauer, have long defended their decision, even after the command center had to be evacuated during the 2001 terror attack.

Last week, in an interview with Fox News, Mr. Giuliani again faced questions about the site. He put responsibility for selecting it on Mr. Hauer.

“Jerry Hauer recommended that as the prime site and the site that would make the most sense,” Mr. Giuliani said. “It was largely on his recommendation that that site was selected.”
Mr. Hauer took immediate exception to that account in interviews. “That’s Rudy’s own reality that he lives in,” he said. “It is not, in fact, the truth.”

Mr. Hauer has also expressed concern about the level of support he felt from Mr. Giuliani, in particular when he tried to bridge the divide between the city’s Police and Fire Departments, two disparate emergency response cultures that battled over turf.

Mr. Hauer said he ended up in something of a feud with the police commissioner at the time, Howard Safir, which came to a head in 1998 when, he said, he offered to help both departments prepare for a chemical disaster drill.

Police officials declined help, Mr. Hauer said, but then sent detectives to follow him and photograph his meeting with fire officials. During a subsequent meeting with the mayor, Mr. Safir held up the photographs, Mr. Hauer said, as triumphant evidence that Mr. Hauer favored the Fire Department.

“Any man worth his salt would have been outraged that the Police Department followed one of his closest commissioners,” Mr. Hauer said. “It was disgraceful.”

But Mr. Hauer said that when he complained to Mr. Giuliani, all he got was a blank stare.
Mr. Lhota, speaking for the campaign, said he was unaware of such an incident. Mr. Safir did not return a call for comment.

Mr. Hauer left his city job in 2000. A year later, Mr. Giuliani called him back into service after the terror attacks. He was assigned to help prepare for possible biological or chemical attacks and to help set up an assistance center for victims’ families.

Mr. Giuliani’s wife, Judith, who was then his companion, also had a role in setting up the center. But last week Mr. Hauer told New York magazine that the campaign’s depiction of her role was “simply a lie.”

The campaign’s Web site said that Mrs. Giuliani had “coordinated the efforts at the Family Assistance Center on Pier 94.”

Indeed, others were at least equally involved in that effort. Rosemary O’Keefe, who was then director of the Community Assistance Unit, said Mrs. Giuliani had helped during the first two days at the pier.

“Judith was a very important part in the very beginning,” Ms. O’Keefe said in an interview. “I ran it 20 hours a day from that point forward.”

Michael McKeon, a Giuliani campaign spokesman, said the campaign never meant to suggest that Mrs. Giuliani played a singular role in coordinating the center, only that she had helped set it up. He said the language on the Web site had been adjusted.

Mrs. Giuliani, Mr. McKeon said, is “the first one to give credit to other people.”

Mr. Hauer, Mr. McKeon said, is just bitter.

Mr. Siegel said that what is indeed singular is the role Mr. Hauer has now assumed, that of a high-ranking Giuliani insider who is now an outsider with pointed opinions on a central topic of the presidential campaign.

“To me, it’s unfortunate,” Mr. Siegel said, “that two people who did so much to prepare the city had a falling out.”

Sewell Chan contributed reporting.

Giuliani, 1989: "There Must Be Public Funding For Abortion"

youtube.com

Giuliani, 1989: "There Must Be Public Funding For Abortion"