Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Ex-New York Mayor Giuliani booed at 9/11 hearing

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 13:43:23 -0400

Ex-New York Mayor Giuliani booed at 9/11 hearing
Myth confronts reality
By Bill Van Auken
22 May 2004

The two days of hearings held in New York City by the commission
investigating the September 11 terrorist attacks exposed the disparity
between the government- and media-crafted myths about 9/11 and the
reality that has become all-too painfully apparent to those whom the
events of that day touched most deeply.

The confrontation came with Wednesday’s appearance before the commission
of Rudolph Giuliani, the ex-mayor of New York City. The members of the
panel, Democrats and Republicans alike, treated Giuliani like some sort
of secular saint, the embodiment of the tragedy and heroism associated
with the attacks on the World Trade Center in which nearly three
thousand people, including hundreds of firefighters and other rescue
workers, lost their lives.

While this was the image that the media and Giuliani himself
aggressively cultivated, it was hardly embraced by many in the audience
who were relatives of those killed in the attacks. They erupted in anger
over the ex-mayor’s testimony, as well as the fawning attitude of the
panel members.

The failure to aggressively question the ex-mayor helped solidify the
growing conviction among many of the relatives who had fought for the
commission’s creation that the panel’s efforts are directed not at
revealing, but rather at covering up critical questions surrounding the
September 11 attacks.

The commission blocked any real inquiry by “cloaking everything in
heroism,” Monica Gabrielle, whose husband was killed at the trade
center, told the media. She described herself as “frustrated” and
condemned the panel for “letting Rudy Giuliani polish his crown.”

Giuliani was allowed to drone on for 35 minutes—the longest presentation
given by any witness who has thus far appeared before the commission—in
a self-serving account that was crafted to serve both the Bush
administration and his own business interests. He repeated US National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s lie that no one could have imagined
the use of hijacked airplanes as weapons—ignoring the numerous
intelligence documents that had warned of precisely such an attack. He
acknowledged that the Bush administration provided no warning to the
city of the heightened threat of terrorist attacks on New York reported
in the controversial August 6, 2001 presidential briefing, but claimed
it would have made no difference.
The 10 members of the commission had only five minutes each to ask
questions, and virtually every one of them wasted much of their time
heaping praise on Giuliani.

“New York City...in a sense was blessed because it had you as leader,”
gushed the commission chairman, Thomas H. Kean.
“It had somebody who was a great, great leader to take charge of a
terrible, terrible event.”

Commissioner James Thompson, the former governor of Illinois, hailed
Giuliani for providing “extraordinary leadership” and “setting an
example for all of us.”

“Your leadership gave the rest of the world an unvarnished view of the
indomitable spirit of the city, and for that I salute you,” declared
Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democratic member of the panel who in previous
hearings had posed some pointed questions to members of the Bush
administration. Ben-Veniste worked with Giuliani as a prosecutor in the
Manhattan US Attorney’s office in the 1970s.

What precisely was the magnificent leadership that Giuliani supposedly
displayed on September 11? By his own account, the ex-mayor spent much
of the day wandering around lower Manhattan seeking a site for an
emergency command post.
“Rudy’s bunker”

A complex that Giuliani had ordered built for this function was located
on the 23rd floor of a building in the World Trade Center complex that
was destroyed in the attacks on the twin towers. Why the building went
down has yet to be fully explained, but some have pointed to the
Giuliani administration’s decision to run fuel lines up the side of the
structure, in violation of safety ordinances.

The day before Giuliani appeared before the panel, one of his
commissioners testified that he had opposed the decision to put what was
widely known as “Rudy’s bunker” in a high-rise. But no one posed any
embarrassing questions to the ex-mayor about the decision.

Asked about the chain of command during the emergency, Giuliani
declared: “The line of authority is clear. The mayor is in charge.
That’s why people elect the mayor.” He further insisted that “there was
no problem of coordination on September 11” between the city’s fire and
police departments.

During his meanderings on that day, however, Giuliani did little other
than appear repeatedly before the television cameras. As for his claim
about coordination between the police and firefighters, it was directly
contradicted by the commission’s own draft report. The document cited
evidence that lack of coordination “hampered the city’s ability to
respond well in emergency situations.” It added: “We are unaware of any
communications among” the heads of the police and fire departments on
September 11.

The day before Giuliani appeared before the panel, his police and fire
commissioners testified. Both of these men are now employees at Giuliani
Partners, a firm that markets corporate security services.

Former police commissioner Bernard Kerik, who was elevated to the post
from the rank of third-grade detective after serving as Giuliani’s
bodyguard and chauffer during his 1993 mayoral election campaign,
largely stonewalled the commission, telling panel members they should
direct their questions to the current city administration. Kerik’s
dog-like political loyalty earned him a short stint with the US
occupation authorities in Iraq, where he headed the abortive effort to
form an Iraqi police force.
Thomas Von Essen, the former fire commissioner, was named to that post
after serving as president of the firefighters union and backing
Giuliani’s candidacy. He was widely loathed by rank-and-file members of
the fire department. Von Essen, like Kerik, offered testimony that was
both obtuse and hostile.

The grotesque flattery with which the panel treated Giuliani provoked
increasing disquiet and murmurs of protest within the audience. The
frustration with the panel’s kid-gloves approach to the former mayor
boiled over after Giuliani claimed that the deaths of at least 121
firefighters in the World Trade Center’s north tower—the second to be
hit by a hijacked airliner—were the result of their “standing their
ground” against terrorism and “interpreting an evacuation order the way
a brave rescue worker would interpret an evacuation order, which is to
first get the civilians out and then get yourself out.”

In Giuliani’s book Leadership, authored as part of his bid to cash in on
the September 11 attacks, the ex-mayor advanced the same thesis somewhat
more crudely, comparing the firefighters to a captain who elects to “go
down with the ship.”
This claim contradicts the testimony of virtually everyone who survived
the rescue effort at the World Trade Center that faulty communications
equipment prevented those in the tower from ever hearing the order to
evacuate. It has, moreover, been established that virtually all of the
civilians on the floors that could be reached had already gotten out.

Eyewitnesses who escaped the building reported that many of the
firefighters who perished had stopped to rest after climbing 19 floors
lugging heavy gear, unaware that the south tower—the first to be hit—had
already collapsed and that the second was about to follow suit.

Family members in the audience, many of whom are intimately familiar
with the details of September 11, rose from their seats in outrage.
“Liar,” they shouted. “Let us ask the questions.”

“My son was murdered because of your incompetence!” cried Sally
Regenhard, whose son was one of the firefighters who died at the trade
center.

Rosaleen Tallon, whose brother, also a firefighter, was killed on
September 11, shouted at Giuliani: “Talk about the radios.”
The fire department radio scandal

The radios she was referring to were the antiquated “handie-talkies”
used by the fire department. They were the same equipment that the Fire
Department of New York (FDNY) had used in responding to the terrorist
truck bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. They failed then, and,
not surprisingly, they failed again on September 11.

Not only were firefighters on the 19th floor of the building unable to
hear orders from their own commanders in the lobby of the north tower,
but the fire department commanders had no ability to communicate with
the New York Police Department (NYPD), whose members were responding to
the same disaster. A police helicopter radioed to NYPD commanders that
the building appeared about to fall. In response to this information, an
evacuation order was communicated to police personnel on the scene. This
report, however, never reached the fire department.

Similarly, 20 minutes before the south tower collapsed, a caller to the
police department’s emergency number reported that one of the top floors
of the building was collapsing. While the information was relayed to the
NYPD’s commanders, it never reached the fire department, many of whose
members were still in the tower.

Senior FDNY officials have testified that those watching the tragedy
unfold on television knew more about the damage to the towers than fire
chiefs directing rescue efforts from the buildings’ lobbies. This lack
of information helps explain why the death toll for firefighters was 15
times as high as that suffered by city cops.

Why didn’t the city have a radio system that allowed firefighters to
communicate with each other and with the police? Asked this question,
Giuliani claimed that “technology” was the problem. “Those radios don’t
exist today,” he added. No one on the panel bothered to challenge this
incredible assertion.

Those who know the history of the fire department—including many of
those who were in the audience—are well aware that the problem was not
one of technology, but rather of political corruption.

Firefighter union officials called for a grand jury investigation into a
$33 million deal struck several months before September 11 between the
city and Motorola Corporation for the purchase of new digital radios for
the fire department. The no-bid contract resulted in the introduction of
radios that proved grossly ill-suited for use by firefighters.

The model selected by the city was designed for intelligence agencies
seeking encryption capabilities, something with no apparent use in
emergency rescue operations or fire fighting. After the radios were
introduced over the objections of department members, they had to be
withdrawn in the face of repeated failures, some of them
life-threatening.
The expensive new radios were mothballed, and the firefighters were
stuck with equipment that was not only more than 15 years old, but was
also incompatible with the communications system used by the police and
known to be failure-prone in high-rise situations.

Suspicions about the peculiar Motorola deal were heightened by the
well-known predilection within the Giuliani administration for steering
city contracts to political supporters and allies. No one on the panel
bothered to broach the sensitive subject of this contract.

While both Giuliani and the commission members sought to exploit the
heroism of New York City firefighters to gloss over the city
administration’s responsibility for the problems that plagued the
response to the September 11 attack, it was notable that not a single
city firefighter was invited to testify at the hearing.

This was hardly an accident. Firefighters have repeatedly warned that
the city is even less prepared now than it was three-and-a-half years
ago to confront the kind of catastrophe that transpired at the World
Trade Center.

Since coming to office in 2002, the administration of Mayor Michael
Bloomberg, a billionaire Republican businessman, has closed down fire
companies and fire houses in an attempt to balance the city’s budget.
Similarly, the Bush administration’s fiscal 2005 budget slashes funding
for first responders by $800 million. Another program designed to aid
local communities in purchasing fire equipment and training firefighters
is to be cut by $250 million.

Allowing the firefighters to speak about the real situation in the city
would have only served to further puncture the official myths about
heightened “homeland security” that have served as window dressing for
war abroad and attacks on democratic rights at home.

What emerged most clearly at the New York City hearings is the immense
social chasm between the working population and the corporate and
political elite—a gulf that is particularly stark in the financial
center of American capitalism. The social and political interests that
are being defended by the 9/11 panel are diametrically opposed to the
demand not only of family members, but the American public as a whole,
for a truthful explanation of how these terrorist attacks were prepared
and why the US national security establishment allowed them to take
place.

Copyright 1998-2004
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/may2004/comm-m22.shtml

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