Five Years From 9/11, Giuliani’s Actions Questioned

On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, some are taking a closer look at the record of a man whose reputation enjoyed the biggest — and most prolonged — boost from his response to those horrible events: former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

At the time, he was America’s hero. As Time magazine wrote in its 2001 Man of the Year portrait:

When the day of infamy came, Giuliani seized it as if he had been waiting for it all of his life. . . . Improvising on the fly, he became ‘America’s homeland security boss”. . . He was the gutsy decision maker, balancing security against symbolism, overruling those who wanted to keep the city buttoned up tight, pushing key institutions–from the New York Stock Exchange to Major League Baseball–to reopen. . . He was the crisis manager, bringing together scores of major players from city, state and federal governments for marathon daily meetings that got everyone working together.

But what journalists are finding today doesn’t jibe with those sentiments. And it casts doubt on whether Giuliani’s reputation as a strong and able leader was honestly earned by his performance during and after the attacks. Not the kind of news you want to hear if, like Giuliani, you aspire to the White House and you’re the GOP frontrunner in recent 2008 presidential polls.

Most recently, the local New York City CBS affiliate has obtained documents showing that while the EPA and local officials believed the post-attack “toxic soup” of lower Manhattan was unsafe, Giuliani’s City Hall assured workers and residents the area was safe to inhabit:

An explosive memo from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to an associate commissioner at the city health department — dated October 5, 2001 — told the tale.

“This site … poses threats to workers related to potential exposure to hazardous substances,” the head of EPA’s Response and Prevention Branch wrote.

Publicly, however, the EPA maintained the air in Lower Manhattan was safe. That allowed Giuliani’s top environmental protection official to announce on Oct. 26, 2001, “For residents and people who are working in the open area that has been created downtown, there is no realistic danger to health.”

And two Village Voice reporters have painstakingly reviewed the public record of the city’s response on Sept. 11, 2001 — only to conclude that Giuliani made some very bad decisions, which likely cost lives and definitely ran counter to New York’s emergency plans.

In particular, Giuliani allowed the NYPD and FDNY to set up separate, distanced command posts — when their lack of interoperable radios meant a unified center would have been the only way to share critical information quickly. Neither the police nor fire department dispatched personnel to act as liaisons at each other’s command centers.

Setting up a unified command center wasn’t just a good idea. As the authors note, it was what his own protocol required him to do:

[In his 2002 book, ‘Leadership,” Giuliani] said the separation of command posts was “absolutely necessary” because. .. the departments were performing “different tasks.” . . . [T]hat reasoning flew in the face of not only all modern understanding of how to coordinate responses to epic catastrophes, but also all the plans Giuliani’s own government had put in place.

Certainly, mistakes get made amid the chaos of an unfolding catastrophe. But Giuliani’s post-9/11 rep has been based on the notion that he didn’t make any blunders, on that fateful day or afterward. Unfortunately for Rudy, while Time was once on his side, history may yet turn against him.