OK, so Rudy Giuliani has a problem when it comes to domestic policy. And his personal life. And his knowledge of foreign policy. And who he chooses to associate himself with, professionally.
But, when it comes to his presidential campaign, at the very least, he has the terrorist attacks of 9/11 to point to, right? Wrong.
An examination of Mr. Giuliani’s handling of the extraordinary recovery operation during his last months in office shows that he seized control and largely limited the influence of experienced federal agencies. In doing that, according to some experts and many of those who worked in the trade center’s ruins, Mr. Giuliani might have allowed his sense of purpose to trump caution in the rush to prove that his city was not crippled by the attack.
Administration documents and thousands of pages of legal testimony filed in a lawsuit against New York City, along with more than two dozen interviews with people involved in the events of the last four months of Mr. Giuliani’s administration, show that while the city had a safety plan for workers, it never meaningfully enforced federal requirements that those at the site wear respirators.
At the same time, the administration warned companies working on the pile that they would face penalties or be fired if work slowed. And according to public hearing transcripts and unpublished administration records, officials also on some occasions gave flawed public representations of the nature of the health threat, even as they privately worried about exposure to lawsuits by sickened workers. […]
Lee Clarke, director of health and safety for District Council 37, the city’s largest public employees’ union, said Mr. Giuliani used “very, very poor judgment” in rushing to reopen the financial district without watching out for the workers who cheered him at ground zero. Ms. Clarke said that if those workers found themselves in a meeting with Mr. Giuliani today, “a number of them would be standing up, wanting a piece of Rudy.”
In addition to the obvious hardship on workers and their families, the politics of this is enough to make one wonder why Giuliani is even bothering to run.
For that matter, all of this comes on top of Giuliani’s conflict with FDNY and the International Association of Fire Fighters, which comes on top of questions about why Giuliani put the city’s emergency response team in a known terrorist target.
On the latter point, Giuliani is trying to place the blame elsewhere.
Rudy Giuliani yesterday fingered his former top emergency-management aide Jerry Hauer as the man responsible for the tragic decision to put the city’s emergency command bunker inside the World Trade Center complex.
“Jerry Hauer recommended that as the prime site and the site that would make the most sense,” Giuliani said on “Fox News Sunday,” adding, “It was largely on his recommendation that that site was selected.”
Giuliani was answering a question about why the city built the $61 million bunker on the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade Center despite the 1993 truck-bomb attack on the WTC, even though Hauer – a Democrat who has since had a falling-out with Giuliani – had told him the existing facility in Brooklyn could be updated.
Giuliani has to know this kind of 9/11 scrutiny is coming, right? If so, he also has to know his 9/11 halo almost certainly can’t remain intact for very long.