Giuliani's feet of clay

by Cliff Schecter - Nov 7, 2007

Rudy Giuliani's record prior to September 11 shows him in an unflattering light - and now his costly mistakes are catching up with him.

Rudy Giuliani grows more absurd by the day. One of his most recent ridiculous pronouncements to an Iowa audience was an oldie-but-goody from the right-wing playbook on xenophobic demagoguery: "If we are not careful and you don't elect me, this country will be to the left of France."

No, not France! You mean that place with the nude beaches and the cheese and the free healthcare system that covers everyone? Run for the hills!

Yes, this kind of thing is what passes for discourse in a country where the race for the presidency has in recent decades morphed into a never-ending episode of Bay Watch.

But I'll share with you a something even goofier - an industry term - than Rudy's Franco-paranoia: many Americans still think Rudy Giuliani is a 9/11 hero.

It's still an uphill battle to question Giuliani's Churchillian poses of that day; the majestic manner in which he carried himself while George Bush was preoccupied with reading mono-syllabic phrases to school children and using Air Force One as the largest hide-and-seek hiding spot in the world.

But even though Rudy hasn't yet donned his Top Gun flight suit, that doesn't change the fact that the serial-marrying former mayor of New York was in fact quite the opposite of a "hero" in the years before 9/11. In fact, his actions, or inaction, are responsible for getting firefighters killed.

The record is clear, and still hasn't received the coverage in the US media it deserves. It seems however, that might be about to change.

Last week, New York city councilman Eric Gioia, the chairman of the committee on oversight and investigations, was visited by political activists in New York. As any polite New Yorkers would, they came bearing a gift: enough signatures on a petition calling for an investigation into Giuliani's decisions to fill City Hall.

The reasons given for this investigation are the following (full disclosure, I work for Brave New Films, which made a video calling for this investigation):

(1) Rudy Giuliani knew that the radios New York firefighters were relying upon would not work in a 9/11-type scenario, as they failed during the first World Trade Centre bombing in 1993.

(2) It took Rudy seven years to do anything about it (1994-2001), and when he did, he granted a no-bid contract to Motorola for radios that were never field-tested.

(3) When those radios failed in March of 2001, Rudy gave the firefighters their old, dangerously outdated radios back again.

(4) On 9/11, while the members of the New York Police Department heard the call to evacuate the north tower before it fell, many firefighters did not, and 121 of the bravest men and women in New York that day died largely because of this.

This would almost seem to be an open and shut case, and yet it has never really been investigated or widely reported in the American mainstream press despite the heroic efforts of a few, such as investigative reporters Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins. Meanwhile, Giuliani has turned the halo of his "successes" that day into a personal enrichment plan and presidential platform.

Gioia, upon reviewing the petition and watching the video, agreed that questions need to be answered and has called for an investigation. He has sent letters to agencies such as the New York fire and police departments to see what limited inquiries, if any, have already taken place.

He is also reaching out to the speaker of the council, Christine Quinn, to gain her support (in New York city politics, the council speaker can easily quash such efforts - Quinn is a Democrat and presumably a Giuliani foe). But make no mistake, the process has already begun.

Rudy's hero Winston Churchill once said: "Democracy is the worst form of government, save for all the others." Yet, if this master of narcissistic negligence can evade the accountability that is supposed to come with democracy, one might be led to ask what's so much worse about "the others".