RUDY, FIREFIGHTERS AND 9/11

Rudy, Firefighters and 9/11

The rationale driving Rudy Giuliani's campaign for President - that he was the most-compelling leader this nation had on Sept. 11, 2001 - has hit a major pothole in the form of a video released by the International Association of Fire Fighters.

Titled "Rudy Giuliani: Urban Legend," it uses interviews with past and present city firefighters, union leaders, and parents of firemen who perished at the World Trade Center to challenge our former Mayor's meticulously-honed image.

Some of the charges raised in the often-emotional video are debatable. There is clear bitterness about Mr. Giuliani's handling of the search for the remains of many of those who died in the collapse of the Twin Towers, but a strong case could be made that he sought to scale back the rescue operations out of safety concerns.

But other issues, from Firefighters being equipped on 9/11 with the same flawed hand-held radios that had malfunctioned in the Trade Center following the 1993 bombing there to the Mayor's ill-considered decision to create the city's emergency command center in the Trade Center complex, are harder to explain away. Certainly Mr. Giuliani has never done so satisfactorily.

Early in 2001, after a Mayday call from a young Firefighter who had become isolated from his company during a Queens basement fire went unheard by his colleagues, a new digital radio system was scrapped. It turned out that the radios hadn't been field-tested, in violation of fire union contracts, and that a small order for replacement radios had somehow morphed into a large-scale, multi-million dollar deal with Motorola.

The then-Mayor responded to the questions raised by lashing out at then-City Comptroller Alan Hevesi, charging that he had questioned the lack of competitive bidding for the contract to supply new radios in an attempt to win fire union support for his own run for Mayor.

Having parried the issue that way, Mr. Giuliani took no further action to ensure that an improved radio communication system was implemented; the Fire Department simply returned to using the old analog Motorola radios that had been found wanting at the Trade Center in 1993.

Undoubtedly Mr. Giuliani would have treated the matter with greater urgency had he known that less than six months later, there would be another terrorist attack. The fact that he didn't anticipate such a possibility, regarding both the radios and his decision to put the city emergency command center at 7 World Trade Center, punches large holes in his claim that his foresight and leadership helped see the city - and by extension, the nation - through the crisis of 9/11.

Some of the more-visceral moments in the IAFF video involve the response of family members to the Mayor's claim during testimony before the 9/11 Commission three years ago that many of the firefighters who were killed had actually heard an order to evacuate one of the towers before it came down, but elected to "stand their ground" in hope of rescuing people trapped on its upper floors.

"I find that despicable," stated Al Regenhard, a retired NYPD Detective-Sergeant who noted that his son Christian, a rookie Firefighter at the time of his death, had been a Marine accustomed to following orders rather than improvising.

In response, Mr. Giuliani had two supporters - his Emergency Management Director Richard Sheirer and Lee Ielpi, a retired firefighter whose son was among the FDNY members who lost their lives on 9/11 - hold a press conference to counter some of the accusations. Mr. Ielpi disputed the claims made in the video as "disgraceful."

The Giuliani campaign also sought to portray the video as a political hit, noting that the IAFF was a strong and early supporter of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in the last election and has close ties to U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton.

But the claim of partisanship on behalf of Democrats crumbles more than a bit when you consider that one of the most-prominent speakers in the video is Uniformed Firefighters' Association President Steve Cassidy. For it was Mr. Cassidy who profoundly upset the IAFF and much of the city labor movement three years ago when, in the midst of labor protests at the Republican National Convention in Madison Square Garden, he delivered his union's endorsement to President Bush at an Elks lodge in Queens.

Mr. Cassidy states in the video that despite the Republican front-runner's "carefully-crafted persona ... the image of Rudy Giuliani as America's Mayor is a myth." He asserts that the failures of the Giuliani administration contributed to "the unnecessary deaths of our members ... The things that we needed to do our jobs even better we didn't have because of his administration."

Having refrained from explaining the radio situation for so long, it's unlikely that Mr. Giuliani will offer an honest accounting now. He is more likely to side-step such an issue, or contend that the real problem was the failure of a booster signal meant to improve radio communication on the higher floors of the Twin Towers.

But that may not be enough to counter the impact of the video - which the IAFF has said was intended for its members throughout the U.S. - and the publicity it may generate. Having come so far from the time just before Sept. 11 when his mayoralty was winding down on a series of sour notes, largely due to the emotional reaction to his calm but moving presence in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, Mr. Giuliani now has reason to be concerned about an emotion-filled appeal that asks viewers to examine the facts that have been obscured by his myth-making machinery.