WTC Board Game Zings Rudy;

Takes Aim At His Myth
WTC Board Game Zings Rudy


Pete Gleason, an ex-cop who's now an attorney, can add board game developer to his list of professions, as he unveiled the prototype for his Ground Zero board game Nov. 20, a work of satire he believes can shape the course of the presidential campaign.

The Chief-Leader/Adrienne Haywood-James SUPERHEROES AND OTHER CARTOON CHARACTERS: Kevin Doherty (left) and Peter Gleason display some of the art for their prototype of a board game, 'Ground Zero,' that takes aim at ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani and some of his top aides including former Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik. Based on "Monopoly," the cover art features former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, dressed like Monopoly's mascot, Rich Uncle Pennybags, running obliviously over cops, firefighters and other rescue and recovery workers while wearing a Boston Red Sox cap and carrying the money the front-runner for the Republican nomination for President has acquired from speaking fees since 9/11.

Biting Radio Reference

At his ear is a tin can, attached to a broken string, that is supposed to link to another can held by his former Fire Commissioner, Thomas Von Essen, an allusion to the two of them having equipped firefighters with the same radios on 9/11 that had failed them after the first World Trade Center attack of 1993. Firefighters and their unions claim the radios' failures resulted in more than 100 firefighters dying because they never heard the call to evacuate the North Tower. The game's current slogan is, "It's only a game to the politicians. There is no end ... so quit while you're ahead."

The game's cover also features New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin wearing a button with the words "Kapt. Katrina" as he remarks, "Still a hole!" a reference to his defense of his administration's post-hurricane clean-up efforts last year when he said, "You guys in New York can't get a hole in the ground fixed and it's five years later."

Players in the game, Mr. Gleason noted, attempt to hold public officials accountable.

"Players can choose a path to Mt. Sinai," Mr. Gleason said, in reference to the hospital treating and monitoring 9/11 rescue workers. "Or you can go on the path straight to the White House. The characters in the drama are endless."

Zaps Whitman, Coulter

Featured on the game's four-sided dice are former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, who has been chastised for falsely telling the public six days after 9/11 that the air around Ground Zero was safe to breathe, and right-wing pundit Ann Coulter, who is depicted as a black widow spider for her disparaging comments about 9/11 widows having benefited from their husbands' deaths.

The game is meant to be humorous, Mr. Gleason said, but its primary purpose is to spread information about the outstanding issues at Ground Zero to voters during the upcoming presidential primaries. "The object of the game is to educate," said his collaborator and former NYPD patrol partner, Kevin Doherty.

Mr. Gleason got the idea for the game when he recently spoke to his childhood friend, Peter Berardi, a Navy SEAL based in Florida. They worked side-by-side at Ground Zero, and Mr. Berardi has developed a thyroid tumor as a result of breathing in toxins at the site, Mr. Gleason said. The worst part, Mr. Gleason recalled, was that none of the doctors Mr. Berardi encountered in Florida knew anything about Ground Zero illnesses.

Cutting Through Myths

This led Mr. Gleason to the conclusion that people outside of New York didn't fully know about all the problems going on at Ground Zero: the workers getting sick from the airborne toxins near the site, the first-responders who are having trouble collecting their Workers' Compensation, and what he saw as flawed leadership during and after the 9/11 attacks on the part of then-Mayor Giuliani.

His beef with Mr. Giuliani, he said, is that he played a role in firefighters' deaths by not upgrading their radios but profits, both politically and financially, from his image as the Mayor who led New Yorkers through the 9/11 crisis.

"It's really disgraceful how he wants to exploit his 9/11 image," Mr. Gleason said.

Mr. Giuliani's campaign has utilized ex-firefighters and former Fire and Police Commissioner Howard Safir to rebut criticism of the former Mayor's leadership on 9/11. When the International Association of Fire Fighters released a video in July questioning Mr. Giuliani's failure to upgrade firefighter radios, Lee Ielpi, a retired firefighter whose firefighter son died on 9/11, backed up Mr. Giuliani's assertion that firefighters in the North Tower had working radios and in fact ignored evacuation calls, saying that the department trains its force to put the lives of others first. Richard Sheirer, former Director of the Office of Emergency Management, added that a "repeater system" in the building failed, not the radios.

'Encouraged Respirators'

In response to the accusation that Mr. Giuliani did not give Ground Zero rescue workers respirators, campaign spokesman Jeffrey Barker said, "Mayor Giuliani repeatedly encouraged everyone on site at the World Trade Center to wear respiratory masks. He and everyone in the city relied on the EPA to test and determine the quality of the air."

But others share the blame, Mr. Gleason added, including current elected officials as rescue and recovery workers are still getting sick and have trouble getting proper medical attention.

"Everybody has dropped the ball." he said.

When Mr. Gleason sought to create the game, he teamed up with Mr. Doherty, with whom he patrolled the Lower East Side while a cop during the 1980s. Mr. Doherty did most of the artwork for the project.

Mr. Gleason said he hopes to have finished board games for actual use by Jan. 15, 2008, in time for him to go on the road with some of the presidential contenders, in what he called a "guerrilla marketing" campaign. In addition to Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Gleason plans to call attention to U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton and Mayor Bloomberg, who many believe will enter the White House race as an independent.

"They need to answer some tough questions," he said. "It's going to give you a very succinct overview of what's going on at Ground Zero."