FOR THE RECORD

An old enmity was resurrected last week after Rudy Giuliani backed out of a March 14 forum organized by the International Association of Fire Fighters that was meant to showcase the platforms and campaign promises of potential contenders for President from both sides of the political aisle.

His decision came after a leaked draft letter two weeks ago showed that the IAFF had planned to drop him from the event, only to reconsider. Shortly after a copy of the initial "disinvite" surfaced in the media, however, Mr. Giuliani's aides said scheduled fundraisers in other cities precluded him from attending the IAFF forum in Washington, D.C.

The IAFF and many of its affiliates haven't forgotten that it was then-Mayor Giuliani who in November 2001 decided to put a cap on FDNY personnel at Ground Zero. His order interrupted the work of hundreds of firefighters who were still searching for the remains of their fallen comrades, and was the cause of scuffles between protesting firefighters and cops who arrested some of them.

Memories of that bitter time were behind the draft letter from the IAFF that rescinded Mr. Giuliani's invitation to the forum. "The disrespect that he exhibited to our 343 fallen FDNY brothers, their families and our New York leadership in the wake of that tragic day has not been forgiven or forgotten," part of the missive said.

Although the draft seemingly was endorsed by leaders of both the Uniformed Firefighters' Association and the Uniformed Fire Officers' Association, a UFA spokesman said President Stephen J. Cassidy had not signed off on the letter.

"The UFA does not advocate a policy of excluding any of the top presidential candidates from the process, even though Mr. Giuliani tried to close the site of the worst terrorist attack on American soil and had New York City Firefighters arrested in November 2001," Mr. Cassidy said in a statement.

Now that Mr. Giuliani has decided against attending, IAFF spokesman Jeff Zack said the full letter would be e-mailed to all 280,000 members.

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The Bush White House and its Republican supporters in the U.S. Senate are trying to head off a bill granting airport security screeners union rights by claiming that the employee protections would be incompatible with national security needs.

Among those going over the top to try to derail the bill, which has passed in different forms in both houses of Congress but not as a single measure that could then be sent to the President for final approval, is Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell. He vowed that the GOP was "not going to let Big Labor compromise national security." We presume he was including the police and fire unions in his conception of who Big Labor is.

Not to be outdone was North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, who stated with impeccable logic, "Terrorists don't go on strike. Terrorists don't call their union to negotiate before they attack."

It occurs to us that terrorists have as little use for unions as Senator Burr does, although in their case it's probably because they aren't counting on being around long enough to qualify for a pension. And we would also guess that one reason many of them became terrorists is that they live in countries where collective bargaining and grievance procedures are literally foreign concepts.

American Federation of Government Employees President John Gage reacted to the claims by the GOP Senators by remarking, "When we hear that collective-bargaining rights will affect our national security, I really take offense."

Given that the implication of the remarks by Mr. McConnell and Mr. Burr is that either the screeners or the union that represents them would permit a security breach if vigilance butted up against a labor contract, he's got a point.

Our guess, however, is that if a unionized screener got wind of a possible terrorist looking to move through security, he or she wouldn't shrug it off by saying, "Don't bother me, I'm on my break." Unlike one top Republican we can think of who is said to be opposed to their unionizing.