Razzle Dazzle
Rudy Running and Ducking

By RICHARD STEIER

When Ed Koch was Mayor, he had what he called a Same-Door Rule. It didn't matter if the crowd he was addressing turned angry and unruly to the point where his security detail worried about trouble, he said - whatever door he had entered the building by was the one he would exit through.

Mr. Koch was so conscious of his image that he used to check the updated versions of Associated Press stories to see whether a morning event had gotten a new lead paragraph by late that afternoon.

When it came to stage-managing his image, however, he was no Rudy Giuliani.

The man who revels in being called America's Mayor barnstormed through every borough except Manhattan May 29, holding day-late birthday fund-raisers that netted him about $500,000 for his presidential campaign. Each event was in a neighborhood that figured to welcome him; unfortunately, they were also accessible to those pesky 9/11 protesters.

Not Half the Man He Claims to Be

The protesters, several of whom lost loved ones during the World Trade Center rescue efforts, are trying to convince the rest of the nation that Mr. Giuliani wasn't the hero he was portrayed as being on 9/11. They say that his actions and inactions contributed both to the massive death toll among firefighters on that day, and the serious illnesses contracted by thousands of those who searched for the remains of the lost in the months that followed.

The Chief-Leader/Eric Weiss BEARING WITNESS: Firefighter Andrew Amsbro, whose first fire almost killed him when he was trapped in the collapse of the World Trade Center, is among those who claim Rudy Giuliani has 'hijacked' credit for the city's 9/11 response and is trying to ride it all the way to the White House.

They are relatively small in number: there were about 50 gathered outside his appearance at Bay Ridge Manor late last Tuesday afternoon. But their stories are compelling, and their conviction that Mr. Giuliani has unjustly profited - financially and politically - from the gallantry of others is unshakeable.

Video footage that included the ex-Mayor and those jeering him would plant seeds of doubt about the validity of his image. And so Mr. Giuliani's campaign, with some help from the NYPD, managed to ensure that such pictures didn't make it onto CNN or the local broadcast stations which had sent out camera crews.

Earlier in the day, he had been heckled by the protesters when he came to Douglaston, Queens, and he told reporters that he was the target of "displaced anger."

"September 11 we did the best that we could to save as many lives as possible," Mr. Giuliani said.

Those arriving for the Bay Ridge event were placed behind metal barricades across the street from the catering hall, as were media members. The NYPD had designated the area right outside Bay Ridge Manor as a "frozen zone," off-limits to all but those who paid to attend the fund-raiser.

When Mr. Giuliani's black SUV pulled up a bit after 5, he exited on the driver's side, allowing him to avoid looking at the protesters on the other side of the street. When he left about an hour later, cameramen were positioned to shoot him, except that he opted to come out a side door, and the SUV provided him cover to get into the vehicle without offering a clear shot.

It was security, Giuliani-style, designed to ward off character assassination rather than the real thing. It caught the protesters by surprise: they got a clear glimpse of former Staten Island Borough President and longtime Giuliani confidant Guy Molinari entering on their side of the street, but it wasn't until the SUV started moving that they realized the ex-Mayor had joined him. Fooled by the side-door switch, they provided the one bit of consistency, renewing the chant they had used to greet him: "Shame on you! Shame on Rudy!"

Might Have Voted for Him in Past

The Chief-Leader/Eric Weiss TILTING AT GIULIANI MYTH: Rosaleen Tallon, holding a photo of her Firefighter brother who died on 9/11, blames former Mayor Rudy Giuliani for equipping him with an antiquated radio and for not cautioning recovery workers at Ground Zero about the environmental hazards that later caused thousands of them to become seriously ill.

The attorney for the group known as "9/11 Firefighters and Families for Truth" is Norman Siegel, a longtime Giuliani antagonist during his days as the head of the New York Civil Liberties Union. Many of the group's members, however, at one point might have been Giuliani Democrats or Giuliani Republicans - middle-class whites with law-enforcement backgrounds ingrained in their families. Their opposition to the former Mayor does not stem from an ideological or civil liberties base, as Mr. Siegel's does; it is grounded in the ways that they believe he failed firefighters on or before 9/11, then suggested they actually knew they were supposed to leave the North Tower but chose to martyr themselves on the chance that they might be able to save a few more lives if they stayed. Compounding their anger with him is the belief that he has milked the tragedy for all he can get, and has never been forced to account for his mistakes.

"Rudy's basically hijacked the 9/11 hearse and he's trying to ride it into the White House," said Andrew Amsbro, a Firefighter with Engine Co. 58 in Harlem.

He was holding a sign with the state lottery logo redone as "9/11 Lottery," followed by a reference to the ex-Mayor's income from speaking engagements last year: "Rudy made $11 million telling lies. Hey, they'll never know!"

Radio Silence Times 2

"9/11 was my first fire," said Mr. Amsbro, whose father, Michael, at the time was an NYPD Chief assigned to the Transit Bureau. "While I was almost buried in the Marriott, my father was almost buried on the east side of the Trade Center."

A Lieutenant from Engine 58 and two Battalion Chiefs who oversaw the company died following the collapse of the Twin Towers. "We never got the warning that day that the south tower came down," said Firefighter Amsbro, adding that he decided to become active in the anti-Giuliani campaign earlier this spring when he was at the Trade Center site and "everything started to come back to me."

Members of the group attended the 9/11 Commission hearings three years ago and made clear their frustration that panel members - after caustic if not always on-target questioning of the former Mayor's key aides a day earlier - were not pressing Mr. Giuliani about why he had allowed firefighters to continue using the same defective radios that had failed during the first World Trade Center bombing in February 1993. They became further upset when Mr. Giuliani suggested many firefighters had indeed gotten the order to evacuate and decided that it meant: "get all the civilians out, and then get yourself out."

He had lauded "their willingness to stand their ground and not retreat," as if there was a conscious, collective decision made to go down with the buildings.

Sally Regenhard, whose son Christian was a Probationary Firefighter who died in the wreckage, grew increasingly emotional as she echoed the Mayor's May 2004 remarks. "My son was a Marine," she said fiercely. "Marines follow orders. Who would say they decided to stay and die in a hopeless situation?"

Battalion Chief Jim Riches, whose son was also among the 343 Fire Department members who perished, said the groundwork was laid for many of the deaths when former Fire Commissioner Tom Von Essen "and Rudy decided to order radios without having them field-tested."

Suspicious History

Those digital radios from Motorola were the same make that Police Department officials had previously rejected as unsuitable for cops. After one of them failed during a Queens house fire, so that a Probationary Firefighter's call for help could not be heard by members of his company (although his message was picked up by other Firefighters at a much-greater distance from the scene), all the digital radios were recalled and Mr. Von Essen acknowledged that they had never been field-tested, in violation of a union contract clause.

Then-City Comptroller Alan Hevesi did an audit that raised questions about how a replacements contract with Motorola had turned into a no-bid $33-million deal to supply the digital radios. Mr. Giuliani denounced the findings as political, a judge dismissed a suit brought on the matter, and, rather than contracting for new radios, the FDNY gave firefighters back the same analog models that had encountered major communications problems at the Trade Center in 1993.

Once again they failed on Sept. 11, but a civil suit brought against the city and Motorola by the families of some of the firefighters who died was thrown out two years ago on the grounds that the plaintiffs had forfeited their right to collect damages when they accepted money from the Victims' Compensation Fund.

'No True Investigation'

Rosaleen Tallon, whose brother, Sean, was 26 years old when he died along with other members of Ladder Co. 10 in the North Tower, said the no-bid contract with Motorola and the uproar that ensued when its digital radios had to be pulled "allowed my brother to have an antiquated radio in his hand on 9/11."

Noting the deference that the 9/11 Commission members showed toward the ex-Mayor, she said, "That wasn't a true investigation."

She said she believed Mr. Giuliani had a hand in the awarding of the no-bid contract and that some quid pro quo was involved as he wound down his second term as Mayor and prepared for life in the private sector.

It was pointed out to Ms. Tallon that Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins, in their book "Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11," suggested Mr. Giuliani had less to do with the Motorola contract than Deborah Barrell Spandorf, an Associate Commissioner at the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications whose sister and brother-in-law both had high-level positions with the radio firm. Ms. Spandorf died, an apparent suicide, a few weeks after 9/11.

"But who was placing that woman there?" Ms. Tallon replied.

Activist Despite Pain

"This isn't easy to turn out," she said, holding a picture of her late brother in his turnout coat and fire helmet. "I found myself getting upset when we were yelling 'shame on you.' There are a lot of people who feel the same way - they just can't bring themselves to do it."

Ms. Regenhard, who also faulted Mr. Giuliani for his inaccurate reassurances to recovery workers following 9/11 that the air around Ground Zero was safe to breathe, explained why those who endure the gut-wrenching feelings nonetheless continue to turn out: "Our loved ones cannot speak. Everyone here who is speaking is speaking for those who don't have a voice."

Mr. Giuliani clearly hopes they won't be heard, or won't be listened to. On the day that he was eluding his critics, there was a front-page New York Times story by Michael Powell, long one of the most persistent and incisive of the former Mayor's journalistic critics, reporting on how well he was being received at campaign appearances from the Deep South to New England. For those Republican audiences, Mr. Giuliani was a hero, not someone who, in Chief Riches' eyes had stooped to accepting "blood money" last year when he "made a million dollars a month speaking about our loved ones."

Won't Fade Away

But Pete Gorman, who at the end of the week stepped down as president of the Uniformed Fire Officers' Association to take a top post with the International Association of Fire Fighters, said the sunny feelings about the former Mayor could dissipate as the group continues its quest to get the message out.

"We're going to tell America the truth: that he failed the city," Mr. Gorman said. "Rudy, we ain't going away."