I haven’t written about Giuliani in a while for a couple of reasons. One, there hasn’t been that much press on him that I’ve seen. He appears to have descended into the background by virtually ignoring New Hampshire and Iowa. It also now seems that concentrating on Florida has backfired tremendously and many doubt he’ll survive much longer after today’s results. Two, I’ve had my mind on the Democrats more than him. They’re more important anyway.
Today I find this article on Guardian. It’s interesting and definitely worth a read. Families of New York fire fighters who died on 11 September 2001 accuse Giuliani for their deaths due to very old and non-functioning radios. Faults have been found in the contract with Motorola to provide radios. The other reason is the location of the emergency command centre, which Giuliani has recently blamed on others despite evidence to the contrary.
A site across the river in downtown Brooklyn was suggested by the mayor’s own Emergency Management chief, Jerry Hauer, who said it was “not as visible a target as buildings in Lower Manhattan.” (In recent TV talkshow wars on the subject, Giuliani has blamed Hauer for the choice of 7 WTC – but Hauer says Giuliani insisted on a location he could walk to from City Hall, and is now “rewriting history”.)
The lack of a unified command center mattered even more because the radios held by police, firefighters, and other first responders lacked “interoperability”
It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? That old saying comes to mind: “some men are born into greatness, others have it thrust upon them.” Perhaps in Giuliani’s case the latter is true but, unfortunately, he was never equipped to deal with it in the first place.