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Firefighters Challenge Giuliani’s Self-Proclaimed ‘Leadership Experience’ |
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Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani portrays himself as the hero of Sept. 11, and the media takes this claim for granted. But New York City firefighters, who know best, say it’s a different story.
The Fire Fighters (IAFF) union is releasing a new video today, featuring New York firefighters and their families, that challenges Giuliani’s claims of leadership. His performance before, during and after the Sept. 11 attacks, they contend, is marked by serious failures—failures that cost lives.
The video will be distributed on DVD and also will be available online at www.rudy-urbanlegend.com.
The Boston Globe reports:
“He’s not a leader. He is running on 9/11, and it’s all a fallacy,” says Jim Riches, the father of a Sept. 11 victim and a deputy New York fire chief, in the video.
The IAFF points out that the Giuliani administration didn’t provide police and firefighters with inter-operable radios, leaving many firefighters inside the World Trade Center unable to communicate, even as the towers’ collapse was imminent. The radios are a very real symbol of what IAFF describes as Giuliani’s failure to understand the threat of a terrorist attack and his inability to coordinate an effective response.
In the weeks after the attack, firefighters attempted to search for the remains of their comrades who died during the rescue attempt, but Giuliani made the decision to remove them from the site and haul the wreckage to a landfill.
The IAFF also notes that, even after a 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center site, Giuliani chose to house the city’s emergency response operation in the World Trade Center.
Other flaws in Giuliani’s handling of the deadly attacks have been documented in The New York Times, where Giuliani was said to have “seized control” of the cleanup attempts and “ran a generally slipshod, haphazard, uncoordinated, unfocused response” that led to serious illness among workers at Ground Zero. Giuliani’s leadership also was challenged in the book Grand Illusion, released last year and excerpted in the Village Voice.
Giuliani’s run for president is tightly bound with his national image in the wake of Sept. 11, and this video by New York firefighters provides a special perspective on Giuliani’s claims. The IAFF will release copies of the 13-minute video to its 280,000 members in coming days.
3 Comments
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Only in a nation run by its most incompetent President in history would just “showing up” with a video camera garner “hero” status.
The real heroes are the firefighters and police officers that day. What they say about Giuliani matters to me.
Hi;
I work on the AFL-CIO Michigan Union Label and Service Trades Council and wondered if you could send us a copy for our meeting and then we could spread it out to all the other unions from the meeting? Call me at 734-285-6020 for and address and the cost of the copy. Thanks
Union Nonna
I was working in lower Manhattan during and after 9/11. The firefighters were made to look like heros but the city didn’t want to compensate them. Their contract was up for negotiation during that time. I remember looking at the Internet from my computer one day, checking on traffic conditions, only to see the police beating the firefighters who were holding a rally on a street corner to demand a decent contract. This never came out in the news. The heros were praised but the city didn’t want to pay them and give them benefits. Giuliani was the mayor.