Grand Illusion

The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11

HarperCollins

New York, 2006

The major question to ask yourself in deciding whether to read Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins' Grand Illusion is "how angry can I stand to get?" Despite knowing several ways that Rudy Giuliani's image of 9/11 heroism was false, I had always believed George W. Bush to be the politician who most exploited that tragedy for his own political benefit, despite having been culpable through his own negligence. Having read this book, I would have to elevate Rudy Giuliani to a solid tie with Bush.

The myth:

It was Rudy Giuliani's story of quick response and personal fearlessness that provided a clean and reassuring narrative. When he stood up that day, covered in soot, he embodied the resolve of the nation. His name became the one Americans would instinctively connect to that date. A few months later, Time magazine would pick him as Person of the Year over Bush and the other finalist, Osama bin Laden.

Barrett and Collins destroy this myth methodically, chapter by chapter, in detail almost too great to comprehend or bear. Despite the fact that the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, the year Giuliani was elected mayor, he never made terrorism a priority or moved to correct the deficiencies the 1993 bombing revealed in the city's emergency response. In 2001, New York City was therefore completely unprepared as it faced an act of terrorism that had been foreshadowed and even partially enacted years before.

The Office of Emergency Management, which he subsequently touted as the centerpiece of his supposedly-effective 9/11 response, was slow to be established and was given insufficient authority over the police and fire departments, which feuded constantly.

Giuliani's war with the Port Authority left him unwilling or unable to see the WTC as a potential target for terrorism and took Port Authority resources that would otherwise have been used for security.

The fire department continued using radios that had been antiquated in 1993 and that were not interoperable with police department radios. As a result, firefighters had no chance to hear warnings from police helicopters that the South Tower appeared ready to collapse.

Giuliani's insistence that the city's emergency command center be within walking distance of City Hall led to its location in WTC 7, right next to the city's major terrorist target. The building's lack of suitability for such purposes combined with Giuliani's willingness to violate safety standards led to the location of an oversized, insufficiently-protected fuel tank aboveground.

In the name of getting back to normal, rescue and cleanup workers and the residents of lower Manhattan were not warned about air quality problems. Residents were encouraged to clean their own apartments despite evidence that the dust and debris coating them was toxic. Workers at Ground Zero were not made to wear safety equipment long after the urgent attempts to rescue survivors had ended.

Giuliani's management of all these issues was marked by laziness, vain attention to pet projects (the command center at WTC 7 had a private suite with monogrammed towels and a cigar humidor) and wanton disregard for any project that did not satisfy his vanity. The levels of cronyism in his administration were such that while it was not corrupt in the sense of personally enriching Giuliani, it is difficult to think of another word for the process that surrounded him with the likes of Bernie Kerik.

Once his efforts to unlawfully extend his term as mayor were rebuffed, Giuliani turned to blatantly capitalizing on the reputation of 9/11 heroism he so patently did not deserve to earn tens of millions of dollars as a consultant furthering exactly the kinds of cronyism and poor management that had contributed to the many tragedies of 9/11.

Barrett and Collins devote their greatest energy to documenting all of these oversights, only rarely pausing to highlight the blatant untruths Giuliani has told in cementing his heroic myth. But then, they can count on their readers knowing that myth intimately, while the gross negligence it hides is known by very few. The book is strongest in laying out this negligence in the period between 1993 and September 2001, when Giuliani had every reason to be concerned about terrorism but gave it very little attention. Barrett and Collins do identify crucial ways Giuliani mismanaged events on 9/11 itself, but these are mistakes made in the midst of crisis, portrayed as human and understandable. The real mistakes had been made long before.

In the years since 9/11 the media has too often turned its back on any attempt at oversight of government. This failing made them complicit in the Bush administration's drive to war with Iraq, and, as this book makes all too clear, it has also made them complicit in the elevation of Rudy Giuliani to top-tier presidential candidate. As the book demonstrates, we may have as much to fear from a Giuliani presidency as from the Bush presidency, and for many of the same reasons.