CNN: Giuliani campaigning on record as 'Mr. 9/11' David Edwards and Muriel Kane

Published: Monday June 11, 2007 Print This Email This CNN's John Roberts announced a new political series on Monday, saying that each week "we'll tell you about a defining moment for one of the presidential candidates." The first installment in the series concerned Rudy Giuliani and 9/11. After playing a clip of Giuliani insisting, "this war is not a bumper sticker," and pointing out that he has based his entire campaign on his ability to fight terrorism, CNN turned to political reporter Dominic Carter, who covered Giuliani when he was mayor. "Terrorism was not so much on his radar screen," said Carter of Giuliani. "He was more of a law and order mayor." Carter praised Giuliani's leadership after the 9/11 attack, but questioned his judgment leading up to it, mentioning the controversial siting of Giuliani's emergency management center at World Trade Center Building 7 and "the issue of the radios between the police and fire department," which was a factor leading to the deaths of 342 firefighters when the towers collapsed. The country's largest firefighter union is now leading an anti-Giuliani campaign. Giuliani has also recently come under heated criticism for ignoring toxic air pollutants in pressing for a rapid cleanup of the World Trade Center site after 9/11, CNN concluded with former FBI director Louis Freeh -- who worked as a prosecutor in the 80's under then-US Attorney Giuliani and is now a member of Giuliani's campaign team -- calling Giuliani "the best and the brightest." That phrase, which Freeh used with no apparent sense of irony, comes from the title of a 1972 book by David Halberstam, which detailed the disastrous decisions by seemingly brilliant advisers to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations that led the US into a quagmire in Vietnam. The following video is from CNN's American Morning, broadcast on June 11.





