As it has become apparent that Rudy Giuliani has become a shill for Donald Trump, I’ve wondered—where is the guy who took down the Mafia? Where was the guy who helped shepherd New York City through the ugliness after 9-11?
Well, it turns out that New Yorkers have known for some time that Rudy’s legend has been built on a fraud—much like that of his dear one. Salon’s Bob Hennelly brings information to the national spotlight that, had it been known in full, should have ended Rudy’s 2008 presidential campaign before it started—and ended any dreams for Rudy to be in the national spotlight in any capacity.
It turns out that a litany of malfeasance and nonfeasance related to getting new radios for the Fire Department of New York may have resulted in over 100 firefighters being burned or crushed to death in the North Tower (One World Trade Center) And those deaths can be laid squarely at the feet of one Rudolph William Louis Giuliani.
It actually starts in 1993, when firefighters complained about not being able to communicate in the wake of the World Trade Center bombings. An exhaustive postmortem report by FDNY deemed the department’s outdated radios as an issue that needed to be fixed—and promptly.
That report was issued in 1994, soon after Rudy took office. But it took seven years for Giuliani to get new digital radios—and they were pulled from service after only a few weeks due to the firefighting equivalent of a never event.
It took until March of 2001 for new digital radios to be deployed, but they were withdrawn weeks later after they were deemed responsible for a near life-ending miscue when a firefighter isolated in a basement fire in Queens radioed a “May Day” call for assistance that none of his co-workers heard over their radios. It was only picked up by another fire company miles away.
As a result, the old, balky analog radios were put back into service.
An investigation by city comptroller Alan Hevesi found that FDNY brass and the Giuliani administration not only failed to properly field-test the radios, but procured them in a no-bid process that was merely an extension of an existing contract with Motorola. While Giuliani accused Hevesi, who was running in the Democratic mayoral primary, of playing politics, at least one supplier claimed that he found it hard to get the FDNY to even allow him to make a bid.
Fast forward to 9-11. FDNY officials quickly realized that both towers were in danger, and ordered all firefighters in the North Tower to muster in the lobby. No one responded. The order was repeated when the South Tower collapsed—but no one responded.
As a result, 121 firefighters died in that tower. And according to a lawyer for their families, they never even heard the order.
“On 9/11 firefighters went into the North Tower and started ascending the tower, yet they were being called back and they kept going,” said Richard Salem, an attorney who has been representing several of the firefighters’ families who lost loved ones when the North Tower collapsed. “Not one other uniform[ed] officer from any other department [who had functioning radios], perished in that tower other than the FDNY.”
In all likelihood, had there been adequate time to get properly functioning radios in the field, those 121 men would still be alive.
The father of one of those firemen, retired FDNY deputy chief Jim Riches, bird-dogged Rudy during the 2008 campaign and orchestrated a media campaign to tell the world how Rudy’s malfeasance contributed to his son’s death. The International Association of Firefighters put together a documentary about Rudy’s failures, “Rudy Giuliani: Urban Legend.”
Looking at this, it’s unbelievable that Trump was seriously considering Rudy for a cabinet post. If it took him seven years to address an emergency that he knew about soon after becoming mayor, how could he be trusted to lead a cabinet-level agency?
Let there no longer be any doubt—Rudy was a fraud long before he linked up with Trump. And now the rest of the world knows it.