Firefighter: Giuliani "ran like a coward" on 9/11!
Freedom Fighter
minutes beforehand, ran like a coward, and lied about the defective radios
and toxic air quality.
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Firefighter_Giuliani_ran_like_coward_on_0122.html
See the CNN video at the link. This video is from CNN.com, broadcast January
22, 2008.
Firefighter: Giuliani 'Ran like a coward on 9/11'
01/22/2008 @ 5:13 pm
Filed by David Edwards and Adam Doster
Families of firefighters killed in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the World
Trade Center rallied in Orlando Tuesday in anticipation of the state's
upcoming Republican primary. Unfortunately for Presidential candidate Rudy
Giuliani, the firefighters are not in his corner.
"We want America to know that [the Giuliani campaign] is lying to America
and to the American pubic," said Jim Riches, a deputy chief in the New York
Fire Department, "telling all of Florida that the New York City Fire
Department backs him, when that's another lie."
Firefighters and their families vowed to dog the former New York mayor at
all of his Florida campaign stops because the state figures prominently in
Giuliani's big-state primary strategy. The protesters state that Giuliani
was aware that firefighters who responded to the World Trade Center attack
were carrying defective radios and did not hear the order to evacuate.
"He didn't prepare us before, during, or after," says Riches.
Giuliani has campaigned strongly on his leadership during the attacks on New
York, claiming he is the best suited to prevent an "Islamic terrorist war
against us." But the firefighters were quick to question that courage.
"Yeah, the decision he made was, which direction he was going to run," says
Riches. "And he ran north, and that's all he did."
[And he took top police brass with him to act as bodyguards, rather than
having them work with the fire department where they were needed. He stopped
here and there however to pose in front of media cameras. At last, he had
his hoped-for opportunity to play "hero."]
The Giuliani campaign labeled the display a misleading, partisan attack. The
former mayor is also emphasizing his ability to deal with the economy,
distancing himself from the 9/11 pitch.
[Distancing himself, all of a sudden, from all the revelations of how he was
NO HERO on 9/11, but merely exploited the disaster to gain wealth and
political advantage.]
--------------------------
Rudy Giuliani and Air Quality After 9/11
by Andrea Bernstein
http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/92318 WNYC RADIO
NEW YORK, NY January 23, 2008 -In his run for President, Mayor Rudy Giuliani
has showcased his claimed leadership on 9/11 and in the days, weeks, and
months that followed. His actions in those days have been hailed. But far
less understood is how he responded to early concerns about the air quality
in Lower Manhattan. WNYC's Andrea Bernstein has the first of two reports.
REPORTER: After the initial shock of the attacks, it took less than 24 hours
for reporters to start raising questions.
REPORTER: How about asbestos, because the buildings had a lot of asbestos?
GIULIANI: There are concerns about asbestos and at this point it does not
appear as if there is an undue amount of asbestos in the atmosphere but
those are very preliminary tests.
REPORTER: Very early on, both the city and the federal environmental
protection agency had data that showed spikes in the levels of asbestos in
Lower Manhattan. The official interpretation was that those levels were
anomalies. All information was coming through daily briefings held by Mayor
Giuliani.
That week, the pressure to reopen Wall Street was immense. Kathryn Wylde,
head of the New York City partnership, was in on early meetings.
WYLDE: There was talk by the banking regulators of having business and
financial services institutions moving their operations 300 miles outside
New York so they would be a quote nuclear distance away.
REPORTER: By September 17 the New York Stock exchange was reopened in a
Lower Manhattan that was visibly cleaner. Not far away, residents who lived
close to the World Trade Center were beginning to feel sick.
FIELDS: People were complaining about burning skin, irritated throats and
other respiratory problems.
REPORTER: C. Virginia Fields was the Manhattan Borough President. She says
symptoms started early.
On October 3, thousands of Lower Manhattan residents showed up at meeting at
a hotel on Wall Street to hear from government officials.
WOMAN: I live in Southbridge Towers, which is huge, and our building office
manager told me to clean up my dust myself, that there's nothing wrong with
it.
REPORTER: Joel Miele, head of the city Department of Environmental
Protection was reassuring. [Note that city agencies are under the mayor's
jurisdiction].
MIELE: Asbestos is not a problem if its dust on your furniture or dust on
your windowsills. It becomes a problem when it goes from dust on the
windowsills to ambient in the air, because that way you could ingest it into
your lungs. You could eat asbestos it wouldn't bother you in the least. But
if it gets into your lungs it's a health hazard.
[How could asbestos dust be settling on such surfaces if it was not in the
air in the first place?]
REPORTER: The city had directed landlords to have apartments professionally
cleaned. But at the same time the city issued guidelines for residents. They
were told to clean up using wet mops or vacuums with special filters, and
many didn't realize they were handling materials that usually required
special protective gear. There was widespread confusion.
Community Board One Chair Madelyn Wils presided over that meeting. She spoke
to WNYC in 2002.
WILS: It was very difficult for us to communicate directly with the
department commissioners; given the fact that Giuliani made it pretty clear
that he would make all decisions.
REPORTER: With his police commissioner [now an indicted criminal] Bernard
Kerik at his side, every day Giuliani would chair meetings with relevant
officials at pier 84.
Chris Ward, a top port authority official at the time, described them.
WARD: FEMA was there, EPA was there, FAA was there, all the city, state
paramilitary organizations were there and it was just to manage the
aftermath.
REPORTER: There was another set of daily meetings. On the Friday after 9/11,
Congressman Jerrold Nadler set up the Ground Zero Elected Officials task
force. Skeptical of official assurances, they decided to conduct their own
air quality tests. Alan Gerson, then a candidate for city council, had
worked in a law firm representing victims of asbestos poisoning.
GERSON: I got in touch with some of the asbestos fiber measurement experts.
REPORTER: One night, City Councilwoman Kathryn Freed got out her city
council police ID, and took the scientists to Lower Manhattan. Here's how
Gerson describes it:
GERSON: And we literally snuck them past the barricades and they took the
first independent measurements of both air quality and asbestos debris
within residential apartments.
REPORTER: Their tests found elevated levels of hazardous materials. Nadler
submitted the written report to the Giuliani administration, along with a
series of memos addressing community concerns. But he says while other
issues on the memos were handled immediately, air quality concerns were
simply not addressed.
NADLER: So we know they responded to things in those memos but they ignored
all the stuff in them regarding air pollution.
REPORTER: Same memo?
NADLER: Same memo.
REPORTER: One part of it said help get seniors their drugs, they did;
another said, the air is unsafe.
NADLER: And they ignored it. The responded to many things in those memos and
they responded pretty well to many things in those memos, but not anything
related to the air pollution.
REPORTER: On air quality, Nadler was seen as a gadfly. Privately,
administration officials belittled him. "There was a lot of testosterone
flying around in those days" one high-level official told us. "And health
wasn't seen as a high-testosterone issue."
In the daily meetings, half a dozen people who were there told us, the
pressure of issues was intense. Federal data seemed reassuring. Here's
former transportation commissioner Iris Weinshall:
WEINSHALL: At no time did I hear around that table that people shouldn't be
coming back to Lower Manhattan, that there were issues about the health in
Lower Manhattan.
REPORTER: Outside those meetings, Giuliani publicly broadcast that message.
Here he is on September 30, 2001.
GIULIANI: There is a lot of questions about the air quality because there
are at times in downtown Manhattan and then sometimes even further beyond
that, a very strong odor. The odor is really just from the fire and the
smoke that continues to go on. It is monitored constantly and is not in any
way dangerous. It is well below any level of problems and any number of ways
in which you test it.
[The odor was mostly from the thousands of corpses in the debris. Some of
the most toxic substances in the air, like asbestos, have no odor. Yet
Giuliani states it "is not in any way dangerous."]
REPORTER: In the first week of October 2001 environmental lawyer Joel
Kupferman organized a press conference.
KUPFERMAN: This report says there is 2.1 percent asbestos found in one of
the samples. That is more twice the amount, which is one percent, which the
federal government declares is as asbestos problem.
REPORTER: At the press conference, now Lt. Governor - then State Senator
David Paterson - spoke about the drive to re-open Lower Manhattan.
PATERSON: We certainly commend that but we cannot engage in that kind of
conduct at the possible expense of the individuals who live and work there.
REPORTER: But Chris Ward, the former port authority official, maintains
there was no slowing down.
WARD: I'm not sure that there was the political will or capacity to do that
given this just enormous focus on we can't let this linger. We have to - you
know the picture of the president the image of the president with the
bullhorn was the image that people wanted and when Americans are in that
can-do mode, mistakes get made.
REPORTER: By October 26, 2001, the brew of environmental questions hit the
cover of the Daily News. Journalist Juan Gonzalez's story, "Toxic Zone,"
raised questions about the levels of benzene, dioxins and PCBS at the site.
GIULIANI: Let's do the Daily News first. The Daily News today had a story
about how the zone is a "toxic danger." And the reality is that although
obviously very, very close to where the work is being done there are dangers
and risks, the reality is far different than the way the article described
it.
REPORTER: And to back that up, Giuliani brought forward his health
commissioner, Dr. Neal Cohen:
COHEN: We don't believe that there any risks here with respect to long term
health effects and that occasional uptick in elevated readings that are
taken with some of these with pollutants, generally those return to
acceptable levels.
[The subsequent deaths and ongoing illnesses of many rescue workers show
what a malicious lie the above is.]
Dr. Phillip Landrigan of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine has studied those
afflicted with World Trade Center-related illnesses, some 20,000, or more,
by his count. He says it should have been clear the air in Lower Manhattan
was not safe.
LANDRIGAN: And I'm not just talking about the cloud, I'm not just talking
about the first 24, 48 hrs. For a period of many weeks the air in Lower
Manhattan was not safe. And people who lived and worked there should have
been told clearly that the air was not safe. They should have been told
clearly to take precautions. And it's my view that had they been given clear
information that there would be fewer sick people today.
REPORTER: Former Mayor Giuliani continues to maintain his actions and
decisions at the time were correct. For WNYC, I'm Andrea Bernstein