‘Stark Contrasts’

It’s hard to think of the September 11 attacks without thinking of Rudy Giuliani. With his calm and confident demeanor, Giuliani provided a sense of comfort to Americans who were looking for leadership and reassurance in the hours and days after the destruction. Giuliani’s take-charge attitude helped to transform him from a local politician whose approval ratings rarely edged above 50 percent in the two years before 9/11 into a national hero affectionately known as “America’s Mayor.” Even five years later, polls show Giuliani, who is now running a consulting firm, is a leading contender among Republican voters for their party’s 2008 presidential nomination.

But not everyone is touting the former mayor’s leadership credentials. In their new book, “Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11,” ( HarperCollins ) investigative reporters Dan Collins and Wayne Barrett argue that—far from being a heroic soldier in the war on terror—Giuliani failed to take adequate precautions before the attacks and was directly responsible for many of the city’s failures to cope with the crisis. (Giuliani's office said the former mayor has not read the book and is not commenting on it. NEWSWEEK’s Jennifer Barrett spoke with coauthor Wayne Barrett (no relation), a senior editor at the Village Voice and also author of the 2000 book “Rudy! An Investigative Biography” ( Basic Books ) about Giuliani’s performance and presidential ambitions. Excerpts:

politics/elections

NEWSWEEK: Do you think most Americans have an accurate perception of Rudy Giuliani?

Wayne Barrett: After the 9/11 attacks, Giuliani said all the right things—he hit a chord with Americans when the president disappeared. [Giuliani] stood tall that day and empathized and said reassuring things. The powerful visual of him walking the canyons of 9/11, covered in soot, will stick with everyone. The problem is that he did a lot of wrong things [too]—mostly prior to that day, some even on that day, and many after that day, as the respiratory cases related to 9/11 are showing. This book is a story of stark contrasts between this great capacity he showed that day to lead and the way in which those visuals have insinuated him into the American mind and his paltry performance preparing the city for a terrorist attack even though the city had been attacked [in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing] just months before he took office in 1994.

Giuliani managed to convert that persona we all saw on 9/11 and appreciate [it] into a marketing device and turn himself into a legend as someone who understood the threat and really prepared the city. But, as our book shows, he seemed to have had no appreciation of the terror threat prior to 9/11. In fact, he took many steps backward in preparing the city.