Angry Giuliani Aide Lashes Back

NY Times Blog ^ | May 15, 2007

[jdm]

The other day on Fox News Sunday, Rudolph W. Giuliani blamed a former aide for the decision to put the city’s emergency command center at 7 World Trade Center, where it was destroyed on 9/11. Now the aide, Jerome M. Hauer, the former director of emergency management, has fired back, giving Lloyd Grove of New York magazine a February 1996 memo that shows he argued for a Brooklyn location. He says the mayor overruled him.

Here is what Mr. Giuliani said on Fox:

Jerry Hauer recommended that as the prime site and the site that would make the most sense. He recommended that site as the site that would be the best site. It was largely on his recommendation that that site was selected.

Mr. Hauer’s memo to First Deputy Mayor Peter J. Powers recommended the MetroTech Center in downtown Brooklyn: “The building is secure and not as visible a target as buildings in Lower Manhattan.” The World Trade Center had been bombed three years earlier.

Mr. Hauer told Lloyd Grove in an interview:

Rudy’s getting a lot of heat for the decision. He’s trying to run on his homeland-security and national-security background, and if you start peeling back the skin on the errors he made when he was mayor, you take away a lot of the basis for his candidacy… I feel sad that he would betray somebody that had served him loyally in the past, and I’m angry, too. But when you get to know Rudy, you know that this is the kind of thing he does. That’s just his personality.

[wideawake]

Giuliani has gone to great lengths to restrict public access to documents from administration, so it is completely disingenuous for anyone to claim that someone in Hauer’s position — or in the media — has any kind of obligation to produce hard evidence to support statements they have made that contradict claims Giuliani has made without any similar supporting evidence.

Translation: Go along with whatever Hauer says, because actually proving what he says might take some effort.

Apparently a lot of people are unaware of what the "investigative" in "investigative reporting" means.

Of course, if Hauer were being completely forthright he would call upon Giuliani to release all the relevant memos from that policy discussion.

[Spiff]

Perhaps Howard Dean should tag an 'R' after his name and run for president so people like you would defend him.

Ouch! That's gonna leave a mark...

[TommyDale]

The last near-dictator we had was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the damage he created has never been fixed. No thanks.

[wideawake]

That command center at 7 WTC was opened with great fanfare in the media.

Really?

I was living and working in Manhattan at the time and I don't recall any fanfare.

Of course, had there actually been a fanfare over the opening of the facility, that's a far cry from proving that the ECC was built purely for publicity and not for any practical purpose - which is the extravagant claim you made earlier.

[dashing doofus]

Here ya go:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/rudy_giuliani_america_s_mayor_seen_as_middle_of_road_by_most

[HamiltonJay]

Giuliani is Hillary? My goodness folks don’t give up do they. I will not stand here and say Rudy is an conservative ideologue, but please, Hillary could no more have cleaned up NYC than Bill could keep it in his pants.

Giuliani was far far far more effective in his mayorship that Bubby was during his presidency and Hillary has been as a Senator.

[what's up]

Giuliani is liberal on far more issues than he is conservative

Well, I don't have a list of issues in front of me so I can't make a scientific assertion.

However, he is quite conservative on the WOT, the Jewish issue and fiscal issues (much, much more than Lieberman).

He is not as liberal as he is being painted overall. Giuliani is far more conservative on economics than McCain, for example...and other RINO's.

[montag813]

Rudy Giuliani could not win nomination for dog catcher were it not for George W. Bush being MIA for so long on 9/11. Had Bush simply spoken from AF1 to the American people, interest in Rudy would have vanished. He did nothing but run away from Ground Zero like I and thousands of other NYers did. He’s not a bad guy and did a lot of great things for my city. But President? Puh-leeze!

[Kitty Mittens]

Lol, that’s Cute; I Love it!

[miss marmelstein]

Leading is another word for he was running away faster than everybody else

What a stupid, irrational response. Where were YOU on 9/11?

[Alberta's Child]

On June 8, 1999 Rudy Giuliani -- in his capacity as mayor of New York City -- presided over a public ceremomy marking the opening of that emergency command center. Any attempt on his part to assign responsibility for making decisions about the location of that facility to his subordinates -- without providing any evidence to support his statement -- is complete bullsh!t.

Why do you insist on demanding a higher burden of proof for refuting Giuliani's claim than for Giuliani's original claim?

[TommyDale]

However, he is quite conservative on the WOT."

Really? What has he suggested that would give us that assurance? What proof can you provide us? This statement gets made far too often to go unchallenged.

[what's up]

were it not for George W. Bush being MIA for so long on 9/11

Yea...that's what Bill Maher and Alec Baldwin say too. Oh, and I think I heard Carville mention it once or twice.

[dashing doofus]

Besides his pro-abortion, anti 2a and 4a positions, pro homosexual rights agenda, there is the matter of Rudy having pinned the Liberal Party label on himself, twice.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/02/24/liberal.party.ap/index.html

[Alberta's Child]

Polls are hardly a reliable mechanism for measuring someone’s political leanings. Most Americans probably considered Bill Clinton a “moderate” back in 1993-94, too.

[Alberta's Child]

The US certainly needs today what Alexander Hamilton centuries ago called a "strong executive." The federal government is a multi-headed monster that no President can ever fully control. So strength in the Presidency is a good quality -- provided that that person is also HONEST.

Alexander Hamilton also believed in staging a duel to resolve political differences. If we applied those standards today, almost every clown holding public office today would change their careers.

And I can pretty much guarantee you that some effete, limp-wristed lawyer from New York City would be the last person to run for public office, too.

[dashing doofus]

True that, but just pointing out that people are having a hard time figuring out where Rudy stands.

[trisham]

And I can pretty much guarantee you that some effete, limp-wristed lawyer from New York City

*************

You do have a way with words, AC. :)

[miss marmelstein]

Another stupid remark. The Towers fell at what time - 8:20am - something like that? While trying to convince my husband it probably wasn’t a good idea to continue to go to work that day, I kept switching channels to see where Guiliani was. He never appeared. By 10:00am, I was convinced he was dead. I kept telling my husband: he’s dead, he died in the disaster. He finally appeared at 12:00noon and I breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t until then that I realized how much I had come to appreciate the man’s qualities.

You simply don’t know what you’re talking about and I so resent these lies that are being spread about the man.

[wideawake]

On June 8, 1999 Rudy Giuliani -- in his capacity as mayor of New York City -- presided over a public ceremomy marking the opening of that emergency command center.

The mayor of New York City presides over hundreds of little "public ceremonies" a year, which usually feature a "public" consisting of a few employees, a city councilman or two and a couple of newspaper reporters.

Again, you need to substantiate your claim that Giuliani spent all that time and money on the ECC just to have a public ceremony that generated no front-page headlines or lead stories on local broadcasts.

Why do you insist on demanding a higher burden of proof for refuting Giuliani's claim than for Giuliani's original claim?

Hauer is claiming that Giuliani is a liar.

If you are going to accuse someone of something, you had better have the evidence. And a memo you wrote yourself that you refuse to publish ain't evidence.