Roasting Giuliani

And not in a good way. The Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11 is a forthcoming book authored by Giuliani biographer and Village Voice contributor Wayne Barrett and senior producer for CBSNews.com Dan Collins—and they rip the mask right off of “America’s Mayor.”

Compared to the bewildered George W. Bush, Giuliani projected confidence, calm and leadership in the terrible hours after the Twin Towers fell. That was all to the good. However, Barrett and Collins assert, Giuliani's subsequent claims that he had expected and had been preparing for a terrorist attack since taking office do not match the facts, which the authors explore in abundant (and just this side of numbing) detail.

Incompetence: Giuliani located the headquarters of the Office of Emergency Management inside the World Trade Center in spite of its long having been identified as a prime terrorism target.

Partisanship: “The heads of various crisis-management-and-response units were political appointees, most in way above their heads.” Had Giuliani and his appointees not failed to coordinate communications among emergency agencies, “there's a good chance, the authors maintain, that the civilians who were told to stay in place inside the burning towers would have been evacuated, as the fire chiefs had ordered.”

Cronyism: “[T]he Giuliani City Hall seems to have been no stranger to sweetheart deals and patronage, so that the employee in charge of emergency broadband communications had a sister who worked as a lobbyist for the phone provider who just happened to win the lucrative contract. That employee later committed suicide.”

Good lord. I may have to interrupt my McCain Can Blow Me Campaign to sling a little mud in Giuliani’s direction when this tome hits bookstores. I never thought I’d see the day that another potential GOP nominee wound me up as much as McCain.


“Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments…”