Comments by "" (@DavidJ222) on "See Tapper's reaction to Giuliani's conspiracy theory" video.
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There has been speculation as to how Rudy Giuliani “America’s Mayor,” the widely admired civic leader who presided over NYC during 9/11, could have been siphoned into Trump’s underworld. We can thank a compliant, sensationalist media apparatus that breathed life into Trump's phony self-made billionaire myth, just as we owe them for Rudy, who they cast as a post-9/11 American hero.
Overnight, the media turned Giuliani into a larger than life heroic figure. But the people that were most intimately familiar with the city’s pre-9/11 counter-terrorism preparations knew that it was Giuliani’s failures as Mayor which contributed directly to the horrific body count for the FDNY that day.
On Feb. 26, 1993, the World Trade Center was attacked with a 1,200-pound bomb concealed in a rental truck that exploded in the basement. The blast killed six, injured 1,000 people, and forced 50,000 to evacuate.
In a detailed after-action report published in 1994 by the FDNY, the inability of firefighters and their officers to communicate over their analog radios that day was flagged as a vital issue that needed to be addressed with urgency. In 2008 — when Giuliani was running for president — FDNY Lt. James Wood recounted his experiences during the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in an informational video produced by the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF).
While the bombing had taken place during Mayor Dinkins tenure as Mayor, Giuliani was sworn in on Jan. 2 1994. As the IAFF recalls it, the critical report about the defective fire radios gathered dust for several years.
It took until March of 2001 for new digital radios to be deployed, but they were withdrawn weeks later after they were deemed responsible for a near life-ending miscue when a firefighter isolated in a basement fire in Queens radioed a “May Day” call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. The new radios were shelved, and the old dysfunctional analogs were put back in service.
The contract for the new radios was a no bid, non-competitive contract that was, as it turned out, just an extension of an existing contract with Motorola, which has a near-monopoly on emergency communications.
According to a report issued by the NYC Comptroller the next month, Giuliani had “willfully” violated “city contracting rules…. endangering firefighters in a reckless bid to buy a new type of hand-held radio that it later had to pull from service,” The Times reported that “the new digital radios were never properly tested before being distributed to firefighters.” As City Comptroller Alan Hevesi documented, “they were purchased through what he described as an improper process that did not allow competing companies to bid for the contract.” At the time, Michael Wolf, who represented Com-Net Ericsson, a Motorola competitor, told the Times he was stymied in his efforts to even get the city to consider his company’s products.
Just six months later, FDNY’s bravest faced the doomsday scenario as they sized up the rescue operation in the Twin Towers on 9/11 that would take so many of their lives. They were equipped with the same analog radios that had failed them so badly when the WTC was bombed back in 1993. As the IAFF video documents and as the 9/11 timeline confirms, at 9:32 am. on 9/11, an FDNY Chief ordered all members in the North Tower down to the lobby. Even though he repeated the order, not a single company responded.
At 9:59 the WTC South Tower collapsed; and at 10 am the order to abandon the North Tower was repeated. Inside the North Tower were 121 firefighters who never heard that order. They perished when the North Tower collapsed at 10:28 am.
“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 uniformed officer from any other department, who had functioning radios, perished in that tower other than the FDNY.”
Despicably, Giuliani tried to cover up his own malfeasance by telling the 9/11 Commission that the North Tower firefighters had ignored the radio orders because of “their willingness, the way I describe it to stand their ground.”
Retired FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches, who lost his son Jimmy in the North Tower, will tell this tragic story to anyone who will listen. He and other surviving family members shadowed Giuliani during the 2008 primary and carried on a media campaign that was picked up by outlets like the Guardian.
“These radios did not work in the WTC in 1993 and they did not work in 2001." Jim Riches stated. "We got the story out there but when the media christened him ‘America’s Mayor,’ it all went away.”
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