Firefighters group takes on Giuliani over handling of 9/11

by Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON - In an effort reminiscent of the bitter "Swift Boat" campaign during the 2004 presidential race, a group of New York firefighters who lost sons in the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attacks is organizing a political committee to take on former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

A leader of the 9 /11 Firefighters and Families group met Tuesday with union leaders and political consultants, readying plans to set up a tax-exempt committee that would fund appearances and a media drive against Giuliani's campaign for the Republican nomination.

Jim Riches, a New York Deputy Fire Chief whose firefighter son was killed in the 2001 disaster, said the group aimed to raise doubts about the central premise of Giuliani's presidential campaign - his leadership role in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. "If we have to follow him around all 2008, we'll do it," Riches said.

Lauded as "America's Mayor" for his blunt talk and compassion amid the attacks, Giuliani's political stock soared and he went on to build a multimillion-dollar consulting group emphasizing his leadership skills.

"A majority of firefighters believe that Rudy was a great leader on 9 /11," said Howard Safir, who ran New York fire and police departments under Giuliani and now heads First Responders for Rudy, a group affiliated with Giuliani's campaign.

But the former New York mayor's frequent references to Sept. 11 on the campaign trail have infuriated Riches and about 20 activists who lost firefighter sons. The New Yorkers blame Giuliani for decision-making failures that they feel contributed to the deaths.

After protesting near Giuliani fundraising events in New York to little fanfare, they now plan to raise their voices in Florida, South Carolina and other primary states seen as essential to Giuliani's path to the GOP nomination. "When he announced his plans to run for president, we felt he was doing it on the backs of our dead sons," Riches said.

The Sept. 11 group already is being compared by some political observers to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group, which damaged Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry's candidacy in 2004 by impugning his Vietnam War service in the Navy. Both groups feature a self-sustaining constituency of passionate supporters and are aided by outside political forces eager to use them as vehicles in the presidential race.

"Starting small doesn't mean you can count them out," said Stephanie Cutter, a political consultant who countered attacks as Kerry's press aide in 2004. "When the Swift Boat group started . . . they had no money and no plan. In a matter of months they had enough money to go up with an ad buy, and that triggered their relevance."

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth raised more than $25 million for media buys. Some of the money was donated in multimillion-dollar installments from reliable Republican fundraisers such as Texas businessmen T. Boone Pickens Jr. and Bob J. Perry. Last December, the group was fined nearly $300,000 by the Federal Elections Commission for exceeding spending limits and acting in concert with GOP campaign efforts.

The Swift Boat operation made use of an Internal Revenue Service exemption that allowed so-called 527 groups - a reference to IRS code - to raise funds and participate in political debate as long as they adhered to funding and election rules.

"To the extent that new 527 groups would like to do what the Swift Boat group did in 2004 may be subject down the road to much stiffer penalties than the Swift Boat people got," said Paul S. Ryan, associate legal counsel with the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan campaign-finance watchdog group.

According to several participants in Tuesday's discussions between Riches and his supporters from the International Association of Firefighters, the Sept. 11 group is leaning toward using a 527 structure. Riches said the group already had been pledged nearly $200,000 and hoped to raise as much as $1 million for a Web site, media buys and campaign travel.

The Giuliani campaign, reeling in recent weeks from dropping poll numbers and running controversies, already has taken steps to blunt the firefighters' attacks. Heading the campaign's First Responders for Rudy, Safir has appeared on several political talk shows alongside Riches but has been careful not to engage him face to face, recognizing the delicacy of debating a Sept. 11 victim.

"We owe all families that lost loved ones on 9 /11 an unpayable debt, but finally this small group is admitting that this is a political attack with no other objective than to tarnish Mayor Giuliani's good name," Safir said Tuesday.

Earlier this year, the union produced an ad for its Web site that featured Riches and other New York firefighters criticizing Giuliani for blunders before and after Sept. 11. The New Yorkers claimed that Giuliani failed to provide first responders with proper radio equipment before the attacks and afterward sharply reduced recovery teams at the World Trade Center site even though the bodies of many firefighters had not been found.

Giuliani and his aides have long disputed the radios' role in the collapse of emergency communications on Sept. 11. In a recent interview, Safir contended that the "radios worked" but the repeaters - which can extend the range of the radios into high-rise buildings - did not.

The Sept. 11 group's effort to raise questions about Giuliani's performance before and after the attacks "takes on Rudy's strength," Republican consultant Tom Edmonds said. "I'm not sure that will go over with an American public that was impressed with what they saw."

Giuliani $9.11 fundraiser - Giuliani is Asshole of the year

Fire Fighters hot over Giuliani 9/11 fundraiser

September 26th, 2007 · No Comments

Giuliani is accused of exploiting 9/11 for his presidential candidacy

BBC | Sep 26, 2007

Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani has been criticised over a fundraising party at which participants are being urged to donate $9.11.

The International Association of Fire Fighters accuses him of exploiting the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks.

Mr Giuliani rose to national prominence as New York’s mayor on 9/11.

The Giuliani campaign says it did not plan the event, which is due to take place on Wednesday evening in California at the home of a supporter.

Nevertheless, the firefighters association said the stated theme of the fundraiser - “$9.11 for Rudy” was in poor taste.

“It is nothing short of disrespectful to the legacy of the thousands of civilians and 343 brave firefighters who died at Ground Zero,” said Harold Schaitberger, IAFF president.

Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd described the fundraiser’s theme as “unconscionable, shameless and sickening.”

Responsibility

A Giuliani campaign spokesman said the idea was selected without the campaign’s knowledge.

But the host of the party, Abraham Soefer, also said the theme was not his responsibility, and referred other questions to Mr Giuliani’s campaign team, the Associated Press reports.

The event is one of several Giuliani house party fundraisers across the US on Wednesday.

Mr Giuliani is seen as one of the frontrunners in the race for the Republican nomination.

But the BBC’s Justin Webb, in Washington, says that Mr Giuliani’s appeal as the man who led New York through the terrorist attacks is occasionally over-emphasised in his campaign.

This fundraiser looks like a big blunder, our correspondent adds.
. . .

Related

Official Account of 9/11 a “Joke” and a “Cover-up”
September 23, 2007 – Seven CIA veterans have severely criticized the official account of 9/11 and have called for a new investigation. “I think at simplest terms, there’s a cover-up. The 9/11 Report is a joke,” said Raymond McGovern, 27-year veteran of the CIA, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates during the seventies. “There are a whole bunch of unanswered questions. And the reason they’re unanswered is because this administration will not answer the questions,” he said. McGovern, who is also the founder of VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity), is one of many signers of a petition to reinvestigate 9/11.

Categories: 2008 Election · Crime & Corruption · Operation 9/11

Giuliani - A full page of legal threats for GZ vets

Link

Ground Zero Illnesses Clouding Giuliani’s Legacy

[A student in one of my classes last spring, Kojo Davis, kojodavis@mac.com> was a worker on the “pile” as it was known by those doing the cleanup and more than confirmed this report to the horror of our class. He showed us an ugly letter from the Mayor with one sentence thanking the workers and an additional full page of legal threats should any try to benefit from their work there — many in fact had not even received full payment from subcontractors to the 4 major contractors running the work who had been fully compensated by the city.

The student explained that in addition to asbestos the World Trade Center buildings had contained tanks of toxic substances that were mixed in with the debris, adding to its deadly properties. Thousands were thus poisoned — unknown thousands, as so many were volunteers who have returned home many states away not realizing that they had been terribly poisoned. A deputy mayor, Rudy Washington, who had been lung damaged lobbied to get state workman’s compensation deadlines extended somewhat to accommodate workers who began to discover the damage to their lungs (and widespread depression) a year or more after their labors were completed.

Billions of dollars were spent to compensate the families of the 3,000 originally killed on 9/11. But so far most of the tens of thousands injured in the cleanup have been left with minimal compensation if any at all.

This truly is the major NYC scandal of 9/11 and an injustice not yet rectified by an ex-Mayor who has made millions in his subsequent financial ventures and who is running ahead of the pack for the Republicans as their presidential candidate. None of those who worked on the “pile” would trust this man to run a garbage truck, let alone a major military or security operation. Ed Kent]

Rudy-Giuliani
9/11 Presents Challenges for Giuliani - Yahoo! News:

9/11 Presents Challenges for Giuliani

By LARRY McSHANE, Associated Press Writer Fri Mar 30, 11:07 AM ET

NEW YORK - Rudy Giuliani's White House aspirations are inescapably tied to Sept. 11, 2001 — for better and for worse.

While the former mayor of the nation's largest city was widely lionized for his post-9/11 leadership — "Churchillian" was one adjective, "America's mayor" was

"While the former mayor of the nation's largest city was widely lionized for his post-9/11 leadership — "Churchillian" was one adjective, "America's mayor" was Oprah Winfrey's assessment — city firefighters and their families are renewing their attacks on him for his performance before and after the terrorist attack.

Oprah Winfrey's assessment — city firefighters and their families are renewing their attacks on him for his performance before and after the terrorist attack.

"If Rudolph Giuliani was running on anything but 9/11, I would not speak out," said Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son was among the 343 FDNY members killed in the terrorist attack. "If he ran on cleaning up Times Square, getting rid of squeegee men, lowering crime — that's indisputable.

"But when he runs on 9/11, I want the American people to know he was part of the problem."

Such comments contradict Giuliani's post-Sept. 11 profile as a hero and symbol of the city's resilience — the steadfast leader who calmed the nerves of a rattled nation. But as the presidential campaign intensifies, criticisms of his 2001 performance are resurfacing.

Giuliani, the leader in polls of Republican voters for his party's nomination, has been faulted on two major issues:

• His administration's failure to provide the World Trade Center's first responders with adequate radios, a long-standing complaint from relatives of the firefighters killed when the twin towers collapsed. The Sept. 11 Commission noted the firefighters at the World Trade Center were using the same ineffective radios employed by the first responders to the 1993 terrorist attack on the trade center.

Regenhard, at a 2004 commission hearing in Manhattan, screamed at Giuliani, "My son was murdered because of your incompetence!" The hearing was a perfect example of the 9/11 duality: Commission members universally praised Giuliani at the same event.

• A November 2001 decision to step up removal of the massive rubble pile at ground zero. The firefighters were angered when the then-mayor reduced their numbers among the group searching for remains of their lost "brothers," focusing instead on what they derided as a "scoop and dump" approach. Giuliani agreed to increase the number of firefighters at ground zero just days after ordering the cutback.

More than 5 1/2 years later, body parts are still turning up in the trade center site.

"We want America to know what this guy meant to New York City firefighters," said Peter Gorman, head of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association. "In our experiences with this man, he disrespected us in the most horrific way."

The two-term mayor, in his appearance before the Sept. 11 Commission, said the blame for the death and destruction of Sept. 11 belonged solely with the terrorists. "There was not a problem of coordination on Sept. 11," he testified.

Giuliani was also criticized for locating the city's emergency center in 7 World Trade Center, a building that contained thousands of gallons of diesel fuel when it collapsed after the terrorist attack.

The lingering ill will between Giuliani and firefighters was resurrected when the International Association of Fire Fighters initially decided not to invite the former mayor to its March 14 candidates forum in Washington. Other prominent presidential hopefuls, including Republican John McCain and Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, addressed the nation's largest firefighters union.

According to the Giuliani camp, the contretemps with the union dates to tough contract negotiations in his second term as mayor. His critics deny any political motivation.

The IAFF drafted a membership letter — it was never sent — that excoriated Giuliani and promised to tell "the real story" about his role in handling the terrorist attack.

The then-mayor's decision to change policy on the ground zero recovery effort was "an offensive and personal attack" on firefighters, the letter said, going on to say that Giuliani's "disrespect ... has not been forgotten or forgiven."

Giuliani countered the attacks by releasing an open letter of support from retired firefighter Lee Ielpi, whose firefighter son was among the 2,749 victims on Sept. 11. "Firefighters have no greater friend and supporter than Rudy Giuliani," Ielpi said.

A contingent of nearly 100 South Carolina firefighters also expressed their support for Giuliani and his White House hopes.

Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran political consultant, predicted the 9/11 criticisms could resonate beyond New York during the presidential campaign.

"These are very emotional people who will touch a responsive chord with a lot of the electorate," he said. "The things that the 9/11 families say will wind up in television commercials used against Rudy Giuliani."

The issues also have forced Giuliani to try to strike a balance to avoid the perception that he's exploiting the attacks for his own personal gain. President Bush" President Bush faced the same challenge in 2004 when he invoked the attacks to portray himself as a strong and steady leader in the face of terrorism. Some victims' relatives criticized Bush for using the ruins of the World Trade Center in his campaign commercials, while others defended him.