9/11 Presents Challenges for Giuliani

Republican presidential hopeful, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, fields questions from the crowd during a campaign rally with first responders at the North Spartanburg Fire Department, in Spartanburg, S.C. in this Feb. 21, 2001 file ;photo. Giuliani's White House aspirations are inescapably tied to Sept. 11, 2001 - for better and for worse.(AP Photo/Mary Ann Chastain) (Mary Ann Chastain - AP)

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 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.