Giuliani's Rhetoric on Terror Contrasts With His Record

As he campaigns for president, Giuliani describes the 1993 attack as having been forefront in his mind throughout his mayoralty, saying it was others who failed to reckon with the blast.

"Islamic terrorists killed Americans. Slaughtered Americans. Bombed the World Trade Center. Bombed it," he said in July. "You know what the reaction of the Clinton administration at the time was? It was a crime. It was another group of murders. . . . Well, it wasn't just another group of murders."

But the 1993 attack also receded on City Hall's radar screen. During Giuliani's search for a police commissioner, terrorism did not come up, according to four candidates and three members of the hiring panel interviewed by Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins, authors of the 2006 book "Grand Illusion." Giuliani never asked his successor as U.S. attorney about the cases against the attackers or about other terrorism cases, said a source familiar with the office who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Securing the World Trade Center against another attack also got little attention from City Hall. The buildings' owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, made some safety upgrades, but the city set aside a task force's findings on building-code flaws revealed by the attack, as well as findings by fire chiefs. The city held several terrorism drills during Giuliani's tenure, but they focused on biological or chemical attacks, not high-rise evacuations.

Joe Lhota, a deputy mayor under Giuliani, said the threat of terrorism was taken seriously, with City Hall constantly reacting to police or FBI alerts. But the city's planning tended to focus more on the subway system and sports facilities than on high rises, he said; City Hall -- like everyone else -- simply did not envision an airborne attack on the twin towers.

"There were numerous exercises, to the point where I knew all the exitways from Madison Square Garden," Lhota said.

Giuliani often cites the 1993 attack as a motivation for his creation of an Office of Emergency Management, in 1996. But those present at the agency's creation say it was intended to give the mayor oversight over more routine emergencies.

Jonathan Best interviewed for the job of leading the agency and said the subject of terrorism barely arose. "That wasn't the focus of what they were looking at," Best said. "They were interested in hurricanes. Hurricanes were big."

In 1997, the city decided to place an emergency command center for the agency on the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade Center, across from the twin towers. Several top officials argued for a lower-profile site, such as an office complex across the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn.

But Giuliani was adamant about having a site within walking distance of City Hall, recalled Jerome Hauer, then the emergency management commissioner. Hauer left City Hall in 2000 and had a falling-out with Giuliani after Sept. 11 over Hauer's endorsement of a Democrat to replace the mayor.

On Sept. 11, the $13 million center was quickly evacuated, and 7 World Trade Center collapsed later in the day.

Giuliani and his advisers have rejected criticism of the site selection, saying no one could have predicted the collapse of the towers. But Louis Anemone, a top-ranking police officer who has since retired, disagrees. The World Trade Center "was number one on our list of the most vulnerable and critical and symbolic locations in the city. The place had been attacked once before, and they had been threatening to bring those towers down again," Anemone said. "For those of us who lived and breathed this stuff day in and day out, it boggled the imagination."