Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11

Rudy Giuliani emerged from the smoke of 9/11 as the unquestioned hero of the day: America's Mayor, the father figure we could all rely on to be tough, to be wise, to do the right thing. In that uncertain time, it was a comfort to know that he was on the scene and in control, making the best of a dire situation.

But was he really?

Grand Illusion is the definitive report on Rudy Giuliani's role in 9/11 — the true story of what happened that day and the first clear-eyed evaluation of Giuliani's role before, during, and after the disaster.

While the pictures of a soot-covered Giuliani making his way through the streets became very much a part of his personal mythology, they were also a symbol of one of his greatest failures. The mayor's performance, though marked by personal courage and grace under fire, followed two terms in office pursuing an utterly wrongheaded approach to the city's security against terrorism. Turning the mythology on its head, Grand Illusion reveals how Giuliani has revised his own history, casting himself as prescient terror hawk when in fact he ran his administration as if terrorist threats simply did not exist, too distracted by pet projects and turf wars to attend to vital precautions.

Authors Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins also provide the first authoritative view of the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, recounting the triumphs and missteps of the city's efforts to heal itself. With surprising new reporting about the victims, the villains, and the heroes, this is an eye-opening reassessment of one of the pivotal events — and politicians — of our time.

"The terrorist attacks of 9/11 provided Rudy Giuliani with a Churchillian political opportunity: while Bush was whisked away by the Secret Service, Giuliani seized the moment, striding stalwartly along ruined streets, an image which may well propel him to the White House. Barrett and Collins' investigation proves an illuminating counterpoint to Giuliani's unofficial christening as 'America's Mayor,' highlighting the critical errors Guiliani made before, during and after the attack. According to the authors, that memorable image-Rudy among the ruins-hides a multitude of sins: in the event of a terrorist attack, Giuliani should have been directing police, fire and emergency services from the city's high-tech underground emergency management center; unfortunately, Giuliani had insisted that that secure center be located at the World Trade Center. Political infighting between police and fire departments went unchecked, preventing coordination between first responders, and Giuliani's rush to return New York to business as usual (fearing that Wall Street might relocate) may have seriously impaired the health of returning workers and residents. The Giuliani who emerges from these pages-shrewd, calculating, indomitable-remains an impressive figure, but one that will give voters pause. Barrett and Collins provide a critique of one of the lions of 9/11, proving that serious investigation and old-fashioned muckraking are still powerful and necessary weapons." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"In New York City's history, only two mayors have successfully moved on to statewide or higher office, the last one more than 130 years ago. Rudolph W. Giuliani is trying to buck that trend. Not content with a Senate seat or the governorship of New York, the former mayor now seems to be positioning himself for a run at the presidency in 2008. And early polls of Republican voters indicate that he has... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) strong support. Above all, Giuliani's actions during and after Sept. 11, 2001, and his evolution into 'America's mayor' won him his national stature.

If Giuliani is viewed with suspicion by some conservatives who worry about his social views, he is downright loathed by many liberals. And it is from the left that 'Grand Illusion' lunges. Written by Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice and Dan Collins of CBSNews.com, it aims its fire directly at Giuliani's image as a hero of 9/11, blaming him for leaving the city unprepared for a catastrophic terrorist attack. The authors strongly imply that his negligence was responsible for many deaths that day.

This book falls in the grand old tradition of muckraking American journalism. At their best, muckrakers skewer conventional wisdom, puncture myths and expose hypocrisy or corruption. 'Grand Illusion: attempts to do all three, and Barrett and Collins leave no stone unturned to prove their thesis.

But 'Grand Illusion' is hardly the 'untold story' it claims to be. For one thing, many of its claims are well-known. Giuliani's 'bunker' for his Office of Emergency Management (OEM) was located on the 23rd floor of Number 7 World Trade Center, making it inoperable on that terrible day. The entire center was lost when the building collapsed, and there was no backup site. The city's traditionally turf-conscious fire and police departments, as well as the Port Authority that ran the World Trade Center, did not work well together. A centralized command was absent. Many radios did not work, keeping important information from firefighters inside the doomed buildings. Giuliani's post-9/11 suggestion that he stay on for three months beyond the end of his second term was ill-advised and undemocratic.

Beyond these familiar failings, the book offers a persistently prosecutorial brief against Giuliani, accusing him of all manner of cronyism, distraction and mismanagement. Giuliani, the person and politician, never really appears in this book, except to the extent that the authors can use his words against him. The distaste that Barrett and Collins feel for their subject is palpable throughout.

'Grand Illusion' is driven by an intense moralism that neatly divides the world into heroes and villains. This is especially ironic since Barrett co-wrote a book in 1988 about the scandals under Mayor Edward I. Koch. One of the heroes of that book was a young, brash prosecutor named Rudy Giuliani. Now it's Giuliani's turn to don the black hat.

The relentlessness of Barrett and Collins' attack sometimes borders on the petty, as when they criticize Giuliani for not wearing a respirator while visiting Ground Zero — thereby setting a bad example for rescuers, many of whom have since suffered respiratory problems.

A greater historical context would have informed the book's attacks. For instance, Barrett and Collins never explain why the mayor of New York should have obsessed about the threat of jihadist terrorism when politicians in Washington, the press and the public at large were often content to ignore the issue. It is understandable that Giuliani, inheriting a chaotic city beset by crime and fiscal instability, might have let the memory of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing slip into the background. This amnesia was so potent, in fact, that a critical biography of Giuliani published in 2000 paid scant attention to the issue of terrorism. The book's author: Wayne Barrett.

At least Giuliani did create the OEM and try to form a unified emergency command, even if the implementation left something to be desired. Though OEM was concerned more with responding to things such as water-main breaks and West Nile virus, it did spend time and effort dealing with the potential fallout from the Y2K computer bug, as well as security for the millennial New Year's celebration in Times Square, where the threat of terrorism definitely loomed.

Barrett and Collins also gloss over the inconvenient fact that, at the time, the press and Giuliani's liberal critics greeted the mayor's forays into security issues with howls of derision. When Giuliani created the bunker at 7 WTC, most of the criticisms were not about the location but about whether such a command center was necessary in the first place. In 2000, Barrett himself called the center 'a symbol of Giuliani's weakness for gadgetry, secrecy, and militarist overkill.'

That the entire nation was unprepared in many ways for 9/11 is widely accepted and documented. Much has been done to rectify the situation, but another terrorist attack will no doubt highlight other weaknesses. One can't help feeling that the city's response to 9/11 was more than the unmitigated disaster the authors make it out to be. Though chaos reigned and communication was often poor, at least 15,000 people escaped the area around the World Trade Center, and even Barrett and Collins admit that most of the civilian deaths could not have been prevented. As chaotic and uncoordinated as the city's response may now appear, the first responders inspired a nation with their bravery. Most important, New York remained calm, and the city and the country came together as they had not in a long time.

Perhaps that explains why, after some 350 pages devoted to hammering home evidence of Giuliani's purported malfeasance, the book ends on a muted note. Barrett and Collins concede that Giuliani's 'dust-covered march uptown' after the collapse of the towers 'was truly important to the city and the nation' and call his behavior that day 'a fine thing.' But, they add, it was 'not nearly as much as we, at the time, imagined.'

Of course, the shine on Giuliani's political armor since 9/11 is bound to become tarnished, especially in a harsh presidential campaign. But his biggest obstacle probably won't be this book but the rigors of the campaign trail and the demands of his party's conservative base. He may not have been the superman of his post-9/11 press clippings, but he is surely a more substantive politician than Barrett and Collins will ever acknowledge.

With time, Giuliani's legacy will be based on more than just 9/11. He left a city immeasurably better off — safer, more prosperous, more confident — than the one he had inherited eight years earlier, even with the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center at its heart. Debates about his accomplishments will continue, but the significance of his mayoralty is hard to deny. Perhaps that explains the vehemence of 'Grand Illusion.' After all, muckrakers rarely take aim at dismal failures.

Vincent J. Cannato teaches history at the Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston, and is the author of 'The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York.'" Reviewed by Vincent J. Cannato, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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"Arguing that Mayor Giuliani and his department heads, especially those in the FDNY and NYPD, missed the mark in solving problems that could have helped save lives on that day, the authors primarily use publicly available documents to make their points." Library Journal

"This book falls in the grand old tradition of muckraking American journalism. At their best, muckrakers skewer conventional wisdom, puncture myths and expose hypocrisy or corruption. Grand Illusion attempts to do all three, and Barrett and Collins leave no stone unturned to prove their thesis." Washington Post

"This careful condemnation will raise eyebrows." Kirkus Reviews

Perhaps because the images of NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani looking determined and involved during the September 11th attacks of 2001 contrasted so sharply with President Bush's jetting around the country in Air Force One, a mythology quickly arose around Giuliani as "America's Mayor," the one indisputable political hero of that day (a mythology assiduously cultivated by Giuliani himself in the months and years afterwards). While not entirely lacking in praise for Giuliani, Barrett (a senior editor at the Village Voice) and Collins (a senior producer at CBSNews.com) dismantle that mythology piece by piece detailing Giuliani's lack of attention to the threat of terrorism prior to 9-11; mistakes that made the day's toll worse than it might have been, such as placing the emergency command center in the World Trade Center complex after the WTC had already been the target of a previous attack and splitting his operational command on the day itself; and decisions that impeded environmental recovery in the days and weeks afterwards, among other failings. They also criticize Giuliani for leveraging his 9-11 reputation in order build his security consulting business.
Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Perhaps because the images of NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani looking determined and involved during the September 11th attacks of 2001 contrasted so sharply with President Bush's jetting around the country in Air Force One, a mythology quickly arose around Giuliani as "America's Mayor," the one indisputable political hero of that day (a mythology assiduously cultivated by Giuliani himself in the months and years afterwards). While not entirely lacking in praise for Giuliani, Barrett (a senior editor at the Village Voice) and Collins (a senior producer at CBSNews.com) dismantle that mythology piece by piece detailing Giuliani's lack of attention to the threat of terrorism prior to 9-11; mistakes that made the day's toll worse than it might have been, such as placing the emergency command center in the World Trade Center complex after the WTC had already been the target of a previous attack and splitting his operational command on the day itself; and decisions that impeded environmental recovery in the days and weeks afterwards, among other failings. They also criticize Giuliani for leveraging his 9-11 reputation in order build his security consulting business. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Two of New York's toughest investigative journalists explode the myths and misinformation surrounding 9/11 and Rudy Giuliani's leadership, creating an eye-opening reassessment of the landmark event.

"Grand Illusion" is the definitive report on 9/11 in New York andndash;andndash; the true story of what happened that day and how the city fought to recover afterwards.

"Grand Illusion" is the definitive report on 9/11 in New York andndash;andndash; the true story of what happened that day and how the city fought to recover afterwards. It also traces the comeback trail of a city that has never faced a fiercer fire or stiffer wind, discovering survivors who rebuild neighborhoods, heroes who rescue economies.

Beyond the historical account, the book centers on the first clearandndash;eyed evaluation of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's role before, during, and after the disaster. While the pictures of a sootandndash;covered Giuliani making his way through the streets became very much a part of his personal mythology, they were also a symbol of one of his greatest failures. A more sensibly located emergency command post would have kept him behind the scenes, but it would have given the city a functioning, stateandndash;ofandndash;theandndash;art operations center that might have averted some of the calamitous decisions made that day. And the failures weren't limited to iconography. The mayor's performance, though marked by personal courage and grace under fire, followed two terms in office pursuing an utterly wrongheaded approach to the city's security against terrorism.

Grand Illusion will serve as an indispensible corrective to the rough draft of history rushed out in the wake of 9/11. Turning the mythology on its head, it reveals how Giuliani, far from being the savior of the day, was directly responsible for many of the city's inabilities to cope with the crisis. It also demonstrates how Giuliani has himself revised history, inaccurately casting himself as prescient terror hawk when in fact he ignored repeated warnings, too distracted by pet projects and turf wars to attend to vital precautions.

While this book provides an unflinching portrayal of what happened on and after September 11, it will not leave readers hopeless. Instead, it will serve as the first authoritive history andndash; reassessing and recounting the victims, the villains, and the heroes andndash; of the pivotal day in our recent history.

Wayne Barrett is a senior editor at the Village Voice and the author of the bestselling City for Sale.