RUDY ON THE SPOT On the occasion of the 9/11 ...
N THE SPOT On the occasion of the 9/11 Commission's New York visit on May 18 and 19, some suggested questions for Rudy Giuliani:
Why were the roof doors of the WTC locked on 9/11? Did this not come up in your "drills"? Were you aware that helicopters rescued many in the 1993 WTC bombing?
7 WTC collapsed because of the illegal fuel tanks in the building's lobby. Who approved their placement?
You melted down much of the structural steel taken from the biggest crime scene in U.S. history, then said no one told you to keep the evidence. But both engineering groups and victims' families told FEMA and Congress otherwise. Can you explain this?
Considering that you arrived into office shortly after the 1993 WTC attack, why didn't you request firefighting helicopters? Were you aware that airports use foam to extinguish jet fuel blazes, and that California uses helicopters to fight forest fires?
By most accounts, the Emergency Management Center had a state-of-the-art headquarters safely in the basement of One Police Plaza, yet you moved it to a private building owned by perhaps your largest campaign contributor, Larry Silverstein, at taxpayer expense. Why did you move the bunker to a site that had already been bombed, and was widely believed to be a future target?
Why did you claim in your book that the firemen's radios worked and that they stayed to die by choice, when many firemen had already testified that their radios failed? Do you think the firemen are all lying about their radios not working? Did you know they also failed in 1993?
You returned a $10 million donation from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal because he said, "America should reexamine its foreign policy." Cardinal Egan said the same thing and you were silent. Can you explain this? And why don't you owe the victims' families that money you forfeited?
It's been well-established that on the morning of 9/11, there was no organization of rescue teams. Why did the fire department not get the police department's warnings that the towers were going to fall? Why did your "emergency management team" never get these two crucial departments to work together, eight years after the 1993 bombing?
How often did you communicate with the FBI and CIA on terror pre-9/11? Knowing that the terrorists still wanted to raze the towersas they admitted during their trialdid you consider all possible ways to topple the buildings? Were you aware that a Port Authority employee testified after the 1993 bombing that there should be a plan to prevent, or at least deal with, a civilian jet attack?
You have repeatedly said the terrorists attacked because "they hate America's freedom." Have you never heard them claim that America's policies in the Middle East are the real motive? Can you provide a single statement by any terrorist organization that mentions our freedom, or did you just make this up?