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Steve Forbes recently sat down with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to discuss the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, his lingering outrage and what America needs in a president today.
Video, and an excerpt from that conversation are below. We’ll publish more over the next few days.The Morning Of September 11th, 2001
Steve Forbes: The events of September 11th. It’s morning; you’re having a breakfast with Bill Simon, who is running for Governor of California, one of your associates from your U.S. Attorney days. Walk us through what’s going through your mind in the Peninsula Hotel.
Rudy Giuliani: In some ways it was a particularly — the morning of September 11th was a particularly relaxing morning. Most mornings, most weekday mornings when I was the mayor of New York for the eight years, it would start with an 8:00am meeting, either at City Hall or Gracie Mansion, depending on what the other events of the day were.
This day, we sort of took a break from the usual routine because it was primary day. And the Democratic and Republican parties were holding their primary to select their candidate to succeed me, because I was term-limited. So I thought this would be a nice day to have sort of a little different start to the day. I’d have breakfast with Bill, good friend, thinking about running for Governor of California. Denny [Young], who is my chief counsel as well as a close friend of Bill’s. We’re all three of us very close.
So we were sitting there, basically just discussing politics. We finished breakfast and we were about to pay the check. And a police officer came over to Denny. He said something to Denny. Denny then said to me that a twin engine plane had hit the north tower. That there’s a big fire down at the World Trade Center, that a twin engine plane had hit the north tower, that the fire was very bad, and that we probably had better get down there right away.
So we race down there. Before we got into the car, I looked up into the sky, saw an absolutely beautiful day, concluded immediately that it wasn’t an accident. That a plane could not have gotten off course on a beautiful day like this.
Steve Forbes: Like the fog with the Empire State Building.
Giuliani: Well yeah — it wasn’t just a mistake. But I didn’t know if it was a terrorist attack or just a malicious, insane act, which might’ve even been more likely at that point, when all you know is a twin engine plane hitting the north tower. Someone angry at a business or angry at their girlfriend or who knows what crazy thing, which happens in a city like New York.
So as we were rushing down there, Denny and I were trying to see the top of the tower. And at certain vantage points, driving down, we could see it. And it was a terrible fire. It looked worse than what had been described. And when we got about a mile away, there was an explosion. We didn’t know what it was immediately.
But then the police called and said a second plane had hit. So now we knew it was a terrorist attack, and we were trying to get through to Washington to make sure we had air support. Trying to get through to the governor to see if we could get the National Guard involved. I had been able to speak to one of my deputy mayors, Joe Lhota, he had given me an assessment from him and the police commissioner, because he was with the Police Commissioner.
And we had set a point where we were going to meet, which would be about two blocks from where the tower was. And almost instantaneously, we got there. I jumped out of the car, the SUV, and Joe, Sunny Mindel, Bernie Kerik, a couple other police officers were walking toward me. And Joe was the first one to speak. And Joe said, “Mayor, it’s terrible. People are jumping out of the buildings. It’s a disaster up there.”
And I looked up, and I saw debris coming off the buildings, but I didn’t see people. And I think what I did, I can’t remember exactly, but I think what I did was discount that. I think I thought Joe maybe was exaggerating. That he saw the same thing I saw, but somehow he saw it as human beings. Because the thought of human beings throwing themselves out 100 floors was so foreign to anything I’d ever seen before.
Then we began walking toward the fire department command post. Because what I wanted to do was, I wanted to bring the Police Commissioner to the Fire Chief so that they could directly communicate about the help and the support that the Fire Chief needed.
Forbes: A traditional rivalry that you wanted to stop.
Giuliani: I wanted to make sure that they were on the same page — that they were on the same page, and that the fire department was getting what it needed from the police department. And as we are walking toward the scene, which was only two blocks away, looking up, all of a sudden, I see a man throwing himself out of the 101st, 102nd floor. Realize that Joe is right.
And I would say that that is the experience, I describe it as like a switch. It just changed all my emotions. I went from sort of a feeling that I’m walking through an emergency that I can handle, that we’ve had before. We have a game plan. We know what we – everybody knows their role. When I saw that, I just exclaimed to people around me, “This is much worse than anything we’ve ever faced before. It’s off the charts. We’re just going to have to make up our response, we don’t have a plan for this.”
And that, that scene, of the man throwing himself off the building, I probably relive more than any other. When I got back to September 11 and think about it, and lots of memories, but the one persistent and most difficult one is watching that man throw himself from the 101st, 102nd floor. Because it probably shocked me, and I just watched the whole thing. I just stopped and watched the whole thing.
And then I saw other people doing it, but that first one was the one that really just switched my emotions to, “Boy, we’re just going to have to do the best we can.”
We were in a building where the police department command post had been reestablished. It was a Merrill Lynch office, a Merrill Lynch street corner office. We had taken it over because the communication equipment there was very good. I was waiting for a phone call. I was actually waiting for Vice President Cheney to get on the phone, because he was calling me back, because we had called the White House.
And we had gotten to the point where the White House secretary had said, “Mr. Mayor, the Vice President will be on the phone momentarily.” And all of a sudden the phone goes out. The building starts to shake, the table starts to shake. People are going under the tables. I had no idea what was happening.
And someone yells out, “The tower came down and it’s hitting the building.” And I thought they meant the radio tower on the top of the World Trade Center. I didn’t think they meant the whole tower, although it seemed like a heck of an impact just for a radio tower. But I couldn’t put all that together. Then we tried to get out of that building because we were worried it might – we had no idea how much damage was done to it. It might crumble.
We went downstairs, tried to find our way out, we couldn’t. Doors were locked.
Forbes: Exits were locked. You couldn’t’ get out the way you came in. And suddenly two guys appeared.
Giuliani: Two maintenance men came over and said, “We know a way into the building that’s adjoining that’ll take you out and face you on Church Street.” And we followed them down, and lo and behold, the door opened. And they got us right into the lobby of that building. And when we got into the lobby of that building we felt a certain sense of relief until we looked outside. And outside looked like something out of a movie about a nuclear attack, you know? This cloud in the street, and people getting hit with debris. So there was a certain sense of momentary relief, and then a sense of, “Maybe we’ve gone from bad to worse.”
Giuliani: I think to adequately manage a crisis, you have to see it.
Forbes: You’ve got to be there with your own eyes.
Giuliani: I believe that very, very strongly. Because there’s only so much somebody else can tell you about it. And they impose their own distortions on the description. You need to see it yourself.
So I always had a firm rule that, as best I could, if I was going to have to make decisions about an emergency, I better go there, observe it, see it, then I’d know what advice to rely on and what advice not to.
It also comes from always getting conflicting advice. In an emergency, you rarely get one consistent piece of advice. You usually have two or three people with two or three different ideas. So you want to have your own set of thoughts.
I went up to Chief Ganci, and the first thing I said to him was, “Can we get a helicopter up there?” And the chief looked at me, just very matter-of-factly, and he said, sort of almost in a euphemistic way, he was delivering me a message. He said, “My guys can save everybody below the fire.”
And I knew what he was saying by implication was, “I can’t put ‘em above the fire, because in that I’ll kill them if I do that.” And he pointed up. “And I can’t put helicopters up there, because can’t you see those flames? Can’t you see the flames coming out of the building?” All that was unsaid. But all that was part of the conversation.
He was saying to me, “I can save the guys below the fire. My guys will save everybody below the fire.” He said, “Don’t worry.” What he’s also telling me, “I cannot put them above the fire,” because they can’t get through the firewall that was up there. And I can’t put a helicopter up there, because if I try to put a helicopter up there, at any given moment a flame could shoot out and blow up the whole helicopter.
Forbes: And all the debris too.
Giuliani: He conveyed all that with that one sentence.
People were coming out of the building. Everyone’s seen film of this, right? When you watch this film you might notice the following: Some walk, some run, and some stay there.
It’s a phenomenon with fires that’s hard to understand, but some people are mesmerized by fire. So yes, some people came out of the building and knew how bad it was, and they just ran. Some people walked at a reasonably brisk pace. Other people, maybe a third, just stood there watching the fire. Now, they were in a tremendously dangerous situation, because debris was falling from the building, not just people. And debris was hitting people below.
Even in spite of that, even though they could see some of that, they would still stand there, looking. Chief Ganci wanted them out of the way. He wanted them out of the way because he didn’t want them hurt, and he wanted them out of the way because they were hindering the ability of emergency vehicles to get in and out of the site. Ambulances getting people out.
And he was anticipating saving a lot of people. And at that point, they were saving a lot of people and sending a lot of people off to the hospital. So basically, he was telling me another thing. You have to understand the fire department and the police department. He was telling me, “I don’t need the police department inside that building. My guys can handle that.” Right?
And of course, there were polices officers in there from the ESU [Emergency Services Unit]. But what I need the police department to do is their job. I need them to clear this area. “Get these people the hell out of here.” Get enough cops here, so that these people, when they come out, just go north. He said, “And when you brief people, tell them, ‘Go north.’ It’s safer to go north than to go south. So tell them, tell them over and over again, ‘Go north. Go north. Come out of that building and directly go north.’
Giuliani: I then put the Police Commissioner in contact with — put them together and said, “You guys talk over how you’re going to do this.” And they had a conversation. I talked to some of the other Fire Chiefs that were there, got their advice about how bad it was going to be. They told me they thought they’d be there all day and all night, that they would have to bring in everyone that was off duty. And over a period of time they’d relieve the people that were there as soon as they could start taking them out without jeopardizing the recovery effort.
That was the basic conversation there. When it finished, I went over to Chief Ganci. I said, “You have everything you need now?” He said, “Yes.” He said, “Yes.” I think I told him we were going to evacuate. Well, I said, you know, “Police Department Commissioner and I have decided we’re going to evacuate lower Manhattan. So that should help with some of your problems. And we’ll get the vehicles down here right away.”
And he reiterated to me that they were going to have to change shifts. And I just put my hand out and put my arms around him, and I said, “Chief, God bless you.” Because I could see that — obviously, I didn’t know he was going to die But I could see he was in great jeopardy. Because he was in a place where things were falling. Near him, near me. And I didn’t think that far ahead, but probably my instincts told me he was in great danger.
I mean, New York City is not just the World Trade Center.
I didn’t know, that morning, that there’d be only two planes. There could’ve been three, could’ve been four. Could’ve been seven. What could’ve happened were follow-up suicide attacks. We had plenty of intelligence that Islamic extremist terrorists, who would get arrested, would have plans for the Lincoln Tunnel, the Holland Tunnel, the George Washington Bridge, the subways, the PATH train.
The original attack on the World Trade Center was fomented in Union City, New Jersey. And a lot of plans were taken out of there to do these suicide bombings. So one of the things that we were worried about was that this would unleash a series of attacks; that this was the first two of a whole series of different kind of attacks. Maybe they’re going to do a suicide bombing at Penn Station. Maybe they’re going to do a suicide bombing at the Empire State Building. Maybe they’re going to try to hit Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, or Temple Emanu-El.
Forbes: Gracie Mansion.
Giuliani: Or Gracie Mansion, right. So during these conversations with Pete Ganci, I mean, three or four go on at once. I was talking to the Police Commissioner, and Commissioner Dunn (that was the number two guy in the Police Department), about covering our priority targets. Did we have them covered?
Forbes: Looking back, in the days ahead: How did you, one, contain panic, and two, contain anger, which would well up in a situation like that?
Giuliani: Those are two very good questions. The first was easier than the second. It was easier to contain panic because I have sort of a rule that I always followed in emergencies or difficult situations that would tend to provoke emotion and fear. My father taught it to me, and it’s a very interesting rule. It says, “Whenever you’re in an emergency” — he would say a fire — “become very calm, because the only way you’re going to figure your way out of it is if you’re calm. If you get very emotional, you’ll just go banging into walls. But if you remain calm, you’ll give yourself the best chance to think your way out of it.”
And I have no idea why he taught it to me. He never thought I’d be handling an emergency, in particular. And he used to use fire as the example. But I always used – that lesson would always come up for me whenever I was in an emergency. If I was in — I mean, I handled many trials. If I had a courtroom situation where something went wrong and my associates were getting all nervous, I’d just say, “Calm down. Calm down. We’ll think better if we remain calm.”
So I had trained myself to do that. We had had airplane crashes, subway derailments, blackouts. And a certain number of people are very calm, a certain number of people get overexcited about it. I always try to calm down the overexcited people, because I think that emotion gets in the way of thinking.
It starts driving you in rash directions, instead of, “Okay, let me just think about it.” So I was good at that. And so I would take whatever panic I felt and basically just ignore it and say, “Got to remain calm.” Because, I add to that advice, “Even if you don’t feel calm, pretend you are.”
Forbes: People take their cues from you.
Giuliani: Pretend you are, it’ll help them, it’ll help you. The anger was harder. The anger was harder because it was intense. And it remained. It’s still there. The way I would deal with the anger would be, sometimes after a whole series of decisions was over, or the day was over, I would just go down there and just sort of, in my mind, think about all the terrible things I think should be done to these people.
And I would go down there, sometimes it would come about – you know, I would go there and I’d contemplate what was there before. You know, here was this big hole in the ground. Fire coming out of the ground. Buildings like stubs. Body parts being carried out by firefighters and police officers. And I would think, “What was there before?” I had watched the World Trade Center get built. And think about these people in the middle of their lives, in the middle of their morning, just being killed by these maniacs.
Probably it’s the most anger I’ve ever felt in my whole life. So I would try not to feel it when I had to make decisions. But there had to be parts of the day where I just let it out. Just let out all – I think probably it came out absolutely, almost, you know, just unconsciously when I met President Bush.
And he asked me what he could do to help me. And we were at an Air Force base in New Jersey. First he talked to Governor Pataki. And then he came over here. “What can I do to help you?” And then all of a sudden, without planning it, I just spontaneously, I said, “If you capture Bin Laden, I’d like to execute him.” And after I said it, I think I almost went like this. I mean, I didn’t take it back. I probably was too embarrassed to take it back. But it was almost like, “Where did that come from?” I mean, what? I’ve even analyzed where I think – I think it came from being a prosecutor.
I don’t think I was saying I wanted to be the executioner. I think I was saying I wanted to be the prosecuting attorney that, you know, that gets the death penalty for him, or something like that. But the anger was so great it would come out in times like that.
source: forbes.com
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