Perhaps the most annoying part of Rudy Giuliani's Presidential campaign is the candidate's insistent flogging of 9/11, of the dead of that day and of the heroism of others. Giuliani has managed, with remarkably little public questioning, to clutch at the heartstrings of the nation, and to channel grief and horror into a narrative that places his aspirations to advancement squarely in the center of the national consciousness.
If you think you've seen this before, you have: Giuliani's maneuvering recalls nothing so much as George Bush's 2000 positioning as 'a uniter, not a divider', a branding effort born out of a deliberate misrepresentation of his record in Texas. Of course, then as now, the press disseminated the glowing falsehoods and drowned out any facts that might sow discord with the comfortable storyline. Then as now, the actual record of a republican candidate is one of cronyism and incompetence.
This time around, however, there are some uncomfortable questions occasioned by a pile of corpses sitting squarely on the former mayor's doorstep. These are, of course, the firefighters that rushed into the burning towers on 9/11 with malfunctioning radios, to be killed in their hundreds.
The Real Rudy [1] is taking on the history and asking some questions that the former mayor's speechifying and truthiness have failed to address.
The Albany Project [2] sums up:
In the film we learn that 7 years after the 1993 attack, the city awarded a no bid contract to Motorola for radios that were not only never actually field tested, but had to be pulled from the field within months after a firefighter almost died when his call for help went unheard. We also learn that the contract for those radios, originally for $1.4 million dollars ballooned ten fold to 14 million in a matter of days.
Sound familiar? Sure, you've heard this story before: it's been told, with devastating consequences, by contractors in Iraq, in New Orleans, and across the landscape of George Bush's America.
The best part? There has never been an investigation of any of this: the radios themselves, the relationship, via campaign donations or otherwise, between the manufacturer and the Giuliani administration, even of the disastrous decision to site the City's Emergency Command Center in a known terrorist target, 7 WTC.
No investigation. Ever. Again, this should sound familiar.
We can do something about this right here at home, where it happened. The proper venue for addressing the looming questions is the City Council's Committee on Oversight and Investigations, chaired by Eric Gioia [3]. The other members of the Committee [4] are Gale Brewer [5], Jessica Lappin [6], the face that launched a thousand press releases John Liu [7], and Michael Nelson [8].
You can reach Eric at 212.788.7370 or 718.383.9566, or sign a petition asking him to open an investigation here [9].
A lack of oversight is at the core of our current national crisis; too few questions have been asked of the Bush administration, characterized as it is by incompetence, too-cozy relationships with private sector check-writers, stonewalling and a scandalous series of avoidable disasters.
Which is precisely what cost hundreds of New York firefighters their lives on 9/11. This time, we need answers.
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