Revering Rudy

The 9-11 Commission leaders admit to giving Giuliani a pass.

“We did not ask tough questions, nor did we get all of the information we needed to put on the public record,” they wrote.

The commission’s gentle questioning of Mr. Giuliani during his May 19, 2004, testimony at the New School University in Greenwich Village was “a low point” in its handling of witnesses at its public hearings, they wrote.

The 10-member commission was established by Congress in 2002 to investigate the government response to events leading up to and including the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton said the commission had failed to ask Mr. Giuliani more probing questions partly because of criticism of a comment by one commission member, John F. Lehman, at the previous day’s hearing that New York’s disaster-response plans were “not worthy of the Boy Scouts, let alone this great city.”

The morning of Mr. Giuliani’s testimony, The New York Post’s cover had the single word “Insult” above a photograph of a firefighter kneeling at the World Trade Center site.

The panel was affected by the controversy “and by the excellent quality of the mayor’s presentation,” Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton wrote.

The commission has been criticized for its delicate treatment of Mr. Giuliani, particularly by some relatives of Sept. 11 victims.

During his testimony at the public hearing, Mr. Giuliani and others were interrupted by audience members imploring commissioners to ask Mr. Giuliani about trouble with radio communications and other problems the day of the attack.

One man shouted, “My brother was a fireman, and I want to know why 300 firemen died,” adding, “Let’s ask some real questions. Is that unfair?”

It's probably too late to put a dent in Giuliani's secular sainthood or in his reputation for keeping New Yorkers safe. But, maybe the rewriting of the record of "America's Mayor"™ may well be in the early stages of being rewritten again.

Who can forget the aggressive efforts the Giuliani administration made in coordinating emergency response, taking the lead in making sure the fire and police depts. could talk to one another?

Among the more striking aspects of yesterday's hearing was the hard-nosed questioning of Mr. Scoppetta by the council members and the blunt testimony from union leaders, fire safety experts and relatives of people who had died.

Many were direct in stating their views of the shortcomings of emergency operations under the administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, though Mr. Scoppetta had high praise for the former mayor.

Still, the tone was a major departure from the general acclaim for Mr. Giuliani. Moreover, it was clear that many of those present had moved on from the daze of early loss, when New Yorkers were figuring out exactly where friends, relatives and acquaintances worked in the buildings, and turned into a ''city of floor numbers,'' as Julie Talen, a SoHo resident, put it recently.

Beverly Eckert, whose husband, Sean Rooney, tried to get onto the roof of the south tower but found the door locked, said that after the hearings at City Hall, she planned to go to Washington to monitor a Congressional investigation. ''You either ask the hard questions, or you live with the status quo,'' she said.

Or the thoughtful, ego-free decision to house the city's Office of Emergency Services on the 23rd Floor of Seven World Trade Center?

Or the culture he created to, in which the city's police and fire didn't get into fights over turf at emergencies.

And Giuliani is a emergency preparedness consultant? Funny that "communication" and "accountability" are two of Giuliani & Partners' six "strongly held values.