Giuliani made his bones as a crime busting federal prosecutor in Manhattan's Southern District of New York. During his tenure, that office was responsible for over four thousand convictions. Perhaps the biggest win was the Mafia Commission Trial (1986). Five mafia bosses and their subordinates from New York's "five families" were brought to trial and eight were convicted. He parleyed that performance into winning the mayor's office on the second try in 1993. As mayor he is often credited with cleaning up New York street crime, but admirers tend to forget that unleashing the NYPD on petty criminals came at a price. Prominent examples of police excesses suffered by New Yorkers under Giuliani's mayoralty were the killing of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed black man who was shot 41 times while reaching for his wallet by members of the NYPD street crimes unit. Abmer Louima, a Haitian immigrant, was beaten and sodomized with a toilet plunger while in NYPD custody. One of police assailants is alleged to have shouted, "This is Giuliani time", during the sexual assault. Giuliani also had a habit of asking financially interested parties to form city policy. He allowed a deputy mayor on the payroll of Major League Baseball to work on deals for the Yankees and Mets. He commissioned a $600,000 report on privatizing JFK and LaGuardia from a consultant with ties to the company personally chosen by him to manage the airports. Bernie Kerik, Giuliani's Police Commissioner, was forced to withdraw his nomination for the post of Homeland Security director when it was discovered he had ties to a mob controlled construction firm among other ethical problems. Kerik took over an apartment donated for recovery efforts after September 11th and used it as a private rendezvous with his girl friends. In 2oo6 Kerik pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors and was fined $221,000. Giuliani often wows right wing audiences with his mantra of national security and free market capitalism. As a lobbyist he knows about the latter. He took money from everybody: Robert Murdoch, Hugo Chavez, Bechtel, Chevron/Texaco, Saudi Arabia and Seisint, a security firm. Seisint is run by Hank Asher, a former cocaine smuggler. When a federal prosecutor Giuliani called drug dealers murderers. Two million dollars of Asher's money must have changed his opinion.
His heroic media profile amid the rubble of the Twin Towers has made him an "expert" on national security issues in popular opinion. However, Mayor Giuliani put the city's sophisticated terror response command center on the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade Center (WTC) after it had been attacked once. Large tanks of diesel fuel to power the center caught fire on 9/11 and is said to have caused the collapse of that building. He looked and sounded like a leader in the aftermath, but he also profited from the tragedy. The macho mayor with the bull horn reported $8 million in speaking fees in 2002. He received $200,000 for one engagement alone. Giuliani seized control of the cleanup effort and contracted out jobs to politically connected firms. The city's Department of Design and Construction emphasized speed, not the safety of cleanup workers or the public. Contractors were told they would be fired if the highest level of efficiency was not maintained. The city's health department took no responsibility for testing air quality or supervising clean up in private buildings. Only now, with the development of respiratory diseases apparently caused by breathing the toxic atmosphere at the WTC site, is the extent of atmospheric contamination being fully realized. "Ground Zero" was a toxic waste site on the level of Love Canal or Times Beach. The air
contained dioxin, benzene and asbestos among other toxins. At the Pentagon, OHSA required disaster workers to wear hazmat suits. Its estimated that by October respirators were being used at the WTC only 29% of the time. Nevertheless, "America's Mayor" told the public the air at the WTC site was safe to breath. Later, Giuliani sent a letter to Congress asking it to cap the city's liability for injured workers at $350 million. An attorney representing workers in a class action suit says that more people will die from clean up related diseases than died in the attack itself. You just got to admire a guy who can ask workers to risk their lives in a disaster site and still put on a party dress. He makes George W. Bushwack look sick.Weekend Update: Former EPA Administrator Christie Whitman says she urged Giuliani to make WTC rescue and recovery workers wear respirators but was rebuffed by the take charge Mayor. Whitman made the allegation in an interview with WNBC prior to her scheduled appearance before an investigating congressional committee on Monday. Documents from the lawsuit against the city show that New York had a plan for worker saftey but never enforced federal regulations. Workers who refused to wear respirators were banned from working at the Pentagon disaster site. Ms. Whitman also said that she was "tired of having to be defensive" about her role in the aftermath.