Rudy Undone

AMNY's Ellis Henican on the book Grand Illusion:

It's the unexamined question of 9/11: What if Rudy Giuliani wasn't quite the hero everybody thought?

[...]

But what if Rudy's take-charge image was mostly a load of bravado and PR? What if the actual decisions he made - before, during and after the terror attacks - were directly responsible for the city's inability to deal effectively with crucial aspects of the crisis?

[...]

With dozens of exclusive and previously unreleased interviews, Barrett and Collins show how the ambitious ex-mayor has spent recent years revising his own truth of 9/11 - and profiting handsomely from it. Casting himself as a prescient terror hawk who wisely prepared his city for the inevitable, Giuliani in fact ignored repeated warnings from the experts, including his own commissioners and aides.

Instead of confronting the looming danger, they tell how he grew increasingly distracted by pet projects, political turf wars and an extraordinarily messy personal life.

Slowly, the little decisions added up.

I never really bought the Saint Rudy image that his admirers promoted, even though Giuliani deserved credit for attending the funerals of the cops and firemen who died on 9-11. This is the same man who supported and promoted the likes of the corrupt Bernard Kerik who almost became the head of the Department of Homeland Security, were it not for the media uncovering his shenanigans.

Update:

This just in from NYT:

A former deputy press secretary to Rudold W. Giuliani was found strangled in his Greenwich Village apartment Monday night, and investigators believe that he may have known his killer, the police said yesterday.

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