In Sept. 11 chaos, Giuliani forged lasting image

A controlling hand
Mr. Giuliani defended establishing separate command posts. But it is modern practice to establish a unified command. The 9/11 Commission left open the possibility that these problems could have had a “catastrophic effect” that day.

“The preparation for another attack on the World Trade Center was almost zero,” said Mr. Kerrey, the 9/11 commissioner.

That said, the mayor’s harshest critics concede that by the morning of Sept. 11, the die had been cast. No leader could hope to impose order on fractious departments and remedy radio incompatibility after airliners had hit two of the tallest office buildings in America.

“Think about it: By 10:28 a.m., an hour and change, two buildings were down,” said Mr. Dunne, the former commissioner, who is an admirer of Mr. Giuliani. “Who thought those towers would ever fall? We were moving 180 miles per hour.”

Dr. Michael Cohen rode across the East River to advise a mayor he had never met and did not care for politically. It was Sept. 12, and the stench of death lingered in the autumnal air.

The schools chancellor had suggested that Dr. Cohen, a psychologist who works with the schools, might advise the mayor at the Police Academy.

Mr. Giuliani, who had slept two hours the night before, shook hands and sat down. For half an hour the mayor and this psychologist talked the A B C’s of leadership for a city in shock. Speak with an authoritative voice and never promise more safety than you can deliver, Dr. Cohen advised.

Voice your anger, but direct it at the real enemy.

“Honesty becomes a gigantic issue,” Dr. Cohen recalled telling the mayor. “You say, ‘We’re safe’ — well, how do we know that? Make clear the steps to safety.”

Mr. Giuliani asked questions, and acted. “I was blown away by his performance,” Dr. Cohen said.

Wrestling with timing
In the weeks after the attacks, the mayor wrestled with challenges: How fast to push the recovery; when to move from ‘rescue’ to ‘recovery’; how to address grieving families.

One day Mr. Giuliani was agitated. He had to talk with the widows of uniformed workers about the handling of the remains of their loved ones.

Dr. Cohen spoke of recognizing their anger, but the mayor cut him off. He got it. As the widows filed in, the mayor walked over and said: “I understand why you are so angry; I share that.”

On funerals, Mr. Giuliani needed no counsel. He sometimes attended five funerals a day. None of the dead went to their graves unattended by a top official, and always the mayor finished by asking mourners to give the departed a standing ovation.

Mr. Giuliani ruled with a controlling hand. In troubled times, he wrote, people need to see a leader “who is stronger than they are, but human.”

“I saw firsthand his extraordinary competence and calm,” recalled Mark Green, the city’s public advocate and a frequent foe. “The mayor asked questions, ordered it in his mind and spoke in a way that conveyed strength and confidence.”

There was garbage pickup on Sept. 12. City payroll checks went out on Sept. 13. On the sixth day, the stock exchange opened. Security was omnipresent.

But control came with a quid pro quo. Mr. Giuliani demanded that the United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which helped enforce respirator use at the Pentagon cleanup, serve only in an advisory capacity. Mr. Giuliani rarely wore a mask at ground zero. And his officials, while aware of the health hazards, rarely forced cleanup workers to wear masks or respirators.

Christie Whitman, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency at the time, has said that city officials “didn’t want this image of a city falling apart.”

The burden of 9/11 was also deeply personal for Mr. Giuliani. The mayor lost close friends. He identified bodies at the morgue, not least Terry Hatton, a fire captain married to a mayoral secretary, Beth Petrone.

Some saw a man wounded. The mayor suffered shooting tension pains in his back and shoulders. “I never counseled him, but I became aware that he suffered unbelievable personal losses,” Dr. Cohen said.

Mr. Giuliani’s anger, too, burned deep. He asked President Bush to let him execute Osama bin Laden, he wrote in his book. On his last day in office, he walked ground zero and recognized a familiar fury.

“I felt tremendous anger,” he wrote, “as raw and intense as when I first saw the smoldering pile.”

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