Giuliani accused of running a closed City Hall

EPA	In his own words Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani touches upon the primary themes of his presidential campaign.
	Cartoons: Giuliani MSNBC.com's editorial cartoonists weigh in on Rudy Giuliani's candidacy.
AFP/Getty Images	Slide show: Slice of the Big Apple Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s life has shined in the limelight of New York City.

Whereabouts often unclear
Giuliani depicted himself as a round-the-clock mayor, but his whereabouts were often fiercely shielded by his staff, particularly in the later years of his mayoralty, when he was cheating on his wife with Nathan, using decoy vehicles and surrounding himself with a Secret Service-esque security team that traveled in caravans of SUVs.

His personal life became a public riddle. In mid-2001, Giuliani fled the mayor's residence and began bunking with friends, a gay couple — an arrangement eventually disclosed by the Daily News.

In May 2001, in the midst of the mayor's divorce proceedings, one of Giuliani's top lawyers seized from a city library a document with blueprints to Gracie Mansion and blocked access to another copy. At the time, the mayor and his wife were arguing in court over whether Nathan should be barred from the official residence. Giuliani's office said the blueprints could pose a danger in the wrong hands, but the Police Department later ruled that the document was no security threat and it was placed back in public circulation.

Story continues below ↓

In the name of heightened security, Giuliani all but cut off public access to the steps of City Hall, long a civic soapbox. New security cameras scanned anyone entering or leaving the building and kept watch on the grounds. Rules were eased somewhat after a judge found that the city had unfairly restricted access.

When Village Voice reporter Tom Robbins sought expense records for a city housing agency headed by the son of one of Giuliani's closest political advisers, he was told they had been lost. Finally released to the Voice more than a year later, after Giuliani left office, the documents led to an investigation that ended with the guilty plea of Russell Harding, who embezzled more than $400,000 from the city to finance a personal spending spree and download child pornography onto his computer.

AIDS demonstrators were forced to hold a City Hall protest in a steel pen, as police sharpshooters patrolled the roof, an NYPD helicopter thumped overhead, and dozens of police kept watch on foot and motorcycles. Giuliani called the extraordinary security justified.

Break from predecessors
Giuliani's spiriting away of his mayoral records was particularly grating to many.

The traditional home of mayoral records dating to the mid-19th century is New York's municipal archives, a public storehouse where documents are sorted and indexed for the benefit of posterity.

But in a break from predecessors, and some argue the law, Giuliani, in his final days in office, shipped more than 2,000 boxes of correspondence, appointment books, audiotapes, e-mails, telephone logs, briefing memos, private schedules and videotapes and photos to a storage facility in Queens.

Message board
What do you think of Giuliani's candidacy?
The materials were placed in the custody of a private, nonprofit group allied with Giuliani, under an agreement between the city and the Rudolph W. Giuliani Center for Urban Affairs, which, at the time, had no board and no permanent site.

After the arrangement became public, Giuliani promised that once the records were placed in the hands of a private archivist, they would be "more accessible rather than less." In fact, some records from prior mayors remain uncataloged in boxes, in large part because no other mayor has financed a private effort to catalog the materials.

But his assurances did little to ease the anxiety of historians and open-government advocates who wondered if his goal was to reshape — rather than protect — history.

Or worse, erase it — especially with a run for the presidency looming.

The records "were the property of the city. They were not his to take," said Robert Freeman, one of the most widely respected advocates for open government in the country, who heads New York State's Committee on Open Government.

Critics say questions loom
Over time, the records were microfilmed and returned to the city archives. Giuliani aides have bristled at suggestions that documents were withheld, scrubbed of embarrassing details or destroyed.

But "there will always be questions," Freeman added.

The administration of Giuliani's successor, Michael Bloomberg, is confident the records were returned. City archivists echo that assessment but, when questioned, acknowledge the situation is less than definitive.

When asked if everything that left City Hall with the mayor had been returned, archives director Leonora Gidlund said, "That's not a question I can answer. I wasn't physically there."

In 2003, New York City enacted a law forbidding sitting mayors from hiring private firms to archive their papers.

< Prev | 1 | 2

Discuss Story On Newsvine
Rate Story:
View popularLowHigh
Email
Instant Message
Print