NYC Council Member Agrees To Push Investigation of Giuliani and the 9/11 Firemen Radio Debacle [VIDEO]

By Don Hazen, AlterNet. Posted November 1, 2007.

New York City Councilman Eric Gioia says he supports a call for an investigation of former Mayor Giuliani's failure to provide New York City firefighters with radios that could have saved lives on 9/11.

The facts in the case are collected in a recent short video documentary from Brave New Films (BNF) called The Real Rudy: Radios.

"I will do everything in my power to get answers, to get the truth," Councilman Gioia announced after receiving a BNF-launched petition with 20,000 names on it. "There needs to be accountability."

Giuliani did nothing to improve the New York City Fire Department's radio performance for seven years after the 1993 World Trade Center attack. The Giuliani administration then awarded Motorola with a no-bid contract for new radios that were not field tested, did not work properly and were immediately pulled from the field. As a consequence of the inability of the firefighters' antiquated radios to receive police broadcasts, firefighters in the North Tower never received an alert from an NYPD helicopter that the building was in danger of collapse, and remained in place while police officers evacuated. The building's collapse killed 121 firefighters.

Many firefighters in NYC and across the country are quite hostile to Giuliani's presidential bid, and accuse him of derelict behavior and unfair favoritism toward the police.

One FIRE battalion chief, Jim Riches, who lost his son Jim in the attack on the World Trade Center, is particularly angry about Giuliani. He has turned his mourning over the loss of his son into becoming a relentless opponent of Rudy Giuliani's campaign. With other families of 9/11 victims, Riches has vowed to torpedo Giuliani's prospects of winning the White House by attacking his greatest source of strength -- his reputation as a hero that day. "We're going to follow him around the country," said Riches. "We want all of America to know he is not the man he says he is."

The documentary and a video with Gioia's response can be viewed at http://therealrudy.org/radios. Gioia's response also appears in the video above.

Based on months of research and interviews, The Real Rudy: Radios includes testimonies from Wayne Barrett, senior editor of The Village Voice and author of "Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11;" Glenn Corbett, Fire Science Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice; FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches, who lost his son on 9/11; Retired FDNY Chief of Safety Al Santora, who also lost his son on 9/11; and several other experts and relatives of deceased firefighters. In 17 days, THE REAL RUDY: RADIOS has garnered 103,255 views, and reached YouTube's #1 most viewed News & Politics video the day after its release.

See more stories tagged with: 9/11, giuliani, rudy giuliani, firefighters, brave new films, radios, robert greenwald

Don Hazen is the executive editor of AlterNet.

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