Grand Illusion
The Untold Story of
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Myths of a 9/11 hero, debunked
After the terrorist attacks, Mayor Giuliani was the man. Now his leadership comes under fire in `Grand Illusion.'
BOOK REVIEW
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday August 24, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 51 words Type of Material: Correction
Giuliani and Sept. 11: A review in Tuesday's Calendar section of the book "Grand Illusion" said one of the sources in the book, New York's current police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, had been dismissed by Giuliani when he became mayor in 1993. Giuliani was mayor-elect in 1993 when he named Kelly's replacement.
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Rudy Giuliani and 9/11
Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins
HarperCollins: 390 pp., $25.95
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FEW reporters who covered New York City government during Rudolph W. Giuliani's reign would dispute that the mayor saw himself as a powerful leader destined for greatness. But many were shocked when much of the country began to agree.
Giuliani was a lame duck when 2000 drew to a close, a mayor whose political stature was in a tailspin and whose private life was being rocked by illness and scandal. A local tabloid had revealed Giuliani's long-term affair with a pharmaceutical sales manager, which led to an equally public call for divorce from his apoplectic wife. Meanwhile, prostate cancer had forced him from a tepid U.S. Senate campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton.
To Giuliani's political enemies, this delicious farrago had been a long time coming. They relished the comeuppance of a man whose self-assured rhetoric often came off as mean-spirited bullying and who most often reacted angrily to criticism when he wasn't being dismissive in the extreme. Many New Yorkers thought Giuliani would have had trouble being elected dogcatcher. Talk of a run for president of the United States would have been rich indeed. But as Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins note in "Grand Illusion," their superb dissection of the reality behind the Giuliani myth-making after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks: "What a difference a day made."
When Islamic fundamentalists crashed two passenger jets into the World Trade Center on that crisp clear morning, causing New York's signature towers to implode, they not only killed more than 2,700 Americans, they shook the faith of those left living. Solace was in short supply.
The only powerful force at work appeared to be Osama bin Laden, a terrorist mastermind of frightening proportion. America needed a hero, someone to reassure them that everything would be all right. But "the disaster had been so complete that there were remarkably few candidates for the role," Barrett and Collins explain, adding that President Bush's performance "was hardly the stuff of legend." Into this breach stepped the shattered city's mayor. When Giuliani walked before the cameras that day, stern-faced, calm and "covered in soot, he embodied the resolve of the nation."
