Swift Boat, the sequel?
Posted: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 9:17 AM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under:
Republicans
If there was one lesson of 2004, NBC’s Doug Adams says, it was to respond to attacks quickly and directly. In the summer of 2004, John Kerry let a slowly building media campaign against his Vietnam War experience explode into a debacle. From that campaign came a new phrase to the political lexicon -- swift boating.
Well, Rudy Giuliani may have his own "Swift Boaters" now. NBC News was given an exclusive look at a 13-minute video prepared by the International Association of Firefighters, the union for professional firefighters. The video is essentially a long attack ad against Giuliani, and it’s supplemented by a comprehensive Web site entitled, "Rudy Giuliani: Urban Legend." Both the video and the Web site will be unveiled today at 5:00 pm ET. Simultaneously, the video is being uplinked to YouTube and other internet sites.
Adams notes that many firefighters are incensed by Giuliani's use of 9/11 in the campaign, and they are determined to pierce the "myth of Giuliani." They are offended that Giuliani is using the tragedy to raise money and create the backdrop for his presidential campaign, and they claim that he is distorting the truth in order to do it. The video uses testimonials from a half dozen firefighters and relatives of firefighters who died in the World Trade Center attack, and it makes three main arguments against Giuliani:
-- RADIOS: The first is that the radio system the NYFD used during 9/11 was defective, and as a result firefighters in the towers could not hear two separate evacuation orders. As a result, 121 firefighters perished when the North Tower fell. But not one police officer died, because they had a working radio system and heard the urgent calls to leave the tower. The video claims that Giuliani and other New York officials knew for many years that the firefighter radio system did not work, and that they had the same problems during the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
-- GOLD: The firefighters second argument is that Giuliani drastically scaled back search and recovery efforts at Ground Zero on Nov. 1, 2001 to make way for cleanup crews. The remains of dozens of firefighters killed in the attack had still not been found. The reason for the "scoop and dump" operation, as the firefighters call it? Gold. The same day he cut back the search teams, Giuliani also announced that more than $230 million worth of gold and silver bars had been recovered from vaults under the tower. Firefighters claim the search was always more about gold than it was about bodies.
-- COMMAND BUNKER: The final argument against Giuliani is perhaps the most effective. They say that because of business reasons, Giuliani made the decision to house the New York Command Center bunker at 7 World Trade Center building. The command center bunker was never used during that fateful day, and at 5:00 pm on the evening of 9/11, the 7 WTC tower fell. The firefighters question why -- of all places -- would the mayor put the Command and Control Center bunker for emergency operations in the very building complex that was a KNOWN terrorist target (given the 1993 bombing of the WTC)? Click here for more from Adams.
The Giuliani campaign forwarded First Read this statement from Lee Ielpi, a retired New York City firefighter: “It’s unfortunate but not surprising that union bosses have decided to take the low road in a move clearly out of step with their membership. In 2008, I expect these same union bosses to endorse Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or John Edwards, so today’s comments are just a first step in that process. Fortunately, firefighters know the difference between politics and leadership."
