NEW YORK, Aug. 23 (UPI) -- Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been depicted as a hero of Sept. 11, 2001, but a new book claims he ignored warnings and bungled the response.
"Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11," was written by Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice and Dan Collins of CBS.com, two of the city's leading investigative reporters, Newsday reported.
Barrett and Collins say Giuliani portrayed himself as a watchful hawk who fully prepared the city, but that he actually ignored the advice of experts. When police official tried to convince him to develop a citywide anti-terror plan in 1998, he told the authors, "Rudy glazed over."
Instead, Giuliani became involved in pet projects and a complicated personal life, the newspaper said.
The mayor gave police and firefighters radios that were incompatible through a vendor who was politically connected. And he ignored warnings not to locate the city's emergency command headquarters inside the World Trade Center.
Bernie Kerik -- who was police commissioner on Sept. 11 -- became Giuliani's personal bodyguard on that day.
"I don't know who was directing," current police Commissioner Ray Kelly
told Barrett and Collins. "I literally don't."
