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Sept. 15, 2021 - Rudy Giuliani
55:09
The Mayor's Team Who Escaped Death and Kept the City Going During 9/11 | Ep. 170
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This is Rudy Giuliani, and I'm back with Rudy's Common Sense, another episode, and we're with another hero of September 11.
This is Joe Dunn.
Joe, at the time of September 11, was the deputy police commissioner, but Joe had a very distinguished career in the police department.
So on September 11th, when he was taking the actions he was taking, he was backed by years and years of experience and success, like some of the others that you've heard from, like Joe Esposito.
And that's one of the ways the city got through that maybe people don't focus on.
So it's a great pleasure to have Joe here.
And I'm going to have Joe describe a little bit of how you became a police officer, quickly, your career, and then we'll get to September 11th.
I became a police officer in October of 1969 at the urging of my dad who wanted me to get a job.
How old were you then, Joe?
21.
Oh, you were big.
Yes, I had just graduated from college and I was kind of enjoying life and having a good time.
Dad wanted you to work.
Dad wanted to put an end to that.
So I had taken the police test in January of that year and they called me in October and I went in and I was Went through the police academy.
And the year was?
1969, October 24th, 69.
So Lindsay was the mayor?
Yes, he was.
Yes, yes, yes.
I went to the 75th precinct upon my completion of my police academy.
Tell us where that is.
East New York, Brooklyn.
Toughest precinct in the city.
You have to know, you have to know that Joe eventually, when we go forward, turned around Brooklyn North.
Yes.
With his unbelievable command of that, that, that, that borough command.
But go ahead.
Thank you.
So you started off there.
I started off in the 75.
I worked there for about.
That covers what?
Eastern New York, Brooklyn, which is, which is on the Brooklyn-Queens border.
So it's one of the most dangerous, one of the most difficult parts of New York City.
Yes, it always, it always led city.
Like really right up on the top, murder, rape, everything.
All of the major crimes.
And drugs.
They were right there.
And drugs, of course.
Well, it was all fueled by drugs at the end of the day.
So, I worked there, then I went into the narcotics division after about five years in the 7-5.
I went to narcotics, served there for five years as a promoted sergeant.
Worked in the 2-8 in Harlem for two years.
Sometime in the 104, I got promoted to lieutenant and then to captain.
No, no, no.
You took exams.
Oh yeah, yes.
You took exams to become a sergeant?
Yes.
So I worked my way up through the ranks, through the competitive exam system.
When I became a captain, I was assigned as the executive officer in the 8-1 precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, again back in Brooklyn North.
Two years after arriving in the 8-1, I was made the commanding officer of the precinct.
A short time later, I was promoted to deputy inspector and transferred to the 7-5, where I started my career.
Tell me about September 11 now.
So, normal day, you wake up... I get up a little bit early because there's a primary And I wanted to vote before I went into the office, because you never know what happens when you get to work.
And I wanted to make sure that I cast my ballot.
I think it was important.
So I went over to my local voting place.
I was still in a cast.
I was on crutches.
Yeah, so I voted, got in the van, and we were on our way to Manhattan to my office at 1 Police Plaza.
I had a meeting at around 9 o'clock.
I was talking to George Grosso, the Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters, when Dennis, my driver, in front says, hey boss, I'm hearing something on the radio about a plane crashed into the World Trade Center.
I said, what else do they have?
And just at that time we're going into the tunnel.
Midtown Tunnel.
Midtown Tunnel.
There's no communication.
So we get out on the other side and I said, what's going on Dennis?
He said, it sounds like a plane crashed into the South Tower of the North Tower of the Trade Center.
I said, a big plane?
A little plane?
Piper Cup?
What do you know?
He said, they're telling me it's a big plane.
My mind told me that it was a terrorist attack.
I'm not a genius or anything, I just thought it was.
Because as you know, there was so much conversation around a terrorist attack.
John O'Neill, who was the director over at the FBI, and a man that you knew very well, who died on 9-11.
He kept telling me, I hear the jungle drum beats he used to tell me.
I stop the jungle shit, John.
Can you tell me what's going on?
No, I can't.
Okay.
But there's a lot of noise.
And one of my close friends and former assistant was a director of the FBI, Louis Freeh.
And he's the one who got me to close down, remember?
We closed down the courthouse, whole area around it.
We increased the security around police headquarters and we closed off City Hall.
And that was because we had that trial going on.
And the FBI warned me, and they explained it was al-Qaeda, bin Laden, they're doing a lot of attacks overseas, they may come here.
So we got to do this.
I didn't want to do it, because you always get criticized for closing it down.
But I did it.
And so I can't say we weren't expecting something, but certainly nothing like that.
Oh, who could have imagined that?
So, when I got out to the other side, I said to Dennis, get me down there, you know, let's get down there.
So, he went down 2nd Avenue, we went down with the siren blasting and so forth, and we worked our way down, and we came to Vesey Street, And when I got to Vesey Street, fire equipment was all over the place.
I tried to get into Building 7 for the Emergency Management Office.
That was blocked to me.
I told Dennis, make a left, because I saw a command vehicle at Church and Vesey.
A PD command vehicle.
So I said, let me get over there.
So I said, I stopped the car, I got out, I put on a jacket.
As I'm putting on the jacket, I hear this tremendous roar and an explosion.
And my mind told me that it was a secondary explosion in the North Tower.
That's what I thought it was.
Debris started falling down, so we ran to the building 5, which was right on the corner there, for protection, and stayed there until the debris stopped falling.
A couple of pieces hit the vehicle that I was in, and I saw some burning, what looked like airline parts to me, on the ground right there on Vesey Street.
We stayed in the building for a while, holding people back from getting out, because there was debris falling.
So now, for sure, terrorist attack?
Oh, no doubt.
Because now I'm hearing on the radio, they just hit the South Tower.
I said, holy shit, you know, what's happening here?
So I saw Joe Esposito on the corner of Church and Vesey, near that command vehicle.
So I went over to Joe, and we quickly began to talk about, what are you doing, Joe?
Joe, as you mentioned before, is the Chief of Department.
He's in charge of all operational commands in the agency.
And I wanted to help him, you know, help him think, think this through.
But he's, he's, he's right up on his stuff.
Joe, Joe knew his stuff.
He's had as much experience as I had, uh, in, in these matters.
And, uh, he was, he was, he was on, you know, we've got the task force coming here.
We've got, you know, he's telling me what he's doing.
Uh, you know, we're, we're, we're beginning to lock down the city.
We're doing all kinds of things, you know, all right.
What, what, you know, hold back on some of the emergency service.
They may not be through with us.
I'm thinking, I said, Joe, this may be just the beginning.
If they can put two airlines into two buildings...
The two buildings they aimed for, they were capable of doing anything, as far as I was concerned.
So, while I'm there with Joe, I'm looking up at the building, and I'm seeing debris fall to the ground, and I'm thinking, and I'm seeing this, no, no, that's not debris, those are people.
And I was affixed to it for, I don't know, it was probably just moments, but it felt like an eternity.
And I watched these people just, You know, it was raining people down onto the ground.
How many did you see?
I had to see a half a dozen people, maybe more.
I didn't want to look anymore.
I saw one when I was walking toward Pete Gansey at the fire department command post.
It's the thing that really triggered me that this is much worse than ever before.
I actually watched this man, and like you, it felt like it was an eternity, but it was probably 10 seconds.
And I watched this man, he was making his decision.
I mean, he was way up there, but I could see him on the windows.
And I was starting to think, don't jump, you're gonna kill somebody.
And he jumped.
He didn't.
I saw him come down.
And then after that, I can't even count the number.
I stopped looking.
I said, you know, I can't focus on that.
I've got a job to do.
I just said to myself, forget that.
Yeah, exactly.
It gave you a different sense of what this was about.
How bad it was.
Oh yeah.
And I thought to myself, you know, I wonder if I'm going to survive today.
And I said a little silent prayer, you know.
I said, you know, please don't make me make a decision that gets somebody killed today unnecessarily, you know.
And it's at that time we hear from Bernie Kerrick, who's with you, and he's asking for us to meet him.
And that's when I met you inside of Barclay Street.
And you, yes indeed, I saw you on the phone to the White House.
Time to take a short break.
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Thank you for returning.
As you recall, we locked down the city.
We closed the bridges and the tunnels and the access routes to the city.
We kept the roads clear so the emergency equipment could arrive expeditiously and safely into the city, and we did that.
And we began to strategize about how are we going to meet any additional threats that might come our way.
But at some point in time you finished your conversation and you got up and you said that you needed to address the press so that they could get the word out to the public and that you will keep them calm.
You know, I wasn't thinking of a public address at the time, but it's brilliant.
That's your job.
You're the mayor and you were strategizing the right way.
You had to reassure the public to, you know, we're here.
We're trying to get our arms around this.
We're going to get through this.
You'll be okay.
And I think that was really Something that you really wanted to do and it made so much sense to me when you said that that had to be done.
But as we were leaving Barclay Street, as I know you recall, someone yells, get down!
We hear a huge rumble and roar and the building comes down.
You know, the South Tower comes down.
Again, I didn't know when somebody said, the building's down, and I'm imagining that the top half of the building may have fallen.
That's what I thought.
Actually, the guy I heard was Espo, and he yelled, the tower came down.
Okay.
For hours I thought he meant by tower, the top.
Yeah.
But I also couldn't understand how it did that much damage, because almost immediately the streets were filled with black, like within a minute.
When we finally worked our way out, as you recall, we were kind of trapped in the building.
We were trapped in the building, worried about getting out.
When we finally got to see the street, it looked worse.
It was a gray shroud that was over the city.
That clear, perfect day that we started out at was now gone.
It was a dusty, gray city.
Almost a couple of inches of Soot was on the ground, it was flying through the air, papers all over the place, people were wandering around like zombies in shock, and it was hell on earth when we got out there.
You decided to go north up to City Hall with the press and there are some iconic photos of you and the team heading north on Church Avenue.
I went back south to Church and Vesey just to check on my people as best I could.
I wasn't going to be any help to you or the commissioner at that point.
I went down to Church and Vesey and I saw some cops there, and some of the images there were locked in my head, you know?
I saw one young police officer, you know, she was just covered head-to-toe in debris, and I had seen her earlier in Building 5, and she never abandoned her post, you know?
I think, I said, are you okay?
And she says, I'm alright.
She was kind of in shock, I knew it.
But I'm saying, you know, she must have run for cover and got cover, but now she's back.
And I said, listen, you need to leave.
Go.
Go.
Are you OK?
She said, I'm OK.
I don't know her name.
I know she was a young police officer.
There were several others there with her as well.
I said, look, let's evacuate.
Take some people with you.
There were very few people left down there.
Right.
Although we did see some people so confused that they were walking south on Church Street back into the rubble.
We had to turn them around.
So I guess we did that for 10 minutes ago.
So my guy said to me, listen boss, do you hear that?
That's the North Tower.
It's creaking.
It's coming down, just like the South Tower.
And I said, well, let's just make sure we've done all we can here.
Yeah, I don't see anybody else, boss.
Let's go.
So they commandeered a bomb squad vehicle, which was pretty big.
And they told me, look, get in.
So the tower coming down now is closer to you than the other tower.
Yes.
The north tower.
Yes.
So you're a block and a half closer than the south tower.
100 yards, probably.
Maybe closer.
Maybe closer to the building.
I get in the vehicle and no sooner that we got in the vehicle that it came down.
You could hear it.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Remember that sound?
And were you moving at the time?
Yes, we were in the vehicle moving very slowly because you couldn't see.
We were moving very slowly up Church Street.
But then we hear that sound it made when it was going down.
Some crazy extremists say those were explosions.
That was nonsense.
It was the building falling in on itself.
And it went boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, all the way down.
It was eerie.
You heard it, but you didn't see it?
Didn't see it.
No, we didn't see it.
I heard it, but I knew it was coming down.
But now the black smoke is upon us.
No more gray smoke.
It's just this black.
Dark as night stuff coming down.
And I was fortunate enough to be in the vehicle.
You know, it consumed us, but we were able to get out.
Do you remember what street you were on?
I don't remember.
We were maybe two blocks north on Church Street.
Oh, on Church Street.
On Church.
Going north on Church.
Time to take a short break.
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It's time to cancel, cancel culture.
Thank you for returning.
When we finally got out of that area, I returned to police headquarters and went immediately to the command and control center on the eighth floor.
It was fully manned.
There were people there from all agencies.
We were kind of a backup to the OEM, as you recall, Mr. Mayor.
And you were less than a mile from the site.
Oh, yeah.
These people stayed there.
Well, we had to make a decision when we went in there.
My folks said to me, look, do we need to evacuate the building?
And I spoke to Joe Esposito over the phone.
And I said, Joe, look.
What's going to be is going to be.
We're the only semblance of a command center that's still operational.
We need to stay here.
Well, we might be a target.
Well, we might not.
Let's just stay here.
So we ordered the evacuation of all non-essential personnel from the building.
I said, everybody get out.
That is non-essential.
And I let the various agencies decide who was critical and who wasn't.
And most of the people left the building.
We began to work there and I stayed there for, geez, almost the rest of the day because now all of the people who wanted to help us began calling in the state police, New Jersey State Police, Nassau County, Suffolk County, tremendous amount of help offered.
The New York State Police, Jim McMahon was their superintendent.
He was particularly helpful.
I spoke to him.
He was a friend.
And you knew him.
He was a big, tall, skinny guy, you know?
A good guy.
I said, look.
He said, what can I do?
I said, well, what do you got, you know?
That was my, they all said, what could you do?
My next question was, what do you got?
You know, and I say that to some army general they call.
He says, what can I do for you?
I said, what do you got, you know?
So Jim took his resources and we decided that we were going to lock down south of Canal Street.
And that's what we began to do.
And the state police were instrumental in that in terms of using their resources to lock that down for us.
And Nassau County offered to help.
I think they went up to the United Nations.
So we were trying to coordinate the assistance that was coming in.
And you were bringing back cops into every precinct, right?
Oh yeah.
Basically had the whole department Yeah, we had these in the can, Mr. Mayor.
These are our operational plans in the event of emergency.
So all leaves were canceled.
Everybody was called back in.
We went to 12-hour tours, which creates an additional manpower pool for all of the things that you practice for and we've done in the past.
Some personal things began to happen during the course of the day there.
I got a knock.
I was in the executive conference room with, Rudy Washington was there too, by the way, from your office.
Yes.
I get a knock on the door and one of the police officers outside says, listen, there's a John Vigiano that needs to talk to you.
And I looked out and I saw John Vigiano.
Now John Vigiano... Did you know John?
I did, because his son worked for me in the 7-5.
Okay, did you know him when he was a police officer?
No, no.
This was the father, who's the firefighter.
Oh, the firefighter!
The firefighter, the dad.
So John is outside.
So John had two sons.
Correct.
One was in ESU, and the other was in the fire department.
Exactly.
I go out to see him, and I said, what's up, John?
He says, Commission, he said, I can't get a hold of my boys.
He said, I spoke to Joe last and he was on his way over to the World Tramp, but I haven't heard a word from them since.
What can you tell me?
I said, John, our communications there are poor.
You know, we think we've lost some people.
We're trying to get our arms around that.
I know the fire department has lost a lot of people.
I'm being honest with you.
I said, but I can't tell you where anyone is right now.
And it hurt because I knew this man.
He was a good man.
His only two sons, one a cop, one a firefighter, and they never survived that day.
So it was things like that.
And then during the course of the afternoon, We were getting a lot of calls from the wives and family of the missing ESU guys.
It was an easier process for us because our numbers were smaller in terms of those who were missing, and we were able to get our arms around that almost immediately.
Right, you did a great job because the families, when we brought them into the family center, the families were very, very I'm not going to say happy, but the families are very satisfied with it and it caused a problem with the firefighter families because the fire department couldn't possibly do what you did.
At one point they thought they had 600 dead and it ended up 373.
I promised to give them a briefing twice a day.
I gave a morning briefing and I gave an evening briefing every day for weeks.
And they stuck with us, most of them.
They got a lot of value out of it.
How are they doing now?
You know every year, I exchange Christmas cards.
Coughlin's daughter is a cop.
Joe Vigiano's two boys are both cops.
Of course.
And Marines.
Grandpa made sure they went into the Corps.
So these guys are both Marines.
Poor John died, as you know.
He succumbed to cancer.
He was a great man, by the way.
He was a great man.
Yeah, he was a great guy.
He visited the injured soldiers for years and years.
Well, I think he understood that they were carrying on.
I remember talking to him about this at some point during the Twin Towers We raised all that money for the police officers and firefighters.
He helped us make decisions about the distribution of it.
And he was one of the first people that said to me, you know, those people that are going over to Afghanistan, they're carrying on the war that my son was first killed in.
Yeah.
My sons were first killed in.
He had that sense.
He had that sense right away.
He had a sense of history and he could understand the continuity and what was occurring.
How do you look at it now, 20 years later?
Well, you know...
How do you deal with it?
And then how do you look at it?
I think about it a ton.
I'm sure you think about it every day.
Those days go through my mind all the time.
I'm a little disappointed that we weren't able to accomplish more as a country with getting to the core problem and getting to the people we needed to get to.
I think that You know, I remember the days after 9-11.
There were about 30 homes on my block in Queens.
And every single house had a flag.
Every single house had an American flag in front of their house.
And they were there for months and months and months.
And 20 years later, mine is the only flag that lies out in front of the house.
People just learned to accept it.
We started calling it different things.
The tragic events of 9-11.
The loss of life.
No one calls it the slaughter of the innocent.
No one describes it for what it was.
It was a war.
They are attacked.
It was like Pearl Harbor.
It was an act of war against the United States.
And our guys You know, I always believed that our guys that were in the building, particularly, stood up so well that they restored the spirit.
Because the people attacking us wanted to... They didn't just want to kill us.
They wanted to destroy our spirit.
Absolutely.
They thought we were weak people.
We put our head down.
And instead, you get stories of this tremendous heroism, like the Vigianos or Stephen Stiller, who, you know, has tunneled the towers.
Yes.
And I think that inspired people.
There was a defiance.
Let's fight back.
Dammit, we're not going to let them do this to us.
That somehow seems to be gone.
And I think also the Taliban being in charge of Afghanistan again is like a blow right in the head.
It's confounding to me that we're at the point we're at now.
I can't tell you, Joe, how much I admire you.
Well, thanks, Mr. Mayor.
A lot of you were the right person in the right place at the right time.
Well, I hope so.
Thank God.
I hope so.
It would have been much worse.
Thank you, Mr. Maine.
Thank you.
Well, that was quite an interview with a really great man, and we'll be back.
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Welcome back to Rudy's Common Sense. And we are, as I said, interviewing people who were
involved directly in that terrible day, September 11, 2001, trying to get a sense of what happened
and then some perspective on where we are now.
Bye.
Now I have as a guest Anthony Carbonetti.
Anthony was the Mayor's Chief of Staff, my Chief of Staff on that day and for much of the time before.
Tony had worked at City Hall for seven and a half years, like many of the people that we had that day.
Thank goodness they were veterans, meaning they've been through, I think until September 11 happened, they thought they were through everything.
I certainly did.
And then when I saw the man jump out of the window, I said, well, you never threw everything.
There's always something.
Never be arrogant enough to think you handled everything.
This is way beyond us.
But Tony was an integral part of both that day and then the long, long recovery period that was equally difficult and stressful.
So let me welcome him and I'll have him tell you what happened that day and a few of his other observations.
Tony?
Mayor, as always, thank you for having me.
Well, thank you for being here.
You're healthy?
I'm healthy, good.
Just sent my oldest daughter off to college.
My youngest is playing volleyball.
Everything's good.
I can't complain.
So I remember when he was a baby, so we won't go into that.
I didn't have kids on September 11th, so... But, and thank God, I live through it, and I tell people... Oh, that's right.
Your children didn't see September 11th.
No.
You know, there are a lot of people, you don't think, there are a lot of people that never... September 11th is like Pearl Harbor.
What was to us.
And when they ask about it, I say I did nothing heroic.
Dumb luck, still alive, thank God.
A lot of brave people that we saw that day and that we knew very well.
Sacrificed everything to help others.
And then we did what we could afterwards.
They didn't even think about it.
No, no.
I was actually looking for you.
The night before it rained like hell.
Yes.
Do you remember that?
I remember that.
And you probably remember one of the things I remember.
Clemens was pitching for his 20th win that night, and the game got canceled.
Cats and dogs, it was raining.
Yes.
So, the next morning was primary day.
Primary day.
You were relieved of what you always love, the 8 o'clock meeting.
Yes, because you had a breakfast.
I had a breakfast, and we were going to meet at 4.
And the reason I put it at 4 was just in case we had any primary challenges.
Because we had the primaries going on.
Yep.
So set the stage for us.
Where were you when you woke up?
What kind of day was it?
What were you planning to do?
At my apartment, actually, it was early in the morning for me.
You know, you were already out and about.
And I had a driver, Eddie Callens.
And Eddie, I was actually in the shower, and Eddie would sit on my couch and watch the news, except he got a call from the police desk.
He starts banging on the door.
I jump out of the shower.
I grab the phone.
And the first call was some idiot in a twin-engine plane just rammed himself into the side of the Trade Center.
And this was from the police desk at City Hall?
At City Hall.
So you better get down here.
I said, where's the mayor?
He's at his breakfast.
We're trying to reach him.
Fine.
Get dressed quickly, jump in the car.
We're heading down the FDR Drive.
I'm dialing your cell, the detail cell.
I get nothing.
Eddie has the police radio on and you could hear they patched through the helicopter.
A helicopter that was surveilling?
The top of that was surveillance.
Correct.
That got onto the scene to the surveillance of the crash.
Correct.
And he starts describing a crash larger than the plane they thought hit it.
Larger than a twin engine plane.
He said this wasn't a twin engine plane, this was a larger plane.
And we get to about Chinatown and all of a sudden he says there's another one coming.
Did you hear that?
No, we heard from the helicopter.
Did you hear the noise?
You were close enough maybe where you could have heard it.
No, but we saw what we did.
We get off at Chinatown and you could see the towers.
We saw the back.
Yeah, yeah.
Well you saw what I saw.
I was on Canal Street when you were there.
So we got the back end of it.
We did lights and sirens.
We get to City Hall.
At that point you knew it wasn't an accident.
At that point every part of your body is tingling.
We get to City Hall.
You might remember we had a meeting scheduled that morning with Mrs. Robinson, Jackie Robinson's widow, and Pee Wee Reese's widow.
They were doing a statue of the two of them for the new Mets stadium.
The one in Coney Island.
Yeah, the one in Coney Island.
And that was scheduled for... So I run into City Hall and obviously there were some secretaries there and some staff members and Lenny Cherson who worked for me.
And Lenny is one of those guys that all of a sudden he shows up in full combat gear.
You don't know where it comes from but he's always ready.
And I told him, I said, shut the place down.
Don't let anyone in.
Lock the gates outside.
Everyone in here, including the staff, get them out.
We put everyone in your office, actually.
In the mayor's office.
In the mayor's office.
And that vestibule outside where Beth and some of the assistants sat.
And I said, round them up.
So this included the people that were in City Hall and the people that were there for the breakfast.
Correct.
Had they already started the breakfast?
No.
No, they were starting to gather though.
I see.
Okay.
And I said, no one comes into the facility anymore.
Get everyone somewhere safe.
I then found out afterwards that Lenny commandeered an MTA bus and had everyone driven uptown.
So he took all those people, got them on a bus, and got them out of the danger area.
Exactly.
An MTA bus and sent them all uptown.
Gary McCarty, Deputy Police Commissioner, happened to... he was also down there looking for... because we were all trying to find you.
Right.
So, before I left, I tried calling the White House.
I reached out to Andy Card.
They patched me through.
I did not know he was in Florida.
He says to me, I said, well, the mayor's going to want to speak to the president.
We don't know what's going on.
I said, what kind of support do we have?
He's going to have all kinds of questions.
He's definitely going to want to speak to the president.
Andy said, I can tell you we have 8 to 12 more planes that fit this description going cross country that are off radar now.
We're in the process of clearing all of the, grounding all the airplanes, but that's all I can tell you right now.
I said, well I'm going to find the mayor.
Ended that conversation.
Gary and I went running out of City Hall where we knew you would be somewhere down by the Twin Towers.
Right.
So now when you left, when you walked out of City Hall, what did it look like?
Was it still normal?
Did it have any debris on it or?
There was just, everyone was standing out in the street looking up.
There were things flying, but nothing had gotten towards City Hall yet.
Ultimately, the City Hall Park was covered like snow.
Sure.
And you know, it was shut down.
The police had locked it down.
So now you're at City Hall.
And where do you go?
Gary and I went running towards the Trade Center, figuring you'd definitely be down there somewhere.
We started in the, as you get closer, I mean it was, people were running away Obviously and thankfully clearing out as much as they could We ran into the South Tower and I'll never forget there were two Battalions or of firefighters Standing there awaiting orders.
Mm-hmm and as calm as calm could be You know just this is and then you started hearing the thuds and Afterwards, Gary...
You started hearing the...
The thuds.
Right.
With the bodies falling.
Right.
Outside.
Outside.
Could you see...
At that point, had you seen any?
So, afterwards, Gary actually said to me, several months later, we looked up at them,
and I don't remember it.
And he says, no, we stopped and we saw, and I don't remember that.
You stopped and you saw what?
We saw the bodies jumping and I think I just blacked it out.
From the outside?
From the outside, before we got into the building.
Because that's my most... Before we got into the building, Gary's like, it was one of the things when we were approaching, he says, and I think I just totally blacked it out.
When I arrived, I arrived at Barclay and Church, got out, Loda and Bernie briefed me, And we walked over to the fire department command post.
And on the way there, I saw a guy jump from the 100th floor.
And that's what convinced me, whew, this is way beyond anything we ever saw before.
And then after that, I must've seen another 10 people jump.
And I remember watching the guy at the top and saying, don't jump because you're gonna kill somebody.
And a few of them hit people on the ground.
So now you're inside the South Tower.
We cross and, you know, we tell everyone we're looking for you.
And the fire department said they're setting up a headquarters on West Street.
So we cut through the side through the North Tower.
Same thing.
You see the firefighters all doing their business.
We then hook up with you outside on West Street.
And I remember getting there, I think Bill Feehan, Chief Feehan had just gotten there as well.
We met up, I'll, that I'll never forget.
Right at, right at the, uh, basically the fire department command center, uh, command post, outdoor command post.
And, and Chief, uh, Bill Feehan was just starting to brief you, and I'll never forget just how calm he was.
Well, of course, he had been a, he was the 38 years? He was the number two guy in the fire, well the
number two civilian in the fire department because we have civilians, Tommy and Fionn were actually
civilians and Gansey was the chief He was at the desk.
Correct.
Brooklyn or?
No.
No, I'm sorry.
He was at the desk right under the, remember they had a desk and they had big plan on the desk.
The current fire commissioner was manning Brooklyn.
He was over on the other side, yeah.
Yes, yes.
So, Gansey was organizing the troops.
Right.
How they go in and Fiona just arrived to help him.
largely because Fian had even more experience than Gansey.
Gansey probably 35 years, Fian 40 years.
So we were in the hands of probably the best fire commanders in the country.
I mean, nobody has more experience than they do.
Right.
We had actually had an event at Gracie Mansion.
For Downey.
For Chief Downey.
Two months earlier or something?
Yes.
And Chief Downey, did you see him?
He was in the corner.
Yep.
He was in the corner.
The talent that was in that room.
And he had a bunch of firefighters around him.
He looked like a coach and he was And they all went off while we were there and never came back.
But Fian said, we are getting everyone out of the buildings from the plane crashes down.
I was like, that's what's happening right now.
And I had walked through the buildings.
I saw they're getting their orders.
They send the first team up to do the analysis of what they see.
And then they send more guys up to do the evacuation.
I mean, they were doing what they do.
And he was very calm.
Mayor, we're getting them out of the building so the crash is down.
Both Gansey and Vian said, we'll get everybody out below the fire.
Yes.
But you know what that said to me?
Everybody above the fire is dead.
But then he said, rescue, I think he, I think it was one and five.
And he pointed, one's in that tower, five's, and they're going to ascertain if we can get through.
So their job was to go up while everyone else was doing evacuations in the lower, was to go and see if they could get through the crashes.
Well to push it as far as possible.
Right.
Both buildings had a firewall.
One was a little, the first one to get hit was a little lower and the second one was a little higher if I recall correctly.
Correct.
They were slightly different which is why one came down first.
The question was, is there any way, is that a complete fire or can you get around it?
And the fact is that they could get a few people out from above.
When Gansey said it to me, I looked at it.
I had seen the man fall.
I asked him if we could put a helicopter up.
He said, absolutely not.
You asked again.
Can't do that.
And he said, we can get everybody below.
We'll try, but we'll get everybody below.
And then I looked at the people up there and I just had this quick feeling, my gosh, you're all going to die, or most of you are going to die.
I think Fionn, because you asked again about the helicopter, I think he said there's too much debris coming off the building and it's too hot at the top.
Yeah, you can't land.
And then it all kind of made sense, but those people, as you said, they hit that point where they're willing to jump rather than...
So, it was a terrible moment, but as we've all said, the bravery of those guys saved thousands of lives.
Yeah, well the calm way in which they did it is why we saved three, four thousand people that would have died.
The commission, four years later, concluded that it was the best rescue operation.
And they were private citizens, too, on floors that assisted them in clearing out floors when they would get there.
You know, they were private citizens that had been their fire commanders or whatever.
That we all know did heroic things and it was just a great, you know, as tragic as it was, it was a great moment for humanity.
So we left there, we went to the police department, knew... I then told you I'd spoken to Andy Card.
Right.
And you said you wanted to speak to the president.
Right.
And I said, you know, I told him that I had no idea they were up in the air in Florida.
Andy did not share any of that.
But you did tell me that there were A number of planes unaccounted for.
Correct.
And that we were getting help.
And that we were getting help.
They were grounding everything.
So I remember us trying to find, you had instructed the police department to bring their mobile command center in.
At that point there were so many fire trucks backed up.
They were a few blocks away.
Right.
And someone then commandeered a trading floor.
Yes, a Merrill Lynch.
For us, which was diagonally across the street.
Right.
So we all went running, landlines, you know, we all went running into there.
I dialed the White House and I got through to, I asked for Andy Card.
They didn't tell me he wasn't there.
I ended up getting a guy named Chris Hennick on the phone.
Right.
First time I'd ever spoken to Chris in my life and we've now become very dear friends 20 years later.
I knew Chris for quite some time.
You knew Chris from the Republican gubernatorial days.
Correct.
He was a deputy, he was Karl Rove's deputy in the White House and I believe he said they're evacuating the White House, I'm the last guy here and I was He was very, very succinct and very good and very calm, but the end result was, if you thought about it, it was pretty frightening.
I mean, I asked him, can I speak to the president?
He said they evacuated the president.
To me that meant, because I had worked in the Reagan administration, they got him up on the plane.
That means they fear an attack on the entire country, and they don't yet know where to put him.
Right.
They don't know if it's safe to bring him back to Washington, which actually was right, because there was a plane headed to Washington.
Maybe it was going to take out the White House.
We don't know.
They think the Capitol, but there's no definite proof of that.
So I said, my goodness, the president is in the air.
He said, we're going to evacuate the vice president.
He'll call you back right away.
Just be ready.
He'll call you back right away.
We got a call from him right away, I ran to a different room, about two over, pick up the phone, it's the White House secretary, Mayor Giuliani, Vice President Cheney, and before she hung up, the phone went out, the building started to shake, it was like an earthquake, everybody went under, and Joe Esposito yelled out, the tower came down.
Now I'm going to ask you a question.
When he said, you heard that right?
Yeah.
When he said the tower came down, what did you think came down?
The whole building or just the tower on top?
The top.
Yeah.
It didn't make sense.
That's what he thought too.
Even when we spent 20 or whatever it was minutes underground and came out 100 Church Street, If you remember there were cops coming in all bloodied and one of them was Tibor Kerekes.
Yeah he was all covered.
And he said the tower fell and I said no the top fell off and he corrected me and I thought he just in the in the fog of war just didn't see what was going on and we were wrong they were right.
Yeah.
It just made no sense.
We should have known it was the entire building because the effect was devastating.
Almost immediately, right outside the office we were in, it was all glass, it was totally black.
Black.
And things were going, it was like A tornado.
Things were going through the street.
We tried to get out one exit, if you remember, and when you opened the door, you couldn't see.
Couldn't see where you were going.
It was like murky water.
You couldn't see your hand.
Then we went downstairs.
We couldn't find a door that would go through the park.
What was that?
300 Park, right?
We ended up at 100 Church.
100 Church, right.
We started, I can't remember the street.
On West Street.
On Barclay.
We started on Barclay.
Yeah, Barclay and West.
Barclay and Church.
And we were here, and we went under the building, and we came out there.
Eventually.
We came out of the church.
We didn't find that until the custodians brought us to the right door.
Correct.
And by then, you couldn't see.
Remember, the church has the glass doors.
You couldn't see outside.
As people were coming in, the first time you saw them was when they opened that door.
Right.
Then we got outside, And we decided we had to get a new command post and we started debating, will it be the first precinct?
Will it be the police department?
And police department was out of power, so it couldn't be the police department.
Somebody even said we can go to the backup center in Brooklyn.
I said, nope, we're not going to Brooklyn.
And we decided on the police academy and asked Bernie to get it ready.
So he called up and got that ready.
Now we were on the street.
People were fleeing.
Yep.
We're going north.
Then all of a sudden John Huvane grabs me and starts running me.
I stop him.
I turn around.
I see a big cloud in the street.
Now, how did you experience that second plane coming down?
So, as we were heading north, I kept turning around.
Right.
Waiting for... Because at this point, I still didn't believe the entire tower was gone.
Right.
And I kept turning around and waiting for the dust to settle, looking for a stub.
You want to see what was left?
How much was left of the tower?
Yes, and that's where we were heading to when we ended up at the firehouse on Houston Street.
Remember how John Huvane got in?
Yeah, they broke the... He smashed the window.
If you remember, Eddie... All those cars belonged to firefighters.
They just dumped them and went running down.
That entire firehouse was at... They lost like eight or nine people.
Yeah.
But I kept turning around looking for the stub.
And as it started settling, I realized they were right.
Yeah, there was nothing there.
We got in, called the governor, Who was surprised that we were alive?
The governor was surprised.
That was a little eerie.
And we agreed to meet at the police academy, and I think we made the single most important decision then, and that was to run our governments together.
We decided we'd meet every day My people, Tony, his chief of staff, my deputies, his deputies, my commissioners, his commissioners.
Every day we'd sit at the same table so we didn't have to go through this New York to Albany, Albany to Washington, Washington back to Albany, and then Bush gave us FEMA.
But something you said earlier also was a great benefit to us, which is having seven and a half years on the job.
You know which agencies have which assets and bodies.
And it's not just personnel, it's equipment, it's technology.
And people came to those meetings, the first meeting definitely,
with here are the assets I have.
And if you remember, one of the first things you did was not only called all active police
on fire, but the corrections officers went on a double shift.
I don't think they're the prisoners.
The inmates got their hour of rec time that day, but the corrections guys stayed on and they came down to work the makeshift morgue.
It was just moving bodies around and everybody, you know, sat at the table.
They knew what you needed, which was what assets do you have.
The housing authority surprisingly had the most number of beams, the lights. Remember, they were able to come down
and light up ground zero at night because for some reason the housing authority has all these,
you know, but the commissioners walked in knowing that we needed to know what assets they
had.
Yeah, they knew where to get the generator to keep it lit for 24 hours a day from General
Electric.
But that came from... Years of knowledge.
Years of doing these mock drills, of having these morning meetings, of questioning, you know, why do you have this?
What do you do with, you know, and all of them working together.
And, you know, years afterwards when I would meet a chief of staff or a governor, I would say the greatest thing that happened to us was having this cohesive unit that had a dialogue beforehand.
Correct.
You did not keep commissioners away from each other.
They weren't fiefdoms.
Everyone understood it was one administration.
I thought it was remarkable how the state and the city worked together also.
Yeah.
Almost as if we were the same government.
Everyone bent over backwards to help.
That was the greatest time.
You saw all of New York City.
How many people stood on line to give blood at every hospital?
How many flags?
When Bush was driving up, people yelled and screamed at how much they loved him.
So now, Tony, let's go to today.
Would that happen today?
If, God forbid, the same thing happened, would the flags come out, would the patriotism emerge?
What bothers me about our politics today is, you know, I tell the story about the seven-year-old version of me.
I was the little Yankee fan from East Harlem.
And I wasn't just a Yankee fan, I hated the Red Sox.
Everything about Boston I hated, because the Yankees were my life.
Eleven years later I'm a freshman at Boston University.
I'm sitting at Fenway Park with a lifelong Red Sox fan having a beer and a laugh and baseball's bigger than... because you don't know any better.
And I think our politics today are the seven-year-old version of me.
It's not enough to like your team, you have to hate the other side.
And I think that's bad.
I think we've become a society that doesn't see the other side enough.
Well, you did a great job, Tony.
Thank you.
You did a wonderful job.
You were a great chief of staff in general, but you were a real hero during that period.
You just worked your backside off.
You never stopped.
You had prepared all of us for that day, not knowing you were preparing us for that day.
The fact that you and the people around you knew the city as well as you did.
If that was our fourth or fifth month in office, it would have been different.
I always admired Bush because he was a rookie and he handled it really, really well.
Uh, I also think that the, the, the criticism of him not being there.
First of all, he wasn't there because he's the president of the United States.
That's what we do.
No president would have been there.
Right.
And at a moment like that, the president cannot overrule the secret service.
He can't because the president, we can't lose We can't lose the president in the middle of a... That's their ultimate victory.
Imagine!
Imagine they killed our president, whoever he is!
That would have been their ultimate victory.
But, thank you.
Great job.
Thank you.
My love to the family.
Love you.
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