Following a May 29 profile of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, in which he described Giuliani as a “commanding daddy of a [presidential] candidate,” New York Times reporter Michael Powell produced a front-page, 2,700-word article published September 21, headlined "In 9/11 Chaos, Giuliani Forged a Lasting Image." In that article, Powell noted that Giuliani “has made this day the centerpiece of his presidential campaign, aware that millions of Americans hold that heroic view in their collective mind's eye” and quoted former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-NE), a member of the 9-11 Commission, saying that “Giuliani was brave and reassuring, and you can't subtract that from his résumé.” But while Powell cited Kerrey's praise of one aspect of Giuliani's performance in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, Powell did not note, as Media Matters for America has, that the co-chairmen of the bipartisan 9-11 Commission have written that their review of Giuliani's overall record with respect to the 9-11 attacks constituted a “low point” for the commission.

The co-chairmen -- former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean (R) and former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-IN) wrote in their book Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission (Random House, 2006): “The questioning of Giuliani was ... 'a low point' in the commission's examination of witnesses during public hearings,” according to the Associated Press. The AP added that Kean and Hamilton wrote: “We did not ask tough questions, nor did we get all of the information we needed to put on the public record. ... It proved difficult, if not impossible, to raise hard questions about 9/11 in New York without it being perceived as criticism of the individual police and firefighters or of Mayor Giuliani.”

The Times did quote Kerrey criticizing the lack of planning under Giuliani to address issues that “officials had known about since the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.” According to Kerrey, “The preparation for another attack on the World Trade Center was almost zero.”

From the September 21 New York Times:

Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic governor and senator, a Vietnam veteran and a member of the commission that studied the 9/11 attacks, harbors no doubt about what he witnessed that day.

“Trust me, the range of possibilities for leaders is quite extreme: Some panic, some get paralyzed,” Mr. Kerrey said. “Giuliani was brave and reassuring, and you can't subtract that from his résumé.”

Nor, Mr. Kerrey added, did the mayor short the importance of grief. “Giuliani did what the president didn't do,” he said. “He went to all those funerals. And that grieving got us back to normal.”

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Many other things went wrong with the emergency response. Police and fire radios operated on different frequencies, a problem administration officials had known about since the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. The Police and Fire Departments established separate command posts. When police helicopters noticed that the north tower showed signs of buckling, they notified police commanders, who ordered an evacuation. But evidence strongly suggests that many firefighters never heard these orders from the police, or from their own commanders.

Mr. Giuliani defended establishing separate command posts. But it is modern practice to establish a unified

command. The 9/11 Commission left open the possibility that these problems could have had a “catastrophic effect” that day.

“The preparation for another attack on the World Trade Center was almost zero,” said Mr. Kerrey, the 9/11 commissioner.

That said, the mayor's harshest critics concede that by the morning of Sept. 11, the die had been cast. No leader could hope to impose order on fractious departments and remedy radio incompatibility after airliners had hit two of the tallest office buildings in America.