US: The former New York mayor, Mr Rudi Giuliani, testified yesterday that warnings of a possible terrorist attack on New York given to President Bush five weeks before September 11th were not passed on to him or New York City officials.
In a second day of hearings in downtown Manhattan, the commission investigating the attacks also heard Mayor Michael Bloomberg accuse Congress of "pork barrel politics at its worst" for cutting back on security funding to New York.
Warnings of an imminent terrorist attack were given to Mr Bush in an intelligence briefing dated August 6th, 2001, by the administration's then-counterterrorism chief, Mr Richard Clarke, and it mentioned New York or the World Trade Centre three times as possible targets, the commission was told.
"If that information had been given to us, or more warnings had been given in the summer of 2001, I can't honestly tell you we'd do anything differently," Mr Giuliani said. His testimony to the 10-member commission, sitting in a college room in lower Manhattan, was interrupted several times by hecklers who demanded that tougher questions be asked on how nearly 3,000 people died.
On Tuesday, commission members castigated top police and fire officials for inter-agency rivalry that compromised rescue attempts, but yesterday several heaped praise on Mr Giuliani, who was ultimately responsible for co-ordination of police and fire command.
Relatives shouted, "Ask some real questions," and "Put us on the panel."
When chairman Mr Thomas Kean told the hecklers, "You're simply wasting time at this point," a woman shouted back, "You're wasting time." "My son was murdered!" cried Ms Sally Regenhard, who lost her firefighter son in the attack.
A number of hecklers yelled, "Talk about the radios," a reference to the failure of fire department radios that could have warned firemen in the doomed towers to evacuate. Mr Giuliani admitted that they had been struggling with complicated new radios.
The commission heard that firemen in the command centre inside the north tower did not know the south tower had collapsed because police in helicopters overhead operated a different radio system.
It also emerged yesterday that basic flaws in the city's emergency 911 phone system possibly caused many deaths as the operators did not know to tell callers inside the towers not to go to the roof. An unknown number of people tried to go to the roof and perished, when they could have escaped down an open stairway. The roof doors were locked and helicopters could not land because of the flames.
Responding to the hecklers, Mr Giuliani commented, "Our enemy is not each other, but the terrorists who attacked us." Several relatives applauded when he stated, "The blame should be put on one source alone, the terrorists who killed our loved ones."
Mr Giuliani, currently out of political office but campaigning for Mr Bush, acknowledged that "terrible mistakes" were made on September 11th, but that if it were not for the bravery and quick thinking of city rescuers 8,000 or 9,000 more people might have died. "New York handles big things brilliantly," he said. "There was not a problem of leadership. Everyone sublimated their ego."
Graphically describing his own experiences that day, he said he looked up as he arrived at the burning towers, and as he saw a man throw himself off the 101st floor he realised, "We are in uncharted territory." For much of the morning New York Governor George Pataki thought he had been killed.
On Tuesday, commission member John Lehman said the failure of city agencies to communicate effectively was a scandal "not worthy of the Boy Scouts" but reportedly told relatives later he felt he had gone too far.