Former New York mayor Mr Rudolph Giuliani today passionately defended local firefighters and police after the rescue departments' response to September 11 received sharp criticism from the commission investigating the attacks.
Mr Giuliani's ardent testimony was at times interrupted by emotional hecklers, including one who shouted her son was murdered. He spoke after a commission report said rescue officials in New York and Washington are still not prepared to handle another disaster because coordination and communications flaws that hampered rescue efforts in the aftermath of the Al-Qaeda attacks.
"Catastrophic emergencies and attacks have acts of great heroism attached to them. They have acts of ingenious creativity attached to them and they have mistakes that happen," Mr Giuliani said. "When human beings are put under these conditions that's what happens."
"Blame should be directed at one source and one source alone - the terrorists who killed our loved ones."
The Commission said yesterday in the first of two days of hearings, that rivalries between the police and fire departments, equipment problems and weak coordination had hurt rescue efforts.
Mr Giuliani rebuffed the claim saying: "[Rescuers] carried out the mission under great emotion, under great stress flawlessly, and that's because they have a superb command structure and a structure in which they know how to deal with emergencies."
About 25,000 people escaped or were rescued from the 110-story twin towers before they collapsed after being hit by hijacked airplanes, but nearly 3,000 people, including 343 firefighters and 23 police, were killed.