New York Foreign Press Center Briefing
MR. GIULIANI: Good afternoon. I want to welcome all of you to New York City on what is obviously a memorial, whether we like to have a memorial or not, and an anniversary, whether we'd like to have this anniversary or we wouldn't. But the fact is that we're going to have it tomorrow and I'm very honored to be joined by the people I was joined by on September 11 and all the days after that in dealing with the worst attack in the history of our city and country and the immediate recovery from it: the former Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, the former Fire Commissioner Tom Von Essen and the head of Emergency Management, the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management Richard Scheirer. They were the three people I relied on the most, both on that day when the city was attacked, in a way I can't imagine ever really thought would happen, and then having to deal with it immediately and then to deal with all the days that came after that; the realization of the horrible number of people that we lost from New York, from our Fire Department, from our Police Department, from our rescue services, all the civilians we lost, people from over 80 countries in the world; and then the fear and the fright that we had about anthrax that occurred in October of last year, and then ultimately the plane crash that we underwent in November.
It was a very, very difficult testing period for America's largest city, and I believe the world's most famous city. New York has always been the crossroads of the world. Every single one of you that comes from different nations can find people that come from your country that live in New York. I bet you can find people who come from your village that live in New York, speak your language, speak your dialect. This is the world's most international city.
So when we were attacked, it was as if all of you were attacked. And the resiliency, the strength, the bravery of the response overwhelmed the attack itself. And that's the part I would like people to focus on tomorrow. I would like them to remember the people we lost. They were some of the bravest people that we ever had in the City of New York. They were people of rare courage, spontaneous courage. They had no ability to prepare for this; it just happened, and then they gave their lives to save other people. They saved over 25,000 lives. There has never been a greater rescue effort in the history of our country. There has never been a time in which more people were saved in a shorter period of time than on September 11.
And then in the days thereafter, the resiliency of the City of New York led to its legendary status. But I have to share a secret with you. The reason for our resiliency is all of you. It's the fact that we're not just one city; we're everybody's city, where people from all over the world come here, people from all over the country come here. They're all part of one experience. And the way in which people bonded with us and joined with us and supported us is the reason why we were able to deal with this and to be able to overcome it and to come out stronger than we were before.
So I want to thank each and every one of your countries, the people who expressed sympathy with us, the people who expressed support for us. And I'd like to close with one other thought. We should also remind ourselves tomorrow not only about the sacrifice of the people who protected others and the bravery that they showed, but we have to remind ourselves that we have to join together to end global terrorism. This isn't one of those ambiguous things. It isn't one of these things where there's 75 percent right on one side and 25 percent right on the other. There's nothing right about crashing an airplane or two or three or possibly four into buildings filled with innocent civilians. The only people who do that are evil people. Their cause is not just. What they stand for is horrible, and the reality is that decent people have to stand together to end global terrorism.
And if they ever need a reminder of it, then tomorrow should become the reminder of the fact that we should not become complacent about the fact that there are people who are willing to kill innocent civilians for some totally irrational cause that would take us back into the dark ages. We're a modern world, we're a modern nation; we stand for good and valuable things and we should be willing to fight for that. And the people who died on September 11, I think would want me to say that.
Thank you.
QUESTION: Andrew Visconti, Italy, Agenzia Giornali Localie. First of all, our condolences for your loss. A few days ago on NPR, a commentary ended with these words: It said, "We are a sadder but not necessarily a wiser nation." How do you feel about a comment like that?
MR. GIULIANI: Well, first of all, one of my relatives was named Visconte (ph) so it's a beautiful name. He was an uncle of mine, and I think he was from Naples. I'm pretty sure that particular uncle was from Naples. I have relatives from Florence, Montecatini, Avelino, Naples. Now I have relatives from all over Italy, but I'm not sure they're all relatives, actually. (Laughter.) And thank you very much for the people of Italy and the support they gave us.
I don't completely agree with that statement. I believe we are a much wiser country than we were before September 11. First of all, we understand the meaning of what it means to be a free country, which we share with many of you. People living in freedom have an incredible reserve of strength when they have to defend themselves. People all over the world have shown that. And when somebody wants to take your freedom away from you, you're going to fight for it. And that's what those people did on September 11 at the Pentagon, over the skies of Pennsylvania. Let's not forget them, the people who spontaneously brought that airplane down over the skies of Pennsylvania to a small town, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, a plane that was headed probably for the White House or the Capitol.
So I think we're stronger than we were before. I think we're more aware of the value of these principles of democracy and freedom that we inherited. And I think we're much more united as a country. So I travel all over the United States. I probably have been -- I don't want to say how many states -- since September 11, I've probably been in 20, 25 states, half the country at least, and I don't see any reduction in the unity that Americans feel about what they stand for, the justness of their cause and the fact that we can't allow this to happen again.
And I think we're much wiser about how to protect ourselves -- not completely. This is never perfection. Europe has had to deal with terrorism longer than America has. There's no perfect answer to it. We just keep trying to learn more, trying to do better, trying to provide more security, and then being brave.
QUESTION: My name is Eva Schweitzer, Germany, Frankfurter Rundschau. I work for Frankfurt Aurunchaz (ph). And Mr. Giuliani, what are your plans? There have been reports all the time that you would play a role in national politics, but so far --
MR. GIULIANI: What are my plans? It's been a very short time. I've been out of office less than a year. I don't know what my plans are for the future. I learned on September 11, and then I learned about a little over a year before when I had to deal with prostate cancer and had to go through treatments and get cured of it, I learned that you take life without too much planning; let the future take care of itself. So I'm involved in private business now. I give a lot of talks and speeches, including for political causes. I support candidates who supported me in the past. So I guess I repay the debt I owe them.
And in the future -- I don't exactly know when that is -- I've believe I would like to run for office again. But if you tell me which office, I don't know. What country are you in? Maybe I'll come to your country and run. (Laughter.) Where? Germany? All right, I'll have to brush up on my German. We'll see what happens. (Laughter.)
Yes, sir.
QUESTION: I’m Philippe Reltien, France, Radio France. Mr. Mayor, you talked about Normandy cemetery the other day. It was a comparison. What kind of cemetery do you foresee in the future for those 2,800 people, because many, many people like us will come back here?
MR. GIULIANI: Well, I believe that the site of the World Trade Center, which then became known as Ground Zero, should be a memorial. That should be its primary, possibly its exclusive, focus. And that's, first of all, to honor the fact that it is a cemetery. We don't make it a cemetery; it is. People are buried there. Thousands of people were not recovered.
But what I would like to see is a library, a museum, a grand artistic rendering, a beautiful soaring structure that goes up into the sky, dominates the skyline, and stands as a memorial to how good overwhelmed evil, how bravery overwhelmed cowardice, in less than one day. And then to relive the experience, to relive the experience of the people that were there, to set it in proper historical context. And I think you're absolutely right; many people want to come there. And I think 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 years from now, many people are going to want to come there. It's a piece of our history. And it's either going to be a good piece or a bad piece, depending on what we do with it, whether we learn from it, grow from it. But in any event, whether we like it or not, it's a piece of our history and we shouldn't cover it over with office buildings or constricted; we should let it become a grand memorial that all of you will want to come to -- people from America, people from around the world -- and experience it.
Also, probably every one of you have countrymen and women who were lost there. I remember taking so many world leaders there from every single country in the world, and then I remember after a while we developed a viewing area and there were the names of all the countries, and I think it was 80 or 83, 83 countries. So you have your own countrymen and women buried there. So I think it becomes a place that people can come to.
And if the worry is about economic development, then that's economic development. If you all want to come to someplace in New York, it creates economic development for us. Have you figured out how expensive we are? I mean, you contribute to the economy of the city. And that's the right way to do it. That's the way people go to Normandy, it's the way people go to Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, it's the way people go to Appomattox Courthouse where the Civil War ended and Saratoga Battlefield, and I'm sure in all your countries there are historical monuments similar to that.
QUESTION: Jane Standley, United Kingdom, BBC. That puts you in conflict with Mayor Bloomberg, who just a week ago actually said that it had to be mixed-use site, it really had to cater to business and not just be a memorial park. So how do you feel about that conflict with your successor over what the site should be?
MR. GIULIANI: First, I would like to particularly thank the people of England and the United Kingdom. We had a lot of support in the days and weeks after September 11. Your Prime Minister was probably one of our prime principal supporters. His strong words and his coming here, and in part also because you lost so many people there. I think probably -- I don't know if it was the most after the United States, but it was pretty close. So I feel a very special bond and I want to thank you and thank the people of England and the people of the United Kingdom for their support of the United States.
Second, I don't really know who I'm in conflict -- I don't want to be in conflict with anyone. These are my views, so people can agree with them, people can disagree with them. They come out of a lot of thought and a lot of reflection and a lot of study of history, trying to look at what they did in Oklahoma City when we had a terrorist attack, a domestic kind of terrorist attack of terrible dimensions, trying to think about our history.
And I developed these views before I left office. I first announced them at the last speech I gave at St. Paul's Chapel in December of last year, and I've become very, very close to -- I was close originally and become closer even now to many of the families that have lost loved ones there, and I live through it, and so did Richie and Tom and Bernie. We were trapped and had to get out and live through it, so maybe that creates more emotion about the experience. I don't claim to be objective about this. As I look back on it, they almost lost their lives there, I almost did, and many of our best friends did, our good friends did. And so for me, it's hard to think of it as a place in which we're going to build over it.
And then, you know, I love history. One of the reasons I ran for mayor was because I love history. And there are many places in which you can build office buildings. You can't build a memorial any place else but there and you can't build a library and a museum. So this is hollowed ground, the way Abraham Lincoln looked at Gettysburg, as hollowed ground.
QUESTION: Ervin Hladnik-Milharcic, Slovenia, Delo Newspapers. The World Trade Center was, if I'm not wrong, the last really exceptionally great building build in New York City. Everything else that was built after looked small and barely noticeable compared to that. And from the plans that were laid out for the rebuilding of Ground Zero, I think the size was at least halved.
Do you think that the era of, say, really ambitious building in the city is over? Will the Empire State Building be the tallest building in New York City?
MR. GIULIANI: You know, you go through phases and you go through eras. My favorite building is the Woolworth Building. The Woolworth Building used to be the tallest building in the world at the turn of the last century, the one before this. I think it's like the most classic, the most beautiful. And I love architecture. And I photographed the World Trade Center a dozen times, maybe more. I loved it. I thought it was a beautiful, beautiful structure. But I mean, the reality is that what I would prefer to see there now is a memorial. And it could be as high as the World Trade Center, but as a memorial, something that dominates the skyline. And we have a lot of places in the city where we could build office buildings either of that size or other sizes, so it really depends on what you think you can do in a particular area.
If you're asking me do I think it's safe to build large office buildings, I think the answer is yes, it is. I mean, this was a -- we can't let this act stop us from doing the things that we have to do. But for that particular area, I think that particular area should be a memorial. If somebody wants to build a large building somewhere else, as large or larger, I think that would be a great thing to do.
Yes, sir.
QUESTION: Maurizio Molinari, Italy, La Stampa. Mr. Mayor, in which way do you believe that September 11th changed the life of New York, of behaving, of living in the city? What's your impression?
MR. GIULIANI: Sometime on the first day, maybe our first or second press conference, I don't remember now because they all, they all kind of merge together -- the press conference on the street and the one at the fire department and fire station, the one at the police academy -- I remember, it may have been one of the latter ones, I said I really hoped that the people of New York City would emerge stronger from this. Because when you get attacked in a way that you never expected, even personally, or as a city or as a country, one of two things can happen to you: You can recede and become weaker and more frightened or you can grow from it and you can say to yourself, "Look at the resources I have. I can be hit this way, in a way that nobody could possibly imagine, I'm still here, I'm still alive and I'm still very strong."
And that's what I think the people of New York City, I think that's what the people of New York City are experiencing. I think they're experiencing the fact that they were attacked in a way in which they could never have possibly conceived, unlike any other American city has ever been attacked before, and they are stronger than they were on September 10th of last year. They're stronger because they understand what they stand for. And they understand the importance of being able to go on with life and not letting people frighten you. And just go talk to them. Just go walk in Times Square or go take a walk up Madison Avenue or Fifth Avenue and go talk to them and see how resilient they are. I am so proud of them and the reason is that they're really, they're everybody. I mean, they're from all over the country and all over the world, and they're not going to let this stop them, they're going to just grow. And if anything, the legendary status of this city has grown even more as a result of its ability to absorb this horrific attack and to grow from it.
QUESTION: Ane Lunde, Norway, Norwegian News Agency.
MR. GIULIANI: Which news agency?
QUESTION: The Norwegian.
MR. GIULIANI: Oh, thank you.
QUESTION: If I may ask about your private recollection of last, that day last year, is there one single image that you think of when you think of that day, of September 11th last year? And the second part of the question, when you think of September 11th in the future, what kind of day would you like it to be in America and elsewhere in the world?
MR. GIULIANI: I was actually just thinking about that today -- what it's going to be like next year and the year after and the year after. I don't know. I have no one, single recollection of that day. I have a million recollections of that day and probably haven't even had all the recollections of that day that I'm going to have in my lifetime.
It was the worst day of my life. And maybe it was the greatest day, just like it was for them and for so many others. I remember being notified, I remember rushing down, I remember seeing a man jump from the 102nd, 103rd floor. I remember being trapped in a building. I remember getting out with them, reestablishing the city. And I remember being told, I remember the pain of constantly being notified of the people that were missing and saying to myself, "I can't think about that now. I just have to block that out of my mind. Cannot think about it, cannot feel it, I have to think about how we move on., how do we worry about the next attack or the recovery or whatever." So the recollections of that day will -- are going to kind of unfold, I think, throughout the rest of my life.
QUESTION: And in the future?
MR. GIULIANI: In the future, I think as a country we have to figure out how we want to memorialize this in the future; probably can't figure that out in one year. You mean should it be a national holiday or not? National holidays have emerged 20, 30 years after an event, not at the time of an event. So for now, I think we should just see how we feel about it.
I believe that what we're going to do tomorrow is right. I think the people are going to celebrate it or memorialize it or ignore it, depending on their feelings, their -- how they feel about it. You know, they're either going to say, "I want to go to a public event, I want to go to a church service, or I would just like to go somewhere and not think about it because I've thought about it so much since then." And they should feel okay with all of that. They should feel that it's perfectly appropriate to do all of those things. If they want to go to the service at Ground Zero or they want to go to their church or their synagogue or whatever, they should do it. And if they feel like, as I know some people do, I just want to ignore it, I mean some people feel we've memorialized it so often already that we've already gotten past the first memorial. So they should feel comfortable with any of those things.
QUESTION: Vladimir Lensky, Russia, TV-6. Right after September 11th there was written a lot in the press that America lost its innocence in terms of being attacked on its soil, in terms of international terrorism. Do you think that the Americans and the New Yorkers have lost that sense of security at home that was always here?
MR. GIULIANI: I think that's a very good point. There's no question that what happened to us -- you know, the way I would put it, rather than innocence is we always felt invulnerable. We had our own Civil War. But, you know, since then, because of the oceans, of these huge oceans, the Atlantic and Pacific, we felt protected. We felt protected against domestic invasion and we even felt protected against aerial invasion because it would take time to attack us and we could prepare; unlike, you know, countries in Europe that are very close together.
So I think, you know, even though we went through periods where we thought there might be an invasion or attacks or whatever, I think deep inside of Americans we felt invulnerable. That's why we had, like, this whole spirit of isolation at one time. And all of a sudden on September 11, we found out that we're human, we're mortal, we're just like you are and we are not invulnerable. We're mortal and, you know, the worst things can happen to us, too. It was horrible thing. It was a terrible thing. It was a cowardly thing. And the pain it's caused to so many people, and, you know, all of us can tell you that there's no way to describe to you how much pain this has caused from all the funerals and memorial services and children that don't have parents.
But in one sense, it woke us up to reality and it woke us up to the fact that we are not invulnerable. We are vulnerable. We are human. We have to defend ourselves. We have to prepare for the same things you have to prepare for. And I hope we keep reminding ourselves of that. I hope we don't, as we move away from September 11, become complacent again. Because I think maybe before that, we lived in a lot of an unreal world. There's a psychological term called denial. You know, when people, people are facing some serious problem, but they can't deal with it, so they deny it and they pretend. We may have been in denial about terrorism. You know, we put a cloud over it, didn't see what was happening in many of your countries and thought it could never happen to us. So before September 11, we had an excuse for that -- but, you know, maybe justifiable in a way, just human. Now we don't. So we'd better wake up to it.
QUESTION: Hi. Isabel Piquer Hubert from the Spanish newspaper El Pais. I have two questions. During these past years there have been reports and articles about the problems of September 11th when the whole thing happened about the building was maybe not safe enough, there was a lack of coordination between the police and the firefighters, elevators were not working.
During this year have you ever thought of any decision you could have taken before September 11th that maybe have -- would have made this day different security-wise? And my second question, on a more personal level, is do you miss being mayor right now, not being here while the city is rebuilding?
MR. GIULIANI: I really don't miss being mayor. (Laughter.) I mean, every once in a while maybe I do a little bit, but I had eight years, seven and three-quarter wonderful years, some of the city's greatest years, its greatest surpluses, its record reductions in crime, record tourism, a city that in 1992 and '93 was considered the most dangerous city in the country that became the safest city in America.
In 1990 we were on the cover of Time Magazine as the rotting apple. And in 2000 we were on the cover of Time Magazine as the urban renaissance, as the city that had made the greatest change in the entire country, maybe in the world. So, and then we -- the time after September 11 was like another term in office. And I think our response to it is one I'm very proud of. I'm also very proud of the response on September 11. I don't think that given what was known at the time that any city could have been better prepared than we were. We had an Office of Emergency Management. We had a plan that saved over 25,000 people. If you had the gift of prophesy, maybe you could have saved more people. Maybe. Maybe if you did some of the things that are suggested now you would have actually lost more people. It's very, very hard to know. You know, if you had withdrawn a lot of the firefighters and police officers from the building, if communications had worked better, you might have ended up with three or four thousand more civilians dead.
So it's very hard to know, and in some cases it's done by people who weren't there and have no idea of the battlefield decisions that had to be made at the time. But I think that when you consider the fact that at one time we thought there were as many as eight or nine thousand people that were lost in that building, and it turned out to be a horrific number, but considerably less than that, the rescue efforts in human terms were probably the greatest that had ever been done, accomplished, coordinated in the history of the country.
As we study it, can we improve on it? Can we figure out how to have, you know, better communications and better technology? I imagine we can. I imagine. But I'm not sure. And although I haven't had a chance to really -- no one ever interviewed me about this. If I sat down and looked at the reports, which were done without interviewing me, I'm not sure if some of the things that they suggested wouldn't have actually cost more lives in terms of civilian lives.
So, you know, you can relive these things over and over again. But the people who did it, the people who died and the people who survived, I will believe until I go to my grave conducted the greatest rescue effort that the world has ever seen. And I watched it. I didn't have to review it six months later. I was there and saw it.
QUESTION: Yolanda Gerritsen at Het Parool, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Before I left, I heard that the security code had changed from yellow to orange and I wonder what this means for us who have to move around the city and live here, actually, now. You know, how should that affect or should that not affect our lives and our -- our -- well --
MR. GIULIANI: I heard the same thing as I came here, that the security code for the state moved to orange and for the country and for the city it had been. Let me tell you how I react to that. I used to, for many, many years as the mayor, when we had other, you know, less traumatic or incidents that weren't as large as this one, but still would create great, great fear, you have to leave the handling of this up to the police, the emergency authorities, the federal government, the fire department. Civilians who can't do much about this should just go about their lives. They really should. And they shouldn't -- there's a psychology to dealing with terrorism that's really, really important to understand. (Cell phone rings.) I think that's one of them calling us now. I think it's just gone to Code Pink. What's the next one? Purple? Red? Red. It's been downgraded? Oh, it's been downgraded. Okay. Whatever, it's a new code now. Out of this world or something.
But the reality is you have to put this in context. The federal government, the state government, the local government, the authorities, the military, have to deal with this. We have to trust them to be able to deal with it as well as they can. We have to trust that they've learned from what happened on September 11. You know, before September 11 we didn't know about a lot of these things. Now we do. So hopefully there have been a lot of changes. I think there have.
But ultimately, there isn't much civilians can do other than lead your life. Believe me, this is not the greatest risk to your survival. Today, when you leave here, you have many more risks to your survival than the possibility of terrorism, and you will tomorrow and the next day and next year and the year after. It's one risk. The risk of disease is greater. The risk of domestic crime can sometimes be greater. The risk of accident. We've lost more people to drunk driving than we did to terrorism last year. So you live with all those risks. You don't go hide in a hotel room or your apartment or your house. You go about your life. You don't let all of those risks stop you from living. And in America, we sure should know that. And we're supposed to be the Home of the Brave, right? So if we're brave, we might stop, you know, getting all nervous about terrorists and going about our lives.
QUESTION: I'm Shuk Sengal (ph) from India working with ZTV (ph). How do you see the terrorism attack on Indian parliament and how do you compare it with September 11?
MR. GIULIANI: Well, I don't know how to compare it because I don't know all of the details of the attack in India the way I do in America. So I don't know how to compare it. I mean, terrorism has different causes, it has different political ramifications, it has different things that motivate it. But ultimately, ultimately, it's the same conclusion: Absolutely no one has a justification to kill innocent civilians or to kill political leaders. I mean, there's no justification for it. There's no political cause that justifies the slaughter of innocent people. A political cause that attempts to slaughter innocent people is an unworthy, unjust political cause, because what it means is that if those people were to get in power, that's the way they're going to act if they're in power. So I think what it should do is have decent countries unite and understand that we have to be firm against terrorists, we have to unite against them, we have to understand that very often the reaction, almost instinctual reaction to the acts of terrorism in the last 15, 20, 25 years has been we ought to understand the root cause of terrorism. Well, maybe the better response would be we don't care about the root cause of terrorism; if you act in a way that kills innocent people, you have just excluded yourself from civilized countries and civilized people and your cause is unjust, your cause is unworthy, and you've made it unworthy by slaughtering innocent people. And, you know, I would look at that that way if it was in America or India or Europe or anyplace else.
Thank you very much. Is that it? I got a few more questions here. This lady, this one here. I got a lot more questions. All right, okay.
QUESTION: Are you going to read the names of the victims at Ground Zero tomorrow morning?
MR. GIULIANI: Right.
QUESTION: So how would you feel at that moment?
MR. GIULIANI: I don't know how I'm going to feel at that moment. I don't know. I have no idea. I went through -- just this morning I buried my mother and I don't know how I'm going to feel tomorrow morning.
I'm going to think about the fact that she had 92 years, almost 93, and many of them had their lives cut short without being able to live them. Many of them had children that they're not going to be able to see. And I'm going to feel the way I felt many times when I went to the World Trade Center and Ground Zero with some of the leaders of your countries. I'm going to feel very angry. I'm going to feel very upset. And I'm going to feel ultimately very strong and united behind the idea that we have to end global terrorism, because I don't want this to happen again. And I would ask the people of your country, each one of your countries, to think about that. I said this to many of your leaders when they came to Ground Zero and the World Trade Center: This could happen to you; in some cases, in some ways, it's already happened to you; and in some cases it's happened repetitiously to you. And if we understand that we have to stand together against this, there's no justification for it, there's no negotiating with it, just a matter of ending it, we're going to save a lot more lives and there are going to be a lot more kids to grow up with their fathers and mothers in the future.
Thank you, God bless you, and welcome to New York. I know it's a very, very solemn and very difficult period of time, but I hope you also get a sense of the beauty, the wonder, of this city, and I hope you feel at home here. This is your home. I mean, all of you have -- I know you have friends here and I know you have countrymen and women here, and you've got to always feel like New York is your second home.
Thank you very much.
(Applause.)
