10:30 A.M. EDT 
MS. NISBET: Good morning. I am pleased to welcome back former mayor of the city of New York, the Honorable Rudolph Guiliani. On behalf of my colleagues and the foreign press corps, I'd like to thank you for taking time out of your schedule to be with us here today.
Questions will be taken following the mayor's remarks. And if you could please, as always, wait for the mike, and please state your name and affiliation before asking your questions. Thank you.
MR. GIULIANI: Thank you very, very much. And thank you all for being in New York.
(Interruption to the proceedings.)
MR. GIULIANI: Thank you very much for being in New York. The second day that I was mayor, I referred to New York City as the capital of the world. That was back in 1994. And one of the reasons that I did that is because there is no place in the world that's more diverse than New York City. There are other great world cities, many of you come from them, cities that have a longer history than New York. But there is no city that has a more diverse population than New York City.
Every single country in the world is represented here. Every religion, every ethnic group, and every time I greeted a foreign visitor or businessperson or government official in New York City, I always felt comfortable that I could find somebody from their village that lived in New York City because it's such a diverse place. And on September 11 of 2001, that was also demonstrated, people from over 80 different countries died at the World Trade Center.
Wherever I go in the world, I meet people who were affected by the attack or attacks of September 11th, people directly affected by it, someone who lost a son or a daughter, or a brother or a close friend. And I remember when the wall was put up with the names of all of the different countries that were affected by this. It really gave you a sense of the impact, the worldwide impact that that attack had.
Of course it was an attack on New York, of course it was an attack on the United States of America including the attack on Washington and over the skies of Pennsylvania, but it literally was an attack on the modern world, on people who work hard, work hard for a living and believe in economic freedom, political freedom, religious freedom and the rights of women.
That's the kind of society that the hard work of the people of the World Trade Center was trying to support and to develop and to expand. Many times I am asked wherever I travel what the condition of New York City is today. And I thought I would answer that question here for all of you because it's very, very hard to do it individually.
New York City is, as I asked it to be, on September 11th, 2001, in the late afternoon, I asked the city of New York to be stronger than it was before the attack, and it has more than exceeded anything I could possibly have thought back then in the middle of the attack almost still going on.
The city is more vital, the city is rebuilding, the city is even more diverse. It's population has grown rather than contracted. It's well over 8 million people now, 8.1, 8.2. And the city of New York, most importantly, is spiritually stronger. It's faced the worst that can happen to it. And it's not only survived, it's not only still very sad and still mourning, as the funeral for the last firefighter the other day demonstrated, but we have learned that we can hurt and we can mourn, and we can even be afraid, but we can also move on with our lives.
And there are two major reasons for New York City's success: The first is that we leave in freedom, and people that live in freedom have more strength than people that live in oppression. World history has demonstrated that. The Second World War demonstrated that. And the second reason is that we're a city of immigrants, and we keep renewing ourselves every single day with new people that come from all different parts of the world that want to make a better life for themselves and their family.
You put those things together, living in freedom and renewing yourself through immigration, and you have the world's best known city, and I believe the world's greatest city. Thank you very much.
QUESTION: My name is Paolo Mastrolilli with the Italian daily newspaper, La Stampa. There is an organization called the "Skyscraper Safety Campaign" that was founded by the relatives of two victims of September 11.
They say that there are many questions that are still unanswered concerning the reason of the collapse of the towers, like the evacuation plan or the fire safety and other issues like that. And they also say that the debris of the towers have been taken away too quickly in order to collect crucial evidence for the investigation. I would like to know if you are aware of these claims and what is your answer to that.
MR. GIULIANI: Well, I'm not aware completely of those, but I think that part of what you say is correct. I mean, there is no question that there are a lot of unanswered questions about the attack, about the reason why the building imploded rather than exploded. And I don't know that -- I can't imagine that all the answers to that have been reached at this point. It's an enormously complex question. But that's the work of the commission that the President appointed, and that's the work of all of the people who are studying it, to try to figure out what happened.
And I suspect, like in most horrific circumstances, we are never going to absolutely know. There will be some dispute about what the answers were, you know: Did the terrorists plan to bring the buildings down? Did they succeed at the level they wanted to succeed? Did they succeed more than they anticipated, less?
I think those are all important questions, but I don't know that we know the answers to them yet. And it is important to pursue those things because we all want to do the best we can to make certain that it doesn't happen again. I mean, one of the things that every emergency that I ever went through including that, the worst one, something goes wrong, something can be done better in the future. So it creates a really effective and helpful learning experience.
As far as the evacuation is concerned -- maybe it's because I just went to the last funeral of one of the firefighters, Firefighter Ragusa -- if it weren't for the fire department and the police department and their men staying in the buildings, I know we would have lost thousands and thousands more people.
The first number given to me of the losses in the buildings, the first estimate that was done by the police and the Port Authority -- and this is within a half hour of the two buildings coming down -- was that there were probably about 25,000 people in the building at the time of the first impact, and that they thought that they were successful in evacuating about half the building, and that therefore there would be somewhere around 12,000 to 13,000 that would be dead or seriously affected, trapped in the building.
It turned out that there were less than 3,000. And the reason that they evacuated so many people in the brief period of time they had is because they remained in the building and they calmed people down.
Was every decision correct? Probably not. Were there mistakes made? Yes. But on the whole, did they take what could have been a far worse horrific experience and reduce the impact of it by their heroism? I would say the answer to that is yes.
You know, it's like the difference of a ship and the captain stays with the ship until it goes down, and therefore a lot of the civilians are saved. That's essentially what happened at the World Trade Center. The captain, the uniformed service people, stayed with the ship, and as a result of that 6-, 7-, 8,000 civilians -- more than they originally thought -- were saved.
God willing -- I mean, you hope -- you wish to God that it's all, but it was none.
QUESTION: Talal Al-Haj from Abu Dhabi Television. Mayor Guiliani, it's a fact that September 11 was one of the blackest days in the history of the United States. It's also a fact that the perpetrators were Muslims and Arabs.
How can you assure the Arab-Americans living in New York, and also over the Middle East that Mayor Guiliani, a national hero, does not hold a grudge against Muslims and Arabs? And how can you assure them that their civil rights will be protected here in the United States?
People are worried that you might hold the Muslim and Arab community as a whole, as, you know, to blame in a way.
MR. GIULIANI: Well, you know, we should go back and get the tape of the second press conference that I had while I still had the debris of the World Trade Center on my jacket and in my hair.
One of the first comments that I made was that New Yorkers -- because at that time I thought I was talking only to New Yorkers -- that New Yorkers should not engage in group blame; that that was part of the sickness that was affecting us in the attack on the World Trade Center.
Somehow I thought even then it must be some form of irrational group blame, but that we shouldn't respond that way; that I had learned over many, many years of being a prosecutor and dealing with organized crime, terrorism, other forms of crime, that there are good people in every group and bad people; and then when the bad people in a particular group do something wrong you blame them, you don't blame the group.
And I asked New Yorkers to respond that way, not to focus on Arab-Americans or Muslims or anyone else as being responsible for this, because Arab-Americans were no more responsible for this than if right now today an Italian-American was involved in a shooting. It doesn't affect all Italian-Americans. They weren't all involved in it, or someone else from another group. I pick Italian-Americans because I am one.
And I was concerned that New Yorkers would respond inappropriately out of anger. And I asked the Police Commissioner to begin keeping watch on the statistics of how many hate incidents he had so that we could figure out where they occurred and we could send up police there to stop them, to make arrests and to just reinforce to people that they should not act that way.
And although we had some, we had no incident that was out of control and the number kept decreasing every single day. And I kept making that warning for about four or five days, and then after the fourth or fifth day it had just dissipated. And I keep talking about it, and I think that's the only way we can deal with it.
We have to face it, talk about, and say to ourselves that this does not in any way involve blame against the entire Arab community. It certainly doesn't involve any blame against the Islamic religion. Every religion, at different times in its history, has been misused and perverted to a violent purpose or a horrible purpose or an illegal purpose. And there's nothing inherent in the religion that does that, it's inherent in human nature.
QUESTION: Abderrahim Foukara, Al-Jazeera Television. Thank you, Mayor. Good morning. A couple of questions. Soon after 9/11, President Bush, together with large sections of American society starting asking the question, "Why do they hate us?" Why do you think the attacks on the Twin Towers happened? That's number one.
And, number two, you said in your opening remarks that New York is home to a great diversity of people, different nationalities. Incidentally, many different nationalities were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center. How do you think this new fight will reflect the aspirations of the whole world, since the whole world was represented in the World Center when the attacks happened?
MR. GIULIANI: Well, there is no question that whatever happens there, the memorial has to predominate. And the memorial should make it clear that this was an attack not just on America, not just on New York, but on the whole world. I mean, I am not an artist or an architect.
I remember in my experience, one of the most dramatic experiences that I remember having many years ago when I first went to Jerusalem, which is, you know, quite an experience for anyone, because Jerusalem is the home to the three major religions, if you read or you have been educated, you know so many things about Jerusalem that are in your mind.
I remember going to Yad Vashem, you know, the Holocaust museum, and seeing the numbers of Jews that used to live in different parts of Europe and how many were left after World War II -- like in Poland and Germany -- and just the numbers alone almost staggered me.
So I think that something that would demonstrate the enormous impact of this, the numbers of people that have been killed in different countries -- I was just in Australia -- Australia lost people in the World Trade Center. That's on the other side of the world. Muslims and Arabs were killed in the World Trade Center, people from Africa, people from every continent. That has to be -- artistically, that has to be demonstrated.
And then, you know, the other way, in sort of a living way, it's demonstrated by the fact that this city is still open to people from all backgrounds, all nationalities, and we try very hard to find the common root that people have. And if we keep striving for that, maybe we then reduce what happened on September 11th or the risk of it.
Why do I think it happened? I mean, everybody is -- it's almost a philosophical question, you know. We can't know for sure why it happened. I think it happened because of a tremendous amount of resistance to the modern world, which is -- and, as you said, people from all over the world died there.
They don't just represent American values. They represent, I guess, what you would now call "modernism," or the modern world, economic freedom, which is translated by some people into wealth being in the hands of a few people, and other people would applaud to this. But the reality is the system that they were serving shared the wealth better than the system from which the people who attacked came from.
It's an inexact, but the best economic system for bringing people out of poverty, but there is great anger at that. There is great anger at religious freedom, at the idea that I can believe in God, you can in a different way, or you don't have to believe in God. That's something you have to figure out in your conscience.
Do you, and how are you going to express it? And there's a great deal of confusion and anger about that. And resistance to political freedom, selecting your leaders rather than maybe the more, the much more authoritarian approach of a leader being imposed on you. And all of these ideas I think are -- to some people -- are frightening, and they irrationally react to it, out of anger, out of hatred, maybe out of insecurity that then masks itself in hatred and anger.
The only way we can deal with it is to defend ourselves because you have to defend yourself. You can't allow your people to be killed or slaughtered like they were at the World Trade Center, or at the Pentagon or in Pennsylvania. But at the same time, we have to try to share our ideas in a, maybe, in a more accepted way.
I mean, if we could figure out how to get those ideas into the minds of the people who live in oppression, and start to believe that they're possible, then they will overthrow dictators and terrorists.
QUESTION: (Inaudible.)
MR. GIULIANI: Well, I mean, people do. There are people who believe that. I don't think it was related to American foreign policy because I think it's more fundamental than American foreign policy. I think if American foreign policy were different, but America still stood for economic freedom, religious freedom, the rights of women and modern society, we'd be just as hated. And America's not the only place in which terrorist incidents have taken place.
What explains the terrorist incident in Bali? Certainly not American foreign policy.
I think American foreign policy is a legitimate subject of debate. I happen to agree largely, if not completely, with the Bush Administration's foreign policy. I'm a Republican. I served Ronald Reagan. And I would consider that, you know, the Bush foreign policy is closer to the way I think America needs to act in a world that has danger in it.
But whether it was the Bush foreign policy or some other, terrorism didn't start with the Clinton or the Bush foreign policy. Those were the last two Presidents. Terrorism goes back, you know, at least the early 1970's. And I think that's an excuse for not dealing with the real substance of terrorism.
The oppression under which people live in their own country, hoisted on them by their own leaders has a lot more to do with what they are doing and why they are doing it than American foreign policy or some other foreign policy.
QUESTION: Hello, good morning, Mr. Mayor. My name is Agustin DeFrutos from Onda Cero Radio, Spain. Let's go back to September 11th, and what went through your mind when you were told that the first plane hit the towers.
MR. GIULIANI: The first information that I was given about it was probably about four minutes after or five minutes after the first plane hit the tower. And I was told, when I was in mid-town Manhattan, I was told that a twin engine plane had hit the tower, and that there was a very bad fire at the top of the tower.
So I was on 55th Street at the time, and right off Fifth Avenue at the Peninsula Hotel having breakfast. I got in the car to rush down there and as I looked up in the sky, the skies looked like today. And having just been down at the site this morning, it looked like today except it was clear.
So when I saw the blue sky and virtually no clouds, I said to myself, "This cannot be an accident. It can't be that a plane got off course and hit the tower. It has to be a deliberate act."
But my first thought was that it was an act of individual anger or insanity, like someone angry at one of the businesses that may have fired them or -- which happens, in a city this large. And as I rushed down there and passed St. Vincent's Hospital, which is right in the village, which was the first responding hospital, and saw the doctors and nurses on the street like in a war situation with the stretchers out, I thought, "This has to be worse."
And just at about that moment the second plane hit, as I was looking at the towers. And I realized then when I was informed of that, that this was a terrorist attack. So it took awhile to really put together that this was -- I thought it was an attack, but I thought it was an individual -- to get to the point of realizing that it was a terrorist attack. And then the rest of the day kind of merges together. Because I lost a lot of friends and had to do the best that I could to try to keep the city together.
QUESTION: Kelly Ro from Phoenix Satellite Television, Hong Kong.
MR. GIULIANI: Hello, how are you?
QUESTION: Just like other New Yorkers, we all live here in the city, and right now this EPA report is bothering a lot of New Yorkers. Do you believe U.S. Government lied on this EPA report? I'm wondering what's your comment on that.
MR. GIULIANI: I believe this has been terribly politicized. And I think we're kind of moving away from one of the good things that emerged from September 11th, which is the sense of unity and not trying to exploit for political reasons. And everything that I saw about the coverage of that, there was a good deal of political exploitation involved, as opposed to trying as best we can to understand what happened, why it happened.
I worked down there for four months, sometimes, you know, for many hours a day, as did Commissioner Von Essen. Come on up, Tom. The former Fire Commissioner of New York City, Tom Von Essen. And at the time I had no reason to believe, and at this point I have no reason to believe that anyone deceived anyone.
I think that this was a difficult situation, an unanticipated event that different people in the chain of the hierarchy could make different assessments, but I think this thing has been blown way out of proportion for entirely political reasons. And I think that really disappoints me because I remember the political unity that we had after September 11th, where we were all trying to understand each other and help each other, rather than to take a situation and exploit it.
QUESTION: Hello. Jane Standley, BBC. In a couple of weeks' time from now, the decision is going to be made about what kind of memorial is going to stand on the site. And a lot of the those families -- I'm sure everyone else is getting the same response from them -- are very concerned about what's going to happen there because they have seen the choice for a design for the towers be somewhat changed since the decision was made because of commercial concerns, competing interests.
Could you tell me what your perfect memorial would be, and how would you reassure families that they are going to get some say in what stands on the site?
MR. GIULIANI: Well, I'll tell you my view of what the memorial should be has been the same since I left office and it hasn't changed. And the main purpose of that site should be to appropriately remember September 11, 2001, and not commercialism. That should be the overriding purpose.
I can't design it because I'm not a designer or an architect, but I know the right design if I see it and I haven't seen it yet. The right design is one that gives you, as a dominant feeling, what happened that day. And here's what I think has been wrong with the design, if I can. I can only do this conceptually because I'm not -- like I said, I'm not an artist.
The designs to date have mostly been about replacing office towers, and then, as an afterthought, having a memorial. It should work the other way around. The major impact of this design should be remembering and giving you a spirit of September 11th, and then if there is room for office space, then you squeeze the office space in. It should be the office space that's squeezed in, if at all, and not the memorial.
And here's why I came to that conclusion when I was the Mayor. I even think that's in the economic best interest of the city because I think that site will be a site that people will visit from all of your countries for years and years and years. And you create that kind of traffic, numbers of people, and that becomes the basis on which your economic revitalization takes place. But it doesn't go against the grain, it flows with it, and I am very empathetic with the families.
I feel that their desire to make certain that the main part of the site is preserved down to its bedrock is absolutely understandable. You know, I meet with them -- and so does Tom -- various family members, on a pretty regular basis; and we lost a lot of friends there, and some of them are buried there. I mean, they weren't recovered. The firefighter who was buried the other day, it was only because he had donated blood that his family had something to bury.
So I think you've got to take that into consideration. You can't just push that aside, and then you have to focus on it with a sense of history; 30 or 40 or 50 years from now, people are going to want to go see it. And if what they see is a little memorial and a bunch of office buildings that could be anywhere, they are going to have a very strange impression of our generation.
They are going to think that all we thought about was the commercial aspect of it. They're going to say, well, maybe that was the era in which that sort of predominated and these people didn't understand the historical significance of the worst attack on the history of America and the bravest response. I mean, there are two parts to this that are enormously contradictory and can be endlessly examined.
It was one of the most shocking and horrific attacks, certainly the worst in the history of America; and it was the most incredibly spontaneous brave response, not just by the firefighters, who Tom led, and the police officers, but all the civilians and all these people helping each other, and the sense of unity that came out of it. So you have got to recapture that -- a museum, interactive exhibits, a library and a memorial.
One of the people on the committee is the person who designed the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. And look, that was very controversial, a lot of people opposed it, but look at what that's done for Washington. That's been -- it almost seemed impossible to have another memorial in Washington that would be equal to the Lincoln and the Washington and the Jefferson, and here this may be the most -- the one that's seen the most now.
QUESTION: Thank you. I'm Gabe Plesea, writing for Romania Libera, Bucharest. Mayor Guiliani, you won great respect from New Yorkers and for your courage and leadership shown during 9/11/2001. And then, in your opening remarks, you referred to the current situation in New York, that the city is more vital and it's rebuilding and everything -- you know, it's more populous, and so on.
However, I think that in terms of the economic situation, current situation in New York is not that, you know, great. And as opposed to your popularity, Mayor Bloomberg, you know, doesn't enjoy that kind of popularity. Actually, I was at the U.S. Open the other day and he was not very well received over there.
What would you do differently if you were still mayor of New York to correct the situation?
MR. GIULIANI: Well, Mayor Bloomberg is a good friend of mine -- (laughter) -- and I tell him, I tell him all the time that I went through the same thing at approximately the same time in my mayoralty. The first year or year and a half that I was in office, I used to get booed every place I went. (Laughter.) In fact, I got so used to it that when, finally, I was applauded at Shea Stadium, I didn't know where to sit. (Laughter.)
It's part of the job and it turns very much on the economy, and the economy is now improving. And the mayor made very difficult decisions his fist year, year and a half in office, to straighten out the economy, and so did I. My first year, year and a half in office, I had to cut $2 billion or more in expenditures, and people were very angry at me.
And then something that you hope you're planning for -- but is somewhat out of your control -- happened to me, and I hope it happens with him: We had an economic recovery. And New York is particularly sensitive to the stock market, to the financial community. That's our core business and that's the one that drives everything else. We're a great tourist attraction, one of the biggest in the world, one of the biggest in the United States.
We have publishing, and we have all the big networks here. Those are all parts of our economy also, so it isn't as if it's just the financial industry. But if there's one core industry, it's Wall Street, and not just the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, the American -- I was today at the New York Board of Trade, they opened trading today -- the Mercantile Exchange -- and when they have big, big profits, the city has enormous tax receipts. And when they're having a rough time, like the last, particularly, two years ago, then it's very hard. And right now they're improving.
And I think you're going to see, you know, the mayor's popularity improve along with that because people are very affected by that and they're very affected by the state of the economy. And the mayor has the best interests of the city at heart, and I think he is going to go through a cycle very much like I did, and I could trace other mayors that went through the same thing.
QUESTION: Hi, my name is Regis Le Sommier. I work for Paris Match Magazine, a French Magazine. You spoke about -- you said that you agreed to the Bush response, foreign policy, the Bush response to terrorism. But what do you think -- I mean, this response has been directed to mainly, in the past years, towards Afghanistan and Iraq with -- for the latest country, and no real -- no proof linked with al-Qaida so far.
Fifteen out of 19 of the hijackers were of Saudi origin, and there is only a slow movement on the Saudis right now, only two years after. What is your opinion about that? Don't you think measures, and strong measures, should have been taken -- I mean, investigations or -- on the Saudis before that?
MR. GIULIANI: Well, there were intense investigations that began almost at the exact time that the incident occurred. That's how the people were identified who did it, that's how well the arrests took place, which are somewhat controversial, the arrests of the alleged members of al-Qaida, and those who sympathize and work with them.
So it was a many, many faceted response, of which maybe the two that are the most known because they were so dramatic, is the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq. But there has also been, starting at the very beginning, seizing the assets of al-Qaida, meaning their financial resources. That happened within a month to a month and a half of the attack. Arresting hundreds of people who were associated with them, and then even more. Making arrests now with the cooperation of some of your governments that have gone on for the last four or five months.
And even though there was a dispute over Iraq and the necessity for Iraq, I believe it was necessary to remove Saddam Hussein, not just because of September 11th, but because he has been a major -- was a major supporter of terrorism for over a decade, well over a decade, and part of what we have to do is dismantle the apparatus of terrorism. And the President outlined that, you know, when he addressed Congress, right after September 11, 2001.
And so from the first moment that he said that, I understood that this was going to be four or five years of effort, and that we were going to have to, where we could, dismantle the apparatus that world terrorism has built up, whether it's al-Qaida, or the support that they were getting from, or the money that's raised for them, sometimes even here in America under the guise of other things. That's the way in which you take away their world power. So that's why I thought the action in Iraq was necessary because Saddam Hussein was a major player in supporting world terrorists. And then if you need a justification for it, I think the mass graves give you the justification. Any time you can remove someone who has killed hundreds of thousands of his citizens, brutally, and then just thrown their bodies in graves, you've done something good for those people.
You've given them a chance to have a decent life, and then you try to do everything you can to try to encourage them to take that chance. You can't force them to do it, but you try to give them every chance they can to have a decent life.
QUESTION: Dogan Uluc, Hurriyet, Turkish Daily. Mr. Mayor, after the September 11th, we had two wars, one in Afghanistan, and the other with Iraq, which is -- some part of it was against international terrorism that the White House wanted to wipe out; and then a new agency set up, the Home Security, and the CIA and FBI directors renewed their results getting together and sharing information and everything.
But yet, what I believe, that the New Yorkers are still a bit afraid of what happened two years ago. They have not shaken up that fear.
Do you feel yourself that you are safe, New York is safe, as the -- now -- as the, not 9/11, but the 10/11, 10 September, and do you suggest -- do you have any advice for -- to your successor to combat with the terrorism in the city, and then the New Yorkers feel more comfortable and safe?
Thank you.
MR. GIULIANI: I believe that New York is actually safer now than it was on September 10th, 2001, for two reasons: First, you know, the same threats existed the day before as on September 11th. Those threats were there, and they were there for a long time. We just didn't recognize them the way we should. So we're safer because we recognize the threat that we face now.
And we're safer because a lot of things have been done since then to provide more security, whether it's airport security or learning how to deal with emergencies like anthrax. We went through that, remember, a month after the attacks of September 11th. We went through sporadic anthrax attacks in different parts of the city and in Florida. We're more prepared for that, for biological or chemical attacks.
I felt the blackout of a few weeks ago demonstrated the fact that New Yorkers are not really afraid, fundamentally. I would describe New Yorkers as being concerned, the way they should, responsibly concerned and still hurting a lot from the losses of their good friends. But "afraid" I don't think is a term that applies to New Yorkers.
Having watched them get through September 11th and the blackout a few weeks ago, these are enormously resilient people. And even if they are afraid, they're not going to show anybody that. And that's a good thing. That's the way you get through this kind of situation.
QUESTION: Hello. My name is Mercedes Gallego, from the newspaper El Correo, in Spain. Actually, I am going to make two questions:
In the first place, there are lots of New Yorkers that had kind of a post-traumatic stress after September 11th. They were suffering anxiety, nightmares, et cetera. I'd like to know if you suffered it yourself at some point.
The other thing, you opened your remarks talking about New York City as a city of freedom. As a matter of fact, it is unfortunately, on September 11th, the police were blocking the press to get down to the area, and even some press have to get a room at the hotels because it was easier to go through with a key of a room as a tourist than with a NYPD press pass. Can you tell me why was that?
MR. GIULIANI: Well, I'll take it in reverse order. The reason for the security at that time was obviously because we were in the middle of a horrific emergency. And as many people as possible were excluded from going down to the site of the World Trade Center because we wanted to get people away from the World Trade Center.
The last words that Tom -- chief of the department, Pete Dansey (ph) said to me was, "Get people, tell people to go north, and get them out of here."
And the reason he said that was, he and the police needed those roads to get emergency vehicles in. You have a road filled with people standing around, and a fire truck can't get through, an ambulance can't get through. A large van can't get through that's going to be needed to restore power and to save lives. So our objective was to get people out of the area.
QUESTION: Including the press?
MR. GIULIANI: Including anybody. A person of the press -- and there was a lot of press there. I was with the press. From the time we got out of the building we were trapped in. And all of the photographs that exist and coverage demonstrates the fact that there was press there, but we weren't going to add more people to this situation because the idea was to get as many people out of there as possible.
We also thought for about 20 hours that we would be taking a lot more people out of there. The first day, I think about 3- or 4,000 were treated in hospitals. And we expected that the same thing would be happening overnight into the next day. And we wanted to clear out the lanes so that if 5 people were recovered, they'd be put in an ambulance, and we could get them right to St. Vincent's Hospital, or to Bellevue or -- and after about 5 or 6 o'clock that afternoon, tragically, that was not the case.
The first part of your question, I think I went through post-traumatic stress syndrome when I was the mayor, much earlier. I used to go through it every day at press conferences (laughter), and then I sort of got it out of my system. And then I had Tom around to make sure that -- he teases me so much that I can't -- I don't think -- I don't know, Tom, do you have post-traumatic stress syndrome or -- maybe, right? Who knows what it is.
Mr. Von Essen: Yeah, you know, you think about people that you cared about so much, and your heart aches all the time. But as far as not being able to function or nightmares, no, I felt we had a very important job to do, so we just kept going. And in the midst of that, every moment was, you know, the heartache that you felt for other civilians, and for those that you hoped you were going to rescue the first couple of days, and then you realized you weren't.
MR. GIULIANI: Anybody who feels that though, the best answer is to talk about it, whether you talk about it, you know, individually and with friends or you talk about it professionally to get help, people shouldn't be afraid to do that. I mean, the way to deal with a complex, frightening situation is to talk about it, and not keep it bottled up inside you. And you can do that informally with friends, you can do it formally with counselors or doctors or -- and that's all available, and people should feel very, very comfortable about doing that.
There's no -- and it happens -- it happens to people who win the Congressional Medal of Honor in battle. Maybe two, three, four, five years later, they'll have some effects from it. It's part of being human, you know. It's part of being human, and people should feel that they can do that without any mark against them. It's a very honorable thing to do. And talking about it is the key.
QUESTION: Andrew Visconti with AGL News Syndicate in Italy. Two quick questions: New York is a major port of entry for millions of visitors from all over the world, with three international airports.
How do you feel about ideas or measures that have been -- people have been talking about to control who comes into the country -- bar coded passports, or now they are talking about the different colors for different possible danger representing different passengers.
Second question, do you drink Snapple?
MR. GIULIANI: (Laughter.) When I play golf. I thought you were going to ask me if I drink brandy. But, you know, yes, I drink Snapple when I play golf.
There is nothing inconsistent between appropriate security and a country being open. I mean, security doesn't mean that we don't want people. It means that we want to make certain that if people come here, they're safe. And you go into airports around the world now, whether it's America or any other place, and there is -- I mean, I have seen more security in airports in other countries than I have in the United States.
And since the last time I spoke here, I tried to write this out. I have been in, I think, 12 countries: France, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, England, Germany, Canada, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Czech Republic and Austria, so I travel a lot. And in some of those places there has been a significant amount of security, even more than in the United States, in some of those places less. So it's a concern that we all have.
And I think we haven't arrived yet at the best way to do it. And I know because Tom and I are involved in a business that does this. There are all kinds of techniques being developed to try to have better security faster with more convenience for people. That's one of the great things about the free enterprise system. You create a need, and then people think of all kinds of creative and inventive ways to satisfy it. And I think that'll happen. There will be better forms of security.
I have been in airports where I have had to take off my shoes, my jacket. Once I had to open my belt. And then they wanted to even go further, and I said no. It was getting embarrassing. So I've gone through all of that. And I think, unfortunately, it's necessary, but it doesn't take away my -- it delays me a little, it's inconvenient, and sometimes it's a little embarrassing, but it doesn't take away my freedom. I'm still able to go places and do things, and that's true of everyone.
And I'll go back to the original question of people should not be labeled because of race, religion, ethnicity. That's a terrible thing to do. That's the thing we're trying to get away from. That's what -- when I say we're a part of the modern world, that's what I mean by being part of the modern world. We're almost at the point where we don't have those divisions any more, and it would be a shame to go back to them.
The gentleman over here.
QUESTION: Steven Edwards, National Post and CanWest News Service of Canada. Mr. Mayor, yesterday there was a ruling that said families could -- opened the way for families to sue airlines, building owners, et cetera. And, of course, you've got something like 1,700 families who have not claimed through the government's compensation plan, so you can imagine that there will be huge demands through this way. That would -- you can imagine that's going to perhaps cripple or have huge effects on the economy.
Is it the appropriate way for families to respond, and would you therefore dissuade them from trying to seek redress through this course?
MR. GIULIANI: I don't know if I figured this out or Tom and all who we consulted with helped us with this, or we also had grief counselors that we consulted to try to figure out how to get through all this.
But one of the lessons that I learned is that you can't -- you can't tell people how to grieve. Government or society can't say to me or to you, 'This is the way you grieve." People do it in different ways. And you have to be broad enough to allow that, as long as it isn't illegal or trying to harm other people.
And I can't tell people whether they should take what the government is offering them or sue. They have to make their own decision about that. I believe that if they had more information about what they were being offered, however, more of them would accept it, as against the -- whatever hopes there are about, you know, civil recovery. But that's an individual decision that they have to make, and the courts are going to have to resolve if there is liability.
I can't figure that out at this point. I don't know the answer to that. I do know that I think a family has to make an individual decision. And if they make the decision in good faith, then I would support it, whether it's to take the money that's being offered by the government or deciding that that is adequate or it isn't an adequate vindication and they feel they have to pursue a lawsuit. That's their right.
QUESTION: Frances from TVBS, Taiwan. Even now, at this point, in New York, a lot of people who live in New York feel really that New York might be attacked again. But in the past couple days, we have been asking people around even why, even with the fear in their minds, they still decide to stay in the city. People have been giving amazing answers.
MR. GIULIANI: Tell me a few.
QUESTION: Like authentic Polish restaurants or Yankees, or some people just say they enjoy jaywalking in the city. (Laughter.) So I'd like to know what yours, your reason to, you know, what was the thing that you enjoy so much for New York that you decided to stay here.
MR. GIULIANI: The Yankees. (Laughter.) I'm a big Yankee fan. We have won two in a row now. The Yankees have been my passion since I was about two years old. And even after the attacks of September 11th, one of the only things that would relax me during that period of time was to watch a Yankee game, and then watch the playoffs and the World Series. I traveled out to Arizona and flew back in the middle of the night to go see two World Series games.
Let me see if I can put in context what it means to be afraid of terrorism. We should be prepared for terrorism and we should keep it on our minds. And I actually get concerned -- and as we were driving down to the site this morning, Sunny and I discussed this. I get concerned that we're forgetting September 11th -- first, from the point of view of the people that we owe so much to, because Tom and I wouldn't be here.
I mean, we could have been dead on September 11th. For some reason, the way things happened, the buildings fell in a certain way, and some people were killed and others weren't. So I feel a real obligation to the people who were lost, and they need to be remembered in the right way with the appropriate kind of memorial, like we were talking about, and assistance for their families.
But the second thing that we have to keep reminding ourselves is that terrorism poses a terrible threat to us and that we have to remain united. We had a tremendous amount of political unity after September 11th, and some of that now is breaking down and people are trying to take advantage of this, take advantage of that and trying to make political points. We should try to go back to the sense of unity that we had, that came out of being attacked, and then our response.
I took world leaders from many of your governments to the site of the World Trade Center personally, and one or two up in a helicopter, as well as a tour of the event. And they were all very much moved by what happened. And I could see in their eyes the sense that they thought it could happen to them as well, if it hasn't already happened to them in some way.
But we, the good people of the world and the decent countries, have a bond they have to create here. And if we do that and resist terrorism then, you know, we're going to find a way to work together that transcends everything else. And I think it's possible for us to do that. But we have to keep reminding ourselves of what can happen to us. We can't forget it.
I'll take one more question. I see this gentleman right here has been trying. It's all right to ask question.
QUESTION: You've referred repeatedly to the memorial you want to see -- this Nick Rosen from Channel 4 Television, London. You have referred to the memorial you want to see. Can you tell us what you are able to do to try and ensure that that kind of memorial is put up and we don't just get a lot of other stuff?
MR. GIULIANI: All I can do is speak out and join the families in their speaking out on the importance of having a memorial dominate that site. And it isn't -- sometimes the word "memorial" seems like a sad word, but it should be a beautiful structure that really captures what happened, the horror and the grandeur of what happened.
And I think when it's created and designed, people will know it. They'll immediately say, "Ah, yes, that captures the spirit of what happened, the horrific nature of the attack and the brilliant nature of the response."
And so far, because the emphasis has been so much on office buildings, they haven't been able to -- they are, in essence, overwhelming the memorial part of it with the office -- now it's instead of having the memorial part of it, even if it's a structure overwhelm, and then the offices being the secondary part.
And all I can do to make that come about is to keep saying it, keep talking about it, and joining with people who feel that way. We're a democracy. It will ultimately get decided.
Ms. Nisbet: Thanks so much to both of you.
MR. GIULIANI: Thank you very, very much.
