Deconstructing Rudi

Tarnishing the aura of Giuliani on 9/11 - Newsday.com: ". . . Equipping the police and fire departments with incompatible radios from a politically wired vendor. Overruling the warnings of his subordinates and installing the city's emergency-command center inside the World Trade Center -- 'the only bunker ever built in the clouds.'

'The facts -- depressing but unavoidable -- were that Giuliani had allowed the city to meet the disaster of September 11 unprepared in a myriad of ways,' Barrett and Collins write.

When the planes finally hit, the mayor was great on camera, the authors say -- but not so great marshaling a coordinated city response.

Instead of directing his own confused troops, Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik was serving as Rudy's personal bodyguard.

So who was actually in charge in the crucial early hours?

'I don't know who was directing,' current police commissioner Ray Kelly told Barrett and Collins. 'I literally don't. . .'"