“I found his comment to be disgracefully insulting,” said John J. McDonnell, a battalion chief and president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association in New York. “I personally saw him on the 11th, and I can’t tell the next time I saw him” at the site after the attacks.
Last month, the International Association of Fire Fighters (the parent organization of the U.F.O.A.) released a video titled, “Rudy Giuliani: Urban Legend,” and has been appealing to its members not to support Mr. Giuliani’s candidacy.
Giuliani Missteps in Imagery of Sept. 11
By SARAH WHEATON
Rudolph W. Giuliani sought yesterday to clarify comments of a day earlier in which he called himself “one of” the Sept. 11 cleanup workers and said he had been “at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers.” His statement has attracted sharp criticism from first responders and a rival campaign.
“This is not a mayor or a governor or a president who’s sitting in an ivory tower,” Mr. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and current candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, said Thursday at a stop in Cincinnati. “I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I’m one of them.”
Many of the firefighters, police officers and other responders to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, spent 24-hour days at the World Trade Center site in the early weeks, sifting through debris that many now claim gave them serious illnesses.
Mr. Giuliani’s post-Sept. 11 leadership of New York City has been the centerpiece of his presidential campaign, but he has also faced criticism over several issues, including the city’s preparedness before the attacks and whether the city did enough to ensure the safety of the workers at the site after the attacks. His comments on Thursday only intensified the ire of some first-responder groups that have opposed his presidential bid.
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