Rudy Giuliani Retraces His Steps on 9/11 in New York

Mayor, what's the situation right now?

It's one of the most indelible images of 9/11, the moment Rudy

Giuliani became America's mayor.

Now, for the first time, Giuliani retraces his steps from that

infamous day.

And

obviously we're walking faster than this, trying to get there.

Up to this point, it was still an emergency.

It hadn't become

an,

an out of body experience yet.

But that would all change in a New York minute.

Giuliani phoned the White House, reaching President George W.

Bush's aide, Chris Henrick, who informed the mayor

that more attacks may be on the

way.

I did ask Chris, "How many planes are unaccounted for?"

He said, "At least seven, Mayor."

"Are any of them headed for the city?" He said, "You can't discount that, but I

wouldn't worry about that."

He was very confident we'll take them down.

A- and I said, "Well, my main concern now can be secondary

attacks.

Maybe they'll bomb St. Patrick's.

Maybe they'll bomb,

uh, the Empire State Building." I think they

thought they had destroyed the Stock

Exchange by taking that building down.

With the entire police department and the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force

deployed, Giuliani asked the White House for

military support

before heading toward the foot of the Twin Towers.

And then I could see the two towers head on,

and I would say I stopped

and I said, "Oh my God,"

because when you see it

straight on

all the way up there, the flames coming out,

I don't know. It was the worst sight I'd ever seen in my

whole life.

The police said, "Be careful. Things are coming off the building

and they're going

as far away as up there."

By things, it was like pieces of steel,

pieces of debris.

As he got closer to the towers, Giuliani ran into an old friend,

New York City Fire Department Chaplain, Mychal Judge.

When I got to about right here,

right over here,

I saw Father Judge, and I always had a thing

with him. I always would say to him, "Father, will you please pray for us?"

So he would say, "No, uh,

better if you pray. It's more, it'd be more unusual.

God will pay attention." I said that to him.

I didn't get the usual humorous response.

Instead, I got,

"Mayor, this is really bad."

He went like this. "I'm glad you have big shoulders.

Keep praying."

Now, he never said that to me before.

Later that morning when the South Tower collapsed,

debris crashed

through the North Tower lobby, killing many inside, including

Father Mychal Judge, who stayed until the end, praying for

firefighters and administering last rites to the dead.

Hey, chief, let's go.

Police told Giuliani to keep looking up, to anticipate falling

debris. That's when the mayor saw an image he

would never forget.

Let's go, let's go.

All of a sudden,

I saw a man

maybe 100, 101, 102 stories up.

He must've been this big, right? In my vision, he seemed this

big,

and I saw some flames behind him, and I realized Joe was right.

People were throwing themselves out.

And I stopped.

I looked up there. It would, it would've been right there.

That's where the, to the, to the l- to the right of that building.

I looked right up there

and I watched him,

and I was thinking, "Is he gonna do it or not?" And I think

I said to myself,

"I hope he doesn't,

because he could kill someone." All of a sudden, he, he fell

out.

I watched him come all the way down. He hit the ground.

It was at that moment Giuliani turned to his police commissioner, Bernie Kerik.

Yeah, I paused at that point. I grabbed Bernie's arm and I said,

"Bernie,

this is much worse than anything we've ever handled.

We gotta just say to ourselves it's beyond us.

We'll make decisions.

We gotta make them quickly.

We're never gonna know if they're right, and we're just gonna pray to God to make

them right. We gotta go with our instincts,

and thank God everybody around

here has experience. There's no game plan for this.

We're gonna have to invent it."

Giuliani asked Fire Chief Peter Ganci if helicopters could be

used to evacuate the people above the fires.

He said, "Mayor, I, my guys can save everybody below the

fire."

He was telling me he can't save the people above the fire.

What went through your head?

I don't know. I guess, um,

just y-

I felt useless. I felt I'm the mayor of New York City.

I, this is not being, uh, overly whatever.

I had the best police department in the world, the best fire department in the

world. There was no question about that.

I had the best emergency people in the world

if, and we can't save them.

And, and I s- I started thinking, who the hell are these people

that came here and

did this?

I said, "This bin Laden guy

gotta be the incarnation of evil."

You just think about these people were just going to work that day.

Uh, they, they didn't do anything to anybody.

I want to ask you

who you were on that morning of September 11th when you woke up,

when you got out of bed in that morning, and who you became when you went to

bed that night. How did you change?

When I went to bed that night, I took out a bi- uh,

a biography that's been written

of Winston Churchill,

and I read, uh, the chapters on the Battle of Britain so I

could

get advice about how to motivate my people.

And then, uh, I didn't fall asleep.

I, I, maybe 10 minutes here and there 'cause I kept the television on.

I remember at one point, because I had gotten through the whole day

and I kept it

together,

and I, I kn- I mean, I know emergencies

and I knew I had done a good

job

, and I said, "My father would be proud of me."

And I said, "Dad, you know,

I think you'd be, I think you'd be proud of me.

I think I was in the right place at the right time.

And if, I don't know if I'm gonna get through the rest of it,

but at least I got

through the first day."