Looking more like a spook in a sideshow than a presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani continues to lead in several nationwide polls, though not always with likely primary voters. While many may remember the Rudy of 9/10 — rude, fractious, ill tempered, given to fits of pique — for many more their vision extends only so far back as that clear Tuesday morning in September, and the cool-headed way he led a city, nearly a country, in the aftermath of 9/11.

In this campaign, however, Rudy is showing the public the side of him that earned him the enmity of the New York press corps. He has claimed that voting for a Democrat is akin to voting for bin Laden, and now he is trying to shirk his culpability in the ridiculous decision to place New York City’s disaster response center in the World Trade Center, rather than safely at a distance from likely targets (as any disaster plan would do).

No he has lashed out claiming that a former aide was responsible for that decision, and the aide has fired back with documentary proof that, once again, Rudy is not telling the truth.

Giuliani is blaming an old aide turned adversary Jerry Hauer, the city’s first director of the Office of Emergency Management, for the much-criticized decision to locate the emergency command center at 7 World Trade Center instead of a site in Brooklyn. After terrorists flew planes into the Twin Towers, 7 WTC burned and collapsed, and the 23rd-floor command center was rendered useless.”I thought for a number of reasons that Brooklyn was the better location,” says Hauer. He provided New York with a copy of his February 1996 memo to First Deputy Mayor Peter Powers recommending the Metro Tech facility in Brooklyn as his preferred site for the command center. “The building is secure and not as visible a target as buildings in Lower Manhattan,” the memo says.
Giuliani Blames Aide for Poor Emergency Planning – New York Magazine’s Daily Intelligencer

Let’s see if this gets past the Empire Zone blog at the New York Times and onto the front page (or at least section A) where it belongs.