Daily · Dreamtime

WAYNE BARRETT: Well, not only is it an embarrassment that the president of a security company, who basically his claim to fame and his claim to the presidency is rooted in his supposed security consciousness around his icon status from 9/11, not only is that very embarrassing, but the substance of the document is really an indictment of the status of his campaign, because the document was written several months ago, a 140-page game plan about who to focus on, and person after person that's named in the document as people that should be focused on by the campaign to pull them into the campaign as prime supporters, many of those people have already signed up with McCain in the interim.

And, you know, you take a look at Henry Kravis, for example, who's named in the document, a major Wall Street figure. They say we need to get to Henry Kravis and identify him and pull him into our camp. Kravis was a big Giuliani supporter while Giuliani was mayor. You would think that they could at least, if they reached out to Henry Kravis, hold him from entering the fray so early. But, in fact, he's already become a McCain supporter. So it looks like they laid out a game plan and then failed to even execute it.

So ,I think the far more serious damage to the Giuliani campaign is not just that they blew this and that obviously they can't run a secure campaign, but that the evidence that the Daily News has published is evidence that suggests that they're far behind schedule and that they've blown many opportunities to bring some of the major sugar daddies of the Republican Party into line with this campaign. These are now McCain people.

I think -- keep in mind, everybody in the national news media keeps saying that John McCain is the frontrunner. That is a total inaccurate report, because Rudy Giuliani has led in nine out of ten polls. He's the frontrunner. McCain's people, I think, have systematically now -- I think they're very concerned about how Giuliani is showing up in their own private polling. And I think they threw a grenade at this campaign very early, and I think it's having dire consequences for the Giuliani effort.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the significance of Mr. Singer, “P.S.” as named in the plans.

WAYNE BARRETT: Well, Paul Singer is this hedge fund guy who is a big Bush backer and is apparently a very heavy player inside of the Giuliani campaign. What's interesting is that they -- there was memos inside of this playbook that indicate that Paul Singer, this hedge fund guy, was supposed to be in charge of rounding up the 9/11 families to support the Giuliani effort.

I can tell you, having just written the book, about Giuliani's performance on 9/11, that there’s a lot of 9/11 families who are outraged by his performance. You don't have to rely on me. Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, in their own book, which came out simultaneous with mine, reported that the biggest failing of the 9/11 Commission was how they treated Giuliani at that May 2004 hearing, where they gave him a pass on every question, let him tell the same anecdotal speech he usually gets paid $100,000 to tell. And so, they said that because the families were so outraged at the pass that he was given -- and they wrote this in their own book -- they cancelled the buses to the final hearing in July or June in 2004 down in Washington. Hundreds of families that were expected to go cancelled, because they were so offended by the way in which the 9/11 Commission treated the families.

Rudy has, I’m sure, some families he can turn to that will support him for president. But there are many families who I’ve talked to in the course of reporting this book who were outraged by his performance. I mean, the city was about as prepared for that attack, despite the 1993 bombing, as apparently the Giuliani campaign was prepared for some sort of a security leak from their campaign.

AMY GOODMAN: Just on these backers who he may or may not have gotten to support him, Rudolph Giuliani, another Giuliani target, FedEx CEO Fred Smith; the uncommitted Paramount CEO Brad Grey, Giuliani's talent agent after 9/11 is envisioned as leading a celebrities’ fundraising arm; former Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton would raise money from professional athletes; News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch; Pepsico chief Dawn Hudson; Goldman Sachs president Lloyd Blankfein are also listed as industry leaders.

WAYNE BARRETT: I mean, you know, Brad Grey, for example, has worked with Giuliani for years. The fact that he's uncommitted and that they can't nail him down is another example of weakness. So, Brad Grey produced that HBO special after 9/11 that was practically handed over to Giuliani as a production. Everybody that worked for Giuliani exclusively was interviewed for the Brad Grey special on HBO. So the fact that he's uncommitted and the fact that Henry Kravis has been lost to McCain and so many other people who are listed in this playbook --

I did a, as you pointed out, I did a biography of Giuliani in 2000 called Rudy!: An Investigative Biography," and they did exactly the same thing when he ran for mayor. I got a copy of a playbook that was a vulnerability study that was 500 or 600 pages long, that was like a recitation of every weakness in his life that he ever had. And I published that in the earlier book. And it seems like they haven't learned anything from that experience.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to break. When we come back, Wayne Barrett, also Kevin Keating, the filmmaker who did Giuliani Time, and we’ll play excerpts. Stay with us.

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