End of the World.
Inside was an emergency phone directory for the national security apparatus, and the supersecret documents that would activate it in a crisis.
For the first 1,167 days of Mr. Lhota’s tenure as deputy mayor for operations in the Giuliani administration, the binder sat untouched.
On Sept. 11, 2001, it became his bible.
As he ticked through a series of unimaginable decisions that day — rousing the White House, summoning the National Guard — the binder would epitomize Mr. Lhota’s approach to the unfolding crisis, revealing a Boy Scout’s obsession with preparedness and a bureaucrat’s faith in the problem-solving powers of government.
Today, as he struggles to promote himself as the battle-tested candidate for mayor, armed with a rare command of City Hall’s operations, pressure points and bottlenecks, his role in overseeing the response to the attacks remains a potentially potent credential, unmatched by anything on his rival’s résumé.
It was a moment, interviews show, when Mr. Lhota’s understanding of New York City’s fragile psychology prevented the authorities from turning Manhattan into a closed-off bunker; when his longtime insistence on backing up essential government computer systems proved prescient; and when his biography as the son of a city police lieutenant and grandson of a firefighter gave him credibility in delicate talks with victims’ families.
But with the same cruel efficiency that Sept. 11 demonstrated Mr. Lhota’s mettle as a leader, it laid bare weaknesses in his judgment.
He had participated in the fateful decision to place the city’s Office of Emergency Management command center inside a high-rise next to the World Trade Center towers, even though the towers had been the target of a previous terror strike, in 1993.
“I did not object” to the site, Mr. Lhota acknowledged in an interview.
When the city most needed the high-tech command center on Sept. 11, it was rendered useless: first evacuated, then incinerated.
“Was it a mistake in hindsight?” Mr. Lhota asked. “Obviously.”
After the attacks, Mr. Lhota lobbied for an unusual extension of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s term by 90 days, arguing that the extensive rebuilding process required continuity in the mayor’s office. That unsuccessful idea, Mr. Lhota now says, a bit grudgingly, was flawed.
“It wasn’t a perfect thing to do,” he said.
Regrets do not readily tumble out of Mr. Lhota’s mouth, and he still bristles at the rearview skepticism about that day.
“Monday-morning quarterbacking is always easy,” he said. “It was to me a wartime situation.”
With uncharacteristic bravado, Mr. Lhota said that he had thrived under the grim circumstances. “I believe this more than anything else — I knew it before 9/11 and I know it today: I’m at my best in a crisis,” he said.
The destruction and death of that day was so traumatizing that Mr. Giuliani relieved several aides of their duties.
“There were people who cracked under the pressure,” the former mayor said. “Joe got calmer. I could see it.”
Stepping Into Crisis Mode
Sept. 11 was shaping up to be a laid-back morning at City Hall. The mayor had a breakfast in Midtown. The 8 a.m. daily staff meeting was canceled.
Mr. Lhota played his own version of hooky: After voting in the Republican primary (for a long-shot hopeful, Michael R. Bloomberg), the deputy mayor sat down at his desk and rewrote his résumé on a yellow legal pad. The Giuliani administration would leave office in a few months and he needed a new job. An open window, facing west toward Battery Park City, let in the morning air and the unmistakable sound of a low-flying jetliner.
It was Mr. Lhota who delivered the news of the crash at the north tower to Mr. Giuliani. “Get as close to the mayor as you can,” he told Mr. Giuliani’s security guard by phone. “We have a problem.”
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