Some people have said the greatest crisis during Rudy Giuliani's mayoralty was September 11th. I disagree. There was never a doubt that he would perform in the brilliant fashion that he did. It was only Rudy detractors who were surprised by that. Or people who didn't know how effectively a properly managed government could be mobilized in a time of crisis. I give Rudy great credit for 9/11 but it was no more than I knew him capable of and no more than he had shown the city they should expect.
The greatest crisis in Rudy Giuliani's eight years as mayor happened and virtually no one knew or knows about it. It happened fairly early on in his administration and effected the remainder of his two terms. It was in many ways the turning point. Life for him and us could have been far different had this crisis not occurred. But it happened and here for the first time is a first-hand account of what transpired over those two weeks.
Some crises are like 9/11 or Pearl Harbor; you know right away you are involved in something epic and bad. Others dawn slowly, like a creeping epidemic; the realization that something serious is happening may take awhile. The greatest crisis of Rudy Giuliani's mayoralty was more the latter than the former. It took me - us - some time to awaken to the severity of the situation.
It started with a meeting I was attending in the Committee of the Whole Room, always referred to as the "COW”. A high ceilinged, original federalist period space that was being restored with new carpet and an enormous round mahogany table that took up almost the entire room. As the Mayor’s Counsel, Denny Young, had taken the only real conference room in City Hall for his office, this was the main meeting space for the Mayor and his staff. Rudy was running late for the meeting. When he began running really late eyes fell on me. In most meetings I attended, at a certain level, I would be the person to check on his whereabouts due to my longevity with the Mayor through two campaigns and my closeness to his executive assistant, Beth Petrone.
Usually, there are three answers as to where he could be: he’s running late, sit tight; he’s very, very backed up and we need to reschedule; or he had to run out to some emergency and we need to reschedule. There was almost never a fourth, except for this day.
When I dialed Beth and asked “What’s up?” she sounded nervous, which she rarely did, when she responded, “I don’t know what to tell you.” “OK,” I said, “should I wait or should I cancel?” She repeated, ”I don’t know what to tell you.” “OK,” I said, “why don’t I cancel.” Beth Petrone had been with Rudy Giuliani through the U.S. Attorney’s Office, White & Case law firm (where she told me they actually gave out demerits to secretaries for tardiness; she loved that), Anderson, Kill (another law firm), two campaigns, and now City Hall. She conveyed his wishes better than anyone I knew and more accurately, but something was wrong this morning.
My next stop after canceling the meeting was her desk to find out what was going on. “He won’t come upstairs,” she said. I knew she meant that he wouldn’t come up from his basement office.
Most guests to the Mayor’s private office are shocked by how small it is given the prestige of the job. They may or may not notice that off to the right side is a small cut-out through which is a kitchenette. Through that is a staircase that leads to a lower office. Very few guests are ever shown that office. Down there - mayors configure it differently - were a sofa, a small conference table, and a television. Early on in the administration we had meetings down there due to the lack of conference space, but due to reasons soon to follow, that stopped.
“Is she with him?” I asked. Beth nodded. "He just keeps canceling his meetings, one after the other. He won’t attend anything. No, that’s not true. SHE calls up and cancels the meetings.” Beth then named a few internal afternoon appointments that she said he had to attend. They were important meetings, had been on the schedule for weeks, and had been requested by Peter Powers and Denny. We both agreed this was weird but not much weirder than all that had transpired over the last many months.
His relationship with Cristyne Lategano, his recently promoted Director of Communications, was not merely fodder for gossip, inside and outside City Hall, but had become a corrosive force in the running of government. We had all experienced it. The crisis described in this account happened a few weeks after her appointment to that job.
There were those of us who had tried in large or small measure to stem this tide. The person who tried in largest measure was Therese McManus, the Director of Scheduling and Advance, who went to Rudy's office and literally pleaded with him; broke down and tearfully pleaded with him, to come to his senses and see Cristyne as the manipulative, cunning, treacherous, scheming, incompetent that she was. Therese begged him to get rid of her. It was a turning point moment for all of us when he said no. Therese was more or less demoted shortly after that and we all realized that the old guard, the old campaign staff who had been through thick and thin, didn’t stand a chance against Cristyne. Cristyne knew it too. There was no stopping her after that.
Looking back this had all been preventable and I had tried in my small way to wave a flag of the impending danger. It all went back to a confrontational meeting with Peter Powers, the First Deputy Mayor and my immediate boss, where this came up. I didn’t have a very good relationship with Peter. I found him stiff and very taken with himself and his title. Rudy was easier to get along with in the beginning than Peter was. But in fairness, Peter was an exceptional manager who never got proper credit for how well he ran the agencies.
Many months earlier he had asked to see me to enlist my support in his on-going war with Randy Mastro, the Mayor’s Chief of Staff. Few outsiders and no journalists have taken note of the intense hatred that existed and exists today between Peter Powers and Randy Mastro. I thought their feud stupid especially from Peter’s perspective. I focused most of my enmity, at that time, toward Peter’s Chief of Staff, Gordon Campbell.
Gordon had worked in the Dinkins Administration for Harvey Robbins, the Director of Operations and Peter considered himself fortunate having Gordon to help navigate city government for him. The issue I, and a great many Giuliani people, had with Gordon was that he knew not our agenda and didn’t share it. But even that was all fine and could easily be overlooked for the sake of harmony. But the cardinal sin, and not about to be pardoned by me and certainly not by my friend the Appointments Officer, Anthony Carbonetti, was infection. Gordon Campbell through his own and through his influence on Peter was promoting and secretly staffing throughout the administration what we called “permanent government types.” Tony had a file an inch thick of Gordon’s activities. Gordon was a shrewd player of government politics and was helping his friends throughout the agencies. We all knew him to be a terrible influence on Peter. Eventually as time went on the Mayor would come to know this too.
In order to keep his feet in both camps, the Mastro and Powers camps, Tony used me as the foil to launch at Peter. He never helped me at this time. I knew he didn’t have my back but I felt strongly on this matter and I didn’t mind operating alone against Gordon.
In this meeting with Peter we spoke at cross purposes. I tried to get him to see the damage that Gordon was doing to the Giuliani agenda. He was trying to enlist me to join him in seeing the dangers of Randy Mastro and to PLEASE lay off Gordon Campbell. Peter never pleaded with me like this and it was obvious my attacks on Gordon within the administration were having an effect.
Finally I blew-up. You don’t yell at Peter Powers unless you’re Rudy Giuliani and then you do it a lot. I said, “While the two of you keep this battle up between yourselves she drives right down the middle. She keeps getting in closer and closer. She’s driven Therese and Todd out. I’m telling you, unless you turn your attention that way (I pointed towards her office) and away from Mastro she will take over everything. She’s already with him every goddamn minute in that van.” Peter responded in that super patronizing way of his that you can only appreciate if you’ve been on the receiving end. “That will never happen, let me worry about Cristyne. Can I count on you with Mastro and to lay off Gordon?” He asked. “No,” I said, “I’m sorry I don’t agree with you on any of this. I can’t tell best friend Peter Powers with a straight face that he’s off-agenda (a phrase coined by Peter to mean anti-Rudy) but we just don’t agree on any of this. This feud with Mastro is only enabling her. I don’t see why you can’t see that - it feeds right into her plans.” I got up and left. Months later she was Director of Communications.
[ I do not know the exact genesis of the Powers-Mastro hatred. If there is an originating moment, I do not know what it was. It didn't seem to be there in the 89 campaign and I remember only a little visible tension in 93. The apex of their war, at least from Peter's perspective, occurred in May of 1994 immediately after Randy Mastro left for his two week honeymoon. Almost as soon as he left, there erupted what would become the biggest scandal of the Administration (until me). It involved the Department of Youth Services (DYS) and its Commissioner, Rev. John Brandon. I won't bore you with the details, they're not important. The key thing for this purpose is for you to know that Brandon and DYS were viewed as Mastro's domain. He pulled Brandon's strings and had a lot of oversight of DYS. The minute DYS came under scrutiny Peter started blaming Mastro to anyone and everyone who would listen: on the phone, on the steps of City Hall to reporters, to the City Council, the Mayor, anyone. Mastro was in Italy, I think, and helpless. Peter worked tirelessly to stab Mastro in the back every chance he got during that week. Peter also took charge of cleaning up DYS - Mastro's mess. Mastro called in from his honeymoon and his staff informed him how Peter was hanging him out to dry. He tried to do some damage control from overseas but Peter was there on the ground, stiletto in hand. We all had thought it crazy to take two weeks off, even for a honeymoon. You just didn't take that kind of time off in Rudy Giuliani's City Hall. I don't think Mastro ever forgave Peter for doing that to him while on his honeymoon. After it was over someone, I think it was Carbonetti, coined the phrase 'Mastroed'; meaning to be knifed while you're out-of-town. As a lesson learned, no one ever took a lengthy vacation during the rest of the two terms.]
But Beth was wrong. Those meetings Peter and Denny put on the schedule that couldn’t be canceled? They were. And every meeting that followed, one by one struck down. He would not emerge from his basement office. Food was sent down. Cristyne called up the order. What did it mean? Was it just for the day? Were they just going to stay down there screwing around for the day? Who knew? What about tomorrow? Beth wondered what tomorrow would be like.
I stopped by Carbonetti’s office and asked him for an update. Although I had been there at the beginning of the crisis I took it for granted he knew about it by now. “We're going out for dinner,” he said. Tony was becoming part of Rudy’s regular dinner crew that went out nightly. “You’re going out?” I asked surprised. “Well,” he said, “I figured they’d been fucking all day they’d either be starving or exhausted. I guess they’re starving.” I laughed. I had just assumed they’d be exhausted.
Day two of the crisis was exactly the same except we now knew we were in a crisis which made it worse. One by one the appointments fell off the schedule. We weren’t sure how to take this. Was this a lark? It was almost funny if it weren’t so incredibly serious. The Mayor of the City of New York was holed-up with his mistress below ground beneath City Hall doing God knows what not giving a damn and leaving it to his staff to worry about the consequences. More appointments fell, more lunches sent down. Another day over. Day three.
This wasn’t funny at all now because I had a meeting on day three with him. Obviously its not funny when my meetings get canceled. Sure enough, gone. Canceled. The thing is you wait and wait as though he’s going to come. You sit in the COW and stare at the phone. And finally Beth calls and tells you to cancel, as you knew she would. The watchword of Day Three has now become ‘Containment.’ There are still only a handful of us who know what’s going on. But the schedule is continuing to run as normal. The meetings are being assembled as normal and held and then they are being canceled for the usual reasons. In this way I suppose the assembled - mostly agencies - will suspect nothing. They’ve been at City Hall, waited, been canceled, and left before. Business as usual. But what about the insiders? There are a lot of staffers at City Hall. They all don’t know. And can’t.
One of Peter Power’s staffers, Sal Uy, on Day 4 asked me why his agency’s meeting was canceled with the Mayor. I told him scheduling problems; just very backed up. He knew I knew Beth well and I knew these answers. I told him I would get his meeting rescheduled when things got back on track. It was a promise. Back on track? When? We had expected this to pass by the third or fourth day but there was now no sign of this ending. Quite to the contrary. This looked like it might become permanent. Rudy Giuliani was giving every indication that he had lost interest in running city government - his government.
It is impossible to overestimate how much trouble we were in. City government at the very top echelon had stopped functioning. No major decisions were being made or could be made. No meetings of substance were being held. The agencies were all waiting for decisions on our major initiatives. Rudy Giuliani called the shots and he ran the show. He liked it that way and so did we and now he had lost interest in the job. Yes, trash was picked up and traffic was directed. But the things he was elected to do - those things - had ceased moving forward. I don’t mind admitting fear gripped City Hall. We were scared. I know Peter was scared. And I knew it when Beth called Jo Yagid, Peter’s scheduler, to say she was canceling his one-on-one.
By the fourth day Gordon had decided that Peter’s staff and the agencies could get their issues onto Peter’s agenda with his weekly one-on-one with the Mayor. The Mayor rarely canceled that meeting and usually only if he had to run out of the building for some reason. It was as sacrosanct as those Thursday lunches that Presidents have with their Vice Presidents.
Peter didn’t love Gordon’s idea because he had a full list of his own, but it was a crisis so he pared his own items down. Gordon added some of our items along with some agency requests and it seemed like we could maybe get business done this way. Kind of if Rudy wont go to the meetings we’ll bring the issues to him.
Well that idea came crashing down when Beth called and canceled Peter’s one-on-one. That was our last hope of getting business done. If we couldn’t use Peter as our surrogate then things have really and completely shut down. Government at this level, at the very, very top now does not function. Except no one knows and musn’t know it. That was now the challenge for as long as this madness was going to last. My own job, Inter-Governmental Affairs, which included legislative affairs, required immediate answers from him. Albany, Washington, the City Council, all required his position on legislation. The only meeting he kept in the early days of the crisis was his regular Friday meeting with the Speaker of the City Council, Peter Vallone. We took that as a good sign but it meant nothing.
A good portion of my day was spent farming questions from people dropping by my office asking me why the Mayor canceled this meeting or that meeting. I started blaming the issue or the agency. The agency didn’t do their homework and the Mayor was pissed at the briefing material they sent over and in a rage canceled the meeting, I told them. Given Rudy’s personality anyone would believe it. My job, first, last, and always was to defend the principal and however crazy this whole thing was, that’s what I was going to do.
I worked with Gordon on the issue of how to keep things moving and with Tony on containment. Containment proved the easier of the two. Rudy would come out for Blue Room press conferences (Cristyne ran those) and a few outside events (time alone in the van). But always back down to the basement office. Beth would try her best as he went back to his office to try and get Peter or Denny in there but no dice. Cristyne would say, “He doesn’t want to see anyone.”
Seth Kaye, the Director of the Mayor’s Office of Transportation stopped me in Tweed one day. We both knew what was going on but he thought I might have more current info. “Any end in sight? I got a lot of shit backed up at DOT and DEP.” “Nothing,” I said. “It’s just insane, when will it end? Why won’t he go back to work? What if this went on for a month? What would we do? What would we say? It’s like that movie ‘Nine to Five’. Except people actually want to see Rudy.” I jokingly said if the City had a 22nd Amendment we should consider invoking it.
Day by day this kept up. I sat with Peter a few times on issues and Gordon a few times to brainstorm how to find loopholes in the law for certain things that required a mayoral signature.
I also ran the Mayor’s Office of Grant’s Administration. Were there ways around this? Could Peter sign instead? We spent hours finding things for Peter to do in Rudy’s place. People would be surprised how many things by law require the mayor's signature for which no surrogate can be used. But there is no substitute for a mayoral decision, mayoral action. And the voters elected Rudy Giuliani not Peter Powers, Bill Bratton, or Randy Mastro. We were all agreed on that. "Deal with the agencies the best you can." That was Peter’s directive. Keep this to ourselves. Don’t let word leak out. And so it went.
Rudy Giuliani became less a presence in our lives and more an irritant. He was causing all this. And he could end it by emerging. He was the crazy uncle in the attic we were covering up for. Only he was in the basement. And he was the Mayor of the Capital City of the World. What would make it end? It was getting harder and harder to cover with the agencies. We push them for weeks to get a project moving and then they’re ready to do it only waiting for a mayoral ‘OK’ and then no decision.
At this point in the administration most of us had stopped going to the Mayor's daily press avail in the Blue Room. During the crisis everyone, and I mean everyone, went. It was our only opportunity to see him. Cristyne would brief him in the basement on what was likely to be asked. Once or twice someone was called to his office to brief on something specific right before the avail. I would leave a minute before it ended and stand in front of Peter's office to see his face as he passed by on his way back to his office. I was hoping I could detect something in his face: anger, depression, mania - something. But no. He just looked determined. Determined to get back to the basement.
On the evening of Day Eight or Nine I was at dinner with Tony Carbonetti at the Tramway Diner in our neighborhood. We lived one block from each other. Tony told me, “I was downstairs with Schwartz and she kept sneaking in and out of his office.” The entrance to the Mayor’s basement office was located right outside the office of Richard Schwartz, Senior Advisor to the Mayor. “God, I fucking hate that cunt; that she’s causing all this. She’s shutting down the whole government. And when she saw me she giggled. She actually fucking giggled. Jesus Christ!”
We were all becoming a little paranoid too. With any word or gesture we did not want to give away what was actually going on. I remember being at City Hall and thinking whenever I passed someone, Do they Know? I saw Paul Crotty, the City's Corporation Counsel, one day and kept trying to tell if he knew. It was best not to say anything unless you knew the person was already in the know. I would be on the steps of City Hall smoking, looking at all the reporters and thinking, Jesus, if they only knew what was going on.
Just as I didn’t know that a meeting in the COW had launched this crisis for me, so it was that I was unaware when I sat down for another meeting in the COW that I was about to hasten its end.
Coming Monday - the conclusion to Gov't Shutdown.
