Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani (born May 28, 1944) is an American lawyer, businessman, and politician from the state of New York. Formerly Mayor of New York City, Giuliani is currently seeking the Republican nomination in the 2008 United States presidential election.

A Democrat and Independent in the 1970s, and a liberal Republican from the 1980s to present, Giuliani served in the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, eventually becoming U.S. Attorney.

Giuliani later served two terms as Mayor of New York City (1994–2001). Giuliani gained international attention during and after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. [subscription site]</bgref> In 2001 Time magazine named him "Person of the Year" and he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

After leaving office as mayor, Giuliani founded Giuliani Partners, a security consulting business, acquired Giuliani Capital Advisors (later sold), an investment banking firm, and joined the Bracewell & Giuliani law firm, which changed its name when he became a partner. In February 2007 Giuliani filed a statement of candidacy for the Republican nomination for the 2008 presidential campaign.

Rudolph Giuliani was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, the only child of working-class parents Harold Angel Giuliani, AKA Joseph Starrett "Thug Life" and Helen C. D'Avanzo, both children of Italian immigrants. The family was Roman Catholic and its extended members included police officers, firefighters, and criminals. Harold Giuliani had trouble holding a job and had been convicted of felony assault and robbery and served time in Sing Sing; after his release he served as a Mafia enforcer for his brother-in-law Leo D'Avanzo AKA Tuillio, who ran an organized crime operation involved in loan sharking and gambling at a restaurant in Brooklyn.

In 1951, when Rudy Giuliani was seven, his family moved from Brooklyn to Garden City South on Long Island. There he attended a local Catholic school, St. Anne's. Later, he commuted back to Brooklyn to attend Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, graduating in 1961 with an 85 average.

Giuliani went on to Manhattan College in Riverdale, Bronx, where he majored in political science with a minor in philosophy. There he considered becoming a Catholic priest. He was elected president of his class in his sophomore year, but was not re-elected in his junior year. He joined the Phi Rho Pi fraternity, and was active in shaping its direction. He graduated in 1965.

Giuliani eventually decided to forego the priesthood, instead attending New York University School of Law in Manhattan, where he made law review and graduated cum laude with a Juris Doctor in 1968.

Upon graduation, Giuliani clerked for Judge Lloyd MacMahon, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York.

Giuliani did not serve in the military during the Vietnam War. He received a student deferment while at Manhattan College and another while at NYU Law. Upon graduation from NYU Law in 1968, he was classified as 1-A, available for military service. He applied for a deferment but was rejected. In 1969, MacMahon wrote a letter to Giuliani's draft board, asking that he be reclassified as 2-A, civilian occupation deferment, because Giuliani, who was a law clerk for MacMahon, was an essential employee. The deferment was granted. In 1970, Giuliani received a high draft lottery number; he was not called up for service although by then he had been reclassified 1-A.

In 1970, Giuliani joined the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

In 1973, he was named Chief of the Narcotics Unit and was eventually appointed United States Attorney. In 1975, Giuliani was recruited to Washington, D.C. during the Ford administration, where he was named Associate Deputy Attorney General and chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Harold "Ace" Tyler. His first high-profile prosecution was of U.S. Representative Bertram L. Podell (NY-13), who was convicted of corruption.

From 1977 to 1981, during the Carter Administration, Giuliani practiced law at the Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler law firm, as chief of staff to his previous DC boss, Ace Tyler. Tyler later became critical of Giuliani's turn as a prosecutor, calling his tactics "overkill".

In 1981, Giuliani was named Associate Attorney General in the Reagan administration, the third-highest position in the Department of Justice. As Associate Attorney General, Giuliani supervised the U.S. Attorney Offices' federal law enforcement agencies, the Department of Corrections, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the United States Marshals Service.

In a well-publicized 1982 case, Giuliani testified in defense of the federal government's "detention posture" regarding the internment of over 2,000 Haitian asylum-seekers who had entered the country illegally. The U.S. government disputed the assertion that most of the detainees had fled their country due to political persecution, alleging instead that they were "economic migrants." In defense of the government's position, Giuliani stated at one point that political repression under President Jean-Claude Duvalier (the infamous "Baby Doc") no longer existed. After meeting personally with Duvalier, Giuliani testified that "political repression, at least in general, does not exist" in Haiti under Duvalier's regime.

In 1983, Giuliani was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. It was in this position that he first gained national prominence by prosecuting numerous high-profile cases, resulting in the convictions of Wall Street figures Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken for insider trading. He also spearheaded the effort to jail drug dealers, combat organized crime, break the web of corruption in government, and prosecute white-collar criminals. He amassed a record of 4,152 convictions and 25 reversals. As a federal prosecutor, Giuliani was credited with bringing the "perp walk," parading of suspects in front of the previously alerted media, into common use as a prosecutorial tool. After Giuliani "patented the perp walk", the tool was used by increasing numbers of prosecutors nationwide.

Critics of Giuliani claim he arranged public arrests of people, then dropped charges for lack of evidence on high-profile cases rather than going to trial. In a few cases, his public arrests of alleged white-collar criminals at their workplaces, with charges later dropped or lessened, irreparably damaged their reputations. Giuliani's high-profile raid of the Princeton/Newport firm ended with the defendants having their cases overturned on appeal on the grounds that what they had been convicted of were not crimes.

In the Mafia Commission Trial (February 25, 1985–November 19, 1986), Giuliani indicted eleven organized crime figures, including the heads of New York's so-called "Five Families", under the RICO Act on charges including extortion, labor racketeering, and murder for hire. Time magazine called this "Case of Cases" possibly "the most significant assault on the infrastructure of organized crime since the high command of the Chicago Mafia was swept away in 1943", and quoted Giuliani's stated intention: "Our approach...is to wipe out the five families." Eight defendants were found guilty on all counts and subsequently sentenced on January 13, 1987 to hundreds of years of prison time.

Ivan Boesky was a Wall Street arbitrageur who had amassed a fortune of about US $200 million by betting on corporate takeovers. He was investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for making investments based on tips received from corporate insiders. These stock acquisitions were sometimes brazen, with massive purchases occurring only a few days before a corporation announced a takeover.

Although insider trading of this kind was illegal, laws prohibiting it were rarely enforced until Boesky was prosecuted. Boesky cooperated with the SEC and informed on several of his insiders, including junk bond trader Michael Milken:

"Boesky admitted to numerous offenses and then turned state's evidence, primarily against Milken. He received a 3 1/2 year prison sentence and $100 million fine after admitting to the charges and reached a plea bargain with Rudy Giuliani...[who would] draw criticism because Ivan was allowed to unload his holdings before his indictment was officially announced, realizing profits from it before being convicted. Others considered the sentence and fine as being too light. But Giuliani and company was [sic] after a much bigger fish, namely Milken."

In 1989, Giuliani charged Milken under the RICO Act with 98 counts of racketeering and fraud. In a highly-publicized case, Milken was indicted by a federal grand jury, and after a plea bargain, pled guilty to six lesser securities and reporting violations. He paid a total of $900 million in fines and settlements relating primarily to civil lawsuits and was banned for life from the securities industry.

Giuliani was U.S. Attorney until January 1989, resigning as the Reagan administration ended. He garnered criticism until he left office for his zealous handling of cases and was accused of prosecuting cases for political ambitions. He joined the law firm White & Case in New York City as a partner. He remained with White & Case until May 1990, when he joined the law firm Anderson Kill Olick & Oshinsky, also in New York City.

Giuliani first ran for New York City Mayor in 1989, attempting to unseat three-term incumbent Ed Koch. He won the September 1989 Republican Party primary election against business magnate Ronald Lauder, in a campaign marked by claims that Giuliani was not a true Republican and by an acrimonious debate. In the Democratic primary, Koch was upset by Manhattan Borough President David Dinkins.

In the general election, Giuliani ran as the fusion candidate of both the Republican and Liberal Parties. The Conservative Party, which had often co-lined the Republican party candidate, withheld support from Giuliani and ran Lauder instead. Conservative Party leaders were unhappy with Giuliani on ideological grounds. They cited the Liberal Party's endorsement statement that Giuliani "agreed with the Liberal Party's views on affirmative action, gay rights, gun control, school prayer and tuition tax credits."

During two televised debates, Giuliani framed himself as an agent of change, saying that "I'm the reformer," that "If we keep going merrily along, this city's going down," and that electing Dinkins would represent "more of the same, more of the rotten politics that have been dragging us down." Giuliani also accused Dinkins of not having paid his taxes for many years and of several other ethical misteps, in particular a stock transfer to his son. Dinkins said the tax matter had been fully paid off, denied other wrongdoing, and said that "what we need is a mayor, not a prosecutor," and that Giuliani refused to say "the R-word - he doesn't like to admit he's a Republican." Dinkins won the endorsements of three of the four daily New York newspapers, while Giulani won approval from the New York Post.

In the end, Giuliani lost to Dinkins by 47,080 votes out of 1,899,845 votes cast, in the closest election in city history.

In 1993, Giuliani again ran for mayor. Once again, Giuliani also ran on the Liberal Party line but not the Conservative Party line, which ran activist George Marlin. The principal issues of the election of 1993 were crime and taxes. Giuliani also campaigned on what he perceived to be the unchecked expansion of the city's budget and the lack of managerial competence of incumbent David Dinkins.

In addition, the city was suffering from a spike in unemployment associated with the nationwide recession, with local unemployment rates going from 6.7% in 1989 to 11.1% in 1992.</bgref> There was also a public perception that crime was increasing, although in fact the crime rate in most categories had decreased during the Dinkins administration; for example, the per-capita murder rate had peaked and then begun to decline under Dinkins, and rapes decreased in each year of his term.

Giuliani promised to focus the police department on shutting down petty crimes and nuisances as a way of restoring the quality of life: "It's the street tax paid to drunk and drug-ridden panhandlers. It's the squeegee men shaking down the motorist waiting at a light. It's the trash storms, the swirling mass of garbage left by peddlers and panhandlers, and open-air drug bazaars on unclean streets."

Dinkins and Giuliani never debated during the campaign, never coming to terms with how to approach a debate. Dinkins was endorsed by The New York Times and Newsday, while Giuliani was endorsed by the New York Post and, in a key switch from 1989, the New York Daily News.

In the end Giuliani won by a margin of 53,367 votes, with 49.25% of the electorate to the incumbent's 46.42%. He became the first Republican elected Mayor of New York City since John Lindsay in 1965.

Giuliani's opponent in 1997 was Democratic Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, who had beaten Al Sharpton in the September 9, 1997 Democratic primary. In the general election, once again Giuliani also had the Liberal Party but not Conservative Party listing. Giulani ran an aggressive campaign, parlaying his image as a tough leader who had cleaned up the city. Giuliani's popularity was at its highest point to date, with a late October 1997 Quinnipiac University poll showing him as having a 68% approval rating; 70% of New Yorkers were satisfied with life in the city and 64% said things were better in the city compared to four years previously.

Throughout the campaign he was well ahead in the polls and had a strong fund-raising advantage over Messinger. On her part, Messinger lost the support of several usually Democratic constituencies, including gay organizations and large labor unions. All four daily New York newspapers — The New York Times, New York Daily News, New York Post, and Newsday — endorsed Giuliani over Messinger.

In the end, Giuliani won 59% of the vote to Messinger's 41%, and became the first Republican to win a second term as mayor since Fiorello H. LaGuardia in 1941. Voter turnout was the lowest in 12 years, with 38% of registered voters casting ballots. The margin of victory included gains in his share of the African American vote (20% compared to 5% in 1993) and the Hispanic vote (43% from 37%) while maintaining his base of white and Jewish voters from 1993.

Giuliani served as mayor of New York City from 1994 through 2001. In 2002, Giuliani published Leadership, on his account of being Mayor.

In his first term as mayor, Giuliani, in conjunction with New York City Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton, adopted an aggressive enforcement-deterrent strategy based on James Q. Wilson's Broken Windows approach. This involved crackdowns on relatively minor offenses such as graffiti, turnstile jumping, and aggressive "squeegeemen", on the theory that this would send a message that order would be maintained. Giuliani and Bratton also instituted CompStat, a comparative statistical approach to mapping crime geographically and in terms of emerging criminal patterns, as well as charting officer performance by quantifying criminal apprehensions. Critics of the system assert that it creates an environment in which police officials are encouraged to underreport or otherwise manipulate crime data. The CompStat initiative won the 1996 Innovations in Government Award from the Kennedy School of Government.

During Giuliani's administration, crime rates dropped, which Giuliani's presidential campaign website has described. The extent to which his policies deserve the credit is disputed, however. A small nationwide drop in crime preceded Giuliani's election, and critics say that he may have been the beneficiary of a trend already in progress. Additional contributing factors to the overall decline in crime during the 1990s were federal funding of an additional 7,000 police officers and an overall improvement in the national economy. Changing demographics was a key factor contributing to crime rate reductions, which were similar across the country during this time. Because the crime index is based on the FBI crime index, which is self-reported by police departments, some have alleged that crimes were shifted into categories that the FBI doesn't collect.

Giuliani's supporters cite studies concluding that New York's drop in crime rate in the '90s and '00s exceeds all national figures and therefore should be linked with a local dynamic that was not present as such anywhere else in the country: "most focused form of policing in history. Zimring (Frank Zimring — The Great American Crime Decline) estimates that up to half of New York’s crime drop in the 1990s, and virtually 100 percent of its continuing crime decline since 2000, has resulted from policing."

Bratton was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in 1996. Giuliani forced Bratton out of his position after two years, in what was generally seen as a battle of two large egos in which Giuliani was not tolerant of Bratton's celebrity.

Giuliani's term also saw allegations of civil rights abuses and other police misconduct. There were police shootings of unarmed suspects, and the scandals surrounding the sexual torture of Abner Louima and the killings of Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond. Giuliani supported the Police Department, for example by releasing what he called Dorismond's "extensive criminal record" to the public, including a sealed juvenile file.

The Giuliani administration significantly reduced public education funding in New York City, by a total of over six billion dollars, and advocated the privatization of public schools with a voucher-based system.

Giuliani was criticized for embracing illegal immigrants. Giuliani continued a policy of preventing city employees from contacting the Immigration and Naturalization Service about immigration violations, on the grounds that illegal aliens should be able to take actions such as to send their children to school or report crime and violations without fear of deportation.

During his mayoralty, gays and lesbians in New York received domestic-partnership rights. Giuliani induced the city's Democratic-controlled New York City Council, which had avoided the issue for years, to then pass legislation providing broad protection for same-sex partners. In 1998, he codified local law by granting all city employees equal benefits for their domestic partners.

Due to term limits Giuliani could not run for a third term as Mayor. In November 1998, long-serving Democratic New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan retired and Giuliani immediately indicated an interest in running for the seat. Due to his high profile and visibility Giuliani was supported by the state Republican Party, even though he had irritated many by endorsing incumbent Democrat Governor Mario Cuomo over Republican George Pataki in 1994. Giuliani's entrance led to Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel and others recruiting then-U.S. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to run for Moynihan's seat, hoping she might combat his star power.

In April 1999, Giuliani formed an exploratory committee in connection with the Senate run. However, on May 19, 2000, before the Republican primary which he was expected to win, he withdrew his candidacy, with the stated reason that he had been diagnosed as having prostate cancer and needed treatment.

Giuliani was prominent in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. He made frequent appearances on radio and television on September 11 and afterwards — for example, to indicate that tunnels would be closed as a precautionary measure, and that there was no reason to believe that the dispersion of chemical or biological weaponry into the air was a factor in the attack. In his public statements, Giuliani mirrored the emotions of New Yorkers after the attacks: shock, sadness, anger, resolution to rebuild, and the desire for justice to be done to those responsible. "Tomorrow New York is going to be here", he said. "And we're going to rebuild, and we're going to be stronger than we were before...I want the people of New York to be an example to the rest of the country, and the rest of the world, that terrorism can't stop us."

The 9/11 attack occurred on the scheduled date of the mayoral primary to select the Democratic and Republican candidates to succeed Giuliani. The primary was immediately delayed two weeks to September 25. During this period, Giuliani sought an unprecedented three-month emergency extension of his term from January 1 to April 1 under the New York State Constitution (Article 3 Section 25), but the State Assembly and Senate did not approve it. The request was backed by the threat of a run for a third mayoral term as a Conservative Party candidate, requiring a legal challenge to the law imposing term limits on elected New York City officials.

Giuliani claimed to have been at the Ground Zero site "as often, if not more, than most workers.... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them." Some 9/11 workers have objected to those claims. While his appointment logs were unavailable for the six days immediately following the attacks, after that Giuliani spent a total of 29 hours over three months at the site. This contrasted with recovery workers at the site who spent this much time at the site in two to three days.

When Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal suggested that the attacks were an indication that the United States "should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause", Giuliani asserted, :"There is no moral equivalent for this [terrorist] act. There is no justification for it... And one of the reasons I think this happened is because people were engaged in moral equivalency in not understanding the difference between liberal democracies like the United States, like Israel, and terrorist states and those who condone terrorism. So I think not only are those statements wrong, they're part of the problem." Giuliani subsequently rejected the prince's $10 million donation to disaster relief in the aftermath of the attack.

Giuliani has been widely criticized for his decision to locate the Office of Emergency Management headquarters on the 23rd floor inside the 7 World Trade Center building. Those opposing the decision perceived the office as a target for a terrorist attack in light of the previous terrorist attack against the World Trade Center in 1993. The office was unable to coordinate efforts between police and firefighters properly while evacuating its headquarters. Large tanks of diesel fuel were placed in 7 World Trade to power the command center, and this fuel was later deemed responsible for the intense fire that caused that building to collapse hours after the Twin Towers. In May 2007, Giuliani put responsibility for selecting the location on Jerome M. Hauer, who had served under Giuliani from 1996 to 2000 before being appointed by him as New York City’s first Director of Emergency Management. Hauer has taken exception to that account in interviews and has provided FoxNews and New York Magazine with a memo demonstrating that he recommended a location in Brooklyn but was overruled by Giuliani. Television journalist Chris Wallace interviewed Giuliani on May 13, 2007, about his 1997 decision to locate the command center at the World Trade Center. Giuliani laughed during Wallace's questions and said that Hauer recommended the World Trade Center site and claimed that Hauer said that the WTC site was the best location. Wallace presented Giuliani a photocopy of Hauer directive letter. The letter urged Giuliani to locate the command center in Brooklyn, instead of lower Manhattan, because "not as visible a target as buildings in lower Manhattan." The February 1996 memo read, "The [Brooklyn] building is secure and not as visible a target as buildings in Lower Manhattan."

The 9/11 Commission noted in its report that lack of preparedness could have led to the deaths of first responders at the scene of the attacks. The Commission noted that the radios in use by the fire department were the same radios which had been criticized for their ineffectiveness following the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. Family members of 9/11 victims have said that these radios were a complaint of emergency services responders for years. The radios were not working when Fire Department chiefs ordered the 343 firefighters inside the towers to evacuate, and they remained in the towers as the towers collapsed. However, when Giuliani testified before the 9/11 Commission he said that the firefighters ignored the evauation order out of an effort to save lives. Giuliani testified to the Commission, where some family members of responders who had died in the attacks appeared to protest his statements. A 1994 mayoral office study of the radios indicated that they were faulty. Replacement radios were purchased in a $33 million no-bid contract with Motorola, and implemented in early 2001. However, the radios were recalled in March 2001 after a Probationary Firefighter's calls for help at a house fire could not be picked up by others at the scene, leaving firemen with the old analog radios from 1993. A book later published by Commission members Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, argued that the Commission had not pursued a tough enough line of questioning with Giuliani.

An October 2001 study by the National Institute of Environmental Safety and Health said that cleanup workers lacked adequate protective gear.

In the wake of the attacks, Giuliani was hailed by many for his leadership during the crisis. When polled just six weeks after the attack Giuliani received a 79% approval rating among New York City voters, a dramatic increase over the 36% rating he had received a year earlier — 7 years into his administration. [[Oprah Winfrey] called him "America's Mayor" at a 9/11 memorial service held at Yankee Stadium on September 23, 2001., a term now in common use by his supporters. Other voices denied it was the mayor who had pulled the city together. "You didn't bring us together, our pain brought us together and our decency brought us together. We would have come together if Bozo was the mayor", said civil-rights activist Al Sharpton, in a statement largely supported by Fernando Ferrer, one of three main candidates for the mayoralty at the end of 2001. "He was a power-hungry person", Sharpton also said.

On December 24, 2001, Time magazine named Giuliani its Person of the Year for 2001. Time observed that, prior to 9/11, the public image of Giuliani had been that of a rigid, self-righteous, ambitious politician. After 9/11, and perhaps owing also to his bout with prostate cancer, his public image had been reformed to that of a man who could be counted on to unite a city in the midst of its greatest crisis. Thus historian Vincent J. Cannato concluded in September 2006, "With time, Giuliani's legacy will be based on more than just 9/11. He left a city immeasurably better off — safer, more prosperous, more confident — than the one he had inherited eight years earlier, even with the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center at its heart. Debates about his accomplishments will continue, but the significance of his mayoralty is hard to deny."

Giuliani was praised by some for his close involvement with the rescue and recovery efforts, but others, including some firefighters, police, rescue workers, and families of WTC victims argue that "Giuliani has exaggerated the role he played after the terrorist attacks, casting himself as a hero for political gain." Giuliani has also profited personally from the tragedy, collecting $11.4 million from speaking fees in a single year. Before September 11th, Giuliani's assets were estimated to be somewhat less than $2 million, but his net worth could now be as high as 30 times that amount.

It has been alleged that Giuliani never read 9/11 Commission's Report and that he did not attend any meetings of the Iraq Study Group after being appointed to it in early 2006. He missed two early meetings, one of which involved a master class on Iraq, in which he would have had briefings by Colin Powell and David Petraeus. At those times he was giving paid speeches. After he failed to attend meetings of the group, ISG co-chair James Baker III contacted him. He responded with a letter of resignation, owing to "previous time commitments." Giuliani declined to appear at a March 14, 2007 forum of the International Association of Fire Fighters, a bipartisan presidential forum in Washington, D.C. attended by ten other major Democratic and Republican candidates. The relations between Giuliani and the firefighters' union are strained due to their contention that he abandoned efforts to recover remains and effects of firefighters and other victims in the rubble of the World Trade Center.

Giuliani initially downplayed the health effects arising from the September 11, 2001 attacks in the Financial District and lower Manhattan areas in the vicinity of the World Trade Center site. He moved quickly to reopen Wall Street, and it was reopened on September 17. In the first month after the attacks, he said "The air quality is safe and acceptable." However, in the weeks after the attacks, the United States Geological Survey identified hundreds of asbestos hot spots of debris dust that remained on buildings. By the end of the month the USGS reported that the toxicity of the debris was akin to that of drain cleaner. It would eventually be determined that a wide swath of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn had been heavily contaminated by highly caustic and toxic materials. The city's health agencies, such as the Department of Environmental Protection, did not supervise or issue guidelines for the testing and cleanup of private buildings. Instead, the city left this responsibility to building owners.

Giuiliani took control away from agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, leaving the "largely unknown" city Department of Design and Construction in charge of recovery and cleanup. Documents indicate that the Giuliani administration never enforced federal requirements requiring the wearing of respirators. Concurrently, the administration threatened companies with dismissal if cleanup work slowed. In June of 2007, former Republican Governor of New Jersey and director of the Environmental Protection Agency Christie Whitman reportedly stated that the EPA had pushed for workers at the WTC site to wear respirators but that she had been blocked by Giuliani. She stated that she believed that the subsequent lung disease and deaths suffered by WTC responders were a result of these actions. However, former deputy mayor Joe Lhota, now with the Giuliani campaign, replied, "All workers at Ground Zero were instructed repeatedly to wear their respirators." A safety professional who worked at Ground Zero added, "I was absolutely aghast at the refusal of the workers at ground zero to wear the personal protective equipment. All of my efforts to convince these guys to wear the masks was for naught."

Giuliani asked the city's Congressional delegation to limit the city's liability for Ground Zero illnesses be limited to a total of $350 million. Two years after Mayor Giuliani finished his term, FEMA appropriated $1 billion to a special insurance fund to protect the city against 9/11 lawsuits.

In February 2007, the International Association of Fire Fighters issued a letter asserting that Giuliani rushed to conclude the recovery effort once gold and silver had been recovered from World Trade Center vaults and thereby prevented the remains of many victims from being recovered: "Mayor Giuliani's actions meant that fire fighters and citizens who perished would either remain buried at Ground Zero forever, with no closure for families, or be removed like garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills Landfill," it said, adding: "Hundreds remained entombed in Ground Zero when Giuliani gave up on them." Lawyers for the International Association of Fire Fighters seek to interview Giuliani under oath as part of a federal legal action alleging that New York City negligently dumped body parts and other human remains in the Fresh Kills Landfill.

Since leaving office as Mayor, Giuliani has remained politically active by campaigning for Republican candidates for political offices at all levels. He was a speaker at the 2004 Republican National Convention, where he endorsed George W. Bush for re-election by recalling that immediately after the World Trade Center towers fell, "Without really thinking, based on just emotion, spontaneous, I grabbed the arm of then-Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, and I said to him, 'Bernie, thank God George Bush is our president.'"

Similarly, in June 2006, Giuliani started a website called Solutions America to help elect Republicans candidates across the nation.

After campaigning on behalf of George W. Bush in the 2004 election, he was reportedly the top choice for Secretary of Homeland Security after the resignation of Tom Ridge. When suggestions were made that Giuliani's confirmation hearings would be marred by details of his past affairs and scandals, he turned down the offer and instead recommended his friend and former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. Kerik in his pre-announcement interviews with the White House failed to disclose facts in his past that were certain to disqualify him. After the formal announcement of Kerik's nomination, information known for years to local reporters, but unreported, became widely known (most notably, that Kerik had ties to organized crime, but also that he had been sued for sexual harrassment and had employed an undocumented alien as a domestic servant). The political fallout was damaging to the perception of competence in the White House vetting process and doubts as to Giuliani's ethics and political judgment in recommending Kerik in the first place.



On March 15, 2006, Congress formed the Iraq Study Group (ISG). This ten-person bipartisan panel was charged with assessing the Iraq War and making recommendations. They would eventually unanimously conclude that contrary to Bush Administration assertions, "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating" and called for "changes in the primary mission" that would allow "the United States to begin to move its forces out of Iraq". On May 24, 2006, five weeks after accepting appointment to the ISG, and after missing all of the group's meetings, Giuliani resigned, citing his "previous time commitments". It later was discovered that it was Giuliani's fundraising schedule which had kept him from participating in the panel, a schedule which raised $11.4 million in speaking fees over fourteen months, and that Giuliani had been forced to resign after being given "an ultimatum to either show up for meetings or leave the group". Giuliani was described by Newsweek magazine in January of 2007 as "one of the most consistent cheerleaders for the president’s handling of the war in Iraq" and as of June of 2007 remained one of the few candidates for president to unequivocally support both the basis for the invasion and the execution of the war.

A May 14, 2007 "New York Daily News" poll indicates that 56 percent of polled New Yorkers believe that Bloomberg has done a better job as mayor, and that 29 percent believed that Giuliani had been a better mayor. 46% of those polled also indicated they would choose Bloomberg over Giuliani as President; Giuliani received the support of only 29% of New Yorkers.

Giuliani has been the subject of several controversies, involving both his professional and personal lives.

After leaving the mayor's office, Giuliani founded a security consulting business, Giuliani Partners LLC, in 2002, a firm that has been categorized by various media outlets as a lobbying entity capitalizing on Giuliani's name recognition, and which has been the subject of allegations surrounding staff hired by Giuliani and due to the firm's chosen client base. Over five years, Giuliani Partners would earn more than $100 million.

On March 31, 2005, it was announced that Giuliani would join the law firm of Bracewell & Patterson LLP (renamed Bracewell & Giuliani LLP) as a name partner and symbolic head of the expanding firm's new New York office. Despite a busy schedule the former mayor is known to be highly active in the day-to-day business of the Texas-based law firm described by the New York Times as "perhaps the nation’s most aggressive lobbyist for coal-fired power plants, heavy emitters of air pollutants and carbon dioxide, a gas associated with global warming." While there was early speculation that the firm would merge with Giuliani Partners, this is a legal impossibility because as a matter of ethics, lawyers cannot share legal fees with non-lawyers. However, while the firm is completely independent of the consulting business, the two entities maintain a close strategic partnership.

On May 15, 2007 the Associated Press reported that Giuliani "has profited from his firm's work representing corporate clients before nearly every Cabinet department, exposing himself to a wide range of potential ethical entanglements." It was further reported that Giuliani's efforts on behalf of clients such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the chewing tobacco manufacturer UST Inc. had "contributed toward his personal net worth of millions of dollars."

Bracewell and Giuliani has also been tied to the Trans-Texas Corridor, as the firm represents Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A, one of the investment firms involved in the financing of the project.

On June 7th, 2007, Fidelis America, a Catholic political advocacy group, reported that Bracewell & Giuliani has lobbied for stem cell research on behalf of Johns Hopkins University.

Giuliani started his political life as a Democrat, admiring the Kennedy family, working as a party committee person on Long Island in the mid-1960s, volunteering for Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1968, and voting for George McGovern for president in 1972.

In 1975 Giuliani switched his party registration from Democratic to Independent. On December 8, 1980, one month after the election of Ronald Reagan brought Republicans back to power in Washington, he switched his party affiliation from Independent to Republican. Giuliani later said the switches were because he found Democratic policies "naïve", and that "by the time I moved to Washington, the Republicans had come to make more sense to me." Others suggested that the switches were made in order to get positions in the Justice Department. Giuliani's mother maintained in 1988 that, "He only became a Republican after he began to get all these jobs from them. He's definitely not a conservative Republican. He thinks he is, but he isn't. He still feels very sorry for the poor."

Giuliani has been the target of criticism from many conservatives for some of his views, especially with regard to abortion, immigration, gay rights, and gun control.

In 1999, Giuliani said, “I’m pro-choice. I’m pro-gay rights.” On the subject of a partial birth abortion ban, Giuliani said, “No, I have not supported [a ban], and I don’t see my position on that changing." However, on April 18, 2007, Guiliani stated that the United States Supreme Court "reached the correct conclusion in upholding the congressional ban on partial birth abortion." Giuliani supported public funding for abortions when first running for mayor in 1989, and reaffirmed his support in 2007 while campaigning for the presidency.

In October 2007, Dr. Raymond Burke, the Archbishop of St. Louis, threatened to deny Giuliani Communion due to his past and present support for abortion rights.

Giuliani has been married three times. On October 26, 1968, soon after he graduated from law school, he married his second cousin, educator Regina Peruggi, whom Giuliani had known since childhood. In the mid-70s the marriage was in trouble and in 1975 they agreed to a trial separation. Peruggi did not accompany him to Washington when he accepted the job in the Attorney General's Office. Giuliani met local television personality Donna Hanover sometime in 1982, and they began dating when she was working in Miami. Giuliani filed for legal separation from Peruggi on August 12, 1982. Giuliani and Hanover started living together later that year in Washington, D.C. The Giuliani-Peruggi marriage was ended in two ways: a civil divorce was issued by the end of 1982, while a Roman Catholic Church annulment of the Giuliani-Peruggi marriage was granted at the end of 1983, according to Giuliani, because he discovered after 14 years of marriage that he and his wife were second cousins, Washington Post, March 8, 2006, p. A04.</bgref> rather than third cousins, and they did not have the Church dispensation thus needed. Giuliani and Peruggi did not have any children.

Giuliani and Hanover then married in a Catholic ceremony at St. Monica's Church in New York on April 15, 1984. They had two children, son Andrew (born January 30, 1986) and daughter Caroline (born 1989). Andrew first became a familiar sight by misbehaving at Giuliani's first mayoral inaguration, then with his father at New York Yankees games, of whom Rudy Giuliani is an enthusiastic fan; Andrew also was an accomplished junior golfer.

Beginning in 1996, Giuliani and Hanover's public relationship became distant, with Hanover appearing at few public events. In 1997, a Vanity Fair article report that Giuliani had a romantic relationship with Cristyne Lategano, the mayor's communications director. The mayor and Lategano denied the allegations. On Father's Day, 1995 Giuliani had told reporters that he was returning to Gracie Mansion to play ball with Andrew. However, he instead went to City Hall, to a basement suite with his press secretary. Three hours later, Hanover, angered, appeared at City Hall; yet a mayoral aide prevented her from entering the suite.

In May 2000, the New York Daily News broke news of Giuliani's extramarital relationship with Judith Nathan, a sales manager for a pharmaceutical company. Giuliani then called a press conference to announce that he intended to separate from Hanover.</bgref></bgref></bgref> Hanover, however, had not been told about his plans before his press conference,</bgref> an omission for which Giuliani was widely criticized.</bgref> Previously, Giuliani had hinted at the relationship by referring to Nathan as his "very good friend." Giuliani now went on to praise Nathan as a "very, very fine woman", and said about his marriage with Hanover, that "over the course of some period of time in many ways, we've grown to live independent and separate lives." Hours later Hanover said, "I had hoped that we could keep this marriage together. For several years, it was difficult to participate in Rudy's public life because of his relationship with one staff member," a reference to Lategano. Giuliani, Hanover and Nathan appeared on the cover of People magazine in the aftermath.

Giuliani then moved out of Gracie Mansion and into an apartment belonging to two gay friends. Giuliani filed for divorce from Hanover in October 2000, and an unpleasant public battle broke out between their representatives. Nathan was barred by court order from entering Gracie Mansion (where Hanover still lived) or meeting his children before the divorce was final. In May 2001, in an effort to mitigate the bad publicity from the proceedings, Giuliani's attorney revealed (with the mayor's approval) that Giuliani was impotent due to his prostate cancer treatments and had not had sex with Nathan for the preceding year. "You don't get through treatment for cancer and radiation all by yourself," Giuliani said. "You need people to help you and care for you and support you. And I'm very fortunate I had a lot of people who did that, but nobody did more to help me than Judith Nathan." Giuliani argued in a court case that he aimed to introduce Nathan to his children on Father's Day, 2001, and that Donna had prevented this visit. Giuliani and Hanover finally settled their acrimonious divorce case in July 2002, after his mayoralty had ended, with Giuliani paying Hanover a $6.8 million settlement and granting her custody of their children.

Giuliani subsequently married Judith Nathan on May 24, 2003, and thus gained a stepdaughter, Whitney. It was also Nathan's third marriage after two prior divorces.

By March 2007, The New York Times and the New York Daily News reported that Rudy Giuliani had become estranged from both his son Andrew (now a golf team member at Duke University) and his daughter Caroline (graduated from Trinity School in 2007, attending Harvard University), missing major events in their lives, such as graduations, and sometimes going long stretches without talking to them, and that neither of them was taking part in his presidential campaign. Caroline uses her mother's surname, Hanover, rather than Giuliani's, and according to reports, she did not inform Giuliani when she was accepted to Harvard. Caroline apparently linked her personal Facebook page to the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama. However, after a slate.com contributor reported this link, Caroline removed this link from her "Facebook" page.

He is the godfather to former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik's two youngest children.

A draft movement began in late 2005 to get Giuliani to run for President of the United States in 2008. Throughout 2006, rumors circulated regarding a possible Giuliani campaign, abetted by hints from the former Mayor himself. In November 2006 Giuliani announced the formation of an exploratory committee. In February 2007 he filed a "statement of candidacy" and confirmed on the television program Larry King Live that he was indeed running.

Early polls showed him with one of the highest levels of name recognition and support and the front-runner in the race for the Republican nomination.

In Giuliani's second appearance in a major 2007 GOP debate, on May 15, conducted by Fox News, he challenged fellow candidate Representative Ron Paul, when Paul stated that the United States' military interventionist policy was a contributing factor to why America has been attacked and why there are anti-American feelings in the region. Giuliani interrupted the debate and said that Paul made "an extraordinary statement" and that "as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th."

In May 2007, the Associated Press reported that while the Log Cabin Republicans generally favor Giuliani over the other Republican candidates, some within the organization express concerns that Giuliani has spoken against civil unions.

In June of 2007, a poll of New York voters revealed that a majority of New York City voters disapproved of him, while Giuliani's favorable rating among New York Republicans was 76%.

As of September 2007, most polls showed Giuliani to have more support than any of the other declared Republican candidates, with only Senator Thompson and Governor Romney showing greater support in some state polls. Specifically, state-by-state polls for the 2008 Republican nomination show that Giuliani polls ahead of all other candidates in a majority of states including the delegate-rich states of California , New York and Florida. Thompson shows strength in southern states such as Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina (which is a key early state), Georgia, Tennessee (which he served as U.S. Senator) and Alabama (his birthplace). Romney shows strength in the key early states of Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, and is also polling well in Michigan (which may be a key early state), Utah and Idaho.

* In 1998, Mayor Giuliani received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York."

* For his leadership on and after September 11, Giuliani was given an honorary knighthood (KBE) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 2002.

* In 2002, the Episcopal Diocese of New York gave Giuliani the Fiorello LaGuardia Public Service Award for Valor and Leadership in the Time of Global Crisis.

*Also in 2002, Former First Lady Nancy Reagan awarded the Mayor the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award. The award is given to "those who have made monumental and lasting contributions to the cause of freedom," and who "embody President Reagan's lifelong belief that one man or woman truly can make a difference."

* In 2004, construction began on the Rudolph W. Giuliani Trauma Center at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York.

* In 2005, Giuliani received honorary degrees from Loyola College in Maryland and Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont. In 2007, Giuliani received an honorary Doctorate in Public Administration from The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, Charleston, SC.

* In 2006, Rudy and Judith Giuliani were honored by the American Heart Association at its annual Heart of the Hamptons benefit in Water Mill, New York.

*1989 Race for Mayor (New York City) **David Dinkins (D), 51% **Rudy Giuliani (R), 49%

*1993 Race for Mayor (New York City) **Rudy Giuliani (R), 49% **David Dinkins (D) (inc.), 46%

*1997 Race for Mayor (New York City) **Rudy Giuliani (R) (inc.), 59% **Ruth Messinger (D), 41%

*Barrett, Wayne, (2000). Rudy!: An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani. Basic Books, ISBN 0-7567-6114-X (Reprint by Diane Publishing Co.) * *Brodeur, Christopher X., (2002). "Perverted Little Creep; Mayor Giuliani vs Mayor Brodeur". ExtremeNY books, ISBN 0-9741593-0-1. * *Gonzalez, Juan, (2002). Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse. New Press, ISBN 1565847547 * * Koch, Edward I. (1999). Giuliani: Nasty Man. Barricade Books. ISBN 1-56980-155-X. Reissued, 2007. *Mandery, Evan, (1999). The Campaign: Rudy Giuliani, Ruth Messinger, Al Sharpton, and the Race to Be Mayor of New York City. Westview Press, ISBN -10: 0813366984. *Newfield, Jack, (2003). The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania. Thunder's Mouth Press, ISBN 1-56025-482-3 *Polner, Robert, (2005). America's Mayor: The Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani's New York. Soft Skull Press, ISBN 1-932360-58-1 *Polner, Robert, (2007). America's Mayor, America's President? The Strange Career of Rudy Giuliani. [Preface by Jimmy Breslin] Soft Skull Press, ISBN 1-933368-72-1 *

*Biographical drama Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story (2003). *Kevin Keating's Documentary Giuliani Time (2006). *Giuliani appeared in a cameo role in Adam Sandler's 2003 film Anger Management. In it, he uses Rob Schneider's catch phrase, "You can do it!"

*Controversies of Rudy Giuliani *Mayoralty of Rudy Giuliani *Political positions of Rudy Giuliani *September 11, 2001 attacks *William J. Bratton (former Police Commissioner of New York City) *Bernard Kerik (former Police Commissioner of New York City) *Howard Safir (former Police Commissioner of New York City) *Peter Vallone (former Speaker of New York City Council) *Thomas Von Essen (former Fire Commissioner of New York City)

;Official sites *Join Rudy 2008 Giuliani For President Exploratory Committee.

;Documentaries, topic pages and databases *Federal Election Commission — Rudolph W Giuliani Presidential campaign finance reports and data * NewsHour with Jim Lehrer - Vote 2008: Rudy Giuliani *Genealogy of Rudy Giuliani *On the Issues — Rudy Giuliani issue positions and quotes *OpenSecrets.org — Rudy Giuliani campaign contributions *Project Vote Smart - Rudy Giuliani voter information *Giuliani Partners at Stockpikr public companies Giuliani Partners has done business with *Rudolph W. Giuliani Vulnerability Study study prepared for his 1993 Mayoral Campaign *

;Media coverage *The New York Times — Rudolph W. Giuliani News news stories and commentary *Rudy Giuliani in the News articles from media around the world *Giuliani at Large news items from mainstream media sources *Mayor Rudy Giuliani press conference with Governor Pete Wilson of California March 29, 1995 as Wilson campaigns as a Presidential candidate *Rolling Stone magazine comparison with Pres. Bush *Time Magazine - "Behind Giuliani's Tough Talk" *"A Message to You, Rudy", Mother Jones, May/June 2007.

;Grassroots campaigns *Draft Rudy Giuliani for President federal committee organized to "Draft Rudy Giuliani" in 2008. *Unofficial Giuliani Blog

;Links critical of Giuliani *Giuliani - Urban Legend *How much time Giuliani really spent at Ground Zero *Giuliani Closed Off Streets to Avoid 9/11 Victims' Families