The first blog I read every day is Talking Points Memo, and over the months Josh Marshall and the other stalwarts at TPM have been utterly wrecking Guliani, and painting a VERY scary picture... much worse than I would have thought. And TPM is among the least "shrill" of all left-of-center journalism sites. This particular under-reported scandal is one of the saddest, sickest aspects of 9/11 mis-management, but at least it provides an answer to the perplexing question:
Why would anyone locate the NYC crisis command center inside the single highest profile terror target in NYC?
"HE HAD HIS OWN ELEVATOR" By Steve Benen (excerpt)
So, why is it, exactly, that Giuliani picked the WTC site? The mayor personally established a specific standard: he had to be able to walk to the command center from his office. ("I've never seen in my life 'walking distance' as some kind of a standard for crisis management," said Lou Anemone, the highest-ranking uniformed officer in the NYPD. "But you don't want to confuse Giuliani with the facts.")
...Giuliani's office had a humidor for cigars and mementos from City Hall, including a fire horn, police hats and fire hats, as well as monogrammed towels in his bathroom. His suite was bulletproofed and he visited it often, even on weekends, bringing his girlfriend Judi Nathan there long before the relationship surfaced. He had his own elevator.
For the city, this meant that on 9/11, the NYC make-shift command center didn't exist until seven hours after the attack. As for Giuliani's poor judgment, the most rational conclusion is that he put his center in the wrong place because he was creating a "convenient love nest."...
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/016484.php