“I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters at 75 Barkley Street, which was right there with the Police Commissioner, the Fire Commissioner, the Head of Emergency Management, and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. And it [the South Tower] did collapse before we could actually get out of the [Barclay Street] building, so we were trapped in the building for 10, 15 minutes, and finally found an exit and got out.” [2]

Giuliani’s statement to Jennings agreed in part with the account he later gave the 9/11 Commission, but he did not tell the Commission about being “told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse.” Also, whereas he had told Jennings that he was concerned that the Twin Towers were going to collapse, he told the Commission that he instead was worried that he and his people were “in danger in the [Barclay Street] building, that the building could come down.”

Although the 9/11 Commission failed to ask Giuliani about these contradictions – no mention of concern that the World Trade Center would collapse; new concern that the Barclay Street building might collapse – WNBC reported that in May 2007, he was asked about the Jennings interview by a small group of people with a video camera. [3] A young woman, after reminding Giuliani of his statement to Jennings that “no steel structure in history has ever collapsed due to a fire,” asked: “How come people in the buildings weren’t notified? And who else knew about this? And how do you sleep at night?”
Giuliani replied: “I didn’t know the towers were going to collapse.” A male member of the group then reminded Giuliani that he had indeed told Jennings that he had been notified in advance that the towers were going to collapse, adding, “Who told you the towers were going to collapse in advance, sir?”
Giuliani replied: “I didn’t realize the towers would collapse. … Our understanding was that over a long period of time, the way other buildings collapsed, the towers could collapse, meaning over a 7, 8, 9, 10-hour period. No one that I know of had any idea they would implode. That was a complete surprise.” [4]
But this explanation contradicts Giuliani’s statement to Jennings—“we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the building.” According to that statement, he had clearly expected an imminent collapse of at least one of the Twin Towers.

In the first place, in speaking about “the way other buildings collapsed,” he implied that steel-framed high-rise buildings had previously collapsed. (Otherwise, the mention of collapsed buildings would have been irrelevant.) In fact, the young woman’s statement, that “no steel structure in history has ever collapsed due to a fire,” is not controversial. Two months after 9/11, for example, New York Timesreporter James Glanz wrote that “experts said no … modern, steel-reinforced high-rise, had ever collapsed because of an uncontrolled fire.” [5]

Also, although Giuliani claimed that he expected a tower to collapse over a 7-10 hour period, steel-framed buildings had burned, some of them longer than 10 hours, without collapsing:

• In 1988, the 62-story First Interstate Bank Building in Los Angeles burned for 3½ hours, with 64 fire companies battling the blaze. The fire gutted offices from the 12th to the 16th floor, with “no damage to the main structural members.” [6]
• In 1991, a huge fire in Philadelphia’s One Meridian Plaza lasted for 18 hours and gutted 8 of the building’s 38 floors. “Beams and girders sagged and twisted … under severe fire exposures,” said the FEMA report, but “the columns continued to support their loads without obvious damage.” [7]
• During the 1990s, a series of experiments were run in Great Britain to see what kind of damage could be done to steel-framed buildings by subjecting them to extremely hot, all-consuming fires that lasted for many hours. After reviewing those experiments, FEMA said: “Despite the temperature of the steel beams reaching 800-900°C (1,500-1,700°F) in three of the tests … no collapse was observed in any of the six experiments.” [8]
• Finally, illustrating that the laws of nature had not changed in 2001, a 50-story building fire in Caracas in 2004 raged for 17 hours, completely gutting the building’s top 20 floors, and yet this building did not collapse. [9]

However, although the implicit claim that steel-framed buildings had collapsed after burning for several hours was false, his statement was: “Our understanding was that over a long period of time, the way other buildings collapsed, the towers could collapse” (emphasis added). However, even that is false, because Robert F. Shea, the acting administrator of FEMA’s Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration, said: “No one who viewed it that day, including myself, believed that those towers would fall,” [10] and this view was confirmed by multiple firefighters and other experts. [11]

Accordingly, there is no basis for a revisionist account, according to which Giuliani did not tell ABC’s Peter Jennings that he had been warned that “the World Trade Center was going to collapse.” Given the fact that Giuliani did say this, the next question is: Who gave Giuliani this information?

• Deputy Assistant Chief Albert Turi reported that, at a time when they had no indication of any structural instability, “Steve Mosiello, Chief Ganci’s executive assistant, came over to the command post and he said we’re getting reports from OEM that the buildings are not structurally sound … and Pete [Ganci] said, well, who are we getting these reports from? … Steve [Mosiello] brought an EMT person over to the command post … and Chief Ganci questioned him, where are we getting these reports? And his answer was … we’re not sure, OEM is just reporting this.” [12]
• Steven Mosiello’s statement shows that this “EMT person” was Emergency Medical Technician Richard Zarrillo, who said: “John [Perrugia] came to me and said you need to go find Chief Ganci and relay the following message: that the buildings have been compromised, we need to evacuate, they’re going to collapse. I said okay.” After he and Steve Mosiello told Ganci that the buildings were going to collapse, Ganci said “who the fuck told you that?” Mosiello told Ganci and others: “I was just at OEM. The message I was given was that the buildings are going to collapse; we need to get our people out.” [13]
• John Peruggia said: “They [people in the fire operations center] advised me that the Office of Emergency Management had been activated.” Later, Peruggia reported that “I was in a discussion with Mr. Rotanz [the deputy director of planning and research of the OEM [14]] … [and some] engineer type person, and several of us were huddled talking in the lobby and it was brought to my attention, it was believed that the structural damage that was suffered to the towers wasquite significant and they were very confident that the building’s stability was compromised and they felt that the North Tower was in danger of a near imminent collapse. I grabbed EMT Zarrillo, I advised him of that information. I told him he was to proceed immediately to the command post where Chief Ganci was located. … Provide him with the information that the building integrity is severely compromised and they believe the building is in danger of imminent collapse.” [15]
• Peruggia was asked whether they were talking about “just the one building or both of them,” to which he said: “The information we got at that time was that they felt both buildings were significantly damaged.” [16]

As these testimonies show, the message that the towers were going to collapse came from the OEM. Accordingly, if Giuliani, as he told Peter Jennings, was informed that the towers were going to collapse, the warning must have originated from the OEM.

However, the OEM was under Giuliani’s control. [17] So although Giuliani said that he and others at 75 Barclay Street “were told” that the towers were going to collapse, it was his own people in his own office who were providing this warning.

The only remaining question is: How could people in the OEM have known – given the virtually universal belief that a total collapse of the towers would have been impossible – that the towers were going to collapse?

FDNY Commissioner Thomas Von Essen had told the 9/11 Commission that Downey had said to him, “Boss, I think these buildings could collapse.” [20] As to why, according to Downey’s nephew Tom Downey, his uncle had been “worried about secondary devices in the towers, explosive devices that could hurt the firemen.” [21]

During his Oral History interview, FDNY chaplain Father John Delendick said that after the top of the South Tower appeared to explode, he asked Downey whether jet fuel had blown up. Downey replied “at that point he thought there were bombs up there because it was too even” – meaning that it had been too even to have been produced by exploding jet fuel. [22]