"America's Mayor" Rudy Giuliani, retracing his steps with Newsmax's Mike Carter from the day of the 9/11 attacks, recalls 21 years later that at one point, there was a concern that even more planes were headed to New York City than the two that hit the World Trade Centers' twin towers, killing thousands.
"We were walking faster than this, trying to get there," he told Carter in an interview airing on Newsmax's special programming, "September 11th: We Will Never Forget" Sunday. "Up to this point, it was still an emergency. It hadn't become an out-of-body experience yet."
But when he called the White House, reaching an aide of then-President George W. Bush, who told him that at least seven planes were not accounted for and may be heading to the city, that the White House was "'very confident that we'll take them down,'" said Giuliani.
"I saw what, my main concern now can be secondary attacks?" he recalled. "Maybe they'll bomb St. Patrick's; maybe they'll bomb the Empire State Building. I think they thought they had destroyed the Stock Exchange by taking [the North Tower] down."
Giuliani asked the White House for military support before heading toward the foot of the twin towers, where he saw the devastation straight on.
"All the way up there, the flames coming out, the worst sight I have ever seen in my whole life," he said. "The police said to be careful, things are coming off the building."
As he got closer, Giuliani ran into an old friend, New York City Fire Department chaplain Mychal Judge.
"I always had a saying with him," he said. "I always would say to him, Father, will you please pray for us? So he would say no. Better. If you pray it would be more unusual. God will pay attention."
But on that day, Judge wasn't joking around.
"Instead, I got, 'mayor, this is really bad. I'm glad you have big shoulders. Keep praying,'" said Giuliani. "He never said that to me before."
Later that morning, Judge died when debris from the collapsing South Tower went into the North Tower's lobby. He was there praying for firefighters and administrating the last rites to the dead.
The mayor also told Carter that the one image he will never forget was when he saw a man who had jumped from about 100 stories up, falling.
"I looked up…and I watched him. And I was thinking is he going to do it or not? And I think I said to myself. I hope he doesn't because he could kill somebody. "All of a sudden he fell out. I watched them come all the way down. He hit the ground."
At that point, he turned to Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik and grabbed his arm, and told him that "this is much worse than anything we can handle. We got to just say to ourselves, it's beyond us. We'll make decisions and make them quickly."
He admits he felt "useless," even though he had, in New York City, the best police and fire departments and emergency workers in the world, but he knew they couldn't save everyone.
"And I started thinking, who the hell are these people who came here and did this?" said Giuliani. "This [Osama] bin Laden guy has got to be the incarnation of evil. Just think about these people who were just going to work that day. They didn't do anything."
And that night, Giuliani said that when he finally got home and went to bed, he started reading a book by late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to get advice about how to motivate New Yorkers.
"I didn't fall asleep, except for maybe 10 minutes here and there," he said. "I kept it together. And I mean, I know emergencies and I knew I had done a good job, and I said my father would be proud of me. Dad, you know? I think you'd be proud of me. I think I was in the right place at the right time. I don't know if I'm going to get through the rest of it, but at least I got through the first day."
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