By Lauren Gould and Liza Golovtsova
In June 1983, Rudy Giuliani moves back to New York City. He takes a job as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and sets his sights on going after organized crime.
He’ll use his time as prosecutor to go after the mob, which earns him a lot of media attention.
In May 1989, Giuliani has a new goal-to become the next mayor of New York City.
Join us as we try to find out why Giuliani was so obsessed with the mob – and how he used it to run for the city’s top job.
TRANSCRIPT
LAUREN: It’s April 1998. Rudy Giuliani is in Albuquerque. He’s at a social event for the U.S. attorney for New Mexico.
Music in a couple beats…then volume under…
LIZA: Michael Tabman is there too. He’s an FBI agent who used to live in New York City.
TABMAN: “And I get a tap on the back and turn around, the U.S. Attorney standing there and he kind of nods and said, look, look over here.”
LIZA: And that’s when Tabman sees him.
TABMAN: “I look and Rudy Giuliani is standing right there.”
LAUREN: And Tabman has something he’s been wanting to tell Giuliani for years.
TABMAN: “Hey, I got a bone to pick with you…You know, he laughed. He said, what’s up?? I said, you promised, I told him who I was…
I said you promised my mom you’re gonna call and thank me, you never did.”
LIZA: Giuliani and Tabman knew each other back in the 80s. Back when Giuliani was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and Tabman was working on the Drug Task Force.
Back when Tabman saved Giuliani’s life.
Giuliani had promised Tabman’s mom that he’d call him one day and thank him.
But he never did.
Music hard out on a beat…punctuate what you just said by taking the music out
TABMAN: “He said, well, tell your mom I’m sorry, and I’m thanking you now for saving my life…“
I took that, I ran with it. I was happy.”
LAUREN: Why WAS Giuliani’s life in danger the summer of 1988?
SL theme music
LIZA: I’m Liza Golovtsova
LAUREN: And I’m Lauren Gould.
LAUREN: This is Shoe Leather, an investigative podcast that digs up stories from New York City’s past – to find out how yesterday’s news affects us today.
LIZA: This season we’re taking a deep dive into the life and career of Rudy Giuliani. One of the most influential politicians in New York City’s recent history. Before he went to work for President Donald Trump, before he was disbarred and bankrupt…before all the trouble…Giuliani rose to prominence as a prosecutor and politician.
LAUREN: In the last episode, we told you Giuliani is about to leave DC and go back to New York. But Giuliani didn’t see it as a demotion – instead – it was a chance to fulfil his lifelong dream of going after the Mob. At least that’s what he tells everyone.
LIZA: The reality is more complicated. Why was Giuliani so obsessed with the mob? And why was he so desperate to make everyone believe he took them down? How does he toe the line between God and Godfather, between prosecutor and politician – and what is he willing to give up for power?
LAUREN: This is Shoe Leather season 6. GIULIANI – The Unraveling.
LIZA: You’re listening to episode three, The GODFather.
LIZA: Let us back up to June 1983. Scarface is about to come out and become a legend.
SCARFACE TAPE: You wanna play with us? Say hello to my little friend….
LAUREN: Rudy Giuliani is the US Associate Attorney General … which means he’s the third highest ranking attorney at the Department of Justice. He’s been working in DC for the past 2 years. He is 39 and has just met his new love – Donna Hanover – during a trip to Miami. – when he was trying to solve the Haiti crisis.
Donna has blond hair and loves red lipstick. She anchors a show at WCKT.
DONNA NEWSCAST ARCHIVAL: I’m sitting in for …. And I’m Donna Hanover. Make sure to join us tomorrow night for an early edition of the end of minute news at seven before the Yankee game. Until then, have a nice night.
LAUREN: The first time they meet, Giuliani thinks he’s being interviewed., Donna thinks it’s a date. He tells her he likes NYC, opera, and baseball. Here she is in a campaign ad for Giuliani –
93 campaign ad DONNA: “When I first met Rudy he seemed strong but at the same time gentle. And I liked that. I thought this is the kind of man I want to be the father of my children.”
LIZA: GIULIANI PROPOSES JUST SIX WEEKS AFTER they meet – during a trip to Disneyworld. BUT both of them need to figure something out first: they’re catholic and were married before. But Giuliani wants to marry in church – so he asks his childhood friend FOR HELP. HE’S A PRIEST AND HE FINDS A LOOPHOLE. It turns out Giuliani and his first wife, Regina Peruggi, are second cousins. And they never told the priest who married them. This makes that first marriage void – so Giuliani gets an annulment, like it never happened.
He doesn’t tell Regina what he’s doing – it breaks her heart when she finds out, even though they have already been separated for years. He arranges for Donna’s marriage to be annulled, too.
LAUREN: Finally nothing is stopping the lovebirds from being together. They start to plan a wedding – but many things will happen on the way. Very big things.
LAUREN: In the 1980s the Justice Department is working hard to fight the mafia:
REAGAN’s commission ARCHIVAL: President Reagan today announced a new commission on organized crime. He said the time has come to break apart and cripple the power of the mob in America.
LIZA And Giuliani wants to be a part of that mission. He leaves DC in June of 1983, to go back to the Southern District of New York.
LAUREN: The Southern District of New York covers Manhattan, the Bronx, Westchester, and five other counties to the north of NYC. It is one of the most prestigious US Attorney’s offices in the country.
LIZA: Rudy Giuliani knows it well. It’s a job he wanted since his college days. He had worked in that office as a prosecutor in the 1970s and had dreamed of coming back.
LAUREN: And he does, that summer of 1983. Giuliani is the youngest federal prosecutor in history at that point. He has a portrait of Thomas Jefferson and an old Yankees chair in his office. Some of his new colleagues adore him. The others joke about him – Ed McDonald, is one of the lawyers who worked with Giuliani: He says Giuliani was a lot of talk – he made bold promises about indictments – which earned him a nickname – 30 to 60 day Rudy..
MCDONALD: He’d go to meetings and he’d say, I, we’re gonna indict that case in 30 to 60 days. And then, of course, six months later, you have another meeting. You still haven’t indicted the case.
LIZA: Right after coming back, Giuliani jumps at the opportunity to go after organized crime. This is a great chance for a guy with a longtime grudge against the mob to finally get them. Here’s Giuliani in a Netflix documentary:
NETFLIX: I’m an Italian American, I was born in NYC, I grew up in Brooklyn. I was a tough kid, I was a boxer, I was taught not to be afraid of anything. Could I have ended up a wiseguy? Sure I could have.
LIZA: Giuliani says he always hated the mob – because of what it did to his family. His grandfathers, a barber and a tailor, were forced to share their profits with the mafia. AND THERE WAS GIULIANI’S DAD, Harold. You might remember him from episode 1. Harold spent years doing grunt work for the mob at his brother in law’s bar in Brooklyn. He tried breaking away from them, but could never totally escape.
And when Giuliani returns to New York in 1983 , as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District-the city is being torn apart by mafia clans.
NBC 1985: The mob goes where the money is, and over the years, it has moved into legitimate businesses, as well as drugs and vice. It has controlled construction projects, meatpacking operations, the clothing freight.
LAUREN: THERE are FIVE notorious mafia clans in the city, known as the five families. Lucchese, Genovese, Colombo, Bonanno, and Gambino. Each of them controls a different neighbourhood or a specific business – and these lines shouldn’t be crossed.
LIZA: During the 1960s and 1970s, the police managed to send some mobsters to prison, but they were all small fish compared to their bosses:
ARCHIVE: This man is John Sonny Franzese. He’s now serving 50 years in Leavenworth federal prison for conspiring to rob banks across the country. Franzese, who has been arrested countless times, was described as a rising young lieutenant in the Brooklyn mafia…
LAUREN: The heads of the families seem out of reach – they don’t actually kill people themselves, but it’s obvious they’re behind everything. And so by the 1980s, law enforcement at all levels — local, state, and federal — is desperately searching for a way to finally take down the heads of the five families. There are parallel investigations by different offices around New York.
Then, somewhere around 1983, someone comes up with the idea to use a new statute, called RICO, against the mob bosses. This idea will soon prove vital.
But who came up with this in the first place is the big question….We’ll come back to that later.
Music in a couple beats…then lower – use the music to help you with this explanation
There’s the Ny State task force – they are investigating several mafia clans, including the families in New York. There are also two different attorney’s offices- the Southern District, which includes Manhattan, and the Eastern District, with headquarters in Brooklyn. They’re on parallel tracks trying to bust the mob.
LIZA: RICO is a law written in the 1970 to prosecute organized crime clans.
But to use it against mafia bosses , the prosecutors must prove that – that the Five families in fact work together as a criminal enterprise.
LAUREN: Ronald Goldstock was the head of the NY State Organized Crime Task Force, one of the offices involved in going after the mob.
GOLDSTOCK: What we had that no one else knew about were a series of intercepted conversations which laid out the existence of the Commission, what it did, who was on it, when they met, where they met.
LIZA: In other words — Goldstock’s team finally has the evidence that proves that the mob bosses are in fact working together. SO now they are very close to finally bringing RICO charges against the bosses. And Goldstock decides to share the evidence with the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan … whose head is Rudy Giuliani.
GOLDSTOCK: And it just happened that I wound up with the evidence of the commission so I called Giuliani and went out to his office and laid out how the commission case could be created and how he could use this evidence – I would turn over my evidence.
LIZA: But Giuliani is not the only one who wants to get the bosses. Here’s Ed McDonald again, who was working for the US attorney in Brooklyn , on another investigation into the mob.
MCDONALD: I had agents I was working with to install electronic listening devices in the home of Paul Castellano, who was the boss of the Gambino crime family.
LIZA: McDonald’s team records one of the mob bosses talking about the mafia commission.This is enough to bring RICO charges. But Giuliani’s office gets wind of the tapes. And Giuliani wants them. So, according to McDonald, Giuliani uses his connections in Washington to order McDonald to give the tapes to his office.
MCDONALD: Obviously they’ve had another case that was independent of ours but they didn’t have our electronic surveillance, which was critical evidence. So they jumped the gun on us and he was able to indict the boss, the bosses.
LAUREN: Thanks to Ron Goldstock, ED MACDONALD and the FBI, Giuliani’s office starts putting together a case – to get the bosses of the Five Families.
LAUREN: Fast forward to April of 1984. Rudy Giuliani and Donna Hanover get married at St. Monica’s church on the Upper East Side.
A couple years later they have A BOY. And somewhere in between, Giuliani is still going after the Mob.
LIZA: In 1985, Giuliani’s office finally has enough evidence against the 5 bosses. They’re arrested and charged with racketeering, loansharking, and extortion.
CBS: The mafia leaders were rounded up in an overnight sweep and today US attorney Rudolph Giuliani announced the indictments.
RG: “This is a great day for law enforcement, but a bad day, probably the worst, for the Mafia.”
LAUREN: They’re on trial for almost two years; Finally, IN 1986…
ARCHIVE: Here in New York today, after five days of deliberation an anonymous federal court jury convicted three crime bosses of serving on the so-called mafia commission.
LIZA: They’re all found guilty. And in JAN/1987, EACH OF THE BOSSES GETS A 100 YEAR SENTENCE.
RG press (1:45): The sentences that judge Owen gave today are the kinds of sentences that should be given to people who live a life of crime. Sometimes I think that in conveying what the mafia is all about to the public we fall into the trap of romanticising them. And sometimes we need an event like today to bring us back to reality, who we’re dealing with and what we’re dealing with.
LAUREN: Giuliani talks a lot about how he hates the Mob; he’s built this Catholic Italian American image of a guy with a strong sense of right and wrong. But he himself blurs the lines every so often. Still a federal prosecutor, Giuliani goes undercover to buy cocaine in 1986. He holds a press conference and proudly showcases a piece of crack that another undercover agent was able to buy that day.
RUDY PC: What we’re teaching the kids in those neighborhoods is you can sell drugs and you can make money and you can get away with it.
Giuliani urges the public not to romanticize the bad guys – while doing imitations of Godfather. It was a huge success at a Police Department party in 1987, writes Vanity Fair.
LIZA: Gail Sheehy was the journalist who wrote the piece. She goes along with Giuliani on a trip to Little Italy. They’re going to meet with John Gotti, one of the most notorious mob bosses.
They meet outside a local club – and Sheehy notices that Giuliani is exhilarated – she writes quote “The straight black hairs on Giuliani’s wrists seemed to stand up with excitement”, unquote. When Giuliani sees Gotti, he can’t hide his joy. The first thing he says to Sheehy after they leave – “Didn’t he look terrific?”
LIZA: After the case of Mafia bosses, Giuliani is everywhere. The media love him – and the feeling is mutual. But not everyone on the team feels the same way.
MCDONALD: You know, he was a two-faced scheming creep back in the 1980s.
LIZA: That’s Ed McDonald again – one of the guys who went after the Mob. It bothers him that Giuliani gets so much of the credit for taking them down.
Remember we told you before, that there’s a big dispute over who came up with the idea to use the RICO statute. Giuliani claims that it was his brainchild, and that it came from a book — an old mobster’s memoir. Here’s Giuliani’s version:
RUDY ARCHIVE PODCAST: In the book, he’s got a chart. And the chart shows the Commission as he conceived it… I looked at that and I said o my goodness – he just defined a RICO enterprise. Fill in the families – I got a RICO case.
LAUREN: And here’s McDonald again – he says that using RICO against the Mob was the plan all along:
MCDONALD: We wanted to bring a Rico case against the national commission. So this was something that was actually done. It was something that was attempted by the Justice Department and the FBI long before Giuliani claims that he read Bonanno’s book. And it kind of came to him one day like a bolt out of the blue that we could use the Rico statute on the New York commission. It’s a lie. It’s a complete lie.
LIZA: THE NYT ran a profile of Giuliani in June 1985. They interviewed Robert Blakey, a professor who wrote the RICO statute – the law Giuliani used against the mob. In the interview Blakey speaks about the mafia investigation. He says: “It’s like stuffing in a pipe. ‘You put it in at one end, and for a long time you don’t see anything. And then finally it shows. Rudolph Giuliani is the guy lucky enough to be standing at the end of the pipe.”
LAUREN: Giuliani becomes a star after the mob takedown- but was it all hard work or being in the right place at the right time? Or was it both?
That Vanity Fair profile of him starts with the big question: “Is he [RG] a media-hungry careerist? Or is he a messenger of God, a latter-day Savonarola in danger of being hanged and burned?”
LAUREN: By the way, Savonarola was a preacher in Medieval Italy who fought against corruption in church.
PAUSE
LIZA: Whatever is true, Giuliani is riding the wave of fame in the late 80s. And soon enough, he’ll learn the price of being really, really famous.
MUSIC ENDS
LIZA: By the late 80s Rudy Giuliani is a household name. And the mob is everywhere in pop culture. Saturday Night Live even does a sketch about the case of the five families.
ARCHIVE: “So what kinda illegal stuff are you guys into now?”
LAUREN: And Giuliani keeps talking to the press about his work.
BRIAN LEHRER (3:20): “Federal prosecutors in New York moved against the Teamsters Union today…
U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani spoke to reporters in New York about the charges.”
LAUREN: Giuliani loves to publicize his success, and he attracts a lot of attention. But this makes the mobsters he talks about furious.
People like Salvatore Spatola.
LIZA: Spatola has a criminal record. In 1988, he is serving time for his part in a mob drug ring. He’s also suspected of trying to kill an informant in another drug case, known as the Pizza Connection. Giuliani’s office prosecuted that case.
LIZA: And in the summer of 1988, the FBI gets wind that Spatola might be plotting something … something bad. So the agents come up with a plan.
We tracked down one of the officers who was part of the plan. Michael Tabman. He is a retired FBI Special Agent.The one who ran into Giuliani in New Mexico.
LAUREN: Tabman says that Spatola went to another inmate asking him for HELP…
TABMAN: “I don’t want to say too much about him, but he was in there for a very violent crime. He had been there for a long time. So he had sort of the bonafides.…He had the respect of people inside the prison.
LIZA: But Spatola has a problem. The inmate?
He’s working for the FBI.
TABMAN: “. So when he had those conversations with Spatola, we had all that on tape. So those were a little more incriminating.”
LIZA: But the FBI needs more proof. So they stage a phone call. They try to get Spatola on tape offering money in exchange for the murder of Giuliani. So in July 1988, Spatola thinks he’s calling someone to order a hit.
TABMAN: : “So and it doesn’t happen all that often that you’re on a phone with a hit man and you’re going to kill someone. So I’m kind of surprised he felt for that myself.”
LAUREN: The FBI don’t get enough to charge Spatola with murder for hire. But they do get enough to charge him with another crime: threatening to kill a law enforcement official.
But why did he want Giuliani dead?
LIZA: We found that answer in the court archives. It turns out that Spatola thought Giuliani had a big mouth. In the summer of 1988, a news article mentioned Spatola’s role as an informant. Spatola thought Giuliani was the one who leaked this.
LAUREN: At Spatola’s trial the prosecutor asks:
Am I correct that because of the stories which you heard in the press, you threatened to kill Mr. Giuliani?”
Spatola says yes.
SIGNPOST LAUREN: The day after Spatola pleads guilty, Giuliani is back in the spotlight. He’s just stepped down from his job as U.S. attorney a few months back… and now…he has a big announcement…
LIZA: It’s MAY 17th 1989. Giuliani is at the Republican Club On the Upper East Side. He tells the crowd that he’s officially running for mayor.
People aren’t surprised that he wants a shot at New York City’s top job.
Giuliani’s wife, Donna Hanover, is there too. She’s pregnant with his second child. A daughter.
LAUREN: Ed Koch is running too. He’s the incumbent. A democrat. In his third term and trying for a fourth. He’s known to be kinda brash…
KOCH ARCHIVE: There are people who think I’m acerbic and sarcastic. And too New Yorkish. I’m proud to be New Yorkish.”
LAUREN: Giuliani thinks that it will likely be him versus Koch in the general election, even though there’s another Democrat in the race —David Dinkins. If elected Dinkins would be the city’s first Black mayor.
DINKINS ARCHIVE: I’m an instrument or vehicle for people of like philosophy and attitude and certainly for African Americans.”
LIZA: Giuliani’s team hires Charlie Perkins as press secretary. Before this Perkins worked on democratic campaigns and as a spokesperson for New York’s Housing Department.
PERKINS: “And they came in very arrogant. And this was going to be an easy campaign against Ed Koch and Rudy could run against with his stellar record as federal prosecutor.”
LAUREN: That’s Perkins talking about Giuliani’s campaign team. He told us that it was made up of a lot of lawyers. Many didn’t have experience running a political campaign. Even though Giuliani is no longer a prosecutor, he still talks about the mob. Quoting movies about them…
PERKINS: …They spent the whole time quoting. You know, great lines from, from The Godfather Like…”
GODFATHER ARCHIVAL: “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.”.
LIZA: He also likes to talk about the cases he prosecuted as an attorney.
GIULIANI ARCHIVAL “And as U.S. Attorney I got to see up close the inner workings of this city. I saw the invisible government of drug dealers who were taking over our neighborhoods.”
LAUREN: Giuliani says that if he’s mayor, he will fight crime and corruption. And that seems like it can be a winning message. Because etween 1988-1989 violent crime in the city is up 3.5 percent.
New Yorkers know how Giuliani feels about crime. But they aren’t so clear about where he stands on other issues.
Like abortion.
Giuliani’s views on abortion were a bit … complicated.
In a 1987 interview Giuliani said Quote “Generally, I don’t feel very good about abortion. I don’t think it should be freely available and certainly don’t like the idea of abortion as birth control.”
LIZA: He says he doesn’t think abortion is murder, BUT he can’t get over that abortion involves eliminating human life. Remember, Giuliani grew up Catholic. We know that at one point he wanted to become a priest.
BUT He ALSO says that if he ran for public office, he would have to quote “put conscience aside and enforce the law.” And at the time, Roe v. Wade is the law of the land. And abortion is LEGAL in New York City.
—
LAUREN: But in July of 1989, something happens…
The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour July 1989: “Good evening, leading the news this Monday, the Supreme Court said states may restrict a woman’s right to abortion.”
LIZA: The Supreme Court upholds a Missouri law. A law that er to restrict access to abortion. that allows the state to make abortion harder to access.
LAUREN: So now a woman’s legal right to an abortion isn’t so cut and dry. The court’s ruling allows the chance for states to weigh in on the issue.
Mayoral candidates are being asked where they stand…And Giuliani starts to find that being asked as a prosecutor is different than being asked as a political candidate
Where you have to take a firm stance.
Here’s Perkins again
PERKINS: “And he believed, naively, that because he always said he would continue to provide abortion and reproductive services as mayor, that he didn’t have to take a stand beyond that.”
LAUREN: But New York is a blue state. And most New Yorkers are pro-choice. So after the ruling, advocates begin to organize. We tracked down one of those advocates.
So after the ruling, advocates begin to organize. We tracked down one of those advocates.
HOFFMAN: “I’ll say it on this program, I had an abortion when I was 32. And I firmly believe it was a moral choice.
LAUREN: That’s Merle Hoffman. She founded the New York Pro Choice Coalition in 1985.
Hoffman is in her 70s, but still has this fiery energy about her.
HOFFMAN:“You’ve got to go out there, and you’ve got to speak your truth. You have to speak it strongly, because you believe it.”
LIZA: Her organization wants to know what the candidates think about abortion. So they send out a questionnaire.
LAUREN: We wanted to know what was in that questionnaire. So we got a copy through the archives. There were ten questions in total. A lot of the other candidates wrote detailed answers.
But Giuliani only answers the first question, which ASKS:
“Do you support the right to legal abortion? Do you support reinstituting federal Medicaid funding for abortion?”
LAUREN: He answers yes to that question.
But he leaves the rest blank.
On August 3rd, Hoffman’s group holds a rally to announce the results of the questionnaire. They give each candidate a rating on a scale of 1-10. 10 is the most pro-choice and 1 is the least.
HOFFMAN: “And then on this cardboard we had big pictures of all of these candidates, okay, their heads, and then we rated them underneath.”
LIZA: Giuliani scores a 3 out of 10. After Hoffman’s rally, Giuliani says he ”will oppose making abortion ILLEGAL.”
This was a change for Giuliani…Previously, he said he would uphold whatever New York City’s abortion law says. But AFTER the rally he says if nyc passed a law that restricted abortion access he will fight against it.
LAUREN: And he’s criticized. People say he’s flip-flopped his stance. In response, he says, “I didn’t change my mind. I have clarified my position.”
LIZA: And then something else happens. Less than three weeks after the rally, Giuliani’s wife gives birth to their second child. A daughter.
MUSIC STOPS
LAUREN: Perkins remembers how torn Giuliani was about abortion.
PERKINS: “And he kept going back. And, you know, I think it’s I think it’s murder. And that’s the way I was raised. And I’d say well if your daughter got pregnant do you think she shouldn’t have the right to have an abortion abortion and he’d say no no I don’t believe that I think she should, and so then you’re pro-choice. But then he said the same thing..but I think it’s a mortal sin.”
LIZA: AND Perkins told us something else.
PERKINS: “He said that he had spoken to his wife Donna Hannover at length about abortion and she was fervently pro-choice…
LIZA: We gave Donna Hanover a call to see if this was true. But she didn’t want to talk to us.
LAUREN: In September Ed Koch, the current mayor, loses to David Dinkins in the Democratic primary. But even though the race changes, the issue of abortion still haunts Giuliani’s campaign. Here’s Giuliani defending his position on abortion days before the election.
GIULIANI: “I’ have gone through a thought process about this and had to. As much the same way as Teddy Kennedy did who changed his position on abortion.”
LIZA: And in a few days Giuliani will find out if abortion has cost him the race. He’ll also learn if New Yorkers see him as more than a tough-on-crime prosecutor.
If they see him as the next mayor of New York City.
LAUREN: It’s November 7th, 1989. Giuliani is at the Roosevelt Hotel. It’s a grand building in the heart of Manhattan. Inside, there’s a crystal chandelier. The furniture, the rugs, they’re deep shades of red and gold.
LIZA: Charlie Perkins is in the ballroom talking to reporters when one thing is made clear.
Giuliani has lost.
MACNEIL/LEHRER ARCHIVAL: “David Dinkins has won the prize. New York City’s top political job.”
LAUREN: Dinkins will become the city’s first Black mayor. The race is close. In the end, it comes down to less than 50,000 votes.
LIZA: And now it’s time for Giuliani to make his concession speech. Donna Hanover is by his side. She is dressed in bright red. Giuliani addresses the room.
GIULIANI: “Thank you. Than you, Thank you. Thank you very very much.”
LIZA: Charlie Perkins was in the room during Giuliain’s speech. He remembers how upset the crowd was over Giuliani’s loss.
PERKINS: “Rudy reacted somewhat harshly, I guess would be the word, and try to quiet them down. He just sort of yelled at them.”
ARCHIVAL, GIULIANI: “QUIET, QUIET”
LAUREN: Moments later Giuliani reins himself in. Donna is laughing as she gazes up at him.
GIULIANI: “I can be tough the other part is sometimes more, more difficult. But I assure you that I’m also nice.”
LAUREN: Giuliani tells his supporters that they have to accept the results of the election.
GIULIANI: “WE ARE GOING TO UNIFY BEHIND THE MAYOR OF NEW YORK..AREN’T WE? YES! BECAUSE THAT’S THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS…”
LIZA: After his loss, he gives interviews. He reflects on his campaign. In an interview with FOX he has a big takeaway.
GIULIANI: I’ve learned to maybe convey more of myself and to get people to know me better…becuase I did feel hurt by all the descriptions of me as mean and just a prosecutor.”
LAUREN: And now Giuliani isn’t a prosecutor. And he isn’t the next mayor of New York City.
He’s just a regular guy.
LAUREN: But Giuliani isn’t giving up on a career in politics. After his loss he makes plans to run for mayor again.
LIZA SIGNPOST: In an interview, Giuliani says quote “I know your faith in me isn’t going to fade away.”
And he’s counting on that.
CREDITS:
This episode was reported and produced by me Liza Golovtsova and me Lauren Gould.
Joanne Faryon is our executive producer and professor. Peter Leonard and Rachel Quester are our co professors.
Additional editing help from Brent Katz
Shoe Leather’s theme music – ‘Squeegees’ – is by Ben Lewis, Doron Zounes (zoo nez)
and Camille Miller, remixed by Peter Leonard.
Other Music by Blue dot sessions.
Our Season six graphic was created by Emily Sawaked
Some of the sources in this episode include Wayne Barrett’s book, “Rudy!”, as well as Briscoe Center archives at UT Austin and the Duke University library. A special thanks to Paul —— from the court archives of the Southern District of New York.
Special thanks to Andrew Kirtzman, Stuart Karle, Dale Maharidge and Sydney Mimeles.