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CNN Larry King Weekend
The Best of Interviews With Rudolph Giuliani
Aired May 27, 2001 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight: his marital mess is tabloid topic No. 1, and New Yorkers are taking sides. But Mayor Rudy Giuliani is no stranger to headlines. A look back at his news making interviews with us, next on LARRY KING WEEKEND.
Thanks for joining us. Mayor Rudy Giuliani's private life is very, very public these days. He and his wife, Donna Hanover are locked in a bitter divorce battle. Earlier this week, a judge granted Hanover's request for a restraining order against Giuliani's girlfriend, Judith Nathan. The order bars Nathan from Gracie Mansion, the Mayor's official residence. Giuliani's lawyers are appealing. Tuesday, the Mayor lashed out at the New York press corp.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE, JANUARY 19, 2001)
MAYOR RUDY GIULIANI, NEW YORK CITY: You are relentless in your quest for information about this, relentless. So, sometimes you get it because you catch somebody in an emotional moment or -- most of this is coming from you, not the people that are involved. They really would rather not talk about it. But you are relentless.
KING: Despite their split, Giuliani and Hanover continue to live at the mansion with their two children. They mayor was our guest in January on inauguration eve, just a few days before Jesse Jackson admitted that he had fathered a child out of wedlock. I asked Giuliani about that story.
You've had your personal life blared in headlines. It happened to others. What are your thoughts about Jesse Jackson?
GIULIANI: My thoughts are that, that's his problem and his issue, and something he has to work out between himself, his family, and in many other ways. And the less we delve into the personal lives of public figures, whether they are Republicans or Democrats, we like them, we dislike them. Those are their own personal problems. I have mine, and I have to work them out for myself. And, you know, most of the public doesn't really want to know about this. And unfortunately, the line keeps getting pushed further and further back. And I don't think it's a good thing for the country.
KING: How are you feeling?
GIULIANI: I'm feeling a lot better. I got my last injection yesterday, so my last month of treatment, and things look great. And I thank you very much for your concern, Larry.
KING: Your reaction to the deal with the special prosecutor and the crowd going to President Clinton today. That he says he fudged the truth, they drop all charges. Arkansas suspends the license. He can appeal it, and everything's over.
GIULIANI: From Mr. Ray's point of view, I think it was a very wise and appropriate exercise of prosecutorial discretion. I think, as we look back, historically, I think, all of us now commend President Ford for pardoning President Nixon and putting that behind us. And I think Mr. Ray made the right decision in exercising prosecutorial discretion to end this case.
KING: What about the decision on Mr. Clinton's part to accept the deal?
GIULIANI: I think he also made the right decision. Why carry this on. I mean, he has a new life. He has a new life he wants to put together for himself. And it seems to me this is probably the most appropriate way to do it. I mean, a lot of people are going to be angry on both sides of this. People, who feel that he shouldn't have made the admission that he made. People who feel that the President should have been prosecuted. But I don't know, it seems to me the country is better off putting this all behind us and moving on. We're going to have a grand inauguration tomorrow, a new president. A chance for America to reinvent itself under George W. Bush. I think this was a very smart decision on all sides.
KING: And also good for President Bush, right? It takes any heat off him on a pardon?
GIULIANI: Yeah, absolutely, he starts fresh, the whole question is behind us. And he gets an opportunity to do for America what I know he wants to do, and is going to be capable of doing.
KING: So good all the way around from the former prosecutor's standpoint. Prosecutor Giuliani.
GIULIANI: I think that sometimes the most intelligent things that prosecutors do is when they exercise their discretion not to go forward with a case. And I think Mr. Ray is to be commended here. I think he shows a great deal of wisdom.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KING: When we come back Mayor Giuliani talks about the man he prosecuted and Bill Clinton pardoned, billionaire financier Marc Rich.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GIULIANI: The pardon was given for which now there have been two different hearings and there is no reasonable explanation that has emerged for why this pardon was given. In fact as it gets explained, it seems to get more complicated and it seems to raise more questions as to why anyone would have given a pardon to a fugitive.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KING: Welcome back. In he final hours of his presidency, Bill Clinton pardoned 140 people. One of the most controversial recipients, billionaire Marc Rich, who has been living in Switzerland. Rudy Giuliani brought the original case against Rich back in his days as a federal prosecutor. I asked for his reaction to the pardon.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE, FEBRUARY 8, 2001)
KING: Were you shocked at this pardon, Rudy?
GIULIANI: Flabbergasted. I heard about it when I was in Washington a couple of weeks ago. And I think a reporter came up to me and said, do you know President Clinton has pardoned Marc Rich.? And my first reaction was, cannot be, must be a mistake. Presidents don't pardon fugitives, certainly not someone who has been on the number one list for the FBI on and off for about 17 years.
KING: Were you impressed?
GIULIANI: It took me about a day to actually absorb the fact that the President of the United States actually pardoned one of our most notorious fugitives.
KING: Were you impressed with anything Jack Quinn said tonight regarding...
GIULIANI: No, I actually...
KING: ... the applause and the prosecution and the like?
GIULIANI: No, I actually think the more that the Clinton people discuss this, the more questions they raise about how unusual and strange this whole process is. You have to know, Larry that I worked in the Justice Department for more of my life than I have been Mayor of New York City.
I've probably recommended or seen 2000 pardon recommendations, passed them along to President Ford and President Reagan. This pardon for all the kind of rhetoric that goes on, there is no explanation for this pardon. You don't pardon a fugitive. And the man...
KING: I know you, you brought the case against Michael Milliken and tried to get him pardoned.
GIULIANI: Yeah, Michael Milliken pleaded guilty. Michael Milliken went to jail. Michael Milliken paid a huge fine. And then he, allegedly, you know, you can make an argument that he straightened his life out. And I've supported many pardons like that. I think the pardon process is important.
I think the questions the former president has created here put in doubt the pardon process, and it's not just -- you're focusing on the Marc Rich part. He did about 50 that he didn't run through the Justice Department. And some significant number of these, well not significant number, some number involve campaign contributions. So there are some very serious questions raised here.
But getting back to Marc Rich, some of the things left out earlier is, Marc Rich was accused of trading with Iran during the hostage crisis in violation of the Trading with the Enemy Act. Remember the Hostage Crisis, American lives are at stake, this man was doing business with Iran, allegedly, during that period of time.
He ran away for 17 years, renounced his American citizenship, and evaded the FBI, the United States Marshal Service, and flaunted American law. So, I don't understand how a president can give -- there's no argument that can be made for a pardon. A pardon happens when a person has done their time, paid their dues to society, and allegedly straightened themselves out. This man just ran away.
KING: Do you have any read on Denise Rich, his former wife, she's sued him got a lot of money...
GIULIANI: Yeah, on the other side of this you have a pardon that has no explanation. There is no -- you can make them up -- but there is no honest straight explanation for this pardon. On the other side you have over a million dollars in campaign contributions to the President, to First Lady's Senate campaign, and to the Democratic Party.
And now the possibility of contributions to the president's, former president's library fund. Somebody's got to look into this and figure out what the heck happened here. This is not something that just should be, you know, brushed under the rug.
KING: And what, Mr. Mayor, do you do with it when you do find out, since you can't change the pardon. And you don't want to change presidential pardons?
GIULIANI: Well I don't -- there are a lot of things you can't change, it doesn't mean you don't find out why they happened? President Ford was called before the Congress to explain his pardon of President Nixon. You couldn't have done anything about that, but the Congress and the American people had a right to know the reasons that President Ford had for pardoning him.
So, you know, you have here a pardon without explanation, and you have very large multi-million dollar campaign contributions. That's worth taking a look at. I mean, I don't think anybody can say it's unreasonable for the Senate and the House to want to figure out what happened here. If for no other reason than to vindicate in the future the President's awesome power, and important power to pardon. I should emphasize, I agree with pardons. I think pardons are a good thing.
I think they do indicate when people have paid their price to society, straightened themselves out, and some of the pardons that the president gave were justifiable. But you have this one, you have the one in California, with the guy who was pardoned and is now still under investigation. So the Justice Department is involved in the situation that maybe he's been pardoned for future crimes, which is creating a real legal problem. Because the president bypassed the Justice Department process on numerous occasions in those last couple of days. And somebody's got to figure out what happened here.
KING: Thank you Mayor, always good seeing you.
GIULIANI: Thank you, Larry, how you doing?
KING: Well you too. How are you feeling?
GIULIANI: I'm feeling good and I want to know where you bought that shirt?
KING: I got it from -- I got it in New York, OK.
GIULIANI: I bet you got it in New York. It looks like a New York shirt.
KING: Where else? See you in spring training.
GIULIANI: All right, I'm looking forward to it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KING: We'll be back with more highlights from Rudy Giuliani right after this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GIULIANI: The real remaining interest in this case would not be to collect money from them. The government has collected as much money as it is reasonably entitled to and more in this case. The real interest in apprehending them, would be in order to impose prison sentences on them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GIULIANI: I hope that in reflecting on this case in the future, if we face a situation like this again, people will not rush to judgment. People will not demand immediate indictments. People will not try to create the sense that complex criminal cases should be resolved on the streets. That we will learn from this, that the place to resolve difficult, complex criminal cases in America is in a courtroom.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: We're back. In February of '99, a West African immigrant named Amadou Diallo was shot to death by four white New York police officers. The case caused a major uproar. The officers were brought to trial for Second Degree Murder, and were acquitted on all charges. Mayor Rudy Giuliani joined us in February of last year, a few days after the verdict came down. We asked his reaction.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE, FEBRUARY 28, 2000)
KING: Were you surprised at the Amadou Diallo verdict?
GIULIANI: No, not ultimately. Maybe if you take it back a year ago and given the pre-dispositions and all the publicity and everything else, even though I knew the facts of the case probably a little bit better. Maybe then I would have been more surprised. But as I learned the facts, and as the trial worked itself out, I suspected the verdict would be, would be that they hadn't proven the case.
They hadn't proven the case of intentional murder, but rather a case of a horrible accident, a horrible mistake that happened in seven split seconds that none of us would ever want to live through either way.
KING: As a man who has oft -- you're famed as a crime fighter, and standing up for victims. The only victim here was Amadou Diallo, right? He died.
GIULIANI: Sure, and that's tragic. And I think I feel horrible for Mr. Diallo's family. And when it first happened, I called his father and helped his father come to the United States. We would do anything to try to reverse the incident.
But the reality is that people die as victims in crimes, and they die as victims in accidents. I mean, unfortunately, in a city like New York, we have hundreds and hundreds of people that die every year, thousands really. And somebody dies sometimes in a tragic car accident, or somebody dies in a tragic accident like this.
The jury which was four blacks and eight whites, so it was a racially very mixed jury, came to the conclusion that the police officers had mistakenly believed that he was involved either in a robbery, or that he was the rapist that they were searching for.
KING: Where did it go -- if the word wrong applies -- between you and the black community?
GIULIANI: Well I don't know that it has gone wrong? I think that I...
KING: Didn't some black officials say that you were the only Mayor that couldn't attend a black, major black meeting in this city?
GIULIANI: Well, first of all, the entire political leadership are all Democrats, and very, partisan Democrats. I happen to be a Republican. I think that has a lot more to do with it than anything else?
KING: Than color? GIULIANI: Sure, and I actually think that some of the things that I've done have helped, not only the entire city, but the black community more than my predecessors.
KING: So, what do you make of it? can't just be a party?
GIULIANI: Crime, is at the lowest level that it has been at in 35 years. Everybody benefits from that, including the black community. Jobs, we have more jobs in New York City now than we've had since the 1950s. I had to turn that around. We were losing jobs in enormous numbers. We now have 380,000 new private sector jobs, with job growth in the black community at a par or ahead of the rest of the city. And we have 540,000 fewer people on welfare. So...
KING: Have you misconnected Rudy? We can be -- we know each other for a long time. So if I don't say Mr. Mayor all the time, forgive me. Have you misconnected somewhere? Why don't you have more of this?
GIULIANI: I think this is a question of, what are the political bells and whistles that the political leadership establishes. The political bells and whistles are support for welfare. Well, I had a welfare reform program that has turned that around and turned it on its head. I think work is better than welfare and dependency. Support for quotas, I don't believe in quotas.
I think action, really what we've done in America is hold back the poorer communities in America by dependency, victimization. I stand against that. And the political leadership -- well some of the political leadership, a very large percentage of it gets very angry at me. Because I'm talking about things that I think, ultimately, are much more liberating. And actually allow the genius of America to work in the poorer areas of America that the policies of many of the people that I replaced were absolutely prevented.
KING: So you are saying that the people are effected by their leadership and go like sheep?
GIULIANI: I'm saying that when you have a political leadership that largely sees things in a very, very partisan way, it is very difficult to convey a politically incorrect message, but it may be absolutely the right message. When you talk about welfare reform, when you talk about work rather than dependency, you get large numbers of people in the political leadership who try to say, that you are very mean, that, that's very cruel.
In my view, the way I was brought up, it is much more compassionate to lead somebody towards self-sufficiency and work, then it is to have a million people depending on welfare.
KING: Then this is frustrating to you. It has to be.
GIULIANI: I guess in a way, but it really isn't. I mean, I understand it. I understand what's going on. I grew up in the city all of my life. And the think that I guess, what I don't allow to happen is, I don't allow other people to determine my view of myself. I have a pretty solid idea of what I'm doing, and why I'm doing it.
KING: So, you don't walk around brooding, if...
GIULIANI: No, and I look at, I look at the vast change that has occurred in the African American community in New York City. And I say, sure I haven't done it perfectly, and I've made mistakes. But things are a lot better now then they were under my predecessors in terms of jobs, reduced crimes, safety, opportunities for people. And I'm proud of that. And I'd like to see if can even get better.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GIULIANI: We have racism in New York City, unfortunately. We have racism in America. I believe New Yorkers actually do a better job of overcoming racism, anti-Semitism, prejudice then just about anybody else in the country. But that doesn't mean that we don't have it. We also have a vicious form of anti-police bias, which leads to entertaining every doubt possible against the police.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GIULIANI: One of the debates that we're going to have is, we're both going to have to get in our car at LaGuardia Airport, and get home by ourselves. And we're going to have to figure out who can find their way. In fact, maybe I can show her the way to Chappaqua.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: More now of our February 2000 interview with Rudy Giuliani. At the time of that sit-down, the Mayor of the Big Apple was still considering a Senate run against Hillary Rodham Clinton.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE, FEBRUARY 28, 2000)
KING: A couple of things about the first lady. Isn't it, do you feel kind of -- what's the word -- weird? I mean, can you sit next to a first lady and attack her? I mean, she's...
GIULIANI: You'd get arrested if you attack the first lady.
KING: OK, but she's the first -- I mean, you can't run a normal campaign, can you, against someone like that. I'm guessing now. Don't you -- say, isn't this going to be weird?
GIULIANI: Nope.
KING: Nope.
GIULIANI: Everything's weird in New York. KING: I mean, you don't look at this as sort of like, how are we going to deal with this. You're going to be sitting there and Secret Service people are going to be standing around.
GIULIANI: Well it's a great opportunity. Do you have a platform on which you can get out the ideas that you think work? I mean, look, I haven't been actually, I haven't been sitting in an ivory tower for the last six or seven years. And before that I was a United States Attorney. I've been in very, very tough and difficult situations before. So this is, you know, this isn't...
KING: So it is not off-putting to you. It's not, sort of, awing?
GIULIANI: No, not in the slightest. I think that the arguments and the claim that I have of being the senator from my native state, that I've served for many, many years as the mayor of New York City, and as a United States attorney is a pretty darn strong claim. So I'm more than willing to put that, you know, to the test.
KING: Expecting it to be close?
GIULIANI: Absolutely, a race between a Republican and a Democrat in New York, we have a Republican governor, a fine governor, a fine governor. We have two Democratic senators, so we can go in either direction any time.
KING: You supported the Republican governor's opponent ...
GIULIANI: First time.
KING: First time, so you're known as kind of a loner -- you go your way, right? There's a McCain-ish quality about you, agreed?
GIULIANI: Well I guess you could...
KING: What do you get, the liberal party's support...
GIULIANI: Maverick...
KING: You may not get the conservative party support. You get the liberal party support. Do you think Rick Lazio might come in?
GIULIANI: Who knows, he's welcome. I mean, the more the merrier.
KING: But you admit that you're a maverick?
GIULIANI: I would admit that I am a maverick, yes, and I'm an independent, a reformer.
KING: You are also, as a U.S. Attorney, and people you know, a lot of the nation...
GIULIANI: You got me to confess. I don't believe this, after all these years in the United States, getting all those people to confess. You actually got me to confess that I'm a maverick.
KING: Tonight on this program, it happens here, right? I thought you were going to say, OK, I'm not going to run. OK, I'm not going to run. Alright, you also were a pretty rough US Attorney, weren't you? I mean, mob hits, you made a lot -- by mob hits I mean you convicted mob members. You went out after them -- mob hits. You were an anti-mob guy.
GIULIANI: I was going to say, you were doing that Italian stereotype now, mob hits, mob hits.
KING: No, but you were like the tough Italian US Attorney moving against fellow Italians. Wasn't that ever rough.
GIULIANI: Sure, they threatened to kill me.
KING: Colombo, right. Were you ever in fear?
GIULIANI: I guess, but, you know, you don't admit it. You don't say to yourself that you -- you do your job. Yeah, I mean, sure. There were -- I prosecuted he commission of the Mafia. We prosecuted a couple hundred organized crime figures. So sure. Some of them, some of them got pretty angry about it and put out contracts on you. Threatened to kill you, stuff like that.
KING: What philosophy did you bring to that office? Were you the crime -- in the Dewey tradition?
GIULIANI: Tom Dewey was a hero. Somebody that I knew ...
KING: When you were a kid, you liked him.
GIULIANI: Yes, I knew his background, I knew his biography.
KING: But you were a McGovern supporter, you were a Democrat, right?
GIULIANI: I was a Dem -- I began, I came from a family that was largely a Democratic family with a few Republicans. We'd have arguments back and forth. But I was a big, big supporter of John Kennedy. And I began changing my political views in the 1970s.
And I started to think that the Democratic Party had become, from the point of view of its foreign policy, much too unfocused, not enough strength with regard to dealing with the Soviet Union. I started to see, in the 1970s a lot of those things I eventually did as mayor. That the entitlement programs that had a decent motivation were beginning to trap people into dependency, and that they were a terrible mistake.
I then worked for President Reagan. I was part of the Reagan administration, and have to this day enormous respect for President Reagan. I think he was a president that uplifted the office.
KING: I'll see his wife next week, and I'll extend your best ... GIULIANI: And I gave the lecture last year at the Ronald Reagan Library, and spent time with Mrs. Reagan. And it is one of the things that I'll remember forever. I worked for him for two and a half years, and it did a lot to form my political thinking. Also the way that I manage and run things.
KING: But Dewey was a hero of yours. Dewey was a famed crime- busting DA.
GIULIANI: And almost President of the United States, and a great governor.
KING: We'll be back with the admitted Maverick. We'll talk some other aspects. We'll show you another aspect of Rudy Giuliani's life you may not know. And, we'll take your phone calls. This is LARRY KING LIVE, don't go away.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GIULIANI: The Commission of the Mafia has been convicted, a number of the organized crime families, their highest level members, are now spending 50 and 100 years in prison, not the five year and ten years they used to get in the past. We've seized over $100 million in assets from organized crime families, and it is really going way above that now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE, FEBRUARY 28, 2000)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN")
DAVID LETTERMAN, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW": What we're going to do now is put you up on the Jumbotron screen in Times Square for all of New York City, and then you just announce -- you read the new tourism slogan for 1999. There put it up there, there it is.
GIULIANI: We can kick your city's ass.
LETTERMAN: Yeah.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: So what are you, a tough guy, a guy who is going to be brutal. Is it going to be a vicious race, or are you the guy, the Saturday Night Live beating Joe Pesci's imitator over the head, or doing Letterman on the Jumbo Screen. Who is the real Rudy?
GIULIANI: That last one you showed, that got me into almost as much trouble as when I wore a dress. When I wore a dress, my political advisor and close friend and pollster told me my political career was ruined. He maybe right, maybe it is. KING: Where did you get -- which image is correct? I mean, there's the image that this is Rudy the tough guy and people -- to see this Giuliani. Boy it's going to be rough, it's going to be a vicious...
GIULIANI: It's hard to believe. But I am not into images. That's everybody else's problem?
KING: How do you see yourself?
GIULIANI: I see myself as me. I mean, I'm a direct person. I tell you what I think. I'm an honest person. And I just see myself as me. And then everybody else has to figure out what my image is.
KING: Now you share one...
GIULIANI: I enjoy myself, I enjoy life. I love comedy. I love opera. I love music. I love baseball.
KING: We share that one great thing with Hillary...
GIULIANI: I'm a passionate and live human being.
KING: You and Hillary are both Yankee fans.
GIULIANI: right.
KING: Did you know.
GIULIANI: And we both became Yankee fans in rather odd places. I became a Yankee fan in Brooklyn, which is hard to believe, right?
KING: Yeah.
GIULIANI: And she became a Yankee fan in Chicago, which is also hard to believe.
KING: Another aspect of the life and times of maverick Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Giuliani the photographer. Here's a picture of the former Yankee Cecil Fielder batting against the Orioles, that's Cal Ripken there at third. When did you get into photography?
GIULIANI: Oh, years ago, 25 or 30 years.
KING: As a kid?
GIULIANI: Sure, I used to do weddings.
KING: You're kidding.
GIULIANI: Yeah, for fun.
KING: For fun, Bar Mitzvahs or just weddings?
GIULIANI: I may still do one. Maybe I'll do one for charity, and do a wedding. KING: Why don't you publish some of these?
GIULIANI: I did an exhibit at the Likka (ph) Gallery, and we sold about forty of fifty thousand dollars worth for charity.
KING: Look at this one.
GIULIANI: That's one of my favorites.
KING: Where did you shoot this one?
GIULIANI: I shot that from a boat, and that was used by Amtrak as an ad for about a year and a half on the Metroliner.
KING: That's a great shot of the city. It's in your eye, huh -- that's where the photographer...
GIULIANI: And the lighting was the thing that we were very fortunate.
KING: And this one.
GIULIANI: That was a...
KING: Tell us this one?
GIULIANI: That was a subway derailment in the Bronx, that I went up to late at night.
KING: As mayor?
GIULIANI: As mayor. I had my camera with me.
KING: Do you carry your camera as mayor?
GIULIANI: Uh-huh.
KING: And you took that...
GIULIANI: A picture of one of our firefighters. It is the force of the water that is keeping the subway car up there, so that they can eventually stabilize it.
KING: You said worst moments -- was TWA 800 one of them? Was that the worst?
GIULIANI: It wasn't a moment, it was a week, a week and a half or more of -- it was terrible situation. And you feel helpless, and you try to help as much as you can. And also the whole thing was mishandled so badly in the first day.
KING: And you were very critical...
GIULIANI: In notifying the families. I was, and I think the fact that I was helped to straighten it out, to some extent. And you -- the worst moments. John Lindsey told me what the worst moments would be, as Mayor of New York City.
He had lunch with me right after I was elected. He hadn't endorsed me, he was a Democrat at that point. He had endorsed David Dinkins. But he invited me to lunch after I had been elected, and before I became mayor. And he told me that the worst moments of being mayor of New York City is when the phone rings in the middle of the night. And I didn't understand exactly what he meant by that. And I...
KING: There's no good news.
GIULIANI: You got it. It's a police officer has been shot, fire fighter has been burned, some terrible tragedy has occurred, a plane has crashed.
KING: How many times has this happened to you?
GIULIANI: Way more often than I would like.
KING: And the mayor's role in a tragedy is dealing with the tragedy, consoling, all of the above?
GIULIANI: What I've learned is, if the mayor shows up, everything happens much more efficiently. Everybody pays a lot more attention. Everything gets much better organized. There are times in which when I go to the hospital, I can literally make sure that there's better treatment, that there's more attention that's being paid, including to the family.
So part of it is, if there is an emergency, trying to get focused to the handling of the emergency, so that everything is coordinated in the right way. And then, part of it is, to say to people, this is really important. And I've found that it is comforting to families, because they feel that their loved one is getting the attention that their loved one deserves.
And you feel about the people who work for New York City in some way that you just absolutely owe them this. And you keep asking yourself, could it have been avoided, was there something that could have been done?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KING: When we return, Rudy Giuliani's reflections on the tragedy of TWA flight 800. Stay with us.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GIULIANI: I give you the condolences, the sympathy and the prayers and support of all of the people of New York City. Because as one, they come together with you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) KING: In July of 1996, Rudy Giuliani was thrust in the middle of a terrible tragedy. TWA flight 800 crashed off Long Island, killing all 230 people on board. The mayor joined us the day after the disaster. The cause was still a terrible question mark.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE, JULY 18, 1996)
KING: Would you comment please, because we've heard reports all day about your criticism of the airline. What were you angry, or are you angry at?
GIULIANI: Well I was very upset that they didn't notify people in a timely enough way. It took 18, 20 hours for them to do the checking that was needed to determine who was on the flight. And that work could have been done in an hour or two. And unfortunately they sent home the person who was in charge at about 2:00 in the morning, because he thought he needed sleep last night.
Of course no one else who was working on his got sleep last night. So I was quite disturbed that they didn't produce the list from which you could verify the people on this flight until about 4:00 this afternoon.
And that's just unacceptable. That should have been done sometime last night. Families are going through enough heartbreak and enough fear and worry. We can't remove that for them, but we can make things easier, not harder for them. And in this particular instance, TWA at the upper management level was making things harder for them.
There were a lot of very good people from TWA working with the families, working with the people that were concerned. But at the upper management level, they were non-existent at Kennedy Airport last night.
KING: Mayor, what's your role in a tragedy like this. Is there a specific role you have to play?
GIULIANI: Well, we did two things. We sent a large number of people who are skilled in dealing with trauma from the Community Assistance Unit and the Police Department and the Fire Department to Kennedy Airport. To try to help the Port Authority, which worked very cooperatively and very well, to deal with as many of the people that would show up there as possible.
And there were all together about 60 families that showed up. And then we sent emergency service personnel to Suffolk County to assist the Coast Guard. There are four New York City Police Department boats, one a very large floating, really, center. We sent 30 divers from the New York Police Department who are out there helping. And the head of the Mayor's Emergency Management Services is out there. He's been out there and up all night assisting under the leadership of the Coast Guard and Suffolk County Police.
KING: This is the toughest of all jobs for an official, is it not? I mean anything else pails... GIULIANI: Of course, the worst part -- no I can't remember a 24 hour period worse than this one since I've been the mayor. Particularly this morning when all the families came from Montouresville, Pennsylvania. This is a high school in which all of the youngsters or about 17 or 18 of the youngsters were going to France.
They were part of a French Club. And they were going to spend, I believe it was, two or three weeks in France. And their parents had just sent them off, for many of them their first trip overseas, their first trip to France. And then within a few hours of the children leaving, they hear that the plane has crashed. And they took buses -- it's about a three hour bus trip -- in the middle of the night to Kennedy Airport.
And when they arrived, they were clutching the photographs of their children. And I have two children, and this is sort of the nightmare that a parent lives with. And to see it work itself out is a real tragedy.
KING: We have a couple of minutes left, Mr. Mayor. The President of the United States cautioned against quick speculation, rush to judgment, which as you remember happened with Oklahoma City.
GIULIANI: He's absolutely right to do that. I talked to President Clinton today. He was concerned enough about making sure that everything was working, that he called both me and Governor Pataki, to make certain that the federal authorities were working well with the city and the state. And they are, and were.
But I think his words are absolutely important to remember. People should not prejudge. At this point, the FBI, the police and all those who are working on this case -- it's the Joint Anti- Terrorism Task Force that I worked with for some time. And the thing to remember is, no one knows yet what happened.
We shouldn't prejudge it, and we have the best experts available in the world working on this. And they'll come to an answer, but give them time. And anybody who fuels speculation here is disserving the public and these families who easily can succumb to really being hurt in a situation like this. This is a time for restraint and care in what you say and how you say it. And let the experts do the job of investigating it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GIULIANI: Let's remember the words of the 93rd Psalm which tells us from thousands of years ago, "The Lord God on high is mightier than the thunder of great waters. He is mightier than the breakers of the sea." May God bless those who have been taken from us, and welcome them to the Kingdom of Heaven. And most of all may God give us the strength to persevere.
(END VIDEO CLIP) (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GIULIANI: I decided maybe about two weeks ago that I thought the governor would be better for the city. I thought probably I would vote for him. But I weighed the option of remaining neutral and not expressing an opinion on the governor's race. Maybe a couple times during that period I went back and forth about it a little bit, and finally decided over the weekend that, No. 1, that I would support him, but No. 2, that I would publicly state it because I felt that that was the appropriate thing to do as the mayor. I think the people of the city and the region are entitled to know who I'm voting for and why, in such an important race.
QUESTION: When did you inform Mr. Cuomo?
GIULIANI: I didn't.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: We continue with this look back at highlights from our many interviews with Rudy Giuliani.
Although the press coverage was nothing like it is now, the mayor's marital situation was making some headlines when he talked with me in August of 1997.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE, AUGUST 26, 1997)
KING: This has to be asked, a slick tabloid, going unnamed, has questions about your marriage. So it's a two-part question. One, any comment you want to make on that? and two, what about the private lives of public people? What's fair game?
GIULIANI: I think -- you know, actually a public official can't decide what fair game is. I'll tell you what I am interested in about public people that I vote for or have to vote for and that is, things that affect the way they perform their job. I think the prying that goes on into private lives doesn't really add very much to the decisions that you make about people. How is a person doing their job? Are they doing it effectively? Aren't they? What's going on in their private life? In their marriage? I think actually, we have gone way too far in that regard.
KING: So in other words, if, let's take an example, if the Governor of a state is having a marital problem but his state is running well, and everything is going fine that's nobody's business?
GIULIANI: Absolutely right. Or if he's having a health problem of some kind in which he needs some help or he needs some treatment, the question is same thing, can he do his job, can she do her job? Can she function? I think if we stuck so that we'd all be a lot better off and we'd see a lot more people in public life.
KING: Are you annoyed -- at what's happening in America with this tabloid frenzy?
GIULIANI: Sure I think it's damaging. I think it's damaging because I think it drives some good people away. You really have to develop a very thick skin after a while you do but there are some people that don't want to go through having to develop that kind of thick skin.
KING: Is it difficult to deal with emotionally.
GIULIANI: Not after a while.
KING: No?
GIULIANI: This -- being mayor of New York City in some ways, you know you're probably the most accessible candidate or public official in the country. I have two or three press conferences a day, so I have gotten to the point where there's no question that surprises me any longer.
KING: What has surprised you most about being mayor of the city?
GIULIANI: Oh, I think the way in which the city has come back and responded, and I think reestablished itself as the capital of the world...
KING: ... exceeded even your expectations.
GIULIANI: It really has, Larry. I mean, I guess you sort of expect me to say that, but the reality it has exceed my expectations. It's become safer, its economy has come back more. It's the tourist capital of America now. So this is a city that four or five years ago, people didn't want to come to. They weren't building hotels. Now our hotels have been full for the last two and a half, three years. So, in many respects there's been a big comeback, and obviously, a lot more things to do.
KING: Present company excluded, what contributed to this?
GIULIANI: I think first, the decline in crime, which happens because thousands and thousands of people make it happen. I think the just general attractiveness of New York city. It's probably the best known city in the world, and if a couple of the fundamental things are working correctly then people want to come here. You almost have to work at blocking people from coming here. You have to put barriers in their way, because there's so many reasons to come to the city of New York.
KING: Is it as tough as we would imagine? It's called the second toughest job in America.
GIULIANI: Some days it isn't, some days it is. Today was a particularly bad day because we lost a police officer who was executed last night at 11:45 p.m. in the evening, and I was up all night at the hospital with his family. I remember when I was first elected mayor, I had lunch with John Lindsey, who was the mayor of New York city about 20, 25 years ago for two terms. And John told me that the worst part of being mayor of New York city, was when you get the call in the middle of the night, that a police officer, or firefighter, or correction officer, has been seriously injured. And I remember each and every one of them. It is the worst part of being mayor.
KING: Now we slide into the question of the when the reverse happens, when the police commit brutality. Is that the same kind of thing? do you owe the same kind of consoling...
GIULIANI: ... absolutely.
KING: ... to the family of that Haitian gentleman?
GIULIANI: Absolutely. It's interesting you say that. In many ways, it's the same kind of jarring experience for an entire city. In the case of Mr. Louima, who was allegedly -- and I have to say allegedly...
KING: ... Yeah.
GIULIANI: ... because the case is on trial. It doesn't suggest that I'm, you know, that I'm in any way doubting what he said, but I'm required to say allegedly. But in the case of the allegations that are made there, it really is just horrendous conduct. It would be horrendous conduct if anybody were alleged to have done it. It makes it worse if it's a police officer alleged to be involved. So you owe something to the family for sure -- support, help. In his particular case, he wanted protection for his family and he's being given protection for his family to make sure nothing else happens.
KING: And I know you have said that you welcome the Justice Department investigation. You welcome looking into this.
GIULIANI: Well, as I said, I was United States attorney here in new York for five and a half years. I know the advantages of prosecution under federal law. There are, particularly as this case develops from one police officer to now four that have been arrested; there are substantial advantages to the prosecution in federal court. The conspiracy law is broader, the standard of proof in getting to the jury is somewhat easier. So in essence, it makes the achievement of justice somewhat easier.
KING: Nothing worse than a bad cop?
GIULIANI: Sure, because it -- for a lot of reasons it shakes up people's confidence in the law, which you never want to do, and it also hurts. And this really saddens me tremendously because I have such regard for the police. It hurts the reputation of good police officers. It shouldn't, because it really is like prejudice. It's like it's the same thing in a way sometimes that we're dealing with when we're trying to reduce racism or stereotyping, but inevitably, you get a cop that acts improperly, or you get a group of them that act improperly or criminally and there are a certain number of people who try to spread that blame against an entire police department.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KING: More from Mayor Rudy Giuliani on this LARRY KING WEEKEND coming up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GIULIANI: I thought the actions here were horrendous and perverse and sick, and I think every police officer felt that way. I don't think that police officers, in any way, identified with the kind of conduct that was involved here. I think they found it reprehensible and perverse, and some display of some kind of a violent sickness.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GIULIANI: Politics, you know, it isn't as important as I thought it was. I used to think -- I used to make many of my life decisions for the last 10 years around politics, and they should have been made, and I'm going to make them in the future, around the other things that I'm talking about.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: The possibility of a Senate race between Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Rodham Clinton had a lot of people very excited. The face-off never happened. The mayor opted not to run after being diagnosed with prostate cancer.
We talked about the disease in September of last year, and I started by asking him about the treatment he was getting.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE, SEPTEMBER 18, 2000)
GIULIANI: the one that I thought made the sense -- made the most sense for me, is the combination therapy which involves hormones, seeds, and then two months later I go back for five weeks of external radiation. So you -- essentially you have the seeds placed inside the prostate, that is radiation inside that kills the cancer, and then you have radiation from the outside, that hopefully accomplishes the same thing. And I brought along the seeds to show you. This is what they look like.
KING: Let me see them.
GIULIANI: Can you see them? There they are right there. They're little tiny pellets and they place them in the prostate with needles and, you know, it's an operation.
KING: Yes. Are you feeling pain during this?
GIULIANI: No, you are -- you have an anesthetic, I mean, it puts you to sleep from the waist down and you can hear some of the things that are going on, but it's totally painless in that sense, and then afterwards you have some irritation. I would describe it more as discomfort more than pain.
KING: And is there any different feeling now about you when you have radiation in you? In other words, does food taste different? Do you set off light bulbs?
GIULIANI: Well, I like to kid around about it. But no, there is no difference. I -- but I -- don't tell the people that cover my everyday daily press conference because I have them convinced that if they ask me a question I don't like I can turn around and zap them with my seeds and get them really good.
KING: Now, Joe Torre said when he heard about this he said, cut it out, get it out, he doesn't care what the aftermath would be, cut it out. And I know you had to think about that, and that of course, would seem the absolute ultimate thing to do. Why did you come out against surgery?
GIULIANI: I thought -- from my point of view, I thought this worked better. I thought the rates with seed therapy are just as good, some of the side effects are a little bit less. And I thought that I could just handle it better and it would work better, and it would be a better chance of killing the cancer. But you know, I can see people that opt for surgery, and then some people just do external radiation, and then some people just do implantation of seeds. I thought doing the three things, the hormones, the seeds, and then the external radiation, would give me the best chance of killing it no matter where it is.
KING: And as you know, Rudy, you have agreed to this, we are going to do a major show on prostate cancer, and you're going to be our bellwether type co-host of this as we delve into this disturbing disease on -- that's on the increase in America.
GIULIANI: It is. The good news is that there are many therapies, meaning four or five, that have either equal or very similar survival rates and cure rates. The bad news is there are a lot of choices to make. I mean, there is no -- this is not one of those things where surgery is definitely the answer, seeds are definitely the answer, external radiation, so you have to really do some thinking, and with doctors that you trust. And after I thought it out, it seemed to me that this was the best alternative for me.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KING: Mayor Giuliani is still being treated for his cancer. We're happy to report his office says he's doing well, and we wish him the best.
That's it for this weekend edition of LARRY KING LIVE. Good night.
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