Sept. 11: Rudy Giuliani Remembers Bravery

Sept. 11, 2002 -- Many New Yorkers and Americans around the country saw former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as the calm at the center of the storm after the Sept.11 attacks.

Giuliani, who lost his mother over the weekend, says looking back is very hard for everyone, but that we owe it to those that were lost.

The following is a transcript of Giuliani's interview as it aired on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America.

FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYOR, RUDOLPH GIULIANI: It's a difficult day but a necessary day for us to go through and to remember the worst attack in the history of this country and then the bravest, most remarkable, awesome response on the part of thousands and thousands of people who saved over 25,000 people. Somehow, I think we have to extract from this day like we did from so many of the funerals and the memorial services — the sadness, crying, and mourning, but also a tremendous sense of pride in the way these people responded and turned the worst attack in the greatest rescue of this country.

ABCNEWS' CHARLES GIBSON: I think all of us who live in the city learned a lot about New York in the past year, but you're the mayor of the city — did you learn anything about the city?

GIULIANI: Yeah, sure I did. It reinforced and then made very dramatic what I always knew about the city of New York. It can withstand big things better than any place else in the world. I used to know that as the mayor whenever we had an emergency or difficulty or blackout. People in the city would all respond, all come together. Here, it had to withstand the worst attack in the history of this country. From the moment I watched it, when I watched the people fleeing the first building that came down, and I saw the way in which they were doing it, quickly, running sometimes, but in an orderly way, not hurting each other and helping each other. The minute I saw that, I had this sense, they're going to get through this and they're going to be able to get through this. These are very remarkable people.

GIBSON: Anything that's disappointed you in the response in the past year?

GIULIANI: No. No, the only thing that disappointed me is the thing that disappointed me on September 12, remains with me forever and ever. I was just at St. Vincent's hospital last week. One of the things we were very concerned about on the 11th was having hospital space for all the people we expected to take out of there. We opened up thousands and thousands of hospital beds and they were filled the first day with all the people rescued. But then on the second day, about noon, I realized all those beds we had opened up weren't being filled. I had a sense then that there weren't going to be the kinds of survivors that we thought once the building collapsed.

GIBSON: I just remember Cynthia McFadden at the hospital for us, and she kept calling in and saying 'nobody's coming,' and you knew.

GIULIANI: Then in retrospect, as I look back on it, I'm thankful for all the people they saved. It's also true that on once I got out of the building we were trapped in and found the street and was giving press conference sand trying to figure out how many people might be in jeopardy. If you had asked me then, I wouldn't have given a number then, was too frightening. The number I had been given was maybe three or four times the number it turned out to be. It's still a horrific number. But because of the bravery of these men and women, the uniformed people, the way they conducted it, the way they gave up their lives so others would be calm. They didn't abandon the ship, didn't run and panic, because of that, they saved 25,000 or more people, many of whom could have been dead if there had been a mass panic inside the buildings.

GIBSON: I remember that morning, that evening, you said this number could be more than any of us could convey.

GIULIANI: There was no number that could be encouraging or anything else. It was more than any of us could bear.