By Glynn Wilson
From the National Desk
Published 8/26/2002 6:48 PM
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NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 26 (UPI) -- Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani revealed his thoughts on what the World Trade Center site should be in the most explicit terms yet Monday and offered Southern governors some specific advice on preparing for future disasters on the scale of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Giuliani said he dreaded the one-year anniversary of Sept. 11, but in more detail than ever before, he said the devastated World Trade Center site should be a memorial, not a place for commerce.

"The site should primarily be set aside as a memorial, not covered with office buildings for commerce," he said. "It is a burial ground and a historic site people will want to see 100 years from now."

He said the site should be preserved as a "symbol of what patriotism is all about," and insisted that the value of the site lies in showing how even the heroic off-duty rescue workers who responded did what they did because they were Americans.

"We must show what's inside a man who will do what they did," he said. "That's why it is so valuable for so many people from all over the world."

A library and a museum should mark the spot and allow people for years to come to understand the "bravery and patriotism" displayed during the worst terrorist attack ever suffered on U.S. soil.

Those in attendance at the Southern Governors Association conference came to see and hear Giuliani speak on the issue of homeland security. They gave him two standing ovations, one when he came into the room and again when he left.

Most of the media were escorted from the room after 10 minutes of his presentation, and in a news conference afterward, he justified it by saying he wanted to be able to speak freely on issues of national security to the governors in the room.

Giuliani said the situation in the world now reminds him of the 1930s, when many ignored the warning signs of danger from Hitler's Germany.

"You can't prepare for every contingency, but we all need to be prepared for an attack which we hope won't happen," he said.

Giuliani told the governors if they haven't already established an office of emergency preparedness they should. He did that in New York several years prior to Sept. 11, 2001, and it paid off, he said.

One important step involves setting up a system to monitor hospital records for patterns of disease outbreaks. New York's system was in place and had been used to detect the West Nile virus when it hit the city in 1999. The inventory of hospital rooms available that came out of that plan proved valuable on Sept. 11, he said.

Next, he advised the governors to develop detailed disaster plans and conduct simulation drills on a regular basis. In the New York area, drills to plan for a plane crash on the border of Nassau County and New York proved useful on Sept. 11 and in the event of another plane crash in Queens in November, less than two months after Sept. 11.

"Many more would have died if we had not been prepared," he said. "Every bit of information was important."

New York had also planned for a biological or chemical weapons attack, one for anthrax, another for an outbreak of smallpox, another for a sarin gas attack, and, he said, "a suicide bombing like they have in Israel."

"We did think that would happen," he said, even though the city was not prepared for hijackers who used commercial airliners as guided missiles on civilian targets.

"Lesson No. 1 is, develop a plan and be prepared. We may not be able to anticipate exactly what is going to happen," he said. "But we can prepare for everything you can think of, and what you learn will prove invaluable."

He also advised each state to develop a three-tiered communications plan: One for those on the ground who handle the response, like police and firefighters, another for the commanders directing the response, and one for those at the highest levels who have to manage the overall response, such as mayors and governors.

He urged the governors to support a measure before the Federal Communications Commission that would make more Internet bandwidth available in the event of an emergency.

"It's extremely important to be able to communicate," he said. "This would give us one network we could make use of in the future."

In a news conference after his presentation to the governors, Giuliani stopped short of supporting a military invasion of Iraq in the near future. But he said he supports the Bush administration's plan to remove Saddam Hussein's regime as "the only way we are going to make the world safe for the future. They aggressively sponsor terrorism and are clearly developing weapons of mass destruction."