NYC-WTC_000230575

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

John Gambling, Host: Johnny Donovan you are right. The triumphant return of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It’s been three months since I’ve last seen you. What have you been up to?

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg: Well I’ve been talking to an awful lot of your listeners who say, ‘Where are you? Why aren’t you there?’ Good morning.

Gambling: Good morning and congratulations.

Mayor: Thank you for having me back.

Gambling: Are you kidding? Missed you while you were gone. I know you were busy and you did a great campaign. Obviously a lot of New Yorkers agreed that you were the guy.

Mayor: Well I think a lot of New Yorkers thought the City is going in the right direction. We aren’t perfect, but the City, you know, the schools are getting better and crime is coming down and jobs are coming here and housing is getting built and quality of life is going up. And there’s still plenty of tragedies. I just came from visiting the 70* Precinct where Officer Dillon Stewart worked when he was killed the other day. Bu t you know, the public basically likes the direction and didn’t see any reason to change.

Gambling: Absolutely. So I have to ask you before- and then we can kind of back off on the election thing because everybody knows the story. You’re challenger accused you of trumping up the terror alert as part of a campaign tactic.

Mayor: Well every-1 think every single editorial board wrote that we did the right things. You know, you can’t stop and wait to find out whether every threat is legit. By the time you find out it’s much too late. You have to analyze those. This was one- it’s been a while now- but my recollection is the guy that originally started talked about the threat passed a lie detector set. Some other who later on passed lie detector sets saying the other thing screamed, ‘It’s too late, you can’t stop us.’ There was other evidence, and when there is evidence you deploy your police officers and do all the other things in advance and you hope, the greatest thing you pray for...

Gambling: Is that we’re wrong.

Mayor: Is that we’re wrong. Absolutely.

Gambling: Exactly. It’s one of the few areas where you really want to be wrong.

Mayor: It’s like, you know, your life insurance policy. You always want your life insurance company to win. You don’t ever want to beat your life insurance policy.

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