by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, The New York Times
The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is coming to New York next week with plans to provide a definitive account in words, sounds and pictures of what happened that day, a process that will tread on sensitive ground and unsettled history.
For five months, as it has investigated the emergency response to the attacks, the commission staff has heard divergent views on precisely what happened - perhaps unsurprising, given the velocity and stunning sequence of events that morning. The panel has also heard starkly conflicting opinions on whether better planning, coordination and communication might have avoided the heavy loss of life among rescuers and office workers trapped in the towers, according to people the panel has interviewed or their associates.
Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, for instance, has already spoken at length with the panel, telling its members that New York’s emergency services mustered a brave, coordinated response as the city came under attack and two of the world’s tallest buildings collapsed. In contrast, some fire chiefs and families of dead firefighters have told commission investigators that the effort, while brave, was also crippled by poor cooperation and communication among the city’s emergency response agencies.
And the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, which took office four months after the disaster, has argued before the commission in private meetings that it has fixed much that was flawed about the city’s preparedness for catastrophe, a point disputed by some experts and members of the city’s emergency response agencies. As the claims and competing versions arise, and with lawyers from both the city government and Mr. Giuliani’s consulting firm eager to be heard, the commission aims to sort out the factual disagreements and produce a credible account of the day.
“People still debate what happened at Gettysburg,” said Al Felzenberg, a spokesman for the commission. “We know who won but there are still a lot of questions. The goal here is to write the definitive account. We hope our report will eliminate as many of the divergent views as possible.”
The concern within the Bloomberg administration about the hearings - the mayor initially refused to turn over some city records to the commission, citing privacy concerns - has been considerable. While Mr. Bloomberg and his commissioners had no role in managing the response that day, they inherited the delicate task of drawing lessons and applying them to the city’s emergency practices, an effort that began in 2002 when his administration asked a private consulting firm to review the emergency operations.
City lawyers have been present during most of about 50 interviews conducted by the commission staff with police officers, firefighters and other city employees. In recent days the mayor instructed his police and fire commissioners to show their planned testimony to the city’s Law Department. He also told them to focus their testimony on improvements in preparedness, and to avoid discussing the events of that day, according to a Bloomberg administration official.
“We weren’t there,” the official said the mayor had reminded his aides, “and there were plenty of others who were.”
Preparedness remains an area of particular sensitivity for Mr. Bloomberg, since the Police and Fire Departments still disagree on how to share responsibility at emergencies, a subject that the commission has announced it will explore. Safety professionals and emergency management experts have told the commission that, regarding agency cooperation, the city is no better prepared today that it was on Sept. 11, a point vigorously contested by Mr. Bloomberg; his police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly; and the fire commissioner, Nicholas Scoppetta.
On Sept. 11, as police helicopters hovered around the two burning buildings, the police issued evacuation warnings. These warning were generally not heard by firefighters, who had no communications with the Police Department, in part because their radios worked on different frequencies. In many cases, the fire chiefs at the command post were unable to contact their companies in the stairways.
While the mayor has unequivocally defended the performance of the city and its workers on Sept. 11, he also has pointed out that his administration has addressed areas of concern.
The two departments now conduct regular joint helicopter drills and other exercises, said William T. Cunningham, the director of communications for Mr. Bloomberg. They also have started a program in which officers from each agency serve as liaisons to iron out problems. These practical tasks, Mr. Cunningham said, are far more important than whether a formal agreement has been signed.
“The mayor has set the tone: we work together day in and day out,” Mr. Cunningham said. “On whether the piece of paper is signed or not, these two bureaucracies, in a way, are like the Army and the Navy debating where does the shore begin and where does the water begin.”
Mr. Kelly is expected to testify that the department has improved intelligence gathering through measures like its use of Arabic-speaking personnel to monitor chat rooms and Web sites and the deployment of detectives in foreign countries. “Our focus is prevention, prevention, prevention,” said Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman.
The commission has also heard from senior officials at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the owner of the World Trade Center. Those officials have described plans made after the 1993 bombing to prepare for a crisis, including improvements to stairways, emergency lights and public address systems. Some family members have asked whether the Port Authority locked the roof doors of the buildings despite agreeing to comply with city fire codes, and why workers in the south tower, the second building to be hit, were told to remain in the building after the north tower was struck.
The hearings, to be held Tuesday and Wednesday at the Tishman Auditorium of the New School University in Greenwich Village, are scheduled to last a total of 11 hours, and will cover emergency response at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pa., where the fourth plane hijacked that morning went down. Included among the 13 witnesses now listed for testimony are Mr. Giuliani; the past and present commissioners of the Police, Fire and Emergency Management Departments; Alan Reiss, who had been the director of the world trade department for the Port Authority until shortly before Sept. 11; and Joseph Morris, a former chief of the Port Authority Police Department.
The commission has typically used the hearings as a platform for reporting its staff’s findings to the public, and to get comments from some of the decision makers.
The commission has pored through evidence that other researchers of the event either skimmed or never saw. The panel, for example, challenged the Bloomberg administration to let its staff members hear the 911 calls made by people trapped in the towers, and to read oral histories given by more than 500 firefighters.
According to the commission, some two dozen of its 80 staff members have read tens of thousands of documents, listened to hundreds of hours of audio tapes, including the 911 calls, and have conducted interviews with as many as 200 police, firefighters, civilians and Port Authority officials.
The commission staff has created a video using clips from several sources, narrated by fire and police commanders who helped direct rescue operations. The audio portion will include calls for help from inside the tower by people who were trapped but survived. Mr. Felzenberg said the presentation was not intended to recreate the emotions and painful memories, but to capture the environment in which fire and police commanders were working.
“They had to make very quick decisions,” he said, “without good information under tremendous stress and tremendous pressure.”
One commissioner, Timothy J. Roemer, said that reviewing some of the most painful aspects of the day had a value. “This is an effort to write the definitive history, both the good and the bad,” he said. “To sew up the seams and patch up the cracks that the terrorists crawled through on Sept. 11.”