From an interview on WNYC's Brian Lehrer show on 8/12, conducted by Mike Pesca
Guests: Glenn Corbett, Professor of Fire Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice
David McCraw, lawyer for the New York Times which initiated the suit to
release documents
Mike Pesca: Soon after 9/11the New York City Fire Department debriefed personnel and compiled first-hand accounts of what happened that day. Though they were intended for internal use, today written transcripts of those accounts plus transcripts of 9/11 calls and audiotape of fire dispatchers will be released... David McCraw: How did the release of these transcripts and tapes come about?
McCraw: This all began in 2002 when, after the Fire Department refused to release any of the materials, I filed a suit on behalf of the New York Times and our reporter, Jim Dwyer, to overturn their refusal to release materials under the Freedom of Information Act. Ultimately,as you know, we ended up litigating this through the Appellate Division to the highest court in New York, the Court of Appeals. So we're gratified, after three years, to see the materials starting to come out.
Pesca: Were you joined in your suit or were you helped formally or informally through any of the families of 9/11 victims?
McCraw: That's right, Mike. When Jim and I first went to court... we found several family members who'd come out to see the proceedings. We were approached after that by Normal Siegel, their lawyer, and asked if we'd have any objection to their joining on our side of the suit to seek the release of these materials. Ultimately I think there were eight families who became intervenors in the suit and who joined us through all the appeals.
Pesca: Glenn Corbett, tell me, as a matter of procedure, then-Fire Commissioner Van Essen got these testimonials on the record, what was the purpose there?
Corbett: I would imagine it was really for historical purposes to document what happened that day. Everyone understood that this was a tragedy of immense proportions and it was important to put on paper what exactly happened, what people experienced that day... the survivors.
Pesca: And was it so that the techniques could be improved? or was it more of a therapeutic reason?
Corbett: I don't know exactly what their reasoning was. It certainly is important from our perspective of looking at what happened that day and certainly the most important is to learn from it and to help for the future.
Pesca: And do you have any information on that? What did the Fire Department say, Mr. McCraw? What did the Fire Department say was their reason for doing these tapes?
McCraw: That's a very interesting point, Mike, because we started this law suit, fire officials were quoted in the New York Times as saying there were two reasons: one was for historical purposes -- just to make sure the record wasn't lost to posterity, and the second was that they thought these interviews were useful to family members in finding out what happened to their loved ones who died that day. Once we filed the suit, they said, No, no, they actually were designed as part of interagency advice to help make sure the preparations were better next time. We challenged that reason in court because the latter reasons would have allowed them to be held back as secret under the Freedom of Information Law. Ultimately the Court of Appeals agree with us that these were for historical purposes and should be released in their entirety with an exception for some expressions of personal feelings.
Pesca: ..... So that was the reason they gave. And the reasons changed. Do you get any indication of the real reasons or can we figure this out through common sense why they didn't want to release the tapes?
McCraw: I don't know what the internal thinking was. I think there was a range of reasons, as is often the case. They were concerned that some of the things may actually show less preparation than they thought. I think they were concerned about privacy in some cases. Ultimately, though, I was heartened by the press released issued yesterday by the Fire Department which pointed out that the Fire Department officials think that the release of these materials will show -- and I think they will -- that a heroic effort took place that day.
Pesca: Glenn Corbett, Professor of Fire Science, can I ask you pretty much the same question? Why, from what you know about the workings of a fire department, why would they be reluctant to release the tapes?
Corbett: Well, I think they probably had mixed emotions, certainly for the families when it came to putting information about their loved ones out there. But it's the families who are the ones who want this information. They're the ones who want to know what happened to their loved ones because they don't know.... One woman I worked with doesn't know very much about what happened to her son. He just disappeared that day. And any information that we can glean from these records will certainly be important.
Pesca: Are there big gaps in your knowledge? Do we expect to get... you know... twelve thousand pages! Mostly it's going to be stuff we've heard even if it's in different kind of detail. Do you expect anything really new to be released today?
Corbett: Well, I believe so. Yes. And one of the most important things, in my mind, is how these transcripts, especially the transcripts from the oral interviews, how they square with the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission. Because -- specifically when it comes to issues of radio communication -- the 9/11 Commission for all intents and purposes said that a large number of firefighters who were killed that day did hear the orders to evacuate but didn't do so. And I just don't believe it. From what I've learned and when I've talked to people about it, and anecdotally what we've seen already, and none of that information seems to support what I believe to be an erroneous conclusion in that Commission Report about radio communications that day. The same radio that, ironically, the firefighters took to the twin towers in 1993 and was well documented was not what they needed that day....[muddled]... to properly communicate within those twin towers.
Pesca: But if you're right, hasn't the Fire Department gone on the wrong assumption and changed a lot of their radio communications since?
Corbett: Well, certainly the whole issue about radio communications is still an issue today. You would have thought that, it's been almost four years now since 9/11, that we'd have a thoroughly robust communication system for firefighters around the City and we don't have that even today. And that's why I think is a most important issue that the transcripts will bring more information to the forefront about what happened back then...
Pesca: David McCraw, can you explain exactly what the materials are?
McCraw: ...There are three kinds of materials that we ultimately litigated over, two of which are being released today. One is -- and the one we've been focusing on -- is mostly the oral history. These interviews were done not only with firefighters but also with other personnel in the Fire Department in the weeks and months after 9/11. They've brought folks in, interviewed them, asked them to recount what they remember about what happened to them that day. There are 504 of those interviews being released today. And that's going to be the bulk of the material that you're going to see. Second, we're also getting the dispatch tapes. These are the tapes of the internal communications and the dispatch centers and the firefighters that morning. The third thing, which we won't see today but which the City is continuing to work on and will release at some point in the next couple of weeks or month, I hope, are part of the 911 tapes. These are the tape recordings and in some cases transcripts of the calls made by civilians to the 911 line. The Court of Appeals rules that we were entitled only to the operator side of those calls. So when those are released we're only going to hear what the operator said. Frankly I was hoping that we would get both sides because I think it actually would show much more about what was going on. But those tapes will be released sometime in the near future.
Pesca: And with the calls back and forth to dispatchers, we're getting both sides, all sides of those calls?
McCraw: Right. The defense, Mike, of the courts it ran something like this: public employees -- people who were recorded as part of their public duties and public employment -- don't have quite the same privacy interests as a civilian making a call. So the dispatch tapes are only Fire Department personnel. That's why we'reg etting all of those today. On the 911 calls, by 4-3 vote of the Court of Appeals, the Court held that the privacy interest of the callers outweighed the public interest in hearing those tapes. We thought that was unfortunate. Across the country, more courts than not have held that 911 tapes are public documents.
Pesca: Glenn Corbett: the dispatch calls -- will they give us good information? Same question with 911 or half the transcripts of the 911 calls?
Corbett: Yes, I think they will. Any information that can place companies and perhaps even individuals in specific locations are certainly helpful to the families. No doubt about that. But it will also provide a more accurate historical record. And, again, going back and looking at these will help us plan for the future and help us learn from what happened that day.
Pesca: These families -- are they involved in official suits? Are they suits against the City, suits out of curiosity or interest?
Corbett: The families joined with the New York Times on this particular issue of getting access because, at the end, they have very limited information about what happened that day and they would like to know as much as is available out there. I think they may find some things embedded in these thousands of pages of transcripts. There may be some useful information for them there.
Pesca: I'm wondering if any of them have suits pending or this could lead to a suit against the City or the airlines or any other parties?
Corbett: Well, I'm not a lawyer but my understanding is that most of the lawsuits that happened filed by a variety of people against the airlines and against the City, some of those cases were tossed out of court for a variety of reasons notwithstanding just the issue of the victims' compensation fund which to all intents and purposes the person accepted the payments they basically waived their rights to sue any parties shielded by Congress in the months after 9/11.
Pesca: Right. But not every family did and some did so for whatever reasons and some just missed the deadlines. But's some indication that some people to have suits pending.
Corbett: To my knowledge there are still some active cases out there. I don't know what their status is though. The people I'm working with aren't really involved with that.
Pesca: David McCraw. Tell us about... there's a connection here to the criminal trial of Zacharias Moussaoui. Could you tell us how that affects this release today?
McCraw: Yes, that's an interesting angle on this. One of the things the Fire Department told us when we first tried to get these materials made public was that they couldn't be released because they were being used in the Moussaoui prosecution in Virginia. Now, interestingly enough, Moussaoui has all of these materials redacted as part of his preparation and his right as a criminal defendant. So we argued in court that there was no need to withhold any material on that basis because so much has been written about 9/11 that release of this material was not going to cause prejudice to a jury at some point in the future in Virginia, and second that it wasn't as if by hold them they were keeping any secrets from Moussaoui who already had the materials. The court generally accepted our argument. The trial court said that exemption -- the exemption for investigative materials -- shouldn't apply. They should be released if that's the only reason to withhold them. The appellate division upheld that. The Court of Appeals gave the Justice Department the opportunity to make a further showing of why they should be withheld. My understanding is that there are only two portions of 9/11 tapes that are being withheld for use in the Moussaoui penalty phase.
Pesca: And what are those?
McCraw: We don't know. And we're still trying to make a decision about whether we should go back and challenge those. We're working with the City to get a fuller explanation of what materials are being withheld. If we think they're significant, we'll go back to court and make the same arguments that the release of that is not going to affect proceedings in Virginia.
Pesca: What are they being released as transcripts, not audio recordings?
McCraw: The oral histories are being released as transcripts because, literally, that's what we requested. We did not request the tapes. Perhaps some other media organizations [other than the NYTimes] did, so our request is being filled as it was given. On the 911 materials which haven't been released, we understand that some of those are in both transcript and in audio form. So both sets will be released.
Pesca: When you made your request, did you say if it's acceptable if they want to redact the names, or did you use the strategy of "let's request everything, and what they give us, they give us!" If individual firefighters don't want to be named, that's acceptable -- let's not go that far...
McCraw: You know, our view on this was that the whole record should be made available. We understand that this is a difficult day for some people just as when the Port Authority released similar materials two years ago. But overwhelmingly what we found when the Port Authority released materials two years ago was a positive reaction. People wanted to know. People needed to know. And I think the historical record deserves that. So we took the position, after some thought about it, that whatever privacy interests were here should not outweight the great public interest in having a complete historical record. There have been two lines of reporting done on this story which I think are important and which related directly to materials being released today. One is looking at just how well the emergency operation took place, and the second was to look at whether there were structural conditions within the building which contributed to loss of life. We think these materials help us do a better job of involving the public in the debate over these issues.
Pesca: Glenn Corbett -- I know you're a professor of Fire Science. Were you once a firefighter?
Corbett: I'm an assistant chief in Bergen County, NJ, right now.
Pesca: Can you speak at all from the perspective of a firefighter? I suppose there's a diversity of perspectives. But would an individual not want his name on a report or even not want a debriefing to be made public?
Corbett: I'm sure there are some individuals who would prefer that it not be done. I think most firefighters would want that information put out there so that a body of knowledge can be developed because, even though we're four years out, there's still lot of issues about what happened that day. Not only here but for other fire departments across the country. And again, communications, command and control issues -- all things that, unfortunately, we haven't gotten 100% at this point....
End of interview