We had time for politics, I'm speaking to a politicue analyst, and The economist Beatrice Kairu, it's been a while since you had to, So much has happened Actually I was supposed to have Sairaz and something bad happened to him this morning I hope he will be well soon But now, Beatrice, what is your situation? Are you fine? You got lost Actually, I'm sure some people were like, kwa ni ule analista na kujanga skuizia kwa api? No, I'm sure. The comments are so many, we can't sometimes find others wa pokatikati, but I'm sure many were looking forward to you coming here again. But that is it, maybe. Shulet na fungulu alia? Yeah, finally, finally somebody realized. Covid-19 is rising again. I don't know who is playing, who, but Shulet na fungulu alia? I should say, but what is the recovery rate? Compared to... Yeah, it's still at 97 percent. No scientist has come to say that it's not 80 or 88. And we saw Donald Trump, the potters for the United States of America. He says he's recovering well and he's a 74-year-old man. Actually, he has recovered in one week. Exactly, and the people who are going back to school are young people. And we've seen the short studies that have been done, the cases of Covid-19 and the young ones, it's not as serious. In any case, any young person who has died from Covid had an underlying cause. So I think we didn't use science to close the schools. And neither are we using science to open the schools. So I don't see why somebody should come up to try and correlate with the number of cases in Covid-19. So since we didn't use science to close schools and now we are not also using science to open schools, I think let the children go back to school. And kids right now are even eager to go back because they are young active minds. And these young active minds must be engaged. So I kudos to Magoha. Even I know when the president was opening up the economy, he was saying the lives of children are more important than them going to school. But I big up to Magoha, who is also a medical doctor, for going ahead and insisting that they open schools. And I like his strategy. But do you think there was a challenge or there was a contradictory in how things happened? The president says the lives of the children matter. Then a week later, she was in a fungulu, and then kidoga has a fungulu, then it's in a fungulu. Do you think there was confusion? Yes, in terms of administrative and governance, but from an expert point of view, Magoha did based on his own analysis, which makes sense. If young people are not getting affected, then I don't see why we are scared. We didn't see young people falling down, even the one in the universities. Even when you look at various countries. Germany also opened their schools like a month or so ago. And other countries even in Africa, they've been in an open economy for the last since COVID was reported. So I think Magoha did his own analysis and that's the way we should do. We do an analysis, we weigh the options, and then we go ahead and execute. We can't be maktiming and doing a lot of politics. And these are the lives of children we are talking about. So, and I like their strategy. They decided to use the final years. That is from four, class eight and stand four, which will also be good to be able to even plan for the other candidates. Because you see now at least the form was a bit more mature than from once, the closet a bit more mature than the class four and then the class four are a bit the 10 year old. You see it's a very good study. Kohots is taken very good Kohots. So from this Kohots, what I would encourage the education sector to do is now observe and see. It's like this, it's a very good sample study, I would say. So from these sample study, now the government can make better plans. And the schools can also do their needs assessment and see where are they failing, where are they prospering. And then from that make now more comprehensive and then have a return to school formula for the other kids in schools. Yeah, but now I have seen here in the cities the students are going back to school from where I've come from. I met a number this morning. But I'm concerned with the persons from the fun flung places like the north eastern Kenya and maybe in the villages. With those kids go to school. Why not? There have been reports of floods. There have been reports of dilapidated schools where they're going back to where they'll be social distancing. Yes. Will it be an impartial application of the guidelines by the MOH? Exactly, so that's what I'm saying. First you have to make a declaration. Like now kids have to go back to school. So that's part one. Now part two, now they wait for kids to report. Then they assess why didn't these people not report to school, what were the challenges? And what can the government do about it? Actually I was telling one of my colleagues and saying that it's good COVID happened because now it's even exposing big time the education sector. At another level. Actually the healthcare sector progression when it comes to COVID-19 it does not actually affect in terms of healthcare sector whereby how will we run our healthcare sector. But the greatest challenge, the greatest sector with the greatest challenge right now is the education sector. This is where not even the return of businesses that is easy to do it. Not even the return of what is it called agriculture and anything. The greatest headache right now is the education sector not only in Kenya but worldwide. This is where now every institution is now trying to crack their heads on how do we ensure that school continues and why do I say that even in the universities courses like engineering, courses like nursing, courses like medicine. Some of these courses for you to qualify you have to do practicals. You cannot do online, you cannot just see a video and then you say this one now has graduated to be a competent nurse or this one has graduated to be a competent doctor right? So it means as much as people are now saying we can digitalize classes but there are some courses you cannot digitalize. And even the students themselves if it's biology practicals, chemistry practicals you cannot do online and are you sure that the kids have understood? Now something else we have to understand kids aged between the age of four to around the age of 18 years these are formative years and formative years you cannot say you'll do only online. Remember beyond school book there is also character development, social interaction which makes a human being. So by the time that child has reached the age of 18 years now 18 years in university you cannot do online because now it's almost toward now adulthood. But these other ages you cannot fully say they'll do online because they also developing and development is not only cognitive but also in social behavior which is also learned in school and shaped in school because do parents have the capacity to do homeschooling if people say now we are going to do online and homeschooling do as a middle income economy do even have that ability for two parents or one parent to stay at home and supervise the tutoring of kids at home. You see that's a very great challenge. So right now I think the government right now should be cracking their heads on how education post COVID will be. Alright, there was also another concern as we finish upon this education. Yes, yes. There was a concern of fee. You remember at Liamboa this is a near lost and parents when you know kakula fee while others were eating fare so was that the only kula fee. There has been a concern and I hear the government is kinder trying to come to solve that problem but what happens to the private sector. Exactly. So as again we have said part one is first people reporting and I think there is a time Maguha was saying even if you don't have school fees first bring your child. The next thing now the school should do is not do what I insist and I always insist let them do a needs assessment. So how many kids reported to school so how many have school fees how many don't have school fees and those who don't have school fees why? Is it because the parent ate the school fees? Is it because the parent lost a job? Is it because the parent lost a business? Ya because these are the challenges as much as people say jokingly that the parent ate school fees. Chances are majority lost their businesses their daily today earnings right? Some lost their jobs completely some companies close for good they are not opening again so there is a loss of job and to some extent prior covid unemployment rate was still very high in the country so we are looking at the financial strains not necessarily because parents ate school fees but also other factors like job loss like business losses that affected majority of Kenyans so now it's upon the government through that needs assessment and the funds that they get the funds that they have said they have set aside for education they should actually ensure that now they know where to prioritize remember now I am seeing most schools asking parents to ensure their kids have enough masks now I don't know maybe a box of 50 masks maybe it's right now it's going for 1000 shillings now this parent is not even able to buy uniform because kids about grown because remember people staying indoors they overfed so some have increased in girls and that is a factor mangas many Kenyans they felt they have really gained a lot of weight so Reminds me I've seen a video where a girl trying to fit in the uniform and that video going round it's trying to state what is happening on the ground so if uniform is a problem shoe size may increase is also a problem now you're also telling the same students to buy masks so that they can report to school why can't the government give masks to the schools KEMSA actually what is procured very many masks so what was KEMSA procuring it for was it only for hospitals now these are institutions so can we look for a way forward because I imagine those in the flood areas I wonder where are they getting their masks from you know think about most likely they may not be using them so it's right time the government because you want to enjoy I saw they came up with a very good report of covid protocols for schools that is one step but now to achieve that especially hand washing most schools didn't have soap in wash for using for washing pre covid the children didn't have soap to wash their hands in most public schools so right now I'm asking myself will the government also provide soap for these schools and for how long and for how long is sustainability number two hand sanitization points are they going to set up in the classrooms so apart from washing hands do you have a sanitizing point at every point are you seeing then the workers in the schools so will they be also going back to their homes and then coming back and interacting with the children these are many protocols they have to think about it so since camps are over procured and there is an excess amount of masks in storage then also the government should come up with a way of contributing distributing the same mask to the schools right and use that as a case study and see how kids will come back to school and if they come if they come I don't know I'm tempted to continue with this education it's okay it's okay yeah yeah it's very crucial education is crucial if the grade four and now the candidates have come yes and now we only have said one month so we are hoping the next classes they will resume come 2021 yes we don't know whether the numbers will have surge or not but if the numbers continue do you think these other group will have lost and is it fair for them no uh when it comes to learning you can't skip skills you can't skip uh teaching you can't it's like saying you you are going through medical school and you are told you can skip one practical of how to operate maybe a leg because then you graduate you'll you'll have half baked students so the curricula must be completed now I have my nephews who are crying atiyo atiyo atiyo atiyo atiyo atiyo atiyo atiyo atiyo atiyo atiyo they are 10 years they are 10 years they are afraid to go back I should say age is just but a number but um I think the resolution the education sector resolved these were candidates you see it was their final year they they have been trained for like three years if it's the ones in Klaze they have been trained for seven years the one who are doing the CBC in Klaze for they've been trained for three years so if they delay a little bit longer you see you'll be unlearning a lot of things so I think it was prudent and for me I like the idea of their return to school formula and starting with the candidate that was a very good good strategy I really recommend Professor Magoha for doing that so because they are the ones at the end makes sense so then they finish complete and get out of the system but no people are saying the ones who finish Klaze they need to join form one but that's a different story altogether because at least you have your certificate you can wait even that six months or one year but then join form one afresh but you won't go back to do an exam that you know you're taking nine years to have finished right so having said that then therefore what I believe that they are trying to do with these candidates they'll be able to assess in three months and remember the incubation period for COVID-19 is two weeks right so if these kids report back to school they'll observe for two weeks what happens are kids getting sick is there a surge they'll be able to trend and observe and I hope I really hope we have good intellectuals in the education sector they should not make us flop like the health experts did a very shoddy job and flopped the whole system because they were not ready they were not prepared they were not thinking outside the box they were just copy pasting I hope we have intellectuals in the education sector where they can sit down and use the research aspect and observe you see in research that is what you do observation you observe document and then do your analysis and see two weeks do we have surging do you have kids how kids behaving what is the behavior of these students they are able to observe that once they are able to do that and document then now we can lay out a plan do we involve now the sector from 3s and class 7s and class 3s you know you keep on you know in faces and then eventually we'll have all students back to school right so I think for Magoha having picked the finalist was a good idea actually even the university some of them that was the final years if it's something that could be done online and maybe you had finished with the practicals graduate and get out right then the ones and I like even what University of Nairobi was doing even for college of health sciences for those units that are actually doing practicals they decided what can be studied online let's give that that which was supposed to be done for practicals let it keep keep it aside so anything that is theoretical let the students be learning in the meantime which is good because that saves time then once we decide in a return to school formula then now we can begin on the practicals but you can't skip you cannot skip at yuhurumia people and they skip some curricula because you'll have half baked individuals and there'll be a ripple effect in the future you can imagine having a half baked engineer or a half baked doctor it's very catastrophic or a half baked pilot it's very catastrophic so there is no skipping people might rewind at some point yes but it can be carried for then and what will happen I think there is a time that time will lap and it will merge because we know so many people who graduates when they are 23 years old and you get a job five years later right so the kids should not feel that they are growing old because you can finish school at 19 and you get a job a good job at 30 so age is just but a number so that should not be something that should be worrying the student what should be worrying the student are they going to get quality education exactly now the ministry of education may have come up with protocols to protect our children from school but we have an issue with transportation we have the PSVs that are floating the guidelines that have been given yes the skill will be protected from the school but what about the transportation should we have another mechanism for taking these kids to school if you have to use a matatu especially he in Nairobi so what is happening is right now the protocols read by the government if you are entering a matatu you have to have your mask on you see now the parent has to ensure the child has a mask on that's why when they enter the vicinity of the school it's expected by the parent this means the child will be boarding the matatu with the parent no no no no the child even you board a matatu your mask is on because they are saying the basic principle at least have a mask on for preventive measures so the parent at home has to teach the child where your mask as you go to school so definitely where they'll alight because i'm thinking like a normal Kenyan where they'll alight they'll enter the gate of the school so it's expected by the protocols laid out by the ministry of education at the gate there's a hand washing point that's protocol number one number two there's someone with a thermometer at the gate right to take the temperatures of the children and i'm adding the education sector even at the classroom doors let them put hand sanitizers so apart from washing their hands there's also in case a child forgot to wash their hands or maybe wherever was inspecting of a looked at least by the time they enter the classroom there's a hand sanitizing point so already by that preventive measures have been you've intercepted the spread of the disease in itself from a public health point of view and by the time now they go home remember by the time they are now exiting they are also wearing their masks again by the time they enter their home it's now the duty of the parent to insist they wash their hands because the basic principle is the mask washing of hands that there is no other huge protocol beyond that you get because definitely in between there will be no social distancing because even we can see even by our own politicians in their own rally there is no social distancing but those basic principles of masks and hand washing should be ensured and I'm grateful that at least this condition is not affecting the young ones that is what most governments are riding on even in the west they are riding on that basic fact that it's not affecting the young ones otherwise it would have been more catastrophic and bigger but now someone would say the young ones might bring the condition to the parents at home but if you are intercepting by washing of hands and sanitizing then very very few cases will be experienced what you said it's quite true to some extent because I know kids are witty sometimes especially our Kenyans and especially the use of masks if a kinga kwa matawna yawatua na mask and maybe they may think of dropping the guard but anyway let's finish up we have about 10 minutes now let's do are you comfortable with the kind of leadership we are seeing in the country so far now we're moving into politics are you happy how things are happening you just mentioned of the rallies that have been going on we have seen people losing their lives we have seen others being bad from having meetings others they have so there is an impansion of application of the guidelines but are you comfortable for us having this kind of rallies two years before the elections it's not supposed to be the case because this was the high time there will be a lot of reflection from the government aspect you see it exposed the healthcare sector it exposed the education sector it has exposed the finance sector remember it's the small businesses that make the economy grow in any country it's not the big corporations that make the economy grow it's a small businesses that from an economist point of view is the small businesses that makes an economy grow because it's exchange of money there is growth small industries that is what makes an economy grow to a huge economy now right now we've seen the small businesses have been crushed they're dead the healthcare system has been bared open right doctors are now striking right and left and center and then now the education sector has been left this was the time the government should be seated thinking and reflecting where we have been exposed what we do and resolve these issues but now instead of our leaders sitting down and thinking because we I think we lack leaders who can't think I think we just have people who just make noise make noise they're like dogs just backing backing backing they don't sit down and think and reflect and say this thing has exposed us this is the high time the way Kamsa was exposed in the tender premium energy they need to rethink on procurement protocols how do they come such kind of of corruption in government institution when it comes to procuring this should have been the time to ask these questions the members of parliament the senators sitting in government these are the questions they should be really be discussing and looking for a way forward and setting protocols or now to ensure next time they're not exposed right now they'll be thinking of how do they digitalize learning for the students in this country right this is the high time they should be thinking about that but they all they're thinking about is a bbi to create positions which will not even help Kenyans in any way because it's not bringing development right right now they should be asking themselves in those flooded areas how do those people reach the school do we introduce both do we introduce canals and whatever right now they should be thinking about environmental policies to inhibit such occurrence in the future because it's affecting small traders right instead of them thinking about that we are thinking of stupid things like prime minister position deputy prime minister positions right and I am glad that Kenyans are waking and I hope I hope I really hope that when that report comes out I am urging all Kenyans they should sit down critically and read about it read let them not be lured by their leaders because it's apparent we our leaders don't don't think they don't think now over the weekend we had prayers and at the end of it all the president was not supposed to speak according to the people who were there but when he spoke I think there's so much we can gather from his statement and he spoke like the late former president Daniel Moye when he spoke about forgiveness and at the time maybe from the eyes of many and from the political angle saying I am forgiving everyone and if I have wronged you forgive me it has been heated time with him and the deputy president now do you think there was a political meaning to those particular statements for me how I perceive it I'll speak on my own opinion I think the president can start has started feeling the temperatures he's seeing how the citizens are you remember I'll take you back in the year 2013 when now Kibaki was about to finish his term and and it's every leader you see like Moye in 2002 it's every leader's wish that he leaves someone who can carry on either his legacy or he assures he assures himself that the presidency the citizens have been left in good hands which is a good thing about a leader because as a leader you should mentor somebody whom you can leave your legacy you see I wish Mwangare Matae had left her legacy to Ayanga or Mwangare Matae in this country to carry on their legacy activism in terms of environment and everything because once a leader dies they die with their legacy that's a problem in Africa when a leader dies they die with their legacy and never to be heard of but when you look at developed societies it has been ingrained in them when you're a leader you try and spruce up somebody else who will in term carry on your legacy so even when you die there's another Martin Luther King Jr continuing the legacy but we find it in our African setting it's killed it's usually killed many times there's no continuity so you find another leader coming in they have to start again afresh instead of a continuity so President Kibaki in the year 2013 when he was now living government around 2012 he felt that he needs to leave the country in the hands of of an ebolida and he was easily inclined towards Musalia Mudavadi that was one of the greatest choices of Muai Kibaki but people won't even told him no no no no allow the citizens to choose whoever they want don't mendle it into it finish your legacy go home and you can see during that time there was no much tension with Kibaki everybody was just allowing him to to just finish up and nobody bothered so much but now when you look at Uhuru Kenyatta's legacy now there is that you remember politics is about perception so there is now an insinuated perception that there is a way that who wants to continue in leadership even after he has left the presidency now that what has happened it has agitated the populace because remember right now his rating and his favor with the Kenyan populace has really gone way way way way down and even covid in itself has really exposed so many things in that government so now I think Uhuru during that interfaith prayers which sometimes I really wonder why we mix politics and religion but anyway wherever politics is religion follows closely we can look at Islamic states they have for any strong society there must be a strong belief there must be a strong religious belief somebody may say China has no Christianity but China have a belief system that culture of there whether they worship a dragon or they worship a snake they have a belief system the same thing in the West every community any stable community has to have a belief system or a deity they pray to that is kita that is indisputable I don't see any any any state or any country that is stable without a belief even those who are agist it's still a belief system if you eat Scientology you believe in science that's still a belief system so having gone to that interfaith he has sensed the pressure and remember prayer to that interfaith prayer there was a sakazi in Moranga you see now those are political temperatures brewing up and remember you don't want to live as a leader and deaths are on your neck people saying you you made so many people die because of you because remember even the 2007 political violence there are people who still blame kibaki because of it right so Uru is also trying to ensure that he doesn't get that maki into it so I think I hope he's soon realizing that he just needs to finish his term as a president try in the next two years to do as much as possible now it's not even two years almost like a year because most likely 2022 elections will be around April or August so he should try in the next one year at least to do something for the citizens and try and what is it called? clean up his legacy a little bit so that come the year 2022 he lives in peace because this country is does not belong to individuals you are alive today tomorrow you are dead so the best thing you can put is better policy better institutions that can out leave you in years and years to come all right thank you so much apparently we are out of time but at least we have tried to demystify some of the things that maybe are difficult to understand especially in politics thank you so much for being part of us we'll be coming up again after this short break with discussion on career choices you know you're at a point where you're like where do I go next from here what is the best thing that I can do how do I realize myself that interview is coming up in a bit she has been my guest Beatrice Cairo political analyst and health economist and my name is Dereva Hillary have you yourself a very good morning even as you wait to come back with another discussion keep it on your mind for good morning


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Chapter 8.2 of the 9-11 Commission Report. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Leanne Howlett. The 9-11 Commission Report. Chapter 8.2. Late Leeds, Mijar, Musawi and KSM. In Chapter 6 we discussed how intelligence agencies successfully detected some of the early travel in the planes operation, picking up the movements of Khalid el-Madar and identifying him and seeing his travel converge with someone they perhaps could have identified but did not, Nawaf al-Hazmi, as well as with less easily identifiable people such as Khalad and Abu Barah. These observations occurred in December 1999 and January 2000. The trail had been lost in January 2000 without a clear realization that it had been lost and without much effort to pick it up again. Nor had the CIA placed Mijar on the State Department's watch list for suspected terrorists so that either an embassy or a port of entry might take note if Mijar showed up again. On four occasions in 2001, the CIA, the FBI or both had apparent opportunities to refocus on the significance of Hazmi and Mijar and reinvigorate the search for them. After reviewing those episodes, we will turn to the handling of the Musawi case and some late leads regarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. January 2001. Identification of Khalad. Almost one year after the original trail had been lost in Bangkok, the FBI and the CIA were working on the investigation of the coal bombing. They learned of the link between a captured conspirator and a person called Khalad. They also learned that Khalad was a senior security official for bin Laden who had helped direct the bombing. We introduced Khalad in Chapter 5 and returned to his role in the coal bombing in Chapter 6. One of the members of the FBI's investigative team in Yemen realized that he had heard of Khalad before from a joint FBI CIA source four months earlier. The FBI agent obtained from a foreign government a photo of the person believed to have directed the coal bombing. It was shown to the source and he confirmed that the man in that photograph was the same Khalad he had described. In December 2000, on the basis of some links associated with Khalid Al-Madar, the CIA's bin Laden unit speculated that Khalad and Khalid Al-Madar might be one and the same. The CIA asked that a Kuala Lumpur surveillance photo of Madar be shown to the joint source who had identified Khalad. In early January 2001, two photographs from the Kuala Lumpur meeting were shown to the source. One was a known photograph of Madar, the other a photograph of a then unknown subject. The source did not recognize Madar, but he indicated he was 90% certain that the other individual was Khalad. This meant that Khalad and Madar were two different people. It also meant that there was a link between Khalad and Madar, making Madar seem even more suspicious. Yet we found no effort by the CIA to renew the long-abandoned search for Madar or his travel companions. In addition, we found that the CIA did not notify the FBI of this identification. DCI Tenant and Cofer Black testified before Congress' joint inquiry into 9-11 that the FBI had access to this identification from the beginning, but drawing on an extensive record, including documents that were not available to the CIA personnel who drafted that testimony, we conclude this was not the case. The FBI's primary coal investigators had no knowledge that Khalad had been in Kuala Lumpur with Madar and others until after the September 11 attacks. Because the FBI had not been informed in January 2000 about Madar's possession of a U.S. visa, it had not then started looking for him in the United States. Because it did not know of the links between Khalad and Madar, it did not start looking for him in January 2001. This incident is an example of how day-to-day gaps and information sharing can emerge even when there is mutual goodwill. The information was from a joint FBI CIA source who spoke essentially no English and whose languages were not understood by the FBI agent on the scene overseas. Issues of travel and security necessarily kept short the amount of time spent with the source. As a result, the CIA officer usually did not translate either questions or answers for his FBI colleague and friend. For interviews without simultaneous translation, the FBI agent on the scene received copies of the reports that the CIA disseminated to other agencies regarding the interviews. But he was not given access to the CIA's internal operational reports, which contained more detail. It was there, in reporting to which FBI investigators did not have access, that information regarding the January 2001 identification of Khalad appeared. The CIA officer does not recall this particular identification and thus cannot say why it was not shared with his FBI colleague. He might not have understood the possible significance of the new identification. In June 2000, Medar left California and returned to Yemen. It is possible that if, in January 2001, the CIA had resumed its search for him, placed him on the State Department's tip-off watch list, or provided the FBI with the information, he might have been found, either before or at the time he applied for a new visa in June 2001, or when he returned to the United States on July 4th. Spring 2001, looking again at Kuala Lumpur. By mid-May 2001, as the threat reports were surging, a CIA official detailed to the International Terrorism Operations section at the FBI wondered where the attacks might occur. We will call him John. Recalling the episode about the Kuala Lumpur travel of Medar and his associates, John searched the CIA's databases for information regarding the travel. On May 15th, he and an official at the CIA reexamined many of the old cables from early 2000, including the information that Medar had a U.S. visa and that Hasmi had come to Los Angeles on January 15th, 2000. The CIA official who reviewed the cables took no action regarding them. John, however, began a lengthy exchange with a CIA analyst, whom we will call Dave, to figure out what these cables meant. John was aware of how dangerous Khalad was, at one point calling him a major lead killer. He concluded that something bad was definitely up. Despite the U.S. link's evidence in this traffic, John made no effort to determine whether any of these individuals was in the United States. He did not raise that possibility with his FBI counterpart. He was focused on Malaysia. John described the CIA as an agency that tended to play a zone defense. He was worrying solely about Southeast Asia, not the United States. In contrast, he told us, the FBI tends to play man to man. Desk officers at the CIA's bin Laden unit did not have cases in the same sense as an FBI agent who works in an investigation from beginning to end. Thus, when the trail went cold after the Kuala Lumpur meeting in January 2000, the desk officer moved on to different things. By the time the March 2000 cable arrived with information that one of the travelers had flown to Los Angeles, the case officer was no longer responsible for follow-up. While several individuals at the bin Laden unit opened the cable when it arrived in March 2000, no action was taken. The CIA's zone defense concentrated on where, not who, had its information been shared with the FBI, a combination of the CIA's zone defense and the FBI's man-to-man approach might have been productive. June 2001, the meeting in New York. John's review of the Kuala Lumpur meeting did set off some more sharing of information getting the attention of an FBI analyst, whom we will call Jane. Jane was assigned to the FBI's coal investigation. She knew that another terrorist involved in that operation, Faud Al-Cousseau, had traveled to Bangkok in January 2000 to give money to Khalad. Jane and the CIA analyst, Dave, had been working together on coal-related issues. Chasing Couseau's trail, Dave suggested showing some photographs to FBI agents in New York who were working on the coal case and had interviewed Couseau. John gave three Kuala Lumpur surveillance pictures to Jane to show to the New York agents. She was told that one of the individuals in the photographs was someone named Khalid Al-Madar. She did not know why the photographs had been taken or why the Kuala Lumpur travel might be significant, and she was not told that someone had identified Khalad in the photographs. When Jane did some research in a database for intelligence reports in Tel Link, she found the original NSA reports on the planning for the meeting. Because the CIA had not disseminated reports on its tracking of Madar, Jane did not pull up any information about Madar's US visa or about travel to the United States by Hasme or Madar. Jane, Dave, and an FBI analyst who was on detail to the CIA's Bin Laden unit went to New York on June 11th to meet with the agents about the Coal case. Jane brought the surveillance pictures. At some point in the meeting she showed the photographs to the agents and asked whether they recognized Couseau in any of them. The agents asked questions about the photographs. Why were they taken? Why were these people being followed? Where are the rest of the photographs? The only information Jane had about the meeting, other than the photographs, were the NSA reports that she had found on Intel Link. These reports, however, contained caveats that their contents could not be shared with criminal investigators without the permission of the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, OIPR. Therefore, Jane concluded that she could not pass on information from those reports to the agents. This decision was potentially significant because the signals intelligence she did not share linked Madar to a suspected terrorist facility in the Middle East. She had established a link to the suspected facility from their work on the Embassy Bombings case. This link would have made them very interested in learning more about Madar. The sad irony is that the agents who found the source were being kept from obtaining the fruits of their own work. Dave, the CIA analyst, knew more about the Coal and poor meeting. He knew that Madar possessed a U.S. visa, that his visa application indicated that he intended to travel to New York, to travel to Los Angeles, and that a source had put Madar in the company of Calade. No one at the meeting asked him what he knew. He did not volunteer anything. He told investigators that as a CIA analyst he was not authorized to answer FBI questions regarding CIA information. Jane said she assumed that if Dave knew the answers to questions, he would have volunteered them. The New York agents left the meeting without obtaining information and were looking for Madar. Madar had been a weak link in Al-Qaeda's operational planning. He had left the United States in June 2000. A mistake KSM realized could endanger the entire plan. For to continue with the operation, Madar would have to travel to the United States again. And unlike other operatives, Madar was not clean. He had jihadist connections. It was just such connections that had brought him to the attention of U.S. officials. Nevertheless, in this case, KSM's fears were not realized. Madar received a new U.S. visa two days after the CIA FBI meeting in New York. He flew to New York City on July 4th. No one was looking for him. August 2001, the search for Madar and Hasme begins and fails. During the summer of 2001, John, following a good instinct but not as part of any formal assignment, asked Mary, an FBI analyst, detailed to the CIA's bin Laden unit to review all the Kuala Lumpur materials one more time. She had been at the New York meeting with Jane and Dave, but had not looked into the issues yet herself. John asked her to do the research in her free time. Mary began her work on July 24th. That day she found the cable reporting that Madar had a visa to the United States. A week later she found the cable reporting that Madar's visa application, what was later discovered to be his first application, listed New York as his destination. On August 21st, she located the March 2000 cable that noted with interest that Hasme had flown to Los Angeles in January 2000. She immediately grasped the significance of this information. Mary and Jane promptly met with an INS representative at FBI headquarters. On August 22nd, the INS told them that Madar had entered the United States on January 15th, 2000, and again on July 4th, 2001. Jane and Mary also learned that there was no record that Hasme had left the country since January 2000, and they assumed he had left with Madar in June 2000. They decided that if Madar was in the United States, he should be found. They divided up the work. Mary asked the bin Laden unit to draft a cable requesting that Madar and Hasme be put on the tip-off watch list. Both Hasme and Madar were added to this watch list on August 24th. Jane took responsibility for the search effort inside the United States. As the information indicated that Madar had last arrived in New York, she began drafting what is known as a lead for the FBI's New York field office. A lead relays information from one part of the FBI to another and requests that a particular action be taken. She called an agent in New York to give him a heads-up on the matter, but her draft lead was not sent until August 28th. Her email told the New York agent that she wanted him to get started as soon as possible, but she labeled the lead as routine, a designation that informs the receiving office that it has 30 days to respond. The agent who received the lead forwarded it to his squad supervisor. That same day, the supervisor forwarded the lead to an intelligence agent to open an intelligence case, an agent who thus was behind the wall, keeping FBI intelligence information from being shared with criminal prosecutors. He also sent it to the cold case agents and an agent who had spent significant time in Malaysia searching for another Khalid, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The suggested goal of the investigation was to locate Madar, determine his contacts and reasons for being in the United States, and possibly conduct an interview. Before sending the lead, Jane had discussed it with John, the CIA official on detail to the FBI. She had also checked with the acting head of the FBI's bin Laden unit. The discussion seems to have been limited to whether the search should be classified as an intelligence investigation or as a criminal one. It appears that no one informed higher levels of management in either the FBI or CIA about the case. There is no evidence that the lead or the search for these terrorist suspects was substantively discussed at any level above deputy chief of a section within the counter-terrorism division at FBI headquarters. One of the cold case agents read the lead with interest and contacted Jane to obtain more information. Jane argued, however, that because the agent was designated a criminal FBI agent, not an intelligence FBI agent, the wall kept him from participating in any search for Madar. In fact, she felt he had to destroy his copy of the lead because it contained NSA information from reports that included caveats ordering that the information not be shared without OIPR's permission. The agent asked Jane to get an opinion from the FBI's National Security Law Unit, NSLU, on whether he could open a criminal case on Madar. Jane sent an email to the cold case agent explaining that according to the NSLU, the case could be opened only as an intelligence matter and that if Madar was found, only designated intelligence agents could conduct or even be present at any interview. She appears to have misunderstood the complex rules that could apply to this situation. The FBI agent angrily responded, Whatever has happened to this, someday someone will die, and wall or not, the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain problems. Let's hope the National Security Law Unit will stand behind their decisions then, especially since the biggest threat to us now, UBL, is getting the most protection. Jane replied that she was not making up the rules. She claimed that they were in the relevant manual and ordered by the FISA court and every office of the FBI is required to follow them including FBI New York. It is now clear that everyone involved was confused about the rules governing the sharing and use of information gathered in intelligence channels. Because Madar was being sought for his possible connection to or knowledge of the coal bombing, he could be investigated or tracked under the existing coal criminal case. No new criminal case was needed for the criminal agent to begin searching for Madar. And as NSA had approved the passage of its information to the criminal agent, he could have conducted a search using all available information. As a result of this confusion, the criminal agents who were knowledgeable about al-Qaeda and experienced with criminal investigative techniques including finding suspects and possible criminal charges were thus excluded from the search. The search was assigned to one FBI agent and it was his very first counterterrorism lead. Because the lead was routine, he was given 30 days to open an intelligence case and make some unspecified efforts to locate Madar. He started the process a few days later. He checked local New York databases for criminal record and driver's license information and checked the hotel listed on Madar's U.S. entry form. Finally, on September 11th, the agent sent a lead to Los Angeles because Madar had initially arrived in Los Angeles in January 2000. We believe that if more resources had been applied and a significantly different approach taken, Madar and Hasmi might have been found. They had used their true names in the United States. Still, the investigators would have needed luck as well as skill to find them prior to September 11th, even if such searches had begun as early as August 23rd when the lead was first drafted. Many FBI witnesses have suggested that even if Madar had been found, there was nothing the agents could have done except follow him onto the planes. We believe this is incorrect. Both Hasmi and Madar could have been held for immigration violations whereas material witnesses in the coal bombing case. Investigation or interrogation of them and investigation of their travel and financial activities could have yielded evidence of connections to other participants in the 9-11 plot. The simple fact of their detention could have derailed the plan. In any case, the opportunity did not arise. Phoenix Memo The Phoenix Memo was investigated thoroughly by the Joint Inquiry and the Department of Justice Inspector General. We will recap it briefly here. In July 2001, an FBI agent in the Phoenix Field Office sent a memo to FBI headquarters and to two agents on international terrorism squads in the New York Field Office advising of the possibility of a coordinated effort by Osama bin Laden to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation schools the agent based his theory on the inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest attending such schools in Arizona. The agent made four recommendations to FBI headquarters. To compile a list of civil aviation schools, establish liaison with those schools, discuss his theories about bin Laden with the intelligence community and seek authority to obtain visa information on persons applying to flight schools. His recommendations were not acted on. His memo was forwarded to one field office. Managers of the Osama bin Laden unit and the radical fundamentalist unit at FBI headquarters were addressees but they did not even see the memo until after September 11th. No managers at headquarters saw the memo before September 11th and the New York Field Office took no action. As its author told investigators, the Phoenix Memo was not an alert about suicide pilots. His worry was more about a Pan Am flight 103 scenario in which explosives were placed on an aircraft. The memo's references to aviation training were broad including aeronautical engineering. If the memo had been distributed in a timely fashion and its recommendations acted on promptly, we do not believe it would have uncovered the plot. It might well however have sensitized the FBI so that it might have taken the Masawi matter more seriously the next month. Zacarias Musawi On August 15th, 2001, the Minneapolis FBI Field Office initiated an intelligence investigation on Zacarias Musawi. As mentioned in Chapter 7, he had entered the United States in February 2001 and had begun flight lessons at Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma. He resumed his training at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Egan, Minnesota starting on August 13th. He had none of the usual qualifications for flight training on Pan Am's Boeing 747 flight simulators. He said he did not intend to become a commercial pilot but wanted the training as an ego-boosting thing. Musawi stood out because with little knowledge of flying, he wanted to learn how to take off and land a Boeing 747. The agent in Minneapolis quickly learned that Musawi possessed jihadist beliefs. Moreover, Musawi had $32,000 in a bank account but did not provide a plausible explanation for the sum of money. He had traveled to Pakistan but became agitated when asked if he had traveled to nearby countries while in Pakistan. Pakistan was the customary route to the training camps in Afghanistan. He planned to receive martial arts training and intended to purchase a global positioning receiver. The agent also noted that Musawi became extremely agitated whenever he was questioned regarding his religious beliefs. The agent concluded that Musawi was an Islamic extremist preparing for some future act in furtherance of radical fundamentalist goals. He also believed Musawi's plan was related to his flight training. Musawi can be seen as an al-Qaeda mistake and a missed opportunity. An apparently unreliable operative, he had fallen into the hands of the FBI. As discussed in Chapter 7, Musawi had been in contact with and received money from Ramzi bin al-Sheeb. If Musawi had been connected to al-Qaeda, questions should instantly have arisen about a possible al-Qaeda plot that involved piloting airliners, a possibility that had never been seriously analyzed by the intelligence community. The FBI agent who handled the case in conjunction with the INS representative on the Minneapolis Joint Terrorism Task Force suspected that Musawi might be planning to hijack a plane. Minneapolis and FBI headquarters debated whether Musawi should be arrested immediately or surveilled to obtain additional information. Because it was not clear whether Musawi could be imprisoned, the FBI case agent decided the most important thing was to prevent Musawi from obtaining any further training that he could use to carry out a potential attack. As a French national who had overstayed his visa, Musawi could be detained immediately. The INS arrested Musawi on the immigration violation. A deportation order was signed on August 17, 2001. The agents in Minnesota were concerned that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minneapolis would find insufficient probable cause of a crime to obtain a criminal warrant to search Musawi's laptop computer. Agents at FBI headquarters believed there was insufficient probable cause. Minneapolis, therefore, sought a special warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to conduct the search. We introduced FISA in Chapter 3. To do so, however, the FBI needed to demonstrate probable cause that Musawi was an agent of a foreign power, a demonstration that was not required to obtain a criminal warrant, but was a statutory requirement for a FISA warrant. The case agent did not have sufficient information to connect Musawi to a foreign power, so he reached out for help in the United States and overseas. The FBI agents' August 18 message requested assistance from the FBI legal attaché in Paris. Musawi had lived in London, so the Minneapolis agent sought assistance from the legal attaché there as well. By August 24, the Minneapolis agent had also contacted an FBI detailee and a CIA desk officer at the Counterterrorist Center about the case. The FBI legal attaché's office in Paris first contacted the French government on August 16 or 17, shortly after speaking to the Minneapolis case agent on the telephone. On August 22 and 27, the French provided information that made a connection between Musawi and a rebel leader in Chechnya, even Al-Khattab. This set off a spirited debate between the Minneapolis Field Office, FBI headquarters and the CIA as to whether the Chechen rebels and Khattab were sufficiently associated with the terrorist organization to constitute a foreign power for purposes of the FISA statute. FBI headquarters did not believe this was good enough and its national security law unit declined to submit a FISA application. After receiving the written request for assistance, the legal attaché in London had promptly forwarded it to his counterparts in the British government, hand delivering the request on August 21. On August 24, the CIA also sent a cable to London and Paris regarding subjects involved in suspicious 747 flight training that described Musawi as a possible suicide hijacker. On August 28, the CIA sent a request for information to a different service of the British government. This communication warned that Musawi might be expelled to Britain by the end of August. The FBI office in London raised the matter briefly with British officials as an aside after a meeting about a more urgent matter on September 3 and sent the British service a written update on September 5. The case was not handled by the British as a priority amid a large number of other terrorist-related inquiries. On September 4, the FBI sent a teletype to the CIA, the FAA, the Custom Service, the State Department, the INS, and the Secret Service summarizing the known facts regarding Musawi. It did not report the case agent's personal assessment that Musawi planned to hijack an airplane. It did contain the FAA's comments that it was not unusual for Middle Easterners to attend flight training schools in the United States. Although the Minneapolis agents wanted to tell the FAA from the beginning about Musawi, FBI headquarters instructed Minneapolis that it could not share the more complete report the case agent had prepared for the FAA. The Minneapolis supervisor sent the case agent in person to the local FAA office to fill in what he thought were gaps in the FAA headquarters teletype. No FAA actions seemed to have been taken in response. There was substantial disagreement between Minneapolis agents and FBI headquarters as to what Musawi was planning to do. In one conversation between a Minneapolis supervisor and a headquarters agent, the latter complained that Minneapolis's FISA request was couched in a manner intended to get people spun up. The supervisor replied that was precisely his intent. He said he was trying to keep someone from taking a plane and crashing into the World Trade Center. The headquarters agent replied that this was not going to happen and that they did not know if Musawi was a terrorist. There is no evidence that either FBI acting director Picard or assistant director for counterterrorism Dale Watson was briefed on the Musawi case prior to 9-11. Michael Rollins, the FBI assistant director heading the Bureau's International Terrorism Operations section, ITOS, recalled being told about Musawi in two passing hallway conversations but only in the context that he might be receiving telephone calls from Minneapolis complaining about how headquarters was handling the matter. He never received such a call. Although the acting special agent in charge of Minneapolis called the ITOS supervisors to discuss the Musawi case on August 27, he declined to go up the chain of command at FBI headquarters and call Rollins. On August 23, DCI tenant was briefed about the Musawi case and a briefing titled, Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly. Tenant was also told that Musawi wanted to learn to fly a 747, paid for his training in cash, was interested to learn the doors to not open in flight and wanted to fly a simulated flight from London to New York. He was told that the FBI had arrested Musawi because of a visa overstay and that the CIA was working the case with the FBI. Tenant told us that no connection to Al Qaeda was apparent to him at the time. Seeing it as an FBI case, he did not discuss the matter with anyone at the White House or the FBI. No connection was made between Musawi's presence in the United States and the threat reporting during the summer of 2001. On September 11, after the attacks, the FBI office in London renewed their appeal for information about Musawi. In response to U.S. requests, the British government supplied some basic biographical information about Musawi. The British government informed us that it also immediately tasked intelligence collection facilities for information about Musawi. On September 13, the British government received new, sensitive intelligence that Musawi had attended an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. It passed this intelligence to the United States on the same day. Had this information been available in late August 2001, the Musawi case would almost certainly have received intense high-level attention. The FBI also learned after 9-11 that the Millennium Terrorist Rasam, who by 2001 was cooperating with investigators, recognized Musawi as someone who had been in the Afghan camps. As mentioned above, before 9-11, the FBI agents in Minneapolis had failed to persuade supervisors at headquarters that there was enough evidence to seek a FISA warrant to search Musawi's computer hard drive and belongings. Either the British information or the Rasam identification would have broken the log jam. A maximum U.S. effort to investigate Musawi conceivably could have unearthed his connections to Ben Al-Shib. Those connections might have brought investigators to the core of the 9-11 plot. The Ben Al-Shib connection was recognized shortly after 9-11, though it was not an easy trail to find. Discovering it would have required quick and very substantial cooperation from the German government, which might well have been difficult to obtain. However, publicity about Musawi's arrest and a possible hijacking threat might have derailed the plot. With time, the search for Madar and Hasmi and the investigation of Musawi might also have led to a breakthrough that would have disrupted the plot. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Another late opportunity was presented by a confluence of information regarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed received by the intelligence community in the summer of 2001. The possible links between KSM, Musawi and an individual only later identified as Ramzi Ben Al-Shib would remain undiscovered, however. Although we readily equate KSM with Al-Qaeda today, this was not the case before 9-11. KSM, who had been indicted in January 1996 for his role in the Manila Airplot, was seen primarily as another freelance terrorist associated with Ramzi Yousaf. Because the links between KSM and Bin Laden or Al-Qaeda were not recognized at the time, responsibility for KSM remained in the small Islamic extremist branch of the counter-terrorist center, not in the Bin Laden unit. Moreover, because KSM had already been indicted, he became targeted for arrest. In 1997, the counter-terrorist center added a renditions branch to help find wanted fugitives. Responsibility for KSM was transferred to this branch, which gave the CIA a man-to-man focus, but was not an analytical unit. When subsequent information came, more critical for analysis than for tracking, no unit had the job of following up on what the information might mean. For example, in September 2000, a source had reported that an individual named Khalid al-Sheikh al-Balushi was a key lieutenant in Al-Qaeda. Al-Balushi means, from Baluchistan, and KSM is from Baluchistan. Recognizing the possible significance of this information, the Bin Laden unit sought more information. When no information was forthcoming, the Bin Laden unit dropped the matter. When additional pieces of the puzzle arrived in the spring and summer of 2001, they were not put together. The first piece of the puzzle concerned some intriguing information associated with a person known as Maktar that the CIA had begun analyzing in April 2001. The CIA did not know who Maktar was at the time, only that he associated with Al-Qaeda lieutenant Abou Zabaita, and that, based on the nature of the information, he was evidently involved in planning possible terrorist activities. The second piece of the puzzle was some alarming information regarding KSM. On June 12, 2001, a CIA report said that Khalid was actively recruiting people to travel outside Afghanistan, including to the United States, where colleagues were reportedly already in the country to meet them, to carry out terrorist-related activities for Bin Laden. CIA headquarters presumed from the details of the reporting that this person was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In July, the same source was shown a series of photographs and identified a photograph of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the Kaled he had previously discussed. The final piece of the puzzle arrived at the CIA's Bin Laden unit on August 28, in a cable reporting that KSM's nickname was Maktar. No one made the connection to the reports about Maktar that had been circulated in the spring. This connection might also have underscored concern about the June reporting that KSM was recruiting terrorists to travel, including to the United States. Only after 9-11 would it be discovered that Maktar-slash-KSM had communicated with a phone that was used by Ben-Al-Sheeb, and that Ben-Al-Sheeb had used the same phone to communicate with Musawi as discussed in Chapter 7. As in the Musawi situation already described, the links to Ben-Al-Sheeb might not have been an easy trail to find and would have required substantial cooperation from the German government, but time was short and running out. Time runs out. As Tenet told us, the system was blinking red during the summer of 2001. Officials were alerted across the world. Many were doing everything they possibly could to respond to the threats. Yet no one working on these late leads in the summer of 2001 connected the case in his or her inbox to the threat reports agitating senior officials and being briefed to the president. Thus, these individual cases did not become national priorities. As the CIA supervisor John told us, no one looked at the bigger picture. No analytic work foresaw the lightning that could connect the thundercloud to the ground. We see little evidence that the progress of the plot was disturbed by any government action. The U.S. government was unable to capitalize on mistakes made by Al Qaeda. Time ran out. End of Chapter 8.2. Recording by Leanne Howlett. Chapter 9.1 of the 911 Commission Report. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Bob Siebold. The 911 Commission Report. Chapter 9. Heroism and Horror. 9.1 Preparedness as of September 11. Emergency response is a product of preparedness. On the morning of September 11, 2001, the last best hope for the community of people working in or visiting the World Trade Center rested not with national policy makers, but with private firms and local public servants, especially the first responders, fire, police, emergency medical service, and building safety professionals. Building Preparedness. The World Trade Center. The World Trade Center complex was built for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Construction began in 1966, and tenants began to occupy its space in 1970. The Twin Towers came to occupy a unique and symbolic place in the culture of New York City and America. The World Trade Center actually consisted of seven buildings, including one hotel, spread across 16 acres of land. The buildings were connected by an underground mall, the Concourse. The Twin Towers, one World Trade Center or the North Tower, and two World Trade Center or the South Tower were the signature structures, containing 10.4 million square feet of office space. Both towers had 110 stories, were about 1,350 feet high and were square. Each wall measured 208 feet in length. On any given workday, up to 50,000 office workers occupied the towers, and 40,000 people passed through the complex. Each tower contained three central stairwells, which ran essentially from top to bottom, and 99 elevators. Generally, elevators originating in the lobby ran to sky lobbies on higher floors, where additional elevators carried passengers to the tops of the buildings. Stairwells A and C ran from the 110th floor to the raised mezzanine level of the lobby. Stairwell B ran from the 107th floor to level B6, six floors below ground, and was accessible from the West Street lobby level, which was one floor below the mezzanine. All three stairwells ran essentially straight up and down, except for two deviations in stairwells A and C, where the staircase jutted out toward the perimeter of the building. On the upper and lower boundaries of these deviations were transfer hallways contained within the stairwell proper. Each hallway contained smoke doors to prevent smoke from rising from lower to upper portions of the building. They were kept closed but not locked. Doors leading from tenant space into the stairwells were never kept locked. Re-entry from the stairwells was generally possible on at least every fourth floor. Doors leading to the roof were locked. There was no rooftop evacuation plan. The roofs of both the North Tower and the South Tower were sloped and cluttered surfaces with radiation hazards, making them impractical for helicopter landings and as staging areas for civilians. Although the South Tower roof had a helipad, it did not meet 1994 Federal Aviation Administration guidelines. The 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center and the Port Authority's response. Unlike most of America, New York City and specifically the World Trade Center had been the target of terrorist attacks before 9-11. At 12.18 p.m. on February 26, 1993, a 1500-pound bomb stashed in a rental van was detonated on a parking garage ramp beneath the Twin Towers. The explosion killed six people, injured about a thousand more and exposed vulnerabilities in the World Trade Center and the city's emergency preparedness. The towers lost power and communications capability. Generators had to be shut down to ensure safety and elevators stopped. The public address system and emergency lighting systems failed. The unlit stairwells filled with smoke and were so dark as to be impassable. Rescue efforts by the Fire Department of New York were hampered by the inability of its radios to function in buildings as large as the Twin Towers. The 9-11 emergency call system was overwhelmed. The general evacuation of the tower's occupants via the stairwells took more than four hours. Several small groups of people who were physically unable to descend the stairs were evacuated from the roof of the South Tower by New York Police Department helicopters. At least one person was lifted from the North Tower roof by the NYPD in a dangerous helicopter repel operation 15 hours after the bombing. General knowledge that these air rescues had occurred appears to have left a number of civilians who worked in the Twin Towers with the false impression that helicopter rescues were part of the World Trade Center evacuation plan and that rescue from the roof was a viable, if not favored option for those who worked on the upper floors. Although they were considered after 1993, helicopter evacuations in fact were not incorporated into the World Trade Center fire safety plan. To address the problems encountered during the response to the 1993 bombing, the Port Authority spent an initial $100 million to make physical, structural, and technological improvements to the World Trade Center as well as to enhance its fire safety plan to bolster its fire safety and security staffs. Substantial enhancements were made to power sources and exits. Fluorescent lights and markings were added in and near stairwells. The Port Authority also installed a sophisticated computerized fire alarm system with redundant electronics and control panels and state-of-the-art fire command stations were placed in the lobby of each tower. To manage fire emergency preparedness and operations, the Port Authority created the dedicated position to fire safety director. The director supervised a team of deputy fire safety directors, one of whom was on duty at the fire command station in the lobby of each tower at all times. He or she would be responsible for communicating with building occupants during an emergency. The Port Authority also sought to prepare civilians better for future emergencies. Deputy fire safety directors conducted fire drills at least twice a year with advanced notice to tenants. Fire safety teams were selected from among civilian employees on each floor and consisted of a fire warden, deputy fire warden, and searchers. The standard procedure for fire drills was for fire wardens to lead coworkers in their respective areas to the center of the floor where they would use the emergency intercom phone to obtain specific information on how to proceed. Some civilians have told us that their evacuation on September 11 was greatly aided by changes and training implemented by the Port Authority in response to the 1993 bombing. But during these drills, civilians were not directed into the stairwells or provided with information about their configuration and about the existence of transfer hallways and smoke doors. Neither full nor partial evacuation drills were held. Moreover, participation in drills that were held varied greatly from tenant to tenant. In general, civilians were never told not to evacuate up. The standard fire drill announcement advised participants that in the event of an actual emergency, they would be directed to descend to at least three floors below the fire. Most civilians recall simply being taught to await the instructions that would be provided at the time of an emergency. Civilians were not informed that rooftop evacuations were not part of the evacuation plan or that doors to the roof were kept locked. The Port Authority acknowledges that it had no protocol for rescuing people trapped above a fire in the towers. Six weeks before the September 11 attacks, control of the World Trade Center was transferred by net lease to a private developer, Silverstein Properties. Select Port Authority employees were designated to assist with the transition. Others remained on site, but were no longer part of the official chain of command. However, on September 11, most Port Authority World Trade Department employees, including those not on the designated transition team, reported to their regular stations to provide assistance throughout the morning. Although Silverstein Properties was in charge of the World Trade Center on September 11, the World Trade Center Fire Safety Plan remained essentially the same. Preparedness of First Responders On 9-11, the principal first responders were from the Fire Department of New York, the New York Police Department, the Port Authority Police Department, and the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management. Port Authority Police Department On September 11, 2001, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department consisted of 1,331 officers, many of whom were trained in fire suppression methods, as well as in law enforcement. The PAPD was led by a superintendent. There was a separate PAPD command for each of the Port Authority's nine facilities, including the World Trade Center. Most Port Authority Police commands used ultra-high-frequency radios. Although all the radios were capable of using more than one channel, most PAPD officers used one local channel. The local channels were low wattage and worked only in the immediate vicinity of that command. The PAPD also had an agency-wide channel, but not all commands could access it. As of September 11, the Port Authority lacked any standard operating procedures to govern how officers from multiple commands would respond to and then be staged and utilized at a major incident at the World Trade Center. In particular, there were no standard operating procedures covering how different commands should communicate via radio during such an incident. The New York Police Department The 40,000-officer NYPD was headed by a police commissioner, whose duties were not primarily operational but who retained operational authority. Much of the NYPD's operational activities were run by the Chief of Department. In the event of a major emergency, a leading role would be played by the Special Operations Division. This division included the Aviation Unit, which provided helicopters for surveys and rescues, and the Emergency Service Unit, or ESU, which carried out specialized rescue missions. The NYPD had specific and detailed standard operating procedures for the dispatch of officers to an incident, depending on the incident's magnitude. The NYPD precincts were divided into 35 different radio zones, with a central radio dispatcher assigned to each. In addition, there were several radio channels for citywide operations. Officers had portable radios with 20 or more available channels so that the user could respond outside his or her precinct. ESU teams also had these channels, but at an operation would use a separate point-to-point channel which was not monitored by a dispatcher. The NYPD also supervised the city's 9-1-1 emergency call system. Its approximately 1,200 operators, radio dispatchers, and supervisors were civilian employees of the NYPD. They were trained in the rudiments of emergency response. When a 9-1-1 call concerned a fire, it was transferred to FDNY Dispatch. The Fire Department of New York.  Operations were headed by the Chief of Department, the sole five-star chief. The FDNY was organized in nine separate geographic divisions. Each division was further divided into between four to seven battalions. Each battalion contained typically between three and four engine companies and two to four ladder companies. In total, the FDNY had 205 engine companies and 133 ladder companies. On-duty ladder companies consisted of a captain or lieutenant and five firefighters. On-duty engine companies consisted of a captain or lieutenant and normally four firefighters. Ladder companies, primary function, was to conduct rescues. Engine companies focused on extinguishing fires. The FDNY's Specialized Operations Command, or SOC, contained a limited number of units that were of particular importance in responding to a terrorist attack or other major incident. The department's five rescue companies and seven squad companies performed specialized and highly risky rescue operations. The logistics of fire operations were directed by Fire Dispatch Operations Division, which had a center in each of the five boroughs. All 911 calls concerning fire emergencies were transferred to FDNY Dispatch. As of September 11th, FDNY companies and chiefs responding to a fire used analog point-to-point radios that had six normal operating channels. Typically, the companies would operate on the same tactical channel, which chiefs on the scene would monitor and use to communicate with the firefighters. Chiefs at a fire operation also would use a separate command channel. Because these point-to-point radios had weak signal strength, communications on them could be heard only by other FDNY personnel in the immediate vicinity. In addition, the FDNY had a dispatch frequency for each of the five boroughs. These were not point-to-point channels and could be monitored from around the city. The FDNY's radios performed poorly during the 1993 World Trade Center bombing for two reasons. The radio signals often did not succeed in penetrating the numerous steel and concrete floors that separated companies attempting to communicate. And second, so many different companies were attempting to use the same point-to-point channel that communications became unintelligible. The Port Authority installed, at its own expense, a repeater system in 1994 to greatly enhance FDNY radio communications in the difficult high-rise environment of the Twin Towers. The Port Authority recommended leaving the repeater system on at all times. The FDNY requested, however, that the repeater be turned on only when it was actually needed because the channel could cause interference with other FDNY operations in Lower Manhattan. The repeater system was installed at the Port Authority police desk in five World Trade Center to be activated by members of the Port Authority police when the FDNY units responding to the World Trade Center complex so requested. However, in the spring of 2000, the FDNY asked that an activation console for the repeater system be placed instead in the lobby fire safety desk of each of the towers, making FDNY personnel entirely responsible for its activation. The Port Authority complied. Between 1998 and 2000, fewer people died from fires in New York City than in any three-year period since accurate measurements began in 1946. Firefighter deaths, a total of 22 during the 1990s, compared favorably with the most tranquil periods in the department's history. Office of Emergency Management and Interagency Preparedness. In 1996, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani created the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management, which had three basic functions. First, OEM's watch command was to monitor the city's key communications channels, including radio frequencies of FDNY dispatch and the NYPD, and other data. A second purpose of the OEM was to improve New York City's response to major incidents, including terrorist attacks by planning and conducting exercises and drills that would involve multiple city agencies, particularly the NYPD and FDNY. Third, the OEM would play a crucial role in managing the city's overall response to an incident. After OEM's Emergency Operations Center was activated, designated liaisons from relevant agencies, as well as the mayor and his or her senior staff would respond there. In addition, an OEM field responder would be sent to the scene to ensure that the response was coordinated. The OEM's headquarters was located at Seven World Trade Center. Some questioned locating it both so close to a previous terrorist target and on the 23rd floor of a building, difficult to access should elevators become inoperable. There was no backup site. In July 2001, Mayor Giuliani updated a directive titled, Direction and Control of Emergencies in the City of New York. Its purpose was to eliminate potential conflict among responding agencies, which may have areas of overlapping expertise and responsibility. The directive sought to accomplish this objective by designating, for different types of emergencies, an appropriate agency as Incident Commander. This Incident Commander would be responsible for the management of the city's response to the emergency, while the OEM was designated the Unseen Interagency Coordinator. Nevertheless, the FDNY and NYPD each considered itself operationally autonomous. As of September 11th, they were not prepared to comprehensively coordinate their efforts in responding to a major incident. The OEM had not overcome this problem.


Let's start off, what a gole! Thank you, yeah. I'd like you to add another one and I feel like I've been waiting a little while now. So yeah, I can be pleased. You saw the opportunity spring to you. You looked up, were you thinking anything else? I'm just thinking, just direct the ball towards the back post and if someone gets a nick on it they do. But hopefully the shot goes in and it did, so yeah, pleasant. I didn't need that in the ending of course. Seals victory here, that's two on the bounce. Away from home, really carrying some momentum there. Massively obviously we'd probably not be done the best from before and it's a great reaction in the last two games to go and get the six points and we're shooting up the table so we just need to stay on the strong as long as we can and obviously the positive performances are there and hopefully they keep coming. More generally in terms of the performance today just seeming control throughout? Yeah definitely, it's a difficult kind of game coming here. They obviously don't play much football, it's a different type of game but I thought we dealt with it really well and players like Jan coming today hasn't played and dealt with it really well and I think we did look comfortable and matched the challenge and obviously we had to create the best quality we did in that one as a game. Is it about finding that balance between showing that steel being competitive against them but also still playing the way you want to play and not getting sucked into that style too much? Yeah it's difficult, I think it's very easy to get sucked into playing like that. They kill the game and try and make it a bit more of a direct game but I think we matched them in that aspect and then when we could get involved in the play we looked much better team and our quality showed. Last time we spoke you just started coming back into the side a little injury lay off and then the performances of other players were keeping you out. You said you were eager to get those opportunities and when you would you would look to take them. You've certainly done that today. Yeah like I said I think the last time we spoke it's never nice sitting on the bench any player will tell you that and yeah I finally got my chances and performed pretty well and now I've had it to go today so I just need to keep this run of form going and hopefully another go in the next game. And you know elsewhere in those positions there's a lot of rotation obviously Tyreek out today so all of the people coming, Abo's coming to the side how much of those combinations developing between you? Yeah I mean we all see the quality in training first of all I'm absolutely delighted for Abo it's been a long time out of injury and to come back and play like he has has been exceptional he's a great guy and I couldn't be happy for him and yeah the competition obviously we see it every day in training and we bounce off each other and we push each other on and I think that's why you've seen so many good performances in those positions this year as we're all competing to be the one playing and obviously that's how it's going to be for the year so we know if we're not playing well it won't be going in our way so it's just real good competition and it's no negativity about it we all get on and I just want our opportunities. Today's good performances we're certainly recognised by that way I think I've said it almost every interview I love the fans here it's just it's an excellent atmosphere to play in front of and obviously when the goal goes in right in front of them and get to run over there it's the best part of football in it That's what you said to go for the second half surely No exactly No it's one of the best feelings there is so to be able to share it with the fans today and right in front of the crowd is special And just finally today's result if anything makes next week's game more of a crunch match Massively I think we'll win next game on top 3 so massive game we can be on a better vein of form going into it and we just need to go down and show the same aspects we did today in terms of battling and let our quality shine through so we're in a good place looking forward to it