New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani establishes the city’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM). This is tasked with coordinating the city’s overall response to major incidents, including terrorist attacks. [Gotham Gazette, 9/12/2001; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 83-284] It will also be involved in responding to routine emergencies on a daily basis. [9/11 Commission, 5/18/2004 
] OEM comprises personnel drawn from various City agencies, including police and fire departments, and emergency medical services. It begins with a staff of just 12, but by 9/11 this will have increased to 72. Its first director is counterterrorism expert Jerome Hauer. [New York Times, 7/27/1999] Richard Sheirer will take over from him in February 2000 and will be OEM director on 9/11. [New York Magazine, 10/15/2001; Jenkins and Edwards-Winslow, 9/2003, pp. 12 ; 9/11 Commission, 5/18/2004 ] OEM is responsible for improving New York’s response to potential major incidents by conducting regular training exercises involving various city agencies, particularly the police and fire departments (see 1996-September 11, 2001). [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 283] According to Steven Kuhr, its deputy director from 1996 to 2000, one of the key focuses of the office is counterterrorism work, “responding to the consequence of a chemical weapons attack, a biological weapons attack, or a high-yield explosive event.” [CNN, 1/16/2002] Furthermore, OEM’s Watch Command is able to constantly monitor all the city’s key communications channels, including all emergency services frequencies, state and national alert systems, and local, national, and international news. It also monitors live video feeds from New York Harbor and the city’s streets. [9/11 Commission, 5/18/2004 ; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 283, 542] In June 1999, Giuliani will open the OEM’s Command Center on the 23rd floor of World Trade Center Building 7 (see June 8, 1999).
1996-September 11, 2001: New York Office of Emergency Management Practices for Terrorist Attacks, but Not Using Planes as Missiles
New York City’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) holds regular interagency training exercises in the years preceding 9/11, aiming to carry out a tabletop or field exercise every eight to 12 weeks. Mayor Rudy Giuliani is personally involved in many of these. The exercises are very lifelike. Giuliani will later recall, “We used to take pictures of these trial runs and they were so realistic that people who saw them would ask when the event shown in the photograph had occurred.” Scenarios drilled include a sarin gas attack in Manhattan, anthrax attacks, and truck bombs. One exercise, which takes place in May 2001, is based on terrorists attacking New York with bubonic plague (see May 11, 2001). Another, conducted in conjunction with the New York Port Authority, includes a simulated plane crash. Just one week before 9/11, the OEM is preparing a tabletop exercise with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, to develop plans for business continuity in New York’s Financial District—where the World Trade Center is located—after a terrorist attack (see (September 4, 2001)). OEM staffers are actually preparing for a bioterrorism exercise on the morning of 9/11 (see (Shortly After 8:46 a.m.) September 11, 2001 and September 12, 2001). Jerome Hauer, OEM director from 1996 to February 2000, will recall, “We looked at every conceivable threat that anyone on the staff could think of, be it natural or intentional, but not the use of aircraft as missiles.” He will tell the 9/11 Commission: “We had aircraft crash drills on a regular basis. The general consensus in the city was that a plane hitting a building… was that it would be a high-rise fire.… There was never a sense, as I said in my testimony, that aircraft were going to be used as missiles.” [Time, 12/22/2001; Giuliani, 2002, pp. 62-63; Jenkins and Edwards-Winslow, 9/2003, pp. 15, 30 ; 9/11 Commission, 5/19/2004; 9/11 Commission, 5/19/2004 ] The OEM was created in 1996 by Giuliani to manage New York’s response to major incidents, including terrorist attacks (see 1996). [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 283-284]
1997-1998: World Trade Center Rated ‘Critical’ as a Possible Terrorist Target
The New York Police Department’s Chief of Department Lou Anemone creates a citywide security plan that ranks 1,500 of the city’s buildings, shopping areas, and transportation hubs as potential terrorist targets. The World Trade Center is rated as “critical”—the highest rating possible—on Anemone’s “vulnerability list.” Other “critical” targets include the New York Stock Exchange, and the Holland and Lincoln tunnels. Anemone later says the WTC “was very much near the top of that [vulnerability] list, certainly in the top 20.” He announces his findings in 1998 at one of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s weekly public safety meetings. Yet, he says, after finishing his briefing, Giuliani just “glazed over.” Anemone adds, “We never had any discussion about security at the World Trade Center. We never even had a drill or exercise there.” Anemone will later say that, based upon information from FBI counterterrorism expert John O’Neill, the detectives assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and other intelligence, he “knew the World Trade Center was a real continuing target.” [Barrett and Collins, 2006, pp. 105-106]
November 8-9, 1997: Exercise Is Held near the World Trade Center Based around a Simulated Chemical Terrorist Attack
New York City’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) conducts a training exercise called Operation ICE, which is designed to prepare emergency response workers for the possibility of a terrorist attack and includes a simulated chemical attack near the World Trade Center. [City of New York, 11/9/1997; New York Times, 11/9/1997; 9/11 Commission, 5/19/2004] Operation ICE is the largest terrorism response exercise ever conducted by the city. Its aim, according to Mayor Rudy Giuliani, is “to see what would happen if in fact there was a chemical attack and to see how police, fire, EMS [emergency medical services], hospitals, the FBI… would all respond.” [New York Daily News, 11/10/1997; New York Times, 11/10/1997]
Volunteers Go to Hospitals with the Symptoms of Chemical Exposure – Operation ICE incorporates a series of field and tabletop exercises. It consists of three interconnected training events, called MEDEX, FIELDEX, and INFRAEX. MEDEX, apparently the first event to take place, is held on November 8. Forty-one city hospitals are involved in it. The aim is for the emergency workers who participate to learn how to deal with and treat “walk-in, self-referred” patients who arrive at emergency rooms minutes or hours after they have been exposed to a chemical agent. Volunteers, playing the victims, visit the hospitals, complaining about various symptoms. Hospital personnel have to determine the type of chemical exposure that matches the symptoms and decide how to treat the victims. [New York Times, 11/9/1997; Fire Engineering, 3/1998]
Field Exercise Is Held near the WTC – FIELDEX, which is the centerpiece of Operation ICE, takes place a day later, on November 9. This is an elaborate field training exercise involving a simulated chemical attack at a large public gathering. It is directed by Jerome Hauer, head of the OEM, and more than 600 emergency response workers take part. They belong to agencies including the New York Police Department, the New York Fire Department, the FBI, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, and the Departments of Defense, Environmental Protection, Health, and Transportation. [City of New York, 11/9/1997; New York Times, 11/10/1997] The exercise is held less than a mile away from the WTC, on Greenwich Street, between Hubert and North Moore Streets. [New York Daily News, 11/10/1997] It takes place “eerily in the shadow of the Twin Towers,” Giuliani will later comment. [Giuliani, 2002, pp. 63]
Islamic Terrorists Release a Lethal Gas in the Simulation – The scenario for the exercise involves a rally held by a controversial political group. This is “a greed-is-good kind of group,” Giuliani will say. A speaker at the rally explains the group’s philosophy, which gets his listeners angry, and two or three of them consequently attack the group. They release VX, a deadly nerve gas, killing 21 people and injuring at least 27. The mock attackers are Islamic terrorists, according to Giuliani. Red Cross volunteers and police cadets pretend to be victims of the attack, while several mannequins represent people who have been killed. FIELDEX lasts for four hours. [New York Daily News, 11/10/1997; New York Times, 11/10/1997; 9/11 Commission, 5/19/2004]
Real Bomb Goes Off before the Exercise Starts – Participating emergency response workers are unaware of the details of the scenario before the exercise begins. “[W]e know to be prepared, that it is going to happen, but haven’t been given any particulars,” one law enforcement official comments. [New York Times, 11/9/1997] Local residents reportedly approve of the exercise, despite the disruption it causes. One woman remarks that she feels it “needs to be done” because, she says, “Living downtown, we are a direct target for this kind of threat, with the World Trade Center and everything.” [New York Daily News, 11/10/1997] Ironically, two hours before the exercise commences, a real but crude bomb explodes in front of an office building a few blocks away from where the exercise is held. No advance warning is given but, fortunately, no one is injured. No one will take responsibility for the bombing. [New York Times, 11/10/1997]
Exercise Is Mostly Funded by the Defense Department – The INFRAEX segment of Operation ICE consists of a workshop that considers how the simulated attack would affect the city’s infrastructure, and how any adverse effects could be minimized and corrected. The date when this part of the exercise is held is unstated. [Fire Engineering, 3/1998] Operation ICE is the culmination of a yearlong disaster preparedness project. [City of New York, 11/9/1997] Most of the funding for it has come from a grant from the Department of Defense. [New York Daily News, 11/10/1997; New York Times, 11/10/1997] The exercise is intended to be a model for cities throughout the US. [Fire Engineering, 3/1998]
1998-September 10, 2001: Mayor Giuliani Ignorant of Al-Qaeda before 9/11
It is later revealed that, in the years up to 9/11, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has little knowledge of the threat posed by al-Qaeda. [MSNBC, 10/25/2007] In private testimony before the 9/11 Commission in 2004, after being asked about the “flow of information about al-Qaeda threats from 1998-2001,” Giuliani will reply, “At the time, I wasn’t told it was al-Qaeda, but now that I look back at it, I think it was al-Qaeda.” Giuliani will also concede that it was only “after 9/11” that “we brought in people to brief us on al-Qaeda.” Before 9/11, he says, “we had nothing like this… which was a mistake, because if experts share a lot of info,” there would be a “better chance of someone making heads and tails” of the situation. [Village Voice, 10/23/2007] In a later television interview, he will admit that he “didn’t see the enormity of” the threat al-Qaeda posed to the United States prior to 9/11, and add: “I never envisioned the kind of attack that they did.… [W]hat I envisioned were the kind of suicide bombings that had gone on in, in Israel. I had been briefed on that.… But I had no idea of the kind of level of attack that was in store for us.” [MSNBC, 12/9/2007] He blames his lack of knowledge on terrorism partly on the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), a partnership between the FBI and the New York City Police Department. Giuliani will state: “We already had JTTF, and got flow information no one else got. But did we get the flow of information we wanted? No. We would be told about a threat, but not about the underlying nature of the threat. I wanted all the same information the FBI had, and we didn’t get that until after 9/11.” [Village Voice, 10/23/2007] He will also complain, “I was dependent on the briefings that I was getting from… the [Clinton] administration, and… I don’t think they saw the threat as big as it was.” [MSNBC, 12/9/2007] In 2004, the 9/11 Commission asks Thomas Von Essen, who is Giuliani’s fire commissioner, what information he had about terrorism prior to 9/11. He will reply, “I was told nothing at all.” Yet in a speech in 2007, Giuliani will claim that, with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing: “Bin Laden declared war on us.… I thought it was pretty clear at the time, but a lot of people didn’t see it, couldn’t see it.” He also claims to have been “studying terrorism” for more than 30 years. [Associated Press, 6/26/2007; Village Voice, 10/23/2007]
June 8, 1999: New York Emergency Command Center Opened in WTC Building 7
New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani opens a $13 million emergency command center on the 23rd floor of World Trade Center Building 7. [Newsday, 9/12/2001] The center is intended to coordinate responses to various emergencies, including natural disasters like hurricanes or floods, and terrorist attacks. The 50,000 square foot center has reinforced, bulletproof, and bomb-resistant walls, its own air supply and water tank, beds, showers to accommodate 30 people, and three backup generators. It also has rooms full of video monitors from where the mayor can oversee police and fire department responses. It is to be staffed around the clock and is intended as a meeting place for city leaders in the event of an act of terrorism. [CNN, 6/7/1999; London Times, 9/12/2001; Glanz and Lipton, 2004, pp. 233] The center is ridiculed as “Rudy’s bunker.” [Time, 12/22/2001] Author Philip Shenon will later comment that it “seemed the supreme example of how Giuliani’s ego and arrogance knew no bounds after four years in office,” and: “WABC Radio mocked Giuliani with a name-that-bunker contest for its listeners. Among the most popular entries: ‘Rudy’s Nuclear Winter Palace’ and ‘The Nut Shell.’” It is criticized because of the cost and because of the location, next to the WTC towers, one of the city’s top terrorist targets. In addition, the high floor it is on means it is vulnerable to power, water, and elevator outages. [Shenon, 2008, pp. 346-347] Most controversial is the 6,000-gallon fuel tank. In 1998 and 1999, Fire Department officials warn that the fuel tank violates city fire codes and poses a hazard. According to one Fire Department memorandum, if the tank were to catch fire it could produce “disaster.” Building 7 will be destroyed late in the day on 9/11; some suspect this tank helps explains why. [New York Times, 12/20/2001]
May 11, 2001: New York City Practices for Biological Terrorist Attack
New York City’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM), which is located in World Trade Center Building 7, organizes a bio-terrorism drill where militant extremists attack the city with bubonic plague and Manhattan is quarantined. The “tabletop exercise” is called RED Ex—meaning “Recognition, Evaluation, and Decision-Making Exercise”
—and involves about seventy different entities, agencies, and locales from the New York area. Federal legislation adopted in 1997 requires federal, state, and local authorities to conduct regular exercises as part of the Domestic Preparedness Program (DPP). The US Defense Department chose New York City as the venue for RED Ex due to its size, prominence, and level of emergency preparedness. Various high-level officials take part, including Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, OEM Director Richard Sheirer, Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, and Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. Agencies and organizations that participate include New York City Fire Department, New York City Police Department, the FBI, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The exercise is supposedly so intense that, according to one participant, “five minutes into that drill, everybody forgot it was a drill.”
[New York City Government, 5/11/2001; New York City Government, 9/5/2001, pp. 74 ; New York Sun, 12/20/2003; 9/11 Commission, 5/18/2004] According to OEM Director Richard Sheirer, “Operation RED Ex provided a proving ground and a great readiness training exercise for the many challenges the city routinely faces, such as weather events, heat emergencies, building collapses, fires, and public safety and health issues.”
[New York City Government, 5/11/2001] In his prepared testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Bernard Kerik later states: “The City, through its OEM, had coordinated plans for many types of emergencies; and those plans were tested frequently.” The types of emergencies they prepared for, he states, included “building collapses” and “plane crashes.”
[9/11 Commission, 5/18/2004 ] Considering Richard Sheirer’s comments, RED Ex appears to be one example where the city tests for building collapses. Details about training for airplanes crashing into New York City remain unknown. The second part of this exercise, called Tripod, is scheduled to take place in New York on September 12, 2001, but is cancelled due to the 9/11 attacks.
Summer 2001: FBI Officials Warn New York Officials about the Possibility of a Major Terrorist Attack Occurring
John O’Neill, special agent in charge of the FBI’s national security division in New York, and two other senior FBI officials meet New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik to discuss the threat of an imminent terrorist attack. O’Neill attends the briefing along with Kenneth Maxwell, the FBI agent in charge of counterterrorism in New York, and Barry Mawn, director of the FBI’s New York office. The three men present evidence indicating an imminent terrorist plot. Maxwell says everything suggests a big attack is being planned. At the end of the briefing, Kerik asks, “Could that happen here?” Maxwell says the attack is more likely to occur abroad than in the United States. “I can’t say for sure that it wouldn’t, but historically al-Qaeda has always attacked us overseas,” he replies. All the same, he adds, “They’re definitely planning something huge.” FBI agents are currently trying to determine what is happening with the summer’s high level of al-Qaeda threats (see Summer 2001). “Things were happening; people were on standby,” FBI agent Abby Perkins will later comment. But, Perkins will say, “Everyone thought it’d be an international attack.” [Graff, 2011, pp. 298]
July 2001: New York Mayor Giuliani Updates Instructions for Managing Emergencies
Mayor Rudy Giuliani updates a directive that is intended to eliminate conflict between agencies when they respond to an emergency, such as a terrorist attack, in New York. [City of New York, 7/2001; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 284-285] Since at least the late 1970s, New York’s mayors have recognized that the tense relations between the New York Police Department (NYPD) and the New York Fire Department (FDNY) are a potentially serious problem, and have tried, unsuccessfully, to rectify the situation. [Governing, 9/2005] In a new attempt to resolve the problem, Giuliani updates a directive titled “Direction and Control of Emergencies in the City of New York.” This document states that its purpose is to eliminate “potential conflict among responding agencies which may have areas of overlapping expertise and responsibility.”
Specified Agency Would Be the ‘Incident Commander’ for an Emergency – To achieve this, the directive designates which agency would serve as the “incident commander” for different types of emergencies. The incident commander would be “responsible for the management of the city’s response to the emergency.” Meanwhile, the Office of Emergency Management (OEM), which Giuliani created in 1996 (see 1996), would “coordinate the participation of all city agencies in resolving the event,” and “assist the incident commander in his/her efforts in the development and implementation of the strategy for resolving the event.”
Fire or Police Department Would Be in Command for a Terrorist Attack – The document states that in the event of an “air crash” or a “structural collapse,” the FDNY would be the incident commander. In the event of a terrorist attack, the incident commander would be either the NYPD or the FDNY, depending on the type of terrorist attack that occurs (for example, whether it is an attack involving weapons of mass destruction or one in which just conventional weapons are used). However, the directive notes, the nature of terrorist attacks “is such that the incident command will shift as the event evolves.” Therefore, it continues, “Any conflicts regarding the issue of command at these incidents will be resolved by OEM.” [City of New York, 7/2001; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 284-285]
Directive Is Followed ‘to Some Degree’ on September 11 – The directive will be followed with limited success when the terrorist attacks occur on September 11. “To some degree, the mayor’s directive for incident command was followed on 9/11,” the 9/11 Commission Report will state. The report will continue, “It was clear that the lead response agency was the FDNY and that the other responding local, federal, bistate, and state agencies acted in a supporting role.” The report will note, however, that “the response operations lacked the kind of integrated communications and unified command contemplated in the directive.” “These problems existed both within and among individual responding agencies,” it will add. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 319]
8:47 a.m.-9:20 a.m. September 11, 2001: Mayor Giuliani Learns of First WTC Crash, Yet Doesn’t Go to Special Emergency Command Center
New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is promptly informed of the first WTC crash while having breakfast at the Peninsula Hotel on 55th Street. He later claims that he goes outside and, noticing the clear sky, immediately concludes, “It could not have been an accident, that it had to have been an attack. But we weren’t sure whether it was a planned terrorist attack, or maybe some kind of act of individual anger or insanity.” Only after the second plane hits at 9:03 will he be convinced it is terrorism. After leaving the hotel, he quickly proceeds south. In his 2002 book, Leadership, he will claim that he heads for his emergency command center. This $13 million center is located on the 23rd floor of Building 7 of the WTC, and was opened by Giuliani in 1999, specifically for coordinating responses to emergencies, including terrorist attacks (see June 8, 1999). Referring to it, he writes, “As shocking as [the first] crash was, we had actually planned for just such a catastrophe.” At around 9:07 a.m., Giuliani meets Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik at Barclay Street, on the northern border of the WTC complex. [Giuliani, 2002, pp. 3-6; 9/11 Commission, 5/19/2004; Barrett and Collins, 2006, pp. 7] Yet they do not go to the command center. According to Kerik, “The Mayor and I… determined early on that the City’s pre-designated Command and Control Center… was unsafe because of its proximity to the attack.” [9/11 Commission, 5/18/2004 ] Instead, they head to West Street, where the fire department has set up a command post, and arrive there at around 9:20 a.m. However, in his private testimony before the 9/11 Commission in 2004, Giuliani will apparently change his story, claiming he’d never even headed for his command center in the first place. He says, “Even if the Emergency Operations Center had been available, I would not have gone there for an hour or an hour and a half. I would want to spend some time at the actual incident, at operations command posts.” [9/11 Commission, 5/19/2004; Barrett and Collins, 2006, pp. 44-45 and 340-341] Other accounts indicate that the emergency command center is mostly abandoned from the outset, with emergency managers instead heading to the North Tower (see (Soon After 8:46 a.m.-9:35 a.m.) September 11, 2001).
