Brian Garfield: Target Manhattan

Your name, please?

Walter F. DeFeo.

Will you read your official title and position into the record, please.

I’m the director of the New York Civil Defense Emergency Control Board. Our office is at Three Oh Five Broadway.

You understand the purpose of this inquiry?

I understand it, Mr. Skinner. I’m not sure if you do.

I see. What is it you think I don’t understand?

Officially you’re supposed to be doing an in-depth investigation of the disaster to find out how we might have done a coordinated job of heading it off. You’re here, ostensibly, to find some way of insuring that this kind of thing never happens again. That the idea?

Essentially.

That’s the avowed purpose. Actually you’re looking for scapegoats. The mayor’s got his tail in a wringer and he needs to find somebody he can pin it on. Get rid of the stink. Pass the buck.

You think I’ve been commissioned to create a frame-up or a cover-up?

I wouldn’t say that. I don’t know you… only by reputation. Your reputation’s good enough. But I still think some poor bastard’s head is going to roll when you get finished with your investigation. Maybe it’ll be my head-who knows? I’m close to retirement, it wouldn’t do me much damage if I had a can tied to my tail. Am I the sacrificial goat?

Mr. DeFeo, you’re only the fourth witness who’s appeared here. I’ve got weeks of interviews ahead of me.

Then maybe you’ll listen to a word of advice from an old hand in the business of political legerdemain. You’re an academic, not a politician. That’s why I think you probably don’t understand this kind of operation. I’m not impugning your sincerity. I’m only pointing out that mayors and governors and presidents devote half their time in office to the assembling and appointing of commissions of inquiry, and that the only invariable rule of politics is that nothing ever comes of these inquiries. Except for the occasional rolling of the occasional head. The whole ritual is an exercise in waving the right hand violently in front of the public eye in order to distract attention from what the left hand is doing under the table. In a case like this one, of course, the left hand is doing nothing at all. That’s exactly what it should be doing, but the public wouldn’t go for that. The public wants to know how it happened and why it happened and why somebody didn’t have an instant solution to take care of the problem the minute it arose. The public wants blood, Mr. Skinner. That’s why the mayor needs a scapegoat, and that’s why you’re here, and I doubt you really understand that. I doubt you understood it before, and I rather doubt you understand it now.

I don’t think we’re getting off on the right foot. If it will reassure you, I’ve received no instructions-either explicit or implied-to pin blame on any individual or group of individuals. My job, quite specifically, is to determine whether there’s any way we can prepare better preventives for future contingencies of this kind.

You can’t, Mr. Skinner. But of course that’s what the public won’t buy. We live under the constant threat of instant extermination. Emotionally nobody but a suicide can contend with that. We want guarantees. We want them, but of course they don’t exist. How could they? Look, it’s meaningless trying to pin the blame on anybody or trying to forestall future wild-card attacks. This kind of thing falls under the classification of acts of God. You can’t expect anybody to anticipate every wild delusion of every deranged mind out there. My civil-defense office has a handful of employees. Our area encompasses nearly twenty million people. Do you think we can read twenty million minds? There was no way to predict that a kook in a thirty-year-old bomber would circle over Manhattan Island threatening to demolish the city if we didn’t pay him five million dollars’ ransom. Somebody could do exactly the same thing again tomorrow over Washington or Philadelphia or Los Angeles and we’d be no better prepared for it than we were for this one. It’s a hurricane, Mr. Skinner, it’s a tidal wave, an earthquake. Don’t you see, it’s simply a crime-and the only way you can prevent a crime is to know in advance that it’s going to take place.

Not necessarily. It’s possible to look at this kind of behavior as a disease. We’ve found preventives for a good many diseases.

You won’t find any for this one.

We won’t know that until we’ve tried, will we?

I’ve said my piece, Mr. Skinner. Let’s get on with the questioning.

Very well. I have the feeling the interviewer has just been interviewed, but let’s try to get back on the track. Perhaps you could give me a brief summary of what part you took in the events, and then we can go into detail.

Well I’ll make it very brief, and you can call for expansion on whatever details you want. I’d just returned to my office from lunch. I had a call from Joel Azzard of the FBI. He was downtown at the Merchants Trust Bank. He told me what the situation was. I only half-believed him. I had to go over and look out the window before I was convinced.

And you saw the plane?

Damnedest thing I ever saw. I’d seen the things in newsreels during the war and I don’t suppose I’d thought of them since then. It looked so close you could almost reach out and touch it. Right over the rooftops.

What did you do?

I notified various appropriate authorities.

For example?

Well, air-traffic control at the three New York airports, for example. And the police department, division of harbor patrol. I mean, the police were in on it by then, but evidently it hadn’t occurred to them to notify the harbor division. I did so, and they made every effort to clear the harbor of traffic. Barges, pleasure craft, that sort of thing. There wasn’t time to clear the liners and big freighters out, of course. But there was some talk of trying to shoot him down into the Hudson or the East River and we attempted to clear those bodies of water.

Successfully, I gather.

Yes, we had all traffic off the rivers by about half past three. And air traffic had been put on stand-down. Outgoing flights were postponed and remained on the ground. Incoming flights were diverted to Boston and other airports. You can imagine the number of irate passengers. But that was the least of it. Christ, it’s been weeks and you can still smell the smoke uptown.

Your name, please?

Philip B. Swarthout.

You reside at Two Eighteen East Forty-ninth Street in Manhattan?

That’s right, yes.

Your official position, Mr. Swarthout? This is for the record.

Assistant Deputy Mayor of New York. My job is to coordinate operations of the various security and emergency departments in the city government. And maintain liaison with outside agencies that function in the city-the FBI, the Narcotics Bureau, that sort of thing.

You understand the purpose of this inquiry?

Yes, certainly.

Do you have a prepared statement you’d like to offer at this time?

No. Was I expected to prepare one?

Not at all. A few witnesses have asked to read their statements into the record. I thought you might…

I’d like to try to help clear this thing up. I came here to answer questions. It’s your investigation, Mr. Skinner-you ask them, I’ll try to answer them.

The commission appreciates your cooperation, Mr. Swarthout. All right, let’s begin with the chronology. When did the incident first come to your attention?

You mean the time of day

The time and the circumstances.

I was ready to go to lunch-it must have been about twelve twenty. I had a call from the Police Commissioner’s office-Deputy Commissioner Toombes. He said he’d been on the horn with the president of Merchants Trust-he said they had this nut on their hands.