U.S. COAST GUARD ORAL HISTORY
PROGRAM
Operation Noble Eagle Documentation Project
Attack on America:
September 11, 2001 and the U.S. Coast Guard
Interviewee: Lieutenant
Michael Day, USCG
Chief, Waterways Oversight Branch
Coast Guard Activities New York
Interviewer: PAC Peter
Capelotti, USCGR
Date of Interview: 4 April 2002
Place: Activities New York
Q: What's your position here at Activities New York?
LT Day: I'm Chief of the Waterways Oversight Branch.
Q: And how long have you been here?
LT Day: I've been here three and a half years; three years when the event occurred.
Q: Are you Coast Guard Academy?
LT Day: No, I'm OCS [Officer Candidate School].
Q: Uh huh, and you graduated from OCS when?
LT Day: July of 1991.
Q: Were you in college before then?
LT Day: I'd worked a few years for a private engineering firm before I came in the Coast Guard.
Q: Uh huh. Where were you before you showed up at Activities New York?
LT Day: I was actually at the World Trade Center. I was doing a Coast Guard Industry Training program where for eight months they sent me to work for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. So I worked at One World Trade for eight months.
Q: And that's the North Tower?
LT Day: The North Tower.
Q: Right, and then you came here?
LT Day: And then I came here.
Q: So you've been in New York for several years now?
LT Day: Yeah, coming up on four years.
Q: One of the . . . and we have your After Action Reports and the report that you wrote, so I don't want to cover that same ground. But I'm curious about a number of things. Since you were here for several years you had a fairly good sense of the port, is that right?
LT Day: Yes.
Q: And where were you that morning?
LT Day: I was in my office. I was preparing, as a matter of fact, to go into Manhattan for a meeting; a ten o'clock meeting. I was going to carpool in with someone because of traffic and what have you, and someone called up and said, hey, did you hear the news? A plane hit one of the Towers. I went into the Vessel Traffic Service [VTS] and there were sporadic reports of a small commuter plane or what have you, had hit, and we really didn't know - or I didn't really make the connection yet - of what was going to happen.
Q: And VTS is in this building as well?
LT Day: Yes it is.
Q: And your office is in this building?
LT Day: Yes.
Q: I think for an outsider - I consider myself, not having been on active duty before this, somewhat of an outsider - looking in it's been a surprise to me that there's this Service dichotomy between the "M" people and the "O" people. And when you say, I want to go to New York - well we're across the bay from New York. - I think it's a surprise for people outside the Coast Guard that the "M" people don't have boats and that you sort of liaison with the "O" people if you go some place on the water. Is that strange to you as a Coast Guard officer or do you get that response from people?
LT Day: Well I think the uniqueness of the Activities' concept I'd say was true before coming here. Prior to here I was at a Marine Safety Office where you had to deal with a Group. Here in Activities we're all combined, so we all work for one boss.
Q: So the stations like Fort Totten, Sandy Hook and Station New York all work for Activities New York?
LT Day: For Activities New York, right.
Q: [Rear] Admiral [Richard] Bennis was the ultimate commander of all of those.
LT Day: Right, the buck stops with him.
Q: Was it unusual to have an admiral there? Was that because of his seniority and his retirement situation that he was an admiral, or is there usually an admiral in that position?
LT Day: It's a captain's billet. So it was unusual, and fortunate, I think, at many levels.
Q: Yeah, I've gotten that from many people that anywhere else but New York and this would have been an even bigger disaster. And I guess from the situation reports there was an S/V; Ventura. What's an S/V? Is that a sailing vessel?
LT Day: A sailing vessel; Ventura, yeah.
Q: That's what I thought. But a sailing vessel, I guess, called up you folks and said that a plane had gone into the Tower. So you were in the Vessel Traffic Service Office, and my understanding is that . . . well what happened from that point?
LT Day: We, just like everyone, started to watch CNN - there was a TV - just to see what was going on; trying to ascertain what was happening, and I really didn't make the connection. I went back to my office, checked some e-mails and did some other things, and then someone . . . and it was kind of . . . I could look over my shoulder and I could see the building there from my office and I could see some smoke coming out, but it really didn't connect at the time.
Q: So you could actually see the Trade Center from here?
LT Day: Oh yeah, it's very visible from here.
Q: Looking back on it - and we'll want to go back and forth - but looking back on it now with some hindsight, the world, or at least the American world has changed so much since September 11th. Looking back, do you feel like an innocent looking out the building and not assuming anything bad, or assuming an accident now?
LT Day: Yes. I mean having worked there I had thoughts about the people that I had worked with and I was just trying to . . . I mean I can gauge it was the top third of the building and I really thought it was small commuter plane or a helicopter perhaps, or something.
Q: Yes.
LT Day: And people just always talked about how the building was so ruggedly constructed because of the bomb that had gone off there in '93. I can remember someone saying the building was designed to withstand a [Boeing] 707 hitting it. Someone had mentioned that. I guess it just comes up with conversation with a tall building of that type. And I don't know whether I heard it in a legend or what, that it was designed to that level, but I took it with a grain of salt. And so all these different thoughts were going in that . . . you know I knew some people would be hurt or some of my friends could be hurt, but never to that level.
Q: Now the second plane came in, I guess, on a path this way over New Jersey?
LT Day: I believe it was over this part of Staten Island.
Q: Oh, so it came over Staten Island?
LT Day: Yeah.
Q: Could you hear that plane?
LT Day: If I did I wasn't listening for it.
Q: It didn't register.
LT Day: Yeah, and I was in the building and I wasn't . . . again, up to that point . . .
Q: It was an incident.
LT Day: Yeah, it was a tragic incident.
Q: Right. Were you watching the second plane go in or when did you become aware of that?
LT Day: It probably sounds callous, but I was working. I'd look over my shoulder occasionally because I just didn't think of it. Then someone ran down the hall and said, the second Tower's been struck, and then I got chills like I was just, I was like, oh my gosh. I realized that it wasn't coincidental.
We were getting reports from the station. It was chaotic. I just have to back up. People were scurrying around and going back and forth trying to . . . as far as, what do we do, to a certain degree. There wasn't a pre-planned response; this is what we do for two planes crashing into the Towers.
Q: That's kind of one of my big questions is that it was sort of an all-hands . . . it became an all-hands evolution over the next 48 to 96 hours or so.
LT Day: Uh hum.
Q: Do we, given the strategic importance of this port, do we war game things like that or were there plans in place for anything like this?
LT Day: No, there is nothing.
Q: If the Coast Guard suddenly had to be called upon to coordinate the evacuation of lower Manhattan, how would they go about it if all the bridges and tunnels were shut down and so forth?
LT Day: There was nothing like that, and the nearest thing I could think of was . . . well let me back up. When one of the Towers collapsed - I mean by then we're all in the Command Center, riveted, because we've got these large screen TVs and CNN reports - and when the first Tower collapsed we lost one of the means of comms [communications] with the small boats; 41s [41-foot utility boats], were on their way over there initially when we first started instructing, just as a matter of fact.
Q: And they would have been coming from . . .
LT Day: Station New York.
Q: . . . Station New York, and that's right down the road?
LT Day: Right down the road, right.
Q: Yeah, and Fort Totten is where?
LT Day: It's further up the East River.
Q: Is that on the Jersey side?
LT Day: It's on the New York side.
Q: It's on the New York side up on Manhattan?
LT Day: Yes, past the UN [United Nations building] and up.
Q: Oh, it's on the East River side?
LT Day: On the East River, yeah.
Q: Oh, okay.
LT Day: We lost the radar image after the first tower collapsed because of all of the debris - and it's on Governor's Island, the way the debris field was going - and the VTS put out a call for any available vessels to assist. We got reports there were people congregating on the lower tip of Manhattan. That's when it really kicked in; when the first tower collapsed. And I think that it . . . people were leaving. I mean, or it didn't translate, I guess, what was going on there; the havoc.
Q: So right here at Activities New York it was sort of in a monetary mode?
LT Day: Yes.
Q: I got that from, maybe from the Commandant [Admiral James Loy] last week when I was talking to him that this was an aviation incident, or [Vice] Admiral [Thad W.] Allen [Commander, Atlantic Area & Fifth Coast Guard District] maybe, and they didn't think of it in Coast Guard terms; at least not for those first few minutes or ten minutes or so.
LT Day: No, not at all. It was, I mean, like I said, we sent a 41 there just as a matter of courtesy you know, it was a significant event.
Q: To see what was happening.
LT Day: Yeah, to see what was happening.
Q: And you had communications with that 41 footer from here?
LT Day: We did.
Q: Yeah.
LT Day: Yeah, and so at that time we had a lot of the senior leadership out that particular day. They were going to Washington as matter of fact on a train and they were . . . so Captain [Patrick A.] Harris said, we've got to go down there, and we're getting reports of overloading and just people were trying to get off at any means, and some good Samaritans were helping people off. So one of the books I did grab, or guide, was the OpSail plans; the guidebook. We had OpSail 2000 here. I had been involved in that. I knew they had a lot of ambulance staging areas. We had a lot of evacuation points identified. So although it wasn't necessarily a full-scale evacuation plan, it had information.
Q: You sort of knew the places where they would go.
LT Day: Yeah, it had where helipads were. It had a lot of information and it was all in one thing. So I grabbed that book. Oh, let me back up. That person that . . . remember I said we were going to carpool if they had arrived in there - and he was a Sandy Hook pilot.
Q: Oh, okay.
LT Day: And he had said, hey, we have a 200-foot pilot boat.
Q: So he was actually the guy that you were going to drive to New York with that day?
LT Day: Yes.
Q: Well that was fortuitous.
LT Day: Very, very much so. But they're great partners. I mean really.
Q: And what's his name?
LT Day: Andrew McGovern. And we can link every available resource we have. I think I mentioned that we also could have had a Coast Guard cutter at the time, and, you know, it's no slight to the Coast Guard.
Q: Now those cutters that are in New York Harbor; the [CGCs] Wire [WYTL-65612], the Hawser [WYTM-65610], the Katherine Walker [WLM-552] and so forth, are those also under the command of Admiral Bennis, or are those attached to . . . ?
LT Day: The smaller ones are: the 65s; the Hawser and the Line. The larger buoy tender [Katherine Walker] was under the District.
Q: Oh, it was District command, okay. So they would have to chop it to Activities New York if they wanted it. You would have to ask the District for it?
LT Day: Right, right, and it was just easier with the pilots. I mean they have a 14-year apprenticeship. You've got that extra, I think, level of knowledge that it seemed at the time, and I figured I can always cross-deck to another Coast Guard cutter. I mean it was there. It was ready to go.
Q: And now where was that physically?
LT Day: Two miles from here.
Q: So it's down here at the dock, sort of beyond Station New York?
LT Day: Right beyond the Coast Guard Station, and I think the next pier that jumps out is the Sandy Hook Pilot Station. So it was readily available.
Q: And you headed out straight away for lower Manhattan?
LT Day: Right, and there was a sea of boats responding. Matter of fact, since I've spoken to you I've gotten quite a few more images that you may want. I mean it shows all the tugs massing and converging on lower Manhattan, and it's just as wide as the screen could see.
Q: Well at this point - very quickly - I think it was seven minutes after the second plane hit that the Captain of the Port closed the harbor. But in essence it was just chaos in the harbor. I mean the idea of having a closed harbor where there's nobody around, that's not what it was.
LT Day: And there was no way to enforce it.
Q: Right. So the fact that the harbor was closed is kind of irrelevant at this point because they're just trying to . . .
LT Day: Right, people were trying to help. We were saying, all vessels who could help. I remember listening to the radio, because by this time we were underway in the boat and it was just, it was chaos. I mean it was every channel you clicked to people were screaming, help, people are here. I've got someone hurt here, and this and that.
Q: Did you have communications back here, because I know that communications were cut off here fairly quickly?
LT Day: I did, but we quickly lost it, because the further we got away . . . and it was just everyone was talking over everyone. It was very bad, and cell phones stopped working.
Q: So you were, more or less after a few minutes, on your own out there?
LT Day: Yeah. So what we did was the first thing, we dropped off someone at the Battery; a lieutenant commander at the Battery - he's the Battery Supervisor there - because he knew we were going back there and it was good mode of travel that way. So when he went in I asked him to grab a Coast Guard Ensign. It's some way of distinguishing, which he did, and some life jackets and some ball caps, because I remember from past events that getting the Coast Guard, you know, it was good to be seen and known; what we are and who we are. So he grabbed an Ensign and we put that up in the pilot boat and we started circling around and that's when we started making broadcasts. We got on the radio and said, "United States Coast aboard the pilot vessel New York. To all mariners: we appreciate your assistance", and I just start talking on the radio. I said what we want to do is set up some marshalling areas because everyone was converging. As you arrived at the . . . It looked like . . . they were backing out.
Q: Your first stop was at the Battery building?
LT Day: Yeah, we were on the Battery and the pilot boat had the capability to launch a small boat. So they ran the guy over and we proceeded up towards Pier 11 and you could just see everyone on the piers. I mean it was chaos and there was severe overloading on the boats. So we had a Marine Inspector; a civilian, Ken Concepcion that actually said, hey, I'll go on the pier and help because I know the capabilities of these different boats; loading. I said, it sounds like a good idea. By then the PFDs [Personal Flotation Devices] had come up. So he, as a civilian, he actually grabbed some coveralls that said Coast Guard on it. So we gave him a PFD and a ball cap and we put him there and at least it said this is the Coast Guard here. I had a few other petty officers with me and I took them and I . . . so I dropped him off and he had a handheld radio and we went to the different piers; the major loading areas and we dropped Coast Guard people off to just try to work with civilian authorities, because the police were there too. Because like I said, it was a massive thing. So we kind of lowered . . . we went down, back around the tip of Manhattan up the Hudson River up to where the North Cove was, and back down, and we kind of started a barrier patrol, if you will, just going back and forth, very slow and lining up people and setting up marshalling areas. We set up one, like I said, by Governor's Island. We had all the tugs waiting in there and then we'd call them in; one or two, you know, whatever was manageable.
Q: Right.
LT Day: In some of the pictures you can see it was just row to row.
Q: Had the . . . the first Tower's down by now; by the time you get over there?
LT Day: Yeah, it was probably, yeah, 11/11:30ish.
Q: So both Towers have come down?
LT Day: Uh hum.
Q: Can you recall as you're going around on the waterside what the scene looked like; visibility wise?
LT Day: Yeah. Well there was the gray smoke on the East River. It looked like a haze, like a fog, and on the Hudson it was clear. And there were just people . . .
Q: So the wind's blowing out of the north, northwest I guess?
LT Day: Yeah, it was coming down and across, if I could show you. Like just down across this, Brooklyn, coming right across there. So this was Pier 11 and the Battery was one of the big areas, and the Staten Island Ferry.
Q: What's your memory of the scene along the docks as you're running up the East River?
LT Day: It was just wall-to-wall people. It was just chaos. I mean people were eager to get off and I can remember hearing cheering as the boats were leaving and I kind of thought it was ironic. I mean, obviously they're happy to be off, but it was just kind of something that struck me, like they were happy to be gone from New York. I can remember going up and looking and they had closed all the bridges and we were radioing back and forth saying, hey, people can walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. It's probably better than getting them on a boat and getting them across. So they talked to the police there and then they let people, not vehicles, go across, and that helped quite a bit.
Q: Yeah. After this sort of initial wave . . . well I guess this initial wave didn't pass over you for 24-hours?
LT Day: Well I mean the actual . . . there are a couple different phases of the four days I was there. The first; I call it the evacuation phase. That probably went until about 4:30/5 o'clock and then there was just no one around. I mean there were actually more . . . people were taking . . . we're getting reports: people are hurt, broken legs, sprained ankles, and we started getting inundated with calls. We were getting calls from cell phones, you know, sporadic. Sometimes you could get a signal through and Activities would call up and say, hey, the ambulances are at Liberty Island. The ambulances are at different stations.
Q: By this time they had stood up a Command Center at Sandy Hook or rerouted their communications through?
LT Day: Possibly. I don't know how that happened. But I was getting . . . and they said, send all your injured, and I can remember throughout the day waiting for this big casualty thing to happen. I was waiting. I was certain that we were going to find people hurt.
Q: So you were sort of anticipating, after this evacuation of living people . . .
LT Day: Yes, living people.
Q: . . . that there was going to be an evacuation of wounded?
LT Day: Yes, to hospitals. I can remember Ellis Island saying, we've got 40 odd ambulances lined up. Bring them over here. And then hearing someone else, we've got them over here in Brooklyn. We've got ambulances waiting. Bring them over here.
And one other thing I grabbed is a big laminated chart. I had a QM [quartermaster] who was writing where we had all of our assets; just what was going on. And I can remember getting on the radio and there were no major direct injuries. They were all secondary. Someone was running, or somebody, I think, ran into a phone pole or something, you know, just running. They were secondary injuries. It wasn't from the site itself.
Q: Right. Were you getting any reports from the outside world during that day? I mean were you aware of the Pentagon or anything happening in Washington?
LT Day: I heard that in the car going to the ferry.
Q: Going to the ferry, okay, or the pilot boat. Did that give you more of a sense that this was a . . . when did you, or did you that day . . . was there a sense that you were under attack; the country was under attack?
LT Day: Yeah, I remember thinking this was Pearl Harbor. I mean it was a cliche. But I do remember saying that on the bridge pf the pilot house and I think it was such a shock, you know, and it was just . . . I couldn't believe it. Well I'll give more on that later, about the rumor part, because there were no communications.
Q: Right, so everybody invented what was going on.
LT Day: Yes, and it was, after while you just kind of shut it out and said, okay, I'm going to deal with it. We'll talk about that later. But the mariners were very, very willing and eager to help. I can remember one of them . . . we lost, I think, three people in all and all three were heart attacks. One was a tug captain that was bringing some people across had a heart attack and I can remember just hearing on the radio the mate saying, the captain - and I don't recall his name now - he had a heart attack. We're trying to save him and the mate was bringing it in, and then all my focus shifted onto that. I mean a tug was easier to maneuver than an airplane or something. But I was still thinking, we've got all these people on the air and the guy's got a heart attack, and he was dead. And there were two other heart attacks later on. But I remember that was early. That was apparently like two or three in the afternoon that that this guy from Levac Marine had a heart attack.
Q: You said that the first phase was this evacuation phase. What was the second phase for you?
LT Day: The second phase was more the relief supplies. Those would be the main two phases. So we had all this capacity; all these tugs from the request that we initiated. So we probably had 100/120 different vessels of all sizes and contraptions.
Q: Did you have much communication that day with other Coast Guard vessels in the harbor?
LT Day: Not that day. The following day I went and walked over to a buoy tender.
Q: And for somebody who's outside the Coast Guard, if you could speak a little bit to the issue of, again, I'll go back to what we were talking about before. You're a Coast Guard officer on a Pilot Association Vessel. What kind of relationship do you have, did you have, say before then, and that day with, say, the Katherine Walker? Do you see . . . and the Walker, I guess, is one of these D-1 assets. Do you folks liaison with them or know who the CO [commanding officer] is, that sort of thing?
LT Day: Yeah, sure. Yeah I know him very well. I think one of the reasons why the pilot boat was such a good asset was that it had the best of both worlds, in that it had . . . well all the Coast Guard part of it and it had the pilots who work with these guys; even more, all the tugs. I mean every ship that gets brought in has a tug assist and they work every day with those captains, so there's already a high level of trust. And the common denominator to the response was that every one of those guys was Coast Guard licensed. So we had the Coast Guard and there was almost a, I won't call it marshal law, but it was almost like a connection you know, the Coast Guard was the common denominator, I guess, amongst all the responders and I think that's why everyone wanted to help. There was a common purpose.
I was interviewed two weeks after by the Joint Chiefs of Staff by someone that was looking at some phenomenon called self-synchronizing teams and they had heard what we had done, and he asked, well what do you attribute it to? Why do you think you were able to get 120 people that didn't really know each other but had a common . . . and you know, I said, well it was very clear what the purpose was; what we were trying to accomplish. We were trying to get people out of there. There was some degree of trust involved in that . . .
Q: Trust in the fact that the Coast Guard had a level of trust with the maritime community.
LT Day: Yeah, I really think that was a lot of it. You know you hear about degrees of separation. There's probably only one degree of separation between the responders, as either I as a Coast Guard officer dealing in my job, or as I said, we had some Port Authority. It was all externally focused. When I was at Port Authority at that industry training I went and met all these different companies in the port. That was part of it. I went and met in their offices, so I knew a lot of people.
Q: In a general sense, what's the relationship between the "O" side of the Coast Guard and these Pilot Associations, Harbor Associations and so forth? Is it as close as the "M" side or is it . . . ?
LT Day: Well that's a loaded question.
Q: Well I don't mean it to be.
LT Day: I don't think it is. I think it's to be our nature. It's closer with them. I mean we - and I'm talking long lines - but I think we really know the value of partnering, and that's not to say that the "O" guys don't. But I think a lot of times to their mission things are a lot clearer for them. You know its right or it's wrong. You've got drugs or you don't have drugs. Or, you know, the fish net size is one defined size, things are clearer. And I think that the things that we do are sometimes a little more ambiguous and require a little more interpretation. Although you could meet a guy who would say, no, it's clear. There is no gray. It's black and white too. But that's just Mike Day's opinion about it. I'm big on partnering. I'm big on working with these people. I worked on the Harbor Safety Committee, which is all private businesses and industries, and I think we can achieve a lot through this type of partnering approach.
Q: Well I think one of the things that became clear in this situation is that we don't have the resources to do all of these missions that seem to be expected of us in a time of crisis. And Port Security being on the top of the list, and again, this goes back to this whole, how all these different parts fit in. We've had evacuation relief supplies. Was there anytime there, early on or the next successive days, when the Marine Safety side of it turned to Marine Security?
LT Day: Well I had an interesting discussion with the XO [executive officer] when the 270s [270-foot medium endurance cutter] left that next morning; Wednesday morning. I mean all these boats were going . . . let me go back to how the relief thing happened. We started getting calls that supplies were coming into Jersey and all the bridges were shut down into Manhattan. They said, hey, can we get someone to pick up some supplies? So I asked if anyone would mind going over to Colgate in New Jersey and picking up some supplies, and I was inundated. Sure I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. Great. So it started off - and it wasn't my intent - I didn't think about it. I didn't think that it had to be done. It just kind of happened.
Q: Yes.
LT Day: And then the guy comes back. He goes, there are tractor truck loads lining up over there. There were like five of them at night with supplies, and we need a lot more help. It's like, all right. So what are the conditions there? What's going on? Because I had, like I said, I had, you know, drilling rigs, I mean helicopter platforms, so many assets that wanted to help. So I said, okay, it's mostly tugs and its ferries, and he said, well there are a lot of people over there. We've got firefighters, steel workers, doctors and nurses. We've got thousands of people who want to come and help. And people with dogs; people with, you know, the body dogs. There was just a line of people. So there were some ferries there and so we said, okay. So we started bringing people into North Cove. That's where we tied up; at North Cove. And people started coming. I mean the pilot boat is big and it's visible. It had the Coast Guard Ensign flying and people started coming. Firefighters would come up and say, we're going to need water. We don't have any water, and it starting getting dark. So we'd call over to someone from New Jersey on the other side. We established a dialogue with the Office of Emergency Management [OEM] over there. And then bottles of water . . . people were just going to store shelves and buying water. It was coming over. And there was a lot of stuff coming over; a lot of ice. A lot of restaurants were sending over meals. You know it was very disorganized as far as what was coming. Well as we started meeting those needs we started getting more and more requests for the pilot boat. We need acetylene for steel. We need oxygen. We need wrenches. So we started making requests to New Jersey and things started coming and it was busy throughout that night. But the next day when the corporate sponsors kicked in is when it really got busy and supplies started coming. Stuff started coming palletized. I mean in that area of North Cove, which is a very large area, quickly was overrun with supplies.
Q: A supply depot.
LT Day: Yeah, I mean a professional marina. They said like Dunkirk, and it really was. I mean I can remember walking by pallets of Levis thinking, how much is this, because people were sending everything: just the clothes, cat food, dog food, and it was huge. And that's when, I mean, we're running out of room for these boats. There were so many boats coming over that actually we set up a visual traffic on the bow of the pilot boat, because the radios; you couldn't clear people. You couldn't clear them close enough on the radio so we went to hand signals. Getting people out like in waves and letting people go in . . .
Q: Acting as like a Marine traffic cop.
LT Day: A traffic cop, it was. It was a hands-on VTS. And so that's when we started talking. We said, where else can we land some supplies? And that's where the pilots' knowledge helped and the local tug captains helped; that ability. We set up three different areas like this; one at the Battery, one further up at Chelsea Piers and one there at North Cove, because the supplies were coming in so fast and furious that we were running out of room and we couldn't distribute them fast enough.
Q: You need an Army Quartermaster.
LT Day: Well the Army Corps sent over forklifts. They actually helped in that they went over and there was a golf driving range that had offered up their golf carts to help distribute it. They took the crane and a barge, and picked it up with a crane and put it on an Army Corps boat and came down, and we used that for distributing supplies.
Q: Was there any . . . by the end of that first day or early in the second day, what kind of communication were you having with the rest of the command? Was there any, or was everybody still in sort of a response mode?
LT Day: I tried, because at one point I said, this is really big, and I mean I thought I was doing the right thing. I brought the Chief in and said, we're either doing really good or we're doing really bad. I said, I'm not sure.
Q: But we've got to keep doing it.
LT Day: Yeah, it feels like it's the right thing to do.
Q: Right.
LT Day: And I didn't really know and I got to back up . . . I mean part of what we were doing, being the one Coast Guard person and having no comms, we authorized a lot of regulations to be broken. I can remember boats started running out of fuel that night and they were saying, hey, can we transfer fuel amongst ourselves? And you know, you're not supposed to do on-water transfers, and it seemed inconsequential, like the rules at that point didn't matter.
Q: Yes.
LT Day: And other buildings were collapsing. I mean a total of seven buildings collapsed. I remember looking over at, you know, there goes a 21-story building in a big cloud.
Q: Did you have a chance . . . you know you were right in the middle of things, or, you know, a block and a half away, so you sort of had . . . and given where you were on the bridge of this vessel; this front row seat for all this, was there any time when you had a chance to sort of sit back and try to process what was going on intellectually?
LT Day: I think like three days into it the Red Cross had set up something; some tents and they had some TVs there, and it wasn't too far from the pilot boat. I just felt like, I mean I was getting just sick of being there. I went there and I started watching, I could feel my eyes welling up like I wanted to cry right at that point. It was just . . . because there came the Pentagon and everything, and I was just so busy up to that point that I really . . . and it's when I had quiet time, you know, a little bit alone to myself that it really, really struck home. And I think being in the Coast Guard we kind of shut things off at times of stress; it's like a defense mechanism.
That night I walked into Ground Zero because I was trying to establish contact with OEM and I could just remember there were body parts everywhere. It was like . . . I remember thinking like, this is a war. I mean I looked down and saw a foot in a shoe and you could see it. It was just there and I was just fixating on it for a few minutes, and I was like, this was a war. I remember thinking that. It was like a siege, and looking around and seeing National Guard guys with M-16s going through the streets of Manhattan. It was just a site that you've never seen, and all the power was out around the area and a lot of other buildings were on fire, and there was this eerie gray like snow everywhere. I mean just thick. It was like a blizzard and you couldn't really see. They brought some temporary lights in. Where the beams of light were going through and this gray smoke or material was just there. You could see it there. And the wind would blow and there would be burnt charred papers just fluttering all around from all these people.
But I guess to answer your question - I digressed for a little bit - that's the intent and that was probably two days later. It was the first quiet time. I know for the four days I probably slept about three hours I think. I had an opportunity to, on a Wednesday night I remember, and it was like two in the morning and I said, I'm going to go to sleep for a couple of hours, and I couldn't, and I was tired!
Q: Were you in this uniform the whole time?
LT Day: I started off in the uniform but it was trashed and then I went and I was able to . . . the pilots were bringing extra people in and out and they had offered to get some clothes from home. So then I went to a pair of Levis and my shirt because people were always saying with the Coast Guard, this and that . But the pants were more like gray than blue. And then finally - somebody was making a joke about it - I hung up the shirt in the pilothouse and someone said, hey, where's the Coast Guard? And I was pointing to the shirt, because I mean I had a t-shirt on and I still had my lieutenant hat on.
Q: As long as you had the ball cap you're all set.
LT Day: I had the ball cap and I hadn't shaved, and it was just that. Some guys from the Pentagon; a couple of colonels and captains came in and said, people were just checking on what's going on and who's in charge. And they go, he is, and, you know, I had the beard and that's my shirt, and they're all like, you're doing a great job and we're going to federalize it, but you've got to hang on there until Friday and this is and that, and I was like, all right.
Q: You're probably not the first person in the Coast Guard who wanted to switch these polyester pants for blue jeans.
LT Day: No, so I did have a little modified uniform which was good because the Admiral went by and the District Commander in the small boat and as I looked out and waved, and from the top it looked like I still had my shirt on.
Q: Did you meet with . . . did they come over? Did you see them at all? I know that I spoke with [Rear] Admiral [George N.] Nacarra on this Tuesday. I think he came down the second day, or the 12th I think he was there. Did you see him?
LT Day: I saw him go by in a boat; in a 41.
Q: It's a unique situation in a lot of ways. Not the least of which I think as an officer in the chain of command you were sort of cut off, in essence, from that chain of command for the duration of the initial emergency, and having to make these decisions, essentially, with your own wits. Who was the first superior officer that you saw?
LT Day: I didn't see anyone until I came back here.
Q: Oh you didn't, okay.
LT Day: I got relieved. I'd get phone-coms intermittently in the middle of night. I guess a lot of people weren't on the cell. I remember calling up and telling him what we're doing and he goes, yeah, we're seeing what you're doing. Just keep doing what you're doing. And I was like, all right.
Q: So that's interesting because one of the things I ask the senior officers - you have admirals and what not - is do they think that they should be a certain way? Because after all, people don't react normally when an admiral's around and so forth. Do they feel like they have to put on a front or something, especially in a crisis, so that people below them don't . . . well they stay calm, in essence, and keep their heads? But for all intensive purposes you were the senior officer there and you had a chief and a couple of petty officers to forge things.
LT Day: Well yeah, but they were gone. Activities had said - they were pretty clear - we're going to need everyone. Send back what you don't need right away. So for the evacuation phase I used the petty officer. I didn't think the relief thing was going to really kick off, so I had sent them back, which would be poor planning on my part, but I kept the Chief.
Q: Was there any moment there when the Chief turned to you and said, this is just screwed up, or did you talk between yourselves at all those first . . . ?
LT Day: Oh yeah. I mean I asked him, what do you think? Chief, what are we doing, or can you go? When we set up North Cove we had a couple of different agencies that wanted to help but they were actually more of a pain; like they weren't hailing up on the radio. So I was able to send him down and say, hey Chief, go talk to whatever Police Department or Corrections was there and whoever else. And he'd go down there and he was able to say, hey look, this is the thing. This is what we're doing and we're listening to Channel whatever it was; 73.
Q: I want to go back to when you walked into Ground Zero just for a second, because you weren't just a citizen walking into Ground Zero. You were officer in an Armed Force.
LT Day: Right, I had the full access, right.
Q: Did that make a difference for you that you were making a difference in terms of your reaction? I would assume that everybody on-scene is experiencing some level of, for lack of a better term, combat shock.
LT Day: Shock, it was, yeah; a lot of little thousand yard stares.
Q: And those were the kind of looks that you were, or the kind of faces that you were seeing?
LT Day: Uh hum.
Q: Did it make a difference to you that you were a uniformed officer, that you could contribute to doing something, that you weren't completely helpless?
LT Day: Yeah, and it was very . . . I mean looking back it was very cathartic to have been there for me personally, because having worked there I didn't know what the status of those people I had worked for Port Authority were. I didn't know if they were all dead or if there were a couple that ended up not making it out. But at the time I didn't know and I had no comms. I mean CNN wasn't reporting on . . . they were saying, I forget, five or seven thousand people.
Q: Right.
LT Day: I remember we had 20,000 body bags that we had just brought over. I mean looking over everything, again, was coming to North Cove, and the City had requested 20,000 body bags. And I'm looking at them and it was like, I hope we don't need them.
Q: We don't fill all of them.
LT Day: Yeah, yeah, and it was . . . so I didn't know.
Q: You have some perspective on this now after more than six months. How do you look back on this now? Have you had a chance to sort of, you know, over the past six months, to sort of look back and process it, think about it, and turn it over in your head? I mean in the sense that as an experience in the trajectory of your career. I mean obviously I doubt anything like this is ever going to happen again. But where do you put it in your life, in your career and your development as an officer?
LT Day: I think I put it as a leadership lesson of sorts, in that the importance of . . . well that question can be answered at a number of levels. One is the value of partnering and partnerships, and build your bridges before you need them. Two: on making your people feel empowered. I really felt when I worked for Admiral Bennis that I was totally empowered to do the right thing. Do the right thing and I'll take care of you. Don't worry about it. I mean as long as you can say this is why and the reason. It was arbitrary and capricious. Like, for example, the boats. We had hundreds of people waiting to get over here and we had a Captain. He said, I don't have a crew. Can I run my ferry? And the ferry had 350 people on it. And I said, do you feel you can do it safely? He goes, well I need some help. And there were some New Jersey State troopers that were willing to help, and I said, hey, would you mind helping this guy work lines and just look out? No problem, whatever we can do. And I said . . . I even talked to the Captain, because I mean, people wanted to help. And he's like, yeah, I - the Captain - I can do it. I don't need them. It's some silly Coast Guard reg[ulation] that I have to have so many crew. And I was like, all right, you can do it. And I was like; I hope nothing happens to this ferry. (Laughter) But I was kind of like, oh that doesn't matter.
Q: You must have felt like Telly Savalas at some point; like you're in one of these War World II movies with the cigar chomping . . .
LT Day: Yeah, [General George S.] Patton a little bit, you know.
Q: Yeah, he throws all the rules out.
LT Day: Every word was coming up yeah, you know . I rodgered, laughing at myself a little bit. It was just like, wow! I broke more rules than probably I've enforced in my whole Coast Guard career. I mean there was, like I said, all the boats coming into North Cove. There were a lot of these multi-million dollar yachts that were there and we didn't have that many open berths; we had road the line up to drop supplies off . The owners of the yachts couldn't get in the city because it was closed and the pilots said, Lieutenant Day, if we can get these yachts out of here we can get a lot more boats in. And I'm thinking to myself, man, those are multi-million dollar yachts, and I was like, all right, let's pull them out of here.
Q: Worry about the dings in them later.
LT Day: Exactly. And we will drag them up to another pier; we took them up to the Hudson there. And I remember seeing all these high speed boats being towed out by tug boats and I was thinking to myself, oh boy, I hope that I'm doing the right thing.
Q: We're going to get a few phone calls.
LT Day: Yeah, yeah, people looking for their yachts. But it cleared out the whole area and that was like, I don't know, I mean . . .
Q: It's amazing the mythical proportion that North Cove has taken on. I was there when I went and visited the Strike Team for about a week and they took me up to Ground Zero, and we went to North Cove. It's a tiny little place.
LT Day: Yeah.
Q: And the descriptions of all the vessels that were in there. I mean it must have been complete chaos.
LT Day: That's why we had the man on the bow, because there were so many close calls. And the Chief did it a lot.
Q: Do you know how deep that entryway is?
LT Day: How wide?
Q: Or wide. It doesn't seem to be more than 50 feet wide or so. It can't be more than what, 20/30 feet deep at the most, maybe?
LT Day: I don't know. We had some pretty deep draft tugs.
Q: Really?
LT Day: Yeah, yeah, because I remember them spinning around in there. Like the Army Corps boat for example. It was a pretty good size and, I don't know, maybe drew 18 feet. I have no idea what the depth is there but they had some big yachts in there.
Q: Yeah.
LT Day: So I don't know what the depth was.
Q: I'll have to check the chart and see how deep that cove is, because you almost wonder if, with the redevelopment, they shouldn't extend that Cove right into Ground Zero to get rid of vessels in there for a similar type of re-supply.
LT Day: Right. And a lot of the vessels we had, we had cranes and booms on there, so they were able to offload outside the wall and bring stuff over. But there were so many supplies; so many. It took on such a depth of centralization there; so many supplies. It was just where everyone came for things. I mean one of the main boats that was supplying the firefighting water . . . all the fire hydrants in the city had been down so all the firefighting boats were supplying the water for all these firefighting efforts. Like I said, the fire was burning for months afterwards.
Q: Yes.
LT Day: I remember hearing one of the couplings on the main -on the one fireboat - was going and I could hear them on the radio, we're losing the coupling! We're going to loose the firefighting water. And one of the tug captains; Ken Peterson was there. He said, let me get on the radio, and he said, all tugs get out there and he did this broadcast. I need whatever fittings and this and that, and I need a welder to show up to this and that. And he just took it and did it, and they were able to fix this coupling on the primary pump that was supplying the fire-fighter water and it was just such a "can do," everyone wanted to help. I mean you almost couldn't fail in that respect.
Q: As an officer studying, or soon to be, leadership issues at the War College, you mentioned Admiral Bennis. Is he someone that - you didn't see him those first few days - is he someone during your career, or who have you looked to in terms of your senior officers that you . . . do you try to model yourself after the way some of these officers behave?
LT Day: My second cutter CO . . . can I say his name?
Q: Sure.
LT Day: His name is Gene Brooks and he's down in GANTSEC [Greater Antilles Section] now. I think he was in that one year . . .
Q: What cutter?
LT Day: I was on a 270; the Seneca [WMEC-906], and I was with him for [Operations] Able Manner and Able Vigil, which before this had been the big Coast Guard operations. I remember a similar type of cavalier - I won't say cavalier - of empowerment, or sort of a little bit of breaking of rules, but it was for the right reason. I won't go into those stories. But he was very, I think, influential in throwing up the proverbial bullshit flag on things, and say, I mean that's the way it is and that's the way it should be or that's not way things should be. And he was very much, and Bennis too, was very much an influence on me. But Brooks, because of the same thing; Able Manner/Able Vigil it, was very chaotic. I mean thousands of Cubans and Haitians leaving, and I think in some ways it prepared me for this.
Q: Yes.
LT Day: You know in as far as like setting up the marshalling areas just so it wasn't chaos and just getting on the radio.
Q: Before I get to the lessons I want to go back to what you were talking about earlier; about the kind of information you were getting that day. You mentioned one of the things you had deal with was erroneous reports, or let's say . . . in an information vacuum what kind of . . . ?
LT Day: Oh, they were saying that what caused the Towers to collapse was a suicide bomber had ran into the building and detonated himself, which caused the lower structures to collapse, and I guess it made sense, I mean at the time. You know I had heard about it going on in the Mid-East and never did really think about it. Marshal law was going to be called. What else was true?
There was this big "who's in charge" dilemma or question. OEM was one of the buildings that had been destroyed, so there was that thing. And I remember some Air Force staff sergeant yelling up, the Air Force is taking over! We need this and that, and I remember looking at him and I said, oh, who are you again? And I said . . . I think he saw, I kind of still had my uniform put together. He said, oh, Sir . . . and I don't know who this guy was but people were just coming in and trying to take charge.
And there was another . . . when we arrived there the fire trucks were running out of fuel and we started offloading fuel from the tugs in the port . . .and another thing; a buoy broke and one of the . . . in fact the same guy, Ken Peterson, said, hey, we can fuel them a lot faster by barge. So I said, well, you know I can't authorize a purchase order for you to do it, but you make sense. I'll go to OEM in the city and tell them we have this availability because they started having these impromptu meetings. They ordered a barge and it came alongside and it worked through OEM. They said they would pay it. But the point is somebody from the city came along and said, you can't do that here. You need a permit. And I remember thinking, a permit, you know, and there was a row of fire trucks there waiting to be fueled. I said they're fueling the fire trucks. And I wish I could remember what department he was from. He goes, you need a permit. And I said, well this a Coast Guard operation and I'm telling you that it's authorized right now, and he goes, all right, and off he went. But that was like one of the few times I used the Coast Guard vision and I'm saying, did I use the Coast Guard's name the wrong way? I mean I didn't want to use the Coast Guard authority the wrong way. And being in uniform it was strange, and I had people coming with supplies: morphine was coming over, portable DNA analyzers were coming over. You know, $50,000 pieces of equipment. Will you sign for this? I said, no, but the morgue's right there and someone will do it. And there's a medical thing, and . . .
Q: Is there a moment in a crisis like this when you sort of go into that mode where you start to realize that the order of magnitude is such that the rulebook just has to go away? Does that hit you at once or does that sort of happen as these situations come up?
LT Day: It got easier to break them as time went on, if that makes sense.
Q: Sure.
LT Day: I mean it just . . . I won't say it didn't matter, but I knew it became clearer; the reasons. And I saw that, okay, so I let that guy, the fire trucks fuel, or whatever. Nothing really happened, or maybe some of it spilled. But you know what? They're looking at a burning hole. It didn't really matter; the balance of it.
Q: You mentioned Pearl Harbor. For those first few days, or even weeks, nobody knew who had done this, and it wasn't as if another . . . where you had an identifiable country or entity. Did that make this even stranger that you couldn't point to a nation to target your anger too? It was sort of a public emergency as opposed to a national military emergency.
LT Day: I really didn't connect the two at that point. I mean it just isn't important. I won't say it didn't seem to matter. It's just it was very . . . I keep looking at the pictures there. You know the pictures of the Trade Towers right up over there. But it didn't really strike me who did it.
Q: Is it strange looking at photos like that now, or going outside now?
LT Day: Yeah, there's a gap there. Because like I said, I looked over my shoulder in my office and it was there, and now it's not, and there really is a scar. You know I remember talking to my wife saying, you know I feel like I really am ready to leave New York. We've had a great tour here and I was actually thinking of extending before I heard I was going to the War College. I was actually thinking of staying another year. That's, you know you're looking at your career and you're saying, I really like it; the job's challenging. There's a lot to do in New York. So I was thinking of staying an extra year.
Q: The scenery's is a lot better in Newport. (Laughter)
LT Day: Well that's true. But, you know, I just didn't put the two together. It wasn't a hate, you know. It was just a real sadness.
Q: Just a response, yeah.
LT Day: And the busier I was the easier I was able to stay more focused. You know now it's dealing with things afterwards that sometimes are more difficult I think when you're really engaged in them and you just kind of take over. And people are just looking, I think, to you. I mean you asked a question about the admirals, and I think the same way people are just looking to see, okay, what are we doing?
Q: Well I think one of the things that came out of that first . . . one of the comments I heard on the news from somebody who was running away from the scene said something like, when you see the police running away you know it's a crisis.
LT Day: Well there was one scene there too that I probably was the most scared was during that whole event, personally afraid, was when one of the buildings collapsed, and there was just chaos; if you can picture North Cove. It was filled with firefighters, police officers, rescue workers, and they were jumping onto the boats that were there, all on the sides, and they were getting overloaded again. And they were pulling off and firefighters were throwing off their gear and leaping onto the tugs as they were leaving and we probably had 25-30 firefighters in the water floundering because this building had come down and they said the other building was going to come down. So we get on the radio and everyone's panicking and everyone's yelling. That was one of the other occasions when I almost had a heart attack, when that happened; when that building collapsed and it was in Newsweek. I think I included that in the After Action Report. I remember I was on the bridge of the ship and I was like, how long until we get out of here? They said, it's a cold plant. It'll take two hours or so to get the plant up because we had been there for a couple of days. And I was looking for a fire axe to chop off the lines to try to get away, and I can remember looking over at the collapsing building and walking or pacing on the other side of the bridge and thinking, well if I jump in I can swim. Because I'm looking at the building and that was the one they said, it was like 24 inches off of alignment and the front had fallen, and, you know, people are yelling. Like I said, you see the police and the firemen leaping from the pier onto it and not making it, and they're all pulling away, and I was scared. I mean I was really scared I'm looking at the building right in front of me and I said, okay, well I guess this is it and I'm going to die here.
Q: Well it must be strange to be on the water when you're surrounded by buildings that are 40, 50, 60 stories tall?
LT Day: Yeah, and you're doing the math; the trigonometry, and you're saying, boy, is that thing . . .
Q: Yeah, it's coming over on me if it comes over.
LT Day: Yeah, and I can remember like . . . I can say I saw the potential there. Just because everybody else . . . it was all like a herd mentality. Everyone else was running, and scared, and just trampling people. A lot of people got hurt when they were doing that. And really you're caught up in the mob mentality. You know, you thought, the building's going to crush me. And having walked around there and seeing all the carnage, and as I walked through there were fire trucks and cars. Everything was just blown over to the side like Tonka trucks, and I'm thinking, well that thing is going, and then I'd think, okay, well those two buildings kind of fell down on themselves. Okay, maybe that'll happen here. You know I started almost bargaining and reasoning.
Q: Do you look back now to . . . what would you, if a similar type of thing; somebody comes in and parks a radiation bomb and detonates it and you have the same kind of, or similar type of evacuation scenario, what would you do differently?
LT Day: I'd get my family out first. I'd tell them what was going on. I didn't tell my wife right away. She didn't know what . . . when I had left the house that morning I told her I had meeting in the city, so she didn't know for awhile.
Q: Well I guess the question is, is when you hear of an incident now, does terrorism leap to the front of your brain now, as opposed to, say, the kind of slow uptake on this incident? Has it changed the way you'll think about these things in the future?
LT Day: More in consequence management. I mean I was . . . coincidently there was an American Airlines [Flight] 587 crash and I was there at that site. The command sent me there. It was in the Rockaway's. And I'm walking around. I'm seeing the engine and the cowlings and all these parts, and then I thought, this is terrorism, and that was my first thought.
Q: Sure.
LT Day: And I think a lot of other people thought that as well.
Q: Before 9/11 it would have been just another accident.
LT Day: Right.
Q: The vessel that pulled . . . was that one of Activities New York vessels that pulled that wreckage out of the water?
LT Day: They found it. No, but it was an Army Corps . . .
Q: It was an Army Corps barge?
LT Day: Yeah, the crane barge. The same one that . . .
Q: It was the same one that was at North Cove?
LT Day: Yeah, it was the one that was stationed here in the harbor.
Q: Have you . . . you say you have kind of worked through it. Do scenes come back to you in your sleep, or awake?
LT Day: Well yeah. I've had sleepless nights, or actually trouble falling asleep some nights, or if I think about it for awhile. My wife's a labor and delivery nurse and she had a patient whose husband died there, and she told me it was so sad that her husband wasn't there, and I'll start thinking about it, and my kids and, you know, the whole thing. And I'm thinking, she's having her baby and the husband died there.
Q: Yeah.
LT Day: Things like that; something will trigger like that. I mean I've been in the city a few times since then and that doesn't really do it, but certain things like that will really . . .
Q: Did you go back to Ground Zero? Have you been back there in the months afterwards?
LT Day: I went there once, yeah. I didn't really want to. I mean you'll catch a glimpse on the news. Being local they'll show a picture of it. It doesn't look anything like it did.
Q: No, no. How has the Command, do you think, dealt with this in the six or seven months since then, just in terms of how they think about it; how its affected Activities New York?
LT Day: I think . . . how has it affected us?
Q: In terms of things like unit cohesion, morale, those kinds of things?
LT Day: Oh sure, yeah. You know there's a feeling of instability, I think, to a certain degree. That we went through this large-scale event and we're able to do a good job at it. And well . . . and then part of it, I mean a lot of us are leaving now. You know Admiral Bennis left a couple of weeks ago and there's going to be a big turnover. But I think as that experience goes throughout the Coast Guard, you know, it's a good thing.
Q: You say everybody's dispersing. What are you going . . . is there a sense that you need to leave something tangible behind, either on the walls or to say that we were here when it happened, and responded?
LT Day: No, I don't think so.
Q: I think that's a fascinating point that this experience is going to fan out sort of through the Service and I wonder what it will leave behind here.
LT Day: Yeah, I don't know. I don't have a feel for that. I suppose there will be a reunion in 20 years or something of the units.
Q: Where do you see yourself in five or ten years? Do you see yourself still in the Service?
LT Day: Well, I mean I'd like to come back here and be Captain of the Port in New York if I make Captain. I mean I think this is one of the most dynamic ports in the world. Just going to the Naval War College . . . I had applied in May. That takes on a whole new meaning.
Q: So you applied before 9/11?
LT Day: Yeah, the application was sitting there, and I've gotten more phone calls like, wow, you're on the cutting edge of something new there, and especially being a Marine Safety guy; an "M" guy going there. The Board met after 9/11 and I kind of wonder, boy, if that hadn't happened would I be going there?
Q: Would they have taken an "M" guy?
LT Day: Yeah, because you know, they picked five guys and there are five alternates, and all the other nine are "O" guys on the cutters; XOs, and COs.
Q: Well certainly Port Safety and Security is going to be right at the top of their list; Force Protection and all those issues.
LT Day: I think I'd like to go to a Joint Chiefs of Staff job or I'd like to go to something in DoD [Department of Defense] to kind of say, hey, this is what we can do and this what I can tell you. This is the credibility. This is what the Coast Guard brings to it and just to have that part factored into the equation. And then I can . . . you know, I think sometimes there's a little bit of talking about the Coast Guard. You know, what they bring to it. But at least it would be a nice thing. You know, I - as a Lieutenant - was there coordinating the rescue of - and I'm just a lieutenant - and this is what we did. We brought 800 tractor truckloads of supplies across. I don't know how many people . . .
Q: Well it's a good point because on a number of levels I was talking to Dr. [Robert] Browning; the Coast Guard Historian, this morning in Washington and telling him about the interviews I've done with the helo pilots on Cape Cod on Tuesday.
END OF INTERVIEW
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