NYC Mayor: Encrypt NYPD Radio Traffic… And Hide 9/11 WTC Files
NYC Mayor Eric Adams has a transparency problem.
By Bob Hennelly
The day after City & State published an analysis of the Adams administration lack of transparency, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams blasted the Mayor’s encrypting of NYPD radio traffic and his continued suppression of the City’s 9/11 WTC files that would shed light on what the city knew and when it knew it about the toxic air in and around lower Manhattan.
“I think that there is a problem,” Speaker Adams said in response to a Work-Bites question at her pre-stated press conference. “And it is problematic whenever we don’t have transparency that people need and deserve. We can only get better by being held accountable for the work that we are doing so by holding back that information we cannot improve ourselves. There has to be a check and balance. There has to be transparency. That’s the only way we are going to get our jobs right.”
Both the encryption of police radio traffic, which the city quietly started in Brooklyn North this past summer, and the concealing of the city’s 9/11 WTC files are issues that Mayor Adams, as a former NYPD Captain and 9/11 WTC responder, is well versed in. Ironically, it was the failure of New York City’s FDNY fire radios, along with the lack of communication between the NYPD and FDNY on the day of the attack, which was flagged by the 9/11 Commission as problematic on the day of the attack that saw 343 FDNY members lose their lives as well as dozens of other first responders.
This past September, the number of FDNY firefighters that have died from their toxic occupational exposure at the WTC site exceeded the number lost on the day of the attack.
Both the encryption of NYPD police radio transmissions and Adams’ fierce resistance to complying with a long-standing Congressional request for the release of the City’s 9/11 WTC files from when the Giuliani administration went along with the U.S. EPA’s false representation that the air in lower Manhattan was “safe to breathe” would seem to represent a radical departure from Mayor Adams commitment to transparency at the outset of his term.
In February of 2022, Mayor Adams signed Executive Order 6 which committed his administration to “respect and protect the right of free speech and the right to peaceful protest; and provide detailed information about its policies, practices, and activities in publicly accessible ways.”
In his remarks to the press at the time, Mayor Adams told reporters it was his goal “to be as transparent [as possible] to make sure we regain the faith and trust in government.” He referenced his time as an NYPD officer “on the ground” during Occupy Wall Street when “we saw members of the press who were arrested — who were harassed — who were not allowed to cover the story even those who were wearing their press passes.”
Council Member Alexa Aviles (D-Dist. 38) echoed Speaker Adams alarm over both the administration’s move to encrypt NYPD police radio transmissions and its refusal to release the Giuliani-era 9/11 WTC files.
“I am deeply concerned about not only this policy rollback, but the general rollback around transparency policies that this administration appears to be engaged in,” Aviles told Work-Bites as she left City Hall. “As far as the 9/11 WTC documents, I am concerned that these, like all public documents, are funded by taxpayer dollars and should be released to the public.”
Council Member Carlina Rivera (D-2nd Dist.) saw the NYPD’s unilateral encryption as a major undermining of the news media and the City Council’s oversight role in holding the police accountable for how they operate.
“I know that at the very least the Council is very dependent on [breaking news] reporting, especially related to public safety issues,” Rivera told Work-Bites. “As a former chair of the criminal justice committee, I really depended on reporters to actually alert me as to when something as serious as a death occurred on Rikers. I know you asked about the NYPD’s encryption of the radios, but all of it is related. I think that making sure the public holds agencies and even electeds accountable is important.”
As for the Giuliani 9/11 WTC files Rivera was adamant that “for a true public accounting this sort of information has to be available to the public.”
NEVER FORGET: SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
In the twenty plus years since the attack, the 9/11 WTC Victims Compensation Fund has paid out over $13 billion and processed 70,000 claims to first responders and survivors. The 9/11 WTC Health Program has over 86,000 first responders and 41,000 civilian survivors enrolled from every state in the union. Close to 70 percent of the program participants suffer from more than one certified health condition including close to 70 different kinds of cancer.
In the years since 9/11, thousands more people have died from their toxic exposure to that air than the 2,600 that died the day of the attack. There are currently over 125,000 first responder and civilian survivors enrolled in the 9/11 WTC. Health Program. Over 33,000 have one or more cancers. Potentially thousands of retired New York City civil servants, who were ordered back to their desks at locations like the David Dinkins Municipal Building at One Center, but are not considered 9/11 WTC first responders, suffered a life altering toxic exposure from their chronic exposure to the hot zone. Many of these retirees are currently fighting the attempt by the City of New York to force them off of their traditional Medicare and onto a for-profit Aetna Medicare Advantage plan that the Adams administration has said will help the City save $600 million a year.
Back in the final months of the de Blasio the then chairs of the U.S. House Oversight Committee and the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney wrote the City of New York requesting the release of any documents in the city's possession pertaining to what it knew about the air quality in and around the World Trade Center in the days, weeks and months following the destruction of the World Trade Center by terrorists and the toxic conditions it left behind.
In their letter, then Oversight Committee chair Carolyn B. Maloney and Judiciary Committee head Jerrold Nadler, who co-sponsored the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, wrote that disclosure was critical to "help provide injured and ill 9/11 responders, survivors, and their families a better understanding of what the City knew at the time about the likely scope of the health crisis and when they knew it."
The de Blasio administration responded in a statement, "As we continue to remember both those that died on 9/11 and those that passed away years later from toxic dust, we will not forget the lessons we learned that day. We will review the letter."
Three days after the 9/11 attack, Christine Todd Whitman, then-head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, told reporters that "the good news continues to be that air samples we have taken have all been at levels that cause us no concern." Two years later, an investigation by the EPA Inspector General found that the agency "did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement" when it did.
"Air-monitoring data was lacking for several pollutants of concern," the Inspector General concluded. The report stated that President George W. Bush's White House Council on Environmental Quality heavily edited the EPA press releases "to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones."
The IG found that the Council described the readings as just "slightly above" the limit, despite the fact that samples taken indicated asbestos levels in lower Manhattan were double or even triple the EPA's limit.
When the agency watchdog tried to determine who had written the press releases, investigators "were unable to identify any EPA official who claimed ownership," because they were told by the EPA Chief of Staff that there was "joint ownership between EPA and the White House," which gave final approval.
U.S. Reps. Maloney and Nadler cited those findings in their letter to Mayor deBlasio, writing, "This report outlined what the federal government knew about the extent of the problem and the clear health threat, after the EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman had repeatedly said that the 'air was safe to breathe.' However, we have yet to see a full accounting of what then-Mayor Giuliani and his administration knew at the time."
In addition to the Congressional request, which was re-issued to Mayor Adams from Rep. Nadler and Maloney’s successor Rep. Dan. Goldman (D-NY), lawyers Andrew Carboy and Matthew McCauley, who represent 9/11 WTC first responders, have longstanding Freedom of Information Law requests that the Adams administration has steadfastly denied according to the Daily News.
“We are aware of requests to produce city documents on the aftermath of the attacks which would require extensive legal review to identify privileged material and liability risk and are exploring ways to determine the cost of such a review,” a Mayoral spokesperson told the Daily News.
Back when Congress first asked for the City files, Kimberly Flynn, the executive director of 9/11 Environmental Action, and Rob Spencer, director of media services for the Organization of Staff Analysts, who are co-chairs of the WTC Health Program Survivor Steering Committee, wrote to the Chief-Leader, "In the earliest days after the collapse of the towers, the City rather than the federal government led the initial disaster response. In addition, the City Department of Health issued hazardous guidance to those who lived or worked in Lower Manhattan below Canal Street, such as a recommendation to clean up potentially asbestos-contaminated dust in interior spaces using a wet rag and a mop. Respiratory protection was not mentioned."
They continued, "For these reasons and many more, Representatives Maloney and Nadler's request for full disclosure by the City of information about its decision-making and the origins of its guidance is welcome and the release of the information long overdue. We need to understand the failures of decision-making after 9/11 that led to decades of suffering and illness. Going forward, we cannot afford to repeat these mistakes."
Michael Barasch, a leading 9/11 attorney, said the city had a "moral obligation" as an employer to fully disclose what it knew and when it knew it about the conditions in and around lower Manhattan on 9/11 and in the months after the site was being remediated.
"If we learned that our city and other government agencies lied to us, why should we believe them next time unless they were to come out and say we were wrong — we should have shared this information — it's a trust issue," Barasch told Work-Bites. "What the city can do now that would make a difference as one of the biggest employers in lower-Manhattan for their transgressions two decades ago, by reaching out to their former employees and letting them know what benefits are available to them."
As of this June, under the 9/11 Notice Act signed into law by Gov. Hochul last September, employers will be obligated to inform current or former employees who may have experienced a qualifying 9/11 WTC exposure of the existence of the Victims Compensation Fund and the 9/11 WTC Health Program.
IT’S FOR YOUR SAFETY
At a November City Council hearing on the encryption program Reuben Beltran, Chief of the NYPD’s Information Technology Bureau, told the Council panel encryption was “necessary to ensure operational safety and security” adding that “criminal groups” had been “known to monitor” NYPD radio traffic “in order to strike vulnerable areas when officers are required to respond to events at other locations.”
Beltran said the NYPD had documented at least 60 instances where the agency recovered police scanners from burglary teams they apprehended who were using the real time transmissions for their own situational awareness. The NYPD’s tech boss also referenced instances during the George Floyd civil disturbances in 2020 where social media was used to alert protestors and looters of the latest police deployments.
The shift to the controversial encryption program is part of close to $400 million makeover of the NYPD’s decades-old analog radio network to a state of the art digital system. The long overdue upgrade permits the department, for the first time since the advent of radios, to conceal its transmissions from the public, the news media and other first-responding agencies, as well as neighboring jurisdictions.
According to Council Member Jennifer Gutierrez (D-34th Dist.), chair of the Council’s Committee on Technology, the NYPD encryption was first rolled out in the 90th, 93rd and 94th precincts. Beltran told the City Council the encryption protocol would be citywide by the end of the year. At the hearing several Council members expressed serious concerns about the loss of real time transparency for the city’s news media outlets, the general public that has always monitored the police radio traffic as well as professional and voluntary Emergency Medical Services crews.
Beltran dismissed the concerns noting that “hundreds of police agencies have gone encrypted with no problem” and that while the news media might “lose a source of ledes” for stories, the New York media he knew “was very resourceful” and would figure it out. As far as other first responders like EMS, Beltran said the NYPD had plans to integrate them as the rollout progressed.
EMS WORKERS AT RISK NOW
Lt. Vincent Variale, president of DC 37’s Local 3621 which represents the FDNY’s EMS officers’ says the City’s refusal to release the Giuliani 9/11 WTC files is unconscionable.
“It’s been 23 years and my members and their families have a right to know what the city knew and when it knew it — it’s been long enough,” Variale said.
Variale told Work-Bites he’s concerned right now about the impact on his members working in Brooklyn North where the NYPD has already encrypted their real time transmissions as well as on response times which have already been significantly deteriorating.
“It’s not like it used to be when you could listen to all the police channels and know specifically where the danger was — like if there was a shooting going on and you could actually start responding while also avoiding getting caught in the middle of it,” Variale said. “Here’s a classic example — you have a shooting and EMS rolls up to the scene and they have no clue the shooter is still there or that the police are running after the shooter in the very same direction of where one of our crews is located. We dropped the ball here put the cart before the horse here—they should have worked out access for us and all the other professional as well as for all the volunteer EMS unites that we rely on from Day One of this rollout.”
“We were one of the first public unions to endorse Mayor Adams and he has not delivered on one of his campaign promises to us and now, with this increasing lack of transparency, we are going backwards fast,” Variale said.
Charles Jennings is an Associate Professor in John Jay’s Department of Security, Fire and Emergency Management, as well as the director of the Christian Regenhard Center for Emergency Response Studies. He also served as the deputy commissioner of Public Safety for White Plains. Jennings has tracked the national debate over police departments encrypting their radio traffic amidst a growing movement for increased transparency in the wake of the George Floyd police murder. He predicted encryption would shield the NYPD from informed scrutiny.
“When things don’t go right how are you going to know they didn’t go right — you are never going to know if you count exclusively on the police department to tell you because they are going to give you the cleaned up time frame for good or for bad on how things may have played out,” Jennings said.