by Jennifer C. Hunt

Dave Martinez was driving in the Bronx when his partner, Brad English, noticed thick, black smoke coming from a building a few blocks away. It was around 12:45 p.m. on December 21, 2010 and the two ASPCA officers were on their way to a job when they suddenly changed course and headed towards the burning apartment building on Grand Concourse Avenue, about a mile from Yankee Stadium.

An explosion of flames seemed to engulf the structure and spew fire out of the windows on the top floors as the officers pulled up to the scene.  Martinez called 911, identified himself as a retired MOS (Member of the Service-NYPD), and requested fire apparatus and EMS “forthwith.”… . “I’ve got to get in the building.  I’ve got to get people out!” He said, hung up the phone, and ran into the building to begin the evacuation.

Meanwhile, a man with an infant ran up to the car where Brad English was manning the radio. At first, he thought the baby was dead. He’d suffered smoke inhalation and his color was off. Then he saw that the infant was moving his arms. English put the father and his baby in the vehicle to help keep them warm until EMS arrived with the equipment to administer aid.  English called Martinez on the radio to alert him as to what was going on but the reception was bad inside the building and he didn’t hear.

“So now I’m in the building,” Martinez explained, “ I ran in and evacuated everyone I could from the first to the fourth floor. On the fourth floor, I ran into this civilian, a young guy about 20 years old, and I told him I needed his help. We had to get the people out and I asked him if he would continue to evacuate the floors behind me as I ran upstairs. He said o.k. He worked on [two floors] while I ran up to the top. There, I found a woman in the hallway. She was in shock and crying. I told her, ‘We gotta go. I’ve gotta get you out of here!’  She told me her husband was still in the apartment and she couldn’t leave. When I opened the door to her apartment, I was smothered in smoke and heat and had to back up and get out. I told her I couldn’t make it and that we had to leave. ‘We gotta go. Either we go or we die,” I said.  Her friend and another woman came out and helped me get the woman downstairs.  While I’m walking down to the first floor, I meet the firefighters climbing up and told them about the man on the seventh floor. “

Less than a minute later, Martinez was outside and next to his car. That’s when he saw English with the father and baby inside.  English explained that he’d talked to the guys in the EMS truck that was now sitting a few yards away. “I got an infant in a vehicle with possible smoke inhalation. Can you come and take a look at the baby?” English had told EMS. Just as he was finishing the last few words of the sentence, an EMS  supervisor shouted to his men to, “Meet me on the other side .” English watched them gun the engine and drive across the street.

Martinez then ran up to the ambulance just as the EMS personnel were putting on their turnout gear. “It was one of the most frustrating things,” he explained. “They wouldn’t even look at the baby. I just couldn’t believe what was going on. Maybe they didn’t understand what me and Brad were trying to tell them.”

Then Martinez saw a second ambulance pulling up and he and English flagged it down. A woman EMS worker and her Hispanic partner slammed on the breaks, ran out, provided first aid to the baby, and then loaded him and his father into the bus to take them to the hospital.

Relieved, Martinez looked around for the NYPD duty captain to give him a report but there wasn’t a captain there. Then he saw a young sergeant. The sergeant explained that he was responsible for writing up the “49” police incident report. Martinez said he was a retired MOS and now an animal cop who worked for the ASPCA. Then he explained the details of what had transpired and asked the sergeant to include him and his partner in the report as they had to account for their time to their boss.

When Martinez got a copy of the 49 police incident report from a friend the next day, neither he nor his partner’s actions were mentioned.

140-150 firefighters were called out to battle the fire that day.  Only six civilians suffered minor injuries. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k-qfQoKcGw

If it weren’t for the actions of retired NYPD Intelligence Detective and former Emergency Service cop , Dave Martinez and retired NYPD narcotics detective Brad English, there would have been more injuries and possibly deaths. Meanwhile, Martinez and English were both happy to learn that the man who they’d thought was trapped on the top floor had managed to get out of the apartment by way of the fire escape.

Dave Martinez (alias Keith Ryan in Seven Shots) is one of the six Emergency Service officers who was on the entry team that aborted New York City’s first suicide bombing in 1997. Those of you who have read Seven Shots will recognize him as one of the two officers who fired his weapon, critically wounding both suspects.

Brad English is the brother of retired Emergency Service sergeant, John English, who was also on the entry team and one of the main “characters” in the book. Brad English has his own proud history in the NYPD that my book doesn’t touch upon.

It seems ironic that the GOP used 9/11 as part of its justification for invading Iraq. GOP member, Rudy Giuliani used 9/11 to bolster his campaign for a third term as Mayor of New York City. He also used 9/11 to advertise his leadership in his run for the U.S. presidency.

Yet, when it comes down to supporting a bill that would help cover the health care of those who were involved in the rescue and recovery attempts in the wake of the World Trade Center disaster, the GOP turns its back. I don’t know what Rudy thinks. I suppose he supports the GOP stance against taxing the very rich, a move that would help fund the bill providing medical aid for the health-victims of 9/11.

Senate Democrats thus failed to win a vote to even open debate on a bill that would provide medical benefits and compensation for emergency workers who were first on the scene of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

This country has a long and shameful history of denying compensation to those who “we” put at risk.  In the 1950s, “we” used soldiers as guinea pigs, exposing them to radiation while testing atomic bombs. Later, when they began to get sick and die, benefits were denied because the veterans couldn’t prove a relationship between the cancers they suffered and  exposure to radiation years before.

In fact, it wasn’t particularly difficult to prove a relationship between radiation exposure and illness – all that was needed was records showing who was exposed and who was not and if there was a significant health difference between the relevant groups.

The fact that there was a fire at the government facility that contained records of radiation exposure didn’t help. It’s curious that the fire occurred while lawsuits were being filed.

In one location in which a bomb was detonated, veterans were required to wear two patches to measure radiation. Patch 1 read lower than patch 2 because patch 1 did not have readings high enough. Patch 2 showed a lethal amount of radiation although its numbers didn’t go high enough.

Only the results of patch 1 were publicized. The results of patch 2 were kept secret and carried around in a briefcase chained to someone’s wrist when the data needed to transport to another location from where it was secretly kept.

There’s also the case of Agent Orange. Vietnam veterans struggled for years to get benefits from the veterans’ administration. They also filed a class action suit against DOW and Monsanto chemical corporations. Both companies sold Agent Orange to the government to use as a defoliant in Vietnam although executives and lower ranking personnel knew that Agent Orange was toxic to human beings because it contained dioxin.

The lawsuit against DOW was eventually settled.  The veterans received a pittance of the profits the chemical companies made, creating a justification for them to repeat similar actions regardless of who they hurt.  BP’s actions surrounding the Gulf oil spill provide a similar scenario of corporations who put profits ahead of peoples’ lives and a government that doesn’t safe guard its citizens’ welfare and health.

OSHA – the government organization that is supposed to protect the public against man-made environmental hazards – has never been the same since President Ronald Reagan flushed it of personnel and instituted measures that limited it’s power to investigate corporations that wrote letters claiming they voluntarily complied with government regulations.

History repeats itself about ten years after 9/11. Civilian, police and firemen, who “we” once called heroes, now are seen as  responsible for the illnesses that they incurred as a result of their exposure to the toxic chemicals that floated around the pit- the charred metal, ground glass, fuel, and other noxious gases that combined with the pulverized bone and human flesh that permeated the pores of workers’ skin and saturated the air they breathed.

I am mildly disturbed to discover that when the subject of my book Seven Shots: An NYPD Raid on a Terrorist Cell arises on some police websites, police officers sometimes respond with comments such as “yes it’s an updated version” and refer to Sam Katz’s book, written a number of years ago, entitled Jihad in Brooklyn.

The only similarity between the two books is that they both devote chapters to the 1997 raid on a terrorist cell in Brooklyn by members of the NYPD Emergency Service unit. Otherwise they are completely different works.

l. Katz relied mostly on information provided by the character I call Mancini, the Captain in ESU at the time of the raid, and also the lieutenant who I give a pseudonym. He apparently did other brief interviews with a few of the officers on the entry team. He did not interview the two shooters or their sergeant or high ranking commanders in the Special Operations Division and others in the NYPD who had relevant information about the incident.

2. Katz distorts many aspects of what occurred before, during and after the raid. For example, he has the Captain and Lieutenant doing things they didn’t do. He is also very disrespectful to the young Muslim man who came forward to inform the police about the plan to detonate the bombs in the subway.

3. Katz spends the first half of his book talking about Palestine and giving his views about some of the conditions that might result in the area being a breeding ground for terrorism. The last half of the book concerns a not very well researched version of the raid that makes it appear as if  the police officers who had been part of the Housing Police before Housing merged with the NYPD, were responsible for most of the team’s accomplishments.

4. My book explores the raid and includes the two shooters’ point of view, Joe Dolan and Dave Martinez (Keith Ryan in the book). It also includes sergeant John English’s perspective and Bomb Squad detectives Rich Teemsma and Paul Yurkiw as well as that of high ranking commanders in the Special Operations Division and also that of others in high positions in the NYPD.

5. Most important, my book examines the political issues that arose in the wake of the raid and undermined the officers’ sense of victory. I highlight the ugliness of the internal politics that permeates the Department and undermines the morale of committed police officers. At the same time, I try to examine its logic and the purpose it serves.

6. I follow the major characters from the raid in 1997 through 9/11 when they participated in the rescue and recovery attempts surrounding the World Trade Center Disaster.

7. The last chapter raises a number of questions about issues that arose in the raid and during its aftermath.

IN CONCLUSION, MY BOOK IS NOTHING LIKE  JIHAD IN BROOKLYN AND IS CERTAINLY NOT AN UPDATED VERSION OF THAT BOOK.

John Allison is a human terrain team social scientist who went through training at Fort Leavenworth and then resigned before going down range. In the last few days, he’s published a 54 page scathing critique of HTS and what he calls the military industrial complex in the blog,  Zero Anthropology (http://zeroanthropology.net/2010/12/05/the-leavenworth-diary-double-agent-anthropologist-inside-the-human-terrain-system/). He quotes  scholar David Price at various points, which added to my initial impression that maybe he’d have something intelligent to say about the relevant debate.

He doesn’t. I’m disappointed. His writing amounts to an insider report that promises revelations of scandalous proportions but turns into a polemical diatribe against HTS and the military industrial complex with minimal ethnographic or other support for most of his assertions.

I can’t  figure out if he’s an archeologist or a cultural anthropologist. In either case,(1) he doesn’t appear to have applied his training to understanding the culture of the military, the dynamics between  social scientists and defense contractors with prior military experience, and between contractors and active duty military personnel associated with various units that are trained in different ways. He’s also not tried to understand the dynamics of the multitude of organizations involved in HTS and how they contribute to the good and bad in the program.

Allison admits that he entered the program with the notion of changing the military mindset and then goes on to criticize the military for trying to do the same thing in Afghanistan – by encouraging Americanization (colonialism/ideological imperialism of whatever you want to call it ) and the implementation of a government that will work in the interests of the U.S.  (I don’t dispute the latter goal. I’m just noting the contradiction in the way Allison thinks).

He seems to view his photographs of the building in which HTS is housed as uncovering the location of some kind of black-ops operation because training takes place in a basement, and the door is dark and labeled in such a way as to discourage unauthorized persons from entry. BIG DEAL!!! You have to get an I.D. to go upstairs in just about any building in New York City as well as police and other security related facilities. That doesn’t mean these buildings house big secrets or some sort of off the books torture chamber for detainees (no he doesn’t claim that – it’s just a metaphor).

The sad part of his report is that he doesn’t appear to  have developed the kind of relationships with retired military and active duty personnel that would allow them to share insights into their way of thinking and create a dialogue. I can guarantee they don’t all think alike.

Allison claims that HTS is mainly a form of PR to make the public think we are mainly involved in the touchy- feely politics of cultural understanding rather than lethal operations down range. This isn’t the case. The military is involved in both types of operations and HTS, whether successful or not, wasn’t and isn’t intended to serve PR purposes alone. Some in HTS believe in the COIN mission of winning hearts and minds and would find it problematic to get involved directly in kinetic operations. Others wouldn’t think twice. In either case, the counterinsurgency goal of HTS teams is a lot more complex than Allison claims.

I agree with Allison on a few things and sort of agree on a few others but think he’s being simplistic:

l. I don’t like current reporting on the war(s). My reasons are different from Allison’s.  I don’t like that we don’t see the dead and mutilated bodies of our soldiers, “the enemy,” or the civilians who are killed accidentally or as part of some other type of collateral damage. The war is sanitized for public consumption and so we remain passive in letting it go on.

2. Soldiers are trained to kill and to obey their commanders and go through the chain of command. This means that many of those in HTS who have been or are in the military may have fewer qualms about how HTS intelligence (“data”) is used by brigade commanders than some social scientists who are trained to protect human subjects. At the same time, I know of military personnel who are adamantly opposed to HTS getting involved in lethal operations and one or two social scientists who couldn’t care less if they did.

3. He is right, from what I have heard, that the training in research methods is a waste of time.

4.He claims  BAE and the subcontractor that hired him are in cahoots because someone from BAE did his exit interview rather than someone in his firm. That’s totally ridiculous! The person at BAE contractors was assigned the role of facilitating the exit of personnel associated with HTS. Whether or not Allison’s subcontractor also has an exit procedure is up to them. Most subcontractors do. Maybe his didn’t. Sure the prime and its subcontractors attempt to have good relationships. After all both profit from sending qualified personnel down range.  Allison appears to advocate a conspiracy theory about HTS and the contracting world that does not do justice to the complexity of the relationships.

On the other hand, a network analysis of the relationships between difference defense contractors down range and at home and members of congress and high ranking persons in the  military etc. would be  illuminating although I don’t know what it would illuminate.

6. Out of the blue, Allison claims that human terrain teams are involved in targeting. He gives no support to his claim. This may be true in some cases as a result of team decisions. It may be true in others as a result of individuals secretly sharing information. It may not be true in yet others, depending on the team. Yes. It’s true that brigade commanders can  use information in any way they see fit and that could include targeting. It’s still a very far stretch to go from Allison’s experience in training to claiming that HTTs are routinely used in purposefully gathering intelligence for targeting.

In summary – Allison’s purported expose hits the dust and fizzles out under the weight of the author’s megalomania (his I know everything and more than you do mentality) and his lack of ability to use the skills in anthropology he apparently was taught. On the other hand, maybe he’s an archeologist and knows a lot about how to construct history from artifacts but not much about people and organizations. Then it’s the fault of HTS for  hiring him.

(1) I have deleted the inflammatory “shame on him” that appeared in the original post.

(2) I have also deleted a reference to archeologists that could be interpreted as disrespectful to the field