The emergency operations center had been shut because of fears that terrorists would fly a third plane into it. The expensive 800-megahertz interagency radios were all in the trunks of cars, unused, because no one with clout in the city government ever got around to pressing the issue. Peruggia himself was not carrying a fire ground radio that morning, because his ordinary assignment did not call for it. In the world capital of communications, he had only one way to get the engineer’s assessment to the chief of the Fire Department: to send a messenger dodging across acres of flaming debris and
...more
