Iranian Born Novelist Salar Abdoh

DATE October 2, 2001 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Professor Salar Abdoh talks about his new book and
discusses his life as an Iranian-born citizen
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Writer Salar Abdoh tried to penetrate the lives of terrorists in his novel,
"The Poet Game," which was published last year. Ever since September 11th,
he's felt as if he's living in a time of his own fiction. His novel is about
an Iranian undercover operative named Sami Amir, who's sent to the US to
thwart a plot by Islamist terrorists to bomb major Manhattan monuments as a
follow-up to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Author Salar Abdoh was born in Iran to a very wealthy family. In 1980, after
the revolution in Iran, Abdoh fled to America with his two brothers and his
father, who was targeted for execution. Salar Abdoh was 14. His father died
shortly after they got to the US.

Abdoh now teaches at the Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City
University of New York. He was holding class in an annex about a block away
from the World Trade Center when it was attacked.

Professor SALAR ABDOH (Author, "The Poet Game"): I had started to teach for
about 10 minutes and most of my students are freshmen, and when the first
plane it, we had no idea it was a plane. It sounded like a--it was a very,
very huge noise, but we're used to these sorts of noises in New York. We
thought maybe it's a garbage truck. And in retrospect, it almost seems
grotesque, but I turned to my students, and as a joke, I said, `Well, maybe
they hit the World Trade Center again.' And we all sort of smiled and stuck
our noses to the window, and from that vantage point we couldn't really see
much except a lot flying paper. And then this sort of harassed old
gentleman--I don't know where he came from--he ran into our room and told us
to get out, so we did.

And at that time, when we came to the street and we saw this great hole in the
sky, and people have different stories about what had happened--I lost my
glasses in the mayhem, but I also lost sight of my students after that. Then
I retreated a few blocks behind, and I was there when the two buildings
collapsed completely.

GROSS: You've described yourself as being obsessed with terrorism. Now I
think everybody's obsessed with terrorism, but why were you obsessed with it
before?

Prof. ABDOH: Because I've lived in the Middle East. I've seen the elements
that can bring terrorism about. I've seen where it feeds from. And I've also
seen its destructions. I came to a point where I realized that not much was
being written about the subject. Certainly, there were people whom I call in
my article sort of the cult of counterterrorism. There were these people, but
I always felt that somebody, particularly from my part of the world, needed to
address this issue at least in fiction, if not in other mediums of literature.
When you get into the minds of these people--like, for instance, this man,
Mohamed Atta; what brought him to this point? I wanted to know that. I
needed to get into his mind and the mind of others.

GROSS: You said you'd seen places in the Middle East where terrorism feeds
from. What--give us an example of something that you saw.

Prof. ABDOH: Well, when I came back to the Middle East, I was in a peculiar
situation. When the revolution in Iran happened, my father was set to be
executed and, you know, he had to escape the country quickly. And so it took
awhile for me to go back to the Middle East because I felt like I needed to.
I knew what I was going to write about by then--the sorts of things I wanted
to write about.

When I went back I had to (technical difficulties) all these struggles for
power, not just in the government, but among people. For instance, everything
that my family had owned had been confiscated. One reason I was there was to
try to get things back. And in order to do that I had to deal with a variety
of people, a lot of them unsavory people that I can't really mention the names
or individuals or organizations on radio, but I got to see how these people
operate; where their minds are at and how far they're willing to go to get
their way. And I found out very soon that there was a whole--in that part of
the world nothing--everything is sort of intermixed and it both poses a
fascinating subject for a writer to write about and imposes a great danger for
people who are going to combat it, because they're going to come up with a
whole range of people who, on the surface, might not seem connected, but they
really are.

GROSS: I'd actually like you to do a short reading from "The Poet Game." And
this, you know, has to do with the culture clash and, also, a little bit of
the reason--you know, everybody's asking me, `Why are Americans so hated?'
So, anyway, if you could do this reading for us.

Prof. ABDOH: This is a scene that happens in the basement of a falafel shop,
where Sami has penetrated these terrorists and would-be terrorists. And
he's trying to stop them, but in the meantime he has reflections about what
all of this is about. So I'm going to read.

(Reading) `Somebody had to stand in the way of those here that Koran touting
messengers of God from across town, right? Stand in the way of Section 19 and
the men who bankroll these agendas. All of which had brought Sami to here and
now, sitting in the basement of a small falafel joint in the heart of
Greenwich Village in Manhattan with three other men, an American, a Libyan and
another American of Lebanese descent, who were speaking of infidels and body
counts the way other men might speak of good books and great basketball dunks.
Plotting destruction was so abominably easy. Sami wondered if all those fresh
faces he'd seen on the streets above him; the college kids and the street
musicians and the hipsters and the cappuccino-sipping tourists in the cafes
off McDougal Street, the leather-clad, pony-tailed, earring in one ear, tough
guys and their admirers--he wondered if any of these people had any idea just
how perfectly they represented everything the men in the basement of the
falafel place wished to annihilate.'

GROSS: Now what have you come to understand that certain people hate about
those people you're describing--the young students, the hipsters, the people
with the pierced earring? I mean, why does that represent everything that
these would-be terrorists hate?

Prof. ABDOH: I've been thinking about this often, especially in the past
three weeks. I think one thing that the world, America has to realize is that
hatred of America has not only become institutionalized; in a way, it has
become chic in many parts of the world. To go into why this is the case, we
would have to talk about the politics of the world and the Middle East. Some
of the things the US government has done through the decades--I certainly
don't agree with people who just, offhandedly, put down all of American policy
around the world as evil, but there are reasons for all of these things and
there--the problem at this point is some things are just too late. This
institutionalization of hatred is something very difficult to fight against.
Look at America having forced--for the Muslims, basically, maybe a bit late,
but they did fight for the Bosnian Muslims, for Kosovo and so on and so forth.
And nobody even talks about it in that part of the world.

GROSS: You talk about the young, would-be terrorists' real grievances and,
also, their misunderstandings and distortions.

Prof. ABDOH: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: What are some of the real grievances, and where do you think their
misunderstandings and distortions come in?

Prof. ABDOH: Well, I think, certainly not from where I come from in Iran.
I'll start by saying, for instance, the Iranians, in general, except a
minority clergy. They really don't care as much about the Israeli-Palestinian
situation. This is neither a good thing or a bad thing. It's just a reality
because they're so removed from that fight.

But as far as Arabs goes, I've thought quite a bit about this and I've seen
from the many Arabs I've known through the years--there really does seem to be
a sense of all or nothing. And when the question of Israel comes up, no
matter how decent the person is or how logical, as soon as you raise the
question of Israel, it's as if everything, all logic goes through--out the
window, as if, you know, they see Israel as evil and that's all there is to
it. And they want an end to it. There's no sense of compromise. And, on the
other hand, Israelis have their own problems, but at least--and this is the
thing that I really have a problem as a person who's Muslim-born--for whatever
you can say about the Jews and Israelis, there is dialog among them about this
issue. Whereas in the Arab world, especially, there's very little dialog.
There is this sense of all-or-nothingness.

And some of--I hold the Arab, the Muslim-American community somewhat
responsible for this. I don't want to go on too long about this issue, but
I've noticed in the past few weeks what I call the `we are so misunderstood'
syndrome among Muslim-Americans. And some of that is understandable, but I
think we're living in a times where if you're a Muslim, not like me, who
doesn't--who's not a practicing Muslim and is removed from that particular
thing, but if you're an engaged Muslim and you truly are against these acts of
terror, if you're against some of the things that are going on in your home
countries, then you need to organize. You need to make yourselves heard. You
need to try to reach out to other denominations, whether they're Jews or
Christians, and try to show the world that you are not with this, and not to
just come on television or radio once in a while, quote a part of the Koran
that says `Thou shalt not kill innocent people,' because, certainly, there are
parts of the Koran, if anybody's bothered to read it, that are very open to
radical translation, both about the, quote, "unbelievers" and, specifically,
the Jews. And I think Muslim-Americans, more than any Muslims in the world,
have a responsibility now and they need to raise--rise to the occasion.

GROSS: Are statements like this making you popular or unpopular among
Arab-Americans who you know?

Prof. ABDOH: Well, it depends who you talk to. I've given readings for
American audiences where they've--some people in the audience were certain,
beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I must be an Iranian intelligence agent to
know all these things. And I've given readings for Iranian audiences in
places like California where I've been accused of working for the CIA. This
all comes with the territory about being a writer.

On the other hand about my opinions, I think a writer does not necessarily
have to be engaged, just as the Muslim-Americans don't have to be engaged, but
I'm living in a time in history and a place in history where I feel like
nobody else is really speaking and I have to speak. I have to educate people,
even if it's to my own detriment.

GROSS: My guest is Salar Abdoh, author of the novel "The Poet Game." We'll
talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest, Salar Abdoh, is an Iranian-born writer. His novel, "The
Poet Game," is about an undercover operative who's trying to infiltrate an
Islamic group rumored to be plotting to blow up New York landmarks.

Let's talk a little bit about your story. You and your family came to the
United States from Iran because your father was supposed to be executed. Why
was he scheduled for execution?

Prof. ABDOH: Well, my father was a rather well-known figure in the Iran of
those days. He owned a soccer and a sports complex. He had been a boxer, a
golden gloves champion in America. He'd served in the Korean army--I mean,
American Army during the Korean War. He was kind of a person that was in the
public eye in Iran. And, of course, with all of those things comes a lot of
envy by other people. And when revolutions happen, revolutions, like Balzac
said, brings the detritus of the bottom of the ocean to the top and a lot of
people take out old grudges against each other.

So my father--there was this list of 52 people at the beginning to be killed.
Of course, in the course of the revolution many tens of thousands got killed,
but my father had to leave. Everything we had was confiscated and we came to
Los Angeles, where a lot of Iranians were coming. And it was very difficult
for him, for this man who had been quite powerful and quite wealthy, actually,
in Iran to really be left with nothing. And he died very shortly after; he
didn't last six months. And my brothers and I--my two brothers and I--they
were rather young--and we, basically, just grew on our own from that moment
on.

GROSS: Where was your mother?

Prof. ABDOH: My mother was remarried and in Iran. Really, I didn't see her
for another 15 years after that.

GROSS: So you were about 14, I think, when you moved to the United States.

Prof. ABDOH: Yes, I was.

GROSS: So where did you move after your father died?

Prof. ABDOH: Well, I didn't--I certainly didn't have a regular sort of
existence. I lived, literally, on the streets of Los Angeles for a while.
There were a lot of--I lived in this abandoned hotel on Sunset Boulevard with
a bunch of punk rockers. I mean, it's--it retrospect, it sounds horrendous,
but when you're 14 and 15--my younger brother was even a year younger--it was
just what it was. We accepted it, and we even smiled and laughed about it.

And then I started travelling the country on my own--New Orleans,
Pennsylvania, the Bay area and New York City. I spent some time living in
Coverton House(ph) in New York City, other shelters for under-21 boys and
girls. And it was a strange, adventurous life I would not wish on anybody.

GROSS: Well, I imagine part of what made it strange was that you were not
only going from one culture to another, from Iranian culture to American
culture, but you were also going from rich to poor.

Prof. ABDOH: Absolutely. I was going--within a year's period--even
less--I'd gone from being very wealthy, I mean, to being extremely poor to the
point of, really, we didn't have food to eat. And, you know, I was changing
high schools. You know, I was moving, but I tried to go to school and it just
wasn't working. I was in New York and I had to work. I was a delivery boy,
but I did go to night school and finish.

And then I moved to California at some point and managed to get myself in
Berkeley over there, and I ended up going to City College of City University
of New York for a master's degree in creative writing and I began to write.

GROSS: You were teaching just a block away from the World Trade Center when
it was attacked. How do you think you've been permanently changed by that?

Prof. ABDOH: I've been permanently changed in many, many, many ways. It's
funny. The book I brought to read this passage from, you'll be amazed if you
see it because when the paperback came out a couple--a few months ago, I took
it to my class because I always have a very close relationship with all my
students. And they--I had them sign it or write whatever they want on it.
And when you look at this--these signatures and the writings, you see an
Albanian guy says, `You're a great guy. Let's have a beer some time.' Then a
Serbian girl from Montenegro has said--written, `So-and-so Montenegro, 2001.'
I have students from the West Indies, from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
eastern Europe, Russia, wherever you could dream of and we all come together
in New York City to better our lives. I'm their teacher and they're my
students.

And that really brought home to me that with all the enmities that exist in
the world, here are my students coming from places in the world the people,
literally, are at each other's throats--Albanians from Kosovo, Serbians,
whatever--but, ultimately, when that thing hit, we all suffered. It didn't
matter where we were from. We all suffered and I was concerned for all of
these students and concerned for this city and concerned for the world, at
large, that has come to a point where it might go to war.

GROSS: I regret that we can't talk more about this. We're out of time. I
want to thank you very much for talking with us. And I'm glad that you were
safe after being so close to the World Trade Center when it was attacked.
Thank you very much.

Prof. ABDOH: Thank you, Terry.

GROSS: Salar Abdoh is the author of the novel "The Poet Game." He teaches
at the Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New
York.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

GROSS: Coming up, Christopher Whitcomb talks about his work on the FBI
hostage rescue team. He's written a new memoir called "Cold Zero." And Kevin
Whitehead reviews a new reissue by the late trombonist J.J. Johnson. We're
listening to it now.

(Soundbite of J.J. Johnson music)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Christopher Whitcomb talks about his career on the
FBI Hostage Rescue Team
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

FBI agent Christopher Whitcomb was in his boss's office delivering his letter
of resignation when he saw the World Trade Center attack on TV. We talked to
him about that the day after the attack. We invited him back to share some of
his experiences from his 15 years with the FBI, six of which were spent as a
sniper on the hostage rescue team. He also directed information management
for the Critical Incident Response Group which responds to terrorist attacks.
In Whitcomb's new memoir, "Cold Zero: Inside the FBI Hostage Rescue Team," he
describes working on the team as (technical difficulties).

Mr. CHRISTOPHER WHITCOMB (Author, "Cold Zero"): I think what people don't
understand about tactical work involved in these things--and by tactical work,
I mean the possibility that you'd actually have to run in and resolve
something with violence. We try to stay away from that in the United States
now. We do everything possible to prevent that. But the bottom line is,
sometimes it's the only option. It's the only way out. And the provision to
handle this sort of an eventuality is the Hostage Rescue Team. The FBI put
this group together in 1983 and it's really become the United States' asset in
a terrorist attack.

What they strive to find in people is decisionmakers because they always say
you can teach anyone to shoot, you can teach anyone to run and jump and be a
reasonable athlete, but what is difficult to find is people that can run into
a room, differentiate between threats and the hostages and make instant
life-or-death decisions that are going to have a dramatic impact for many,
many years down the line. That's what I mean when they try to find
decisionmakers, people that are smart enough to know when not to shoot.

GROSS: Now how much discretion did you have as a sniper with the Hostage
Rescue Team?

Mr. WHITCOMB: Ultimately, you have all the discretion. You know, we've had
these well-publicized rules of engagement changes at Ruby Ridge and even
talked about it at Waco and some of these terrible, controversial events, but
bottom line is each person that lies behind a rifle, each person that takes a
handgun when they join the FBI accepts the personal responsibility that what
they do with that weapon falls on their own shoulders and each of them know
that. I mean, these are not uneducated people. These are bright
decisionmakers who've had some accomplishment in other careers before they
come to the FBI. So you give them this kind of a responsibility, this sense
of life-or-death responsibility, and you expect that they are going to make
the decision they have to make, you know, on their own.

GROSS: Just run through for us some of the situations that you were called in
for.

Mr. WHITCOMB: Well, you know, I mean, from the first hour--I think the first
two hours that I joined the FBI, I went out on a bank robbery which turned
bad. Yeah. The bank robber that we found in this house came out of the house
with a .357 caliber handgun, waved it and said he was going to kill the two
people standing at the door. So everybody dove out of their cars and grabbed
shot guns and ran for cover and everything else. And I thought, sitting in
the back of this car, that my goodness, you know, I was an hour on the job and
all of a sudden all hell was breaking loose. And I heard a voice yelling my
name and it was actually my boss of two hours yelling at me to hide behind the
car and put my gun back in my holster because he didn't want me to hurt
anybody.

So I think, you know, you think these scenes are going to play out just like
they do in some television show or some movie and they're never the way they
seem. But it went from there to, you know, many, many different types of
confrontations and bank robberies and things that I've worked--the fugitive
investigations that I've worked in my first office. And then back at HRT,
everything from the Los Angeles riots to Ruby Ridge and Waco and many, many
events.

GROSS: In similar situations you were in, like Waco, you were--well, in Waco
for days and days and days, you were just sitting behind your gun waiting.

Mr. WHITCOMB: You know, that's what it always is, Terry. You know, I wrote
something in my book about it's a lonely profession marked by boredom and rare
moments of thrill or something like that, because that's really what it boils
down to. Many times a Hostage Rescue Team sniper is sent out to do a job, but
almost all of that time is spent doing surveillance. You sit through--look
through a scope, usually a rifle scope because you don't want to carry too
much gear, but usually looking through a scope and providing information.
It's very monotonous, very methodical, you read information, trying to
establish patterns of behavior and things like that. But sometimes, from time
to time, you know, things happen very, very quickly and they don't go the way
that you think they will.

GROSS: How does the world look different through a scope of a gun than it
does if you're just using your eye?

Mr. WHITCOMB: Well, I mean, literally and metaphorically, it's a tunnel. I
mean, you're looking through a very narrowly defined world through this tube
that we call a rifle scope and you can't see what's outside it. So sometimes
you have to find yourself sort of trying to maintain contact outside that.
You get very, very focused on the job; very, very wrapped around that
particular event. And sometimes you have to step back and gain the
perspective to put everything in context. And I think we saw that very
clearly the first time. I know I saw it the first time in my life at Ruby
Ridge, Idaho, and, you know, that's been widely talked about for years and
years and will be for many more years. But that was a perfect example.

GROSS: How?

Mr. WHITCOMB: Well, you know, I remember walking up on this mountain. We'd
been up for 36 hours straight under fairly difficult circumstances with the
flight time and the mount alts and everything like that. We end up in this
freezing weather with a low-cloud cover and a drizzling rain, freezing, just
shivering, you know, the air was in the low 30s as I recall. And we walk up
on this mountainside really having no idea what we were going to find except
that we'd been told that these people inside the cabin had engaged in a
shootout with these marshals. And it was one of my first missions as a sniper
on the Hostage Rescue Team. I'd lie down behind my rifle from this rocking
ledge up above the cabin and within minutes of lying down, after walking--you
know, two hours of walking up there, all of a sudden these people come running
out of the cabin right at me with weapons. It was not something I expected.
It wasn't something I even really thought much about. And there it was
playing out in front of me. And then I'd hear gunfire and things end very,
very quickly after that.

Many times you go up there, you look through the rifle scope, you know your
job, but it ultimately comes down to a life-or-death decision in the blink of
an eye in a split second and it's very difficult to put that in perspective
sometimes if you don't have the experience.

GROSS: Did you have to shoot at Ruby Ridge?

Mr. WHITCOMB: No. But I've said this often that I made the same decision
that Lon Horiuchi made and that I was trying to shoot at Ruby Ridge but
because of my angle, you know, the people moving--I shouldn't say the
people--Kevin Harris, Randy Weaver and the woman that we eventually found out
was his daughter were moving from building to building, from rock to rock,
from tree to tree and there was no opportunity to shoot.

GROSS: Now in Waco, it was I think over 50 days that you were behind your
rifle.

Mr. WHITCOMB: Right, 52 days.

GROSS: Waiting it out. How do you keep your focus?

Mr. WHITCOMB: Well, it's really hard to keep your focus. I mean, literally
it's very difficult to look through a scope for that length of time because it
gives you a colossal headache and you even sometimes get vertigo and lose your
balance because you just--you know, because that is your entire world. It's a
magnified scope and you're focusing on a small object, maybe a window pane,
maybe a door lock, trying to gather information about how that door might
open, about how the window might open, who you see in the window, all of those
things. So literally it's very, very difficult. And figuratively it is also
because once again you get consumed with that world and it's tough to maintain
that focus and stay interested for any length of time. So the way to overcome
that is to try to limit the shifts for an hour or maybe two hours on the scope
and then to rotate your personnel through. So you may have five or six or
eight people in a position, but each of them would only actually be on the
scope for an hour, maybe two hours at a time.

GROSS: So everybody has an assignment. Like your assignment might be the
door or the lock on the door, something really small.

Mr. WHITCOMB: Yeah. Exactly. I mean, you know, in the days leading up to
that final--to April 19th, the day of the fire, each of the snipers would go
on and you would really do a sort of general assessment when your shift began,
and you'd look around and you'd see how the place had changed, what (technical
difficulties) windows because you get to know these people after a time.

I mean, David Koresh had sentries that would come to the windows and they'd
wave. They came on their shifts. They were doing exactly (technical
difficulties). And we got to know each other over the course of two months.
So you'd come on and you'd sort of check things out, see if anything had
changed, make sure that they hadn't cut any new holes for firing ports in the
side of the building, things like that. But then after a time, you know, you
focus on individual things that you might find changed, you know, something
specific. But on that last day when we all knew the gas insertion was going
to begin, each of us was on a rifle, each of us was on a scope and each of us
had a very narrowly defined area that we were watching.

GROSS: Did you ever shoot during the whole siege of Waco?

Mr. WHITCOMB: No. And I think that's something that most people don't
understand that no one, not one of us fired a single round the entire time we
were at Waco. I think that's never been really stated, although most of us
believe that American public takes it for granted, and I think they don't.
What they don't understand is that last day, Koresh and his people fired
hundreds if not thousands of rounds at us throughout the morning from 6 AM
when the gas insertion started, right up until the time of the fire. And no
one ever fired back from anyone in law enforcement, including--I should point
out, that at one point I walked out of the building from behind my scope with
a camera to walk around the side and someone, as the fire grew and as the
flames grew and the smoke swelled around them, someone as one of their last
dying acts on Earth tried to shoot me. And I was standing next to a teammate
when the round went right between our heads, missing us just by no more than a
foot.

So, you know, I think to take--to come that close to getting shot in the head
and quite obviously dying, to have restraint and not to shoot in a situation
like that I think is a testament to the control that we had there. And I
think very few people understand that really.

GROSS: Why didn't you shoot?

Mr. WHITCOMB: Our rules stated and basic FBI policy states that you can't
shoot someone unless you know specifically who they are and that you
specifically know them to be a threat. And at that time, all of Koresh's
snipers, all of Koresh's people had built what we call hides which are really
positions inside windows and doors so that you can't see them, you can look
out through them with a scope, but you can't see in. So if they--not if, when
they fired out of those positions, we could see maybe muzzle flash, we might
see a barrel or a barrel jump, but we couldn't see the target behind it. And
many, many times at Waco, we had seem people come to the doors and to the
windows to look out at us and hold small children up in front of them and no
one was going to fire into that building knowing that these people had held up
children in front of them. So even though they were shooting at us, we were
covered behind sandbags and secure positions. And even though they were
shooting at us, they didn't present a threat. So we had no reason to shoot
back at them.

GROSS: What went through your mind when after 52 days of waiting it out, the
whole compound went up in flames and everybody inside was burned to death?

Mr. WHITCOMB: Well, you know, I went through a great number of emotions in a
short period of time. First was shock. I mean, I'd laid in this position for
52 days, as you were saying, waiting for something to happen. And we never
knew from day to day, Terry, what was going to happen. And I thought that was
one of the great shortcomings of this entire mess really is that none of us on
the ground there knew from day to day when we were going to resolve it, how we
were going to resolve it, what was going to happen. And then the night
before, on April 18th, we were told to come in for a double shift, which told
us something was going to happen, but we didn't know what. They came out and
briefed us late that night and then the next morning we got up early, about
4:00, I think--4 or 5:00 in the morning, and actually got ready to prepare for
the gas insertion. So no one knew what was going on.

And then we sat there all morning while the construction vehicles put gas into
the building and then all of a sudden we were looking at the building around
noon and we saw smoke and thought, you know, what could that be? You know,
what is--smoke was coming out the door and thought that was impossible. So
you go through boredom, you go through surprise, you go through shock. And
then it became an overwhelming sense of anger that I still remember very
clearly because I realized they were killing themselves, I realized, you know,
that we'd been there all this time and I felt absolutely helpless to do
anything about it. And I realized that they were committing suicide. It was
a devastating thing.

GROSS: Christopher Whitcomb is my guest. He's a former FBI special agent,
author of the new memoir, "Cold Zero: Inside the FBI Hostage Rescue Team."
Let's take a short break here and then we'll talk some more.

This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is recently retired FBI agent Christopher Whitcomb. He's
written a memoir called "Cold Zero: Inside the FBI Hostage Rescue Team."

You were the director of the crisis response wing of the FBI's Critical
Incident Response Group and you had to establish an emergency information
management cell. You describe emergency information as a new field being
developed by the military to identify and predict the effects of critical
incidents on large groups of people. What does that mean?

Mr. WHITCOMB: Well, what it boils down to is the FBI and the federal
government can approach a crisis from every conceivable angle. Now we have
the tactical wing, like Hostage Rescue Team. We have negotiators. We have
behavioral assessment professionals or profilers as they're better known. We
have logistics units. We show up at a crisis with the experience and the
resources really to handle about everything you can imagine. What we've never
really looked at, as an organization or as a government, is how to deal with
things like panic, as we talked about before, and things like sympathetic
casualties. We found from research, for example, that if you have a chemical
attack that for every casualty, you could expect eight sympathetic casualties,
meaning that they perceive they have some kind of symptom, they suspect they
may have been exposed, but they actually haven't and may not even have a
reason to believe that. So when you look at planning, you say, `This hospital
can respond to 400 victims, for example, but what people don't understand is
they're actually going to have to respond to 3,200 victims because there are
going to be eight sympathetic casualties for every one actual casualty.

So we started looking at information like that saying, `How can we get this
information to the people who make these decisions so they can better resolve
the crisis?' And when I talk about information management, that's the type of
information I'm talking about. Not specifically where are the bad guys and
what are they going to do next, but how are the decisions you, as a command
element person, make--you as a commander in this situation--how are those
decisions going to affect people outside the investigation?

If we have a bomb scare in Times Square, for example, and you have a hockey
game in Madison Square Garden, how can you cancel the hockey game or evacuate
the hockey game without creating a panic and still prevent 30,000 people from
coming inside the bomb radius? There are many, many different types of
factors that people hadn't looked at before that could prevent calamity that
were not actually part of the criminal investigation. So that's what we were
really pioneering here in the last year, year and a half, two years.

GROSS: The FAA is considering allowing pilots to carry guns--airline pilots.
And a lot of pilots seem to want that ability now. FBI agents are required to
carry guns on domestic flights. What do you think of the idea of pilots
flying with guns?

Mr. WHITCOMB: You know, you look at security issues. I think definitely you
have to harden the cockpits. That's a very simple fix and something that has
to be done right away. Maybe the marshals program where you have other people
on planes might be very effective. But when I'm flying on an airplane, I want
the pilot to be flying the plane not, you know, working with a handgun trying
to get in a shootout. It's a very close space in a cockpit and it's a very,
very difficult issue. So any time you take a firearm on a plane, you have to
be very, very cognizant of the downside. And any time you fire a handgun on a
plane, you're really risking a great deal of trouble. So I think sky marshals
and people who have training on aircraft have a much better sense of how to
deal with a situation. And if we are going to go that route, we have to go
with training--lots of it.

On the surface, it sounds like it makes perfect sense. These are some
extraordinarily capable people and certainly they'd be capable with a firearm,
but it's a very tough issue when you think about how the thing is actually
going to play out in reality. Things that sound good on paper actually don't
always work out that way in reality. And I'm still working on that one to be
honest with you.

GROSS: Have you ever needed to use your gun on a flight?

Mr. WHITCOMB: No. I never have. I've never been on a flight when we had
any kind of trouble whatsoever. A friend of mine flew international and had
someone that ended up being a real problem, but he's a big guy and he and a
couple of the passengers actually subdued the person, handcuffed the person
and then when they landed the person was arrested. But I should say, Terry,
that I flew back from London just the night before the World Trade Center
bombings and I sat not far behind the cabin in a 747 flying from London. And
the door was open most of the time and they allowed people go to into the
cabin regularly. And someone actually sat right behind the pilot in the
jump seat when they landed, and I was really appalled at that. That is a
very basic simple thing that we need to eliminate. You know, everything else
is a step in the right direction, but the old policies really had some gaping,
gaping holes. And fortunately, you know, we're moving away from those.

GROSS: Well, Christopher Whitcomb, thank you very much. I wish you good luck
in your life as a retired FBI agent and as a writer.

Mr. WHITCOMB: Thank you, Terry.

GROSS: Thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. WHITCOMB: Thank you.

GROSS: Christopher Whitcomb is the author of the new memoir "Cold Zero:
Inside the FBI Hostage Rescue Team."

(Soundbite of jazz music)

GROSS: Coming up, jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a new reissue by
trombonist J.J. Johnson.

This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Two reissued CDs by the late J.J. Johnson
TERRY GROSS, host:

Trombonist J.J. Johnson died in February at the age of 77. In the 1940s, he
adapted the complex new music of bee-bop to the slide trombone, an instrument
more at home in older forms of jazz like Dixieland. Johnson remained the
reigning jazz trombonist from then till now, even when he gave it up for a
while to write music for films and TV. In the 1950s, Johnson worked a lot as
half of a trombone duo and recorded a few sessions under his own name for Blue
Note. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a reissue of two of those dates.

(Soundbite of jazz music by J.J. Johnson)

KEVIN WHITEHEAD reporting:

J.J. Johnson, 1954, with Kenny Clarke on drums and Sabu Martinez on congas.
Because Johnson could play trombone very fast with great precision, folks
forget he didn't specialize in it. Johnson also loved to sing a tune on his
horn as much as a swing-era favorite like Tommy Dorsey. Where Johnson's
fellow bee-boppers cultivated a bright and searing horn sound, he never lost
the trombone's big brotherly warmth.

(Soundbite of jazz music by J.J. Johnson)

WHITEHEAD: "It's You or No One" from the same 1954 session with Wynton Kelly
on piano and Charles Mingus on bass. That date makes up half the Blue Note
CD, "The Eminent J.J. Johnson: Vol. 2." Back then, he was often heard as
part of a two trombone act with Kie Winding or as third banana in a be-bop
horn section, so it's nice to hear him out front. Jazz folk used to say
Johnson sounded like he played valve trombone with pistons, like a trumpet,
because he didn't use the slide for slapstick or broad smears, but he did use
the slide for shakes and subtle slurs and bends to intensify the horn's vocal
quality. This is from that other session on that CD from 1955, with
saxophonist Hank Mobley, pianist Horace Silver, bassist Paul Chambers and
drummer Kenny Clarke.

(Soundbite of jazz music by J.J. Johnson)

WHITEHEAD: Listening to J.J. Johnson, you sense an artist who was rarely
flummoxed, who always knew what he could do and where he was going. He has
the confidence that comes from total mastery of the trombone, the ability to
play fast and loose and smart and bluesy and swingy. After Johnson came
along, older players of his instrument began sounding old-fashioned, very few
musicians shake things up more than that.

GROSS: Kevin Whitehead lives in Chicago. He reviewed "The Eminent J.J.
Johnson: Vol. 2" on Blue Note.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.

(Soundbite of jazz music by J.J. Johnson)
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