Attacks 20 years ago shaped today’s FBI, its agents

Staff Reports

The morning of September 11, 2001 remains one of the most pivotal points in American history—and for the FBI. The ensuing investigation was the largest in the history of the Bureau. The attacks led to far-reaching changes in the organization as it elevated terrorism to the gravest threat against the U.S.

The attacks took the lives of nearly 3,000 people, and the crash sites represented the largest crime scene in FBI history.

Over the last 20 years, the Bureau evolved from an agency focused primarily on criminal offenses into an intelligence-based national security and law enforcement organization. Preventing terrorism continues to be the FBI’s top priority; the Bureau has established more than 200 Joint Terrorism Task Forces with partner law enforcement agencies across the country.

But the threat picture has changed. Racially or ethnically-motivated extremism and anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism are the top domestic terrorism threats today. These actors often plan their attacks alone or in small cells—presenting an even greater challenge to law enforcement as they seek to prevent the next act of violence.

The events of 9/11 are forever etched in the minds of anyone old enough to remember the day. Those who were on the East Coast recall that it was a brilliant, clear morning. Then, at 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.

In a meticulously planned attack, terrorists hijacked four airliners. They flew three of the planes into buildings: the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. They crashed the fourth plane in rural Pennsylvania. The attacks killed 2,976 people and injured thousands more. Today, many first responders are still dealing with adverse health effects from working in toxic conditions.

THE TOLL OF 9/11

One of those first responders still coping with health effects from September 11, 2001 is Special Agent Scott McDonough, who was helping scientists monitor a massive landfill to ensure heavy debris would not cause a catastrophic collapse. That meant taking photos of it from the sky in an FBI helicopter.

For just over three weeks after the terrorist attacks, McDonough, then an FBI pilot, flew a helicopter over the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island, N. Y., as well as over the World Trade Center rubble in Manhattan. He kept the helicopter door open to take those photos, choking down contaminated air that made his throat burn.

Crews sent fragments of the buildings and other heavy debris on barges down the Hudson River to Fresh Kills, a landfill about the size of 1,500 football fields. There, other FBI personnel processed the large and complex pieces of evidence.

“One of the big concerns is we were putting heavy fill—concrete, cement, metal from these buildings, into a landfill that was made for regular garbage,” McDonough said. “We did multiple photo flights a day trying to help the scientists prevent an environmental catastrophe.”

Nearly 16 years later, in Aug. 2017, McDonough was diagnosed with cancer. He’s one of more than 100 FBI personnel who’ve gotten sick as a result of their response to 9/11. (There may be more, but informing the FBI of an illness is voluntary.) Seventeen FBI personnel have died as a result of these illnesses.

Twenty years after the attacks, the toll they’ve taken on the FBI is obvious—both in the grief over those who have been lost and the vigilance required by all who were there that day to monitor themselves for illness.

Just a few months before his diagnosis, McDonough had heard a presentation by an FBI doctor on 9/11-related cancers. He signed up for the World Trade Center Health Program, which monitors those who responded to the site.

In 2017 and 2018, he endured two surgeries and six rounds of chemotherapy. He even continued working during his chemo treatments.

“It was scary, but never once did I think of the negative side,” McDonough said. “I constantly just had the positive mindset of, ‘I’ve got to fight and beat this.’”

“From the moment of diagnosis, I thought, ‘How fast can I get this out of me and how hard can I fight?’ That’s what I did,” he said.

As the cancer is a workplace injury, the Department of Labor and the World Trade Center Health Program covered all of McDonough’s medical expenses. He encourages all of his fellow first responders to register for these programs and keep careful tabs on their health.

“Know your body. Listen to it,” he said. “If something’s not right, see a doctor right away.”

Today, McDonough is four years cancer-free, though he is screened regularly.

He’s channeled his experiences as a cancer survivor and as a 9/11 responder into the work he does today for the FBI’s Miami Field Office.

McDonough is now a paramedic and manages his office’s operational medicine program, providing medical care to FBI employees in the field, especially as they do dangerous work like SWAT operations or searches. He also manages the office’s Hazardous Evidence Response Team, working to keep employees safe when they have to work with dangerous materials.

“When I had the opportunity to go to paramedic school, I jumped all over it because with everything I’ve been through medically, if I can help other people, I want to do that,” he said.

Thirty-nine-year-old Robert Carroll reportedly spent the last moments of his life crawling on his stomach away from McKinley County Sheriff’s Deputy Dwayne Holder.

Holder allegedly tased him 18 times and there’s video evidence to prove it.

Now, his family is taking legal action against the McKinley County Sheriff’s Office, the McKinley County Board of Commissioners, and Holder.

According to a complaint filed in the State of New Mexico McKinley County Eleventh Judicial District Court by the family’s attorney Eric Dixon, Carroll was passing through McKinley County on his way to Phoenix, Ariz. to visit friends on May 18 when he became confused and disoriented while parked at a pull out near the port of entry of westbound Interstate 40.

According to the complaint, a concerned semi-truck driver called MCSO around 9 pm and said that a man was “acting strange” and that he kept getting in and out of his car and mumbling to himself.

Holder was the deputy who initially arrived at the scene, and the first thing he reportedly saw was Carroll walking around the pull out area. Carroll was wearing a white tank top, red sweatpants and was reportedly unarmed.

When Holder approached him from a distance, Carroll said he was “trying to go.” Holder asked where he was trying to go, and Carroll responded somewhere he could “mind his f****** business.”

According to the attorney’s complaint, Carroll had not been drinking.

Holder asked Carroll to approach him, and asked him not to stand in the road. The complaint states that Carroll was not standing in the roadway. While the confrontation started on the I-40 shoulder, Carroll eventually gravitated to the median.

Carroll repeatedly told Holder that he just wanted to leave, and Holder kept asking him to walk toward him.

He kept trying to get away from Holder, and according to the complaint, Carroll was still not under arrest at the time, nor had he done anything illegal. He held up his hands as he kept walking away.

Carroll repeatedly asked the deputy what was going on, but Holder kept telling him to show him his hands, walk toward him, and eventually, to get down on the ground.

Instead, Carroll began to jog away from the deputy. The complaint said that at this point Carroll still had not done anything “that merited Defendant Holder stopping him, attempting to seize him, or pursue him.”

The county’s attorney Brandon Huss said Holder was simply trying to get Carroll out of the road, although the family’s attorney’s complaint claims he was never in the road.

“… This was a tough situation where you have an individual running in and out of traffic. There was risk to the motorized public who is traveling at a high rate of speed. There’s risk to the decedent, there’s risk to the officers involved out there in the median of I-40, there’s traffic going by on both directions. It’s a tough scenario all around,” Huss said. “These officers have to make quick decisions in the field, and I think they did what they could to try and protect everybody involved from the risk to and from the traffic passing by. It’s unfortunate the way that it ended, but I think the case is defensible; I think the officer’s use of force here was justified.”

Carroll continued to try to walk away from Holder while his pants were falling down.

In Holder’s bodycam video Caroll can be seen eventually stopping while Holder screams at him to get down on his knees.

The video reportedly showed Holder continuing to yell, and Carroll began to crawl away. That was when Holder started threatening Carroll by telling him that he was going to tase him.

Holder repeatedly yelled at Carroll to roll over onto his stomach. At one point Carroll got up and tried to get away from the deputy, saying “I’m good,” but he fell down while trying to walk away.

Holder then tased Carroll repeatedly.

Another deputy came in to assist Holder, and told him to tase Carroll again. Multiple deputies eventually placed Carroll in handcuffs while the man was on his stomach.

The deputies soon realized that Carroll had stopped breathing, and proceeded to administer CPR. However, they were unsuccessful and Carroll was later pronounced dead at the scene. Dixon noted that Carroll had heart disease.

Carroll’s family is suing for the wrongful death of their family member. The court documents state that the family is suing on charges of unlawful arrest and excessive use of force. The lawsuit also claims that the MCSO needs to train their deputies on the proper use of force. The family is asking for compensation for the funeral and burial expenses as well as for the emotional loss.

UNDER THE INFLUENCE?

The lawsuit claims that Holder was under the influence of alcohol. Dixon explained why he believes this to be true.

“I had understood from his statement that he had drunk alcohol at about 12:30 pm [on May 18], gone back to bed, and he went to work at 4 pm,” Dixon said.

Sheriff James Maiorano III did confirm that Holder had consumed alcohol prior to the start of his shift, but he said the plaintiff’s timeline is off.

“During [an] interview Deputy Holder thought he had violated the policy. That’s probably where that came from,” Maiorano explained.

Maiorano explained the timeline of when Holder began drinking before his shift. His shift for the night of May 18 was scheduled to begin at 6 pm and end at 6 am on May 19. He consumed alcohol in the morning, and went to sleep around 12:30 pm on May 18. He then woke up in time for his shift at 6 pm.

With this timeline in mind, Maiorano said Holder didn’t violate the MCSO policies on alcohol.

“Our guys have some strange sleep schedules when they work,” Maiorano said as a way of explaining the timeline.

The MCSO policy on alcohol states that every employee covered by the policy is “prohibited from the consumption of alcoholic beverages within four hours of the employee’s scheduled time to report to work or within eight hours following an accident or until the employee takes a post accident alcohol and/or drug test, whichever occurs first.”

Maiorano said part of the confusion came from when Holder was interviewed by the New Mexico State Police. He said Holder incorrectly believed he was in violation of the policy. Maiorano believes that fact led media sources to publish the false information that he was under the influence during his shift.

“The attorney probably read a portion of the report in the interview where Holder said he thought he had violated the policy. But when we had it investigated and we got the timeline of when alcohol was consumed and when he went on shift, he in fact had not violated the policy,” Maiorano said.

Dixon said that the intricacies of the timeline doesn’t matter, his main concern is that Holder was drinking before his shift.

“We had understood that drinking alcohol within eight hours of going on duty is a violation of their policies. But even assuming for the purpose of argument that it doesn’t, he was still under the influence of alcohol under the laws of New Mexico,” Dixon said. “He had drank at least one and a half shots of bourbon before going on duty, so that’s a real issue.”

The MCSO conducted an internal affairs investigation regarding the claims about the consumption of alcohol and the use of excessive force. Maiorano said the internal affairs investigators looked at the videos, reports, and statements to determine the level of force used, why force was used, and whether the force was fair given the situation that was unfolding.

Ultimately both claims were found to be unsubstantiated by the investigators.

Holder was placed on administrative leave during the investigation. He is now back at work.

“From what we’ve reviewed, it does not appear that Deputy Holder did anything outside of policy,” Maiorano said. He also said the county’s attorney believes the case against the MCSO, the McKinley County Commissioners, and Holder is defensible.

A mandatory case settlement regarding the lawsuit is scheduled for July 26.

By Molly Ann Howell
Sun Correspondent

About 120 kids attend summer football camp

Watching your favorite football team and for that matter, your favorite player on television is always exciting. Kids dreams about becoming just like them, and any chances of getting there enhances their self-esteem.

Well that chance was made available to about 120 kids from the Gallup area June 14-16, and it was free.

The Washington Redskins Original Foundation Youth Summer Football Camp, in part with, Riddell Protect and Perform, the National Football League Foundation, USA Football, Footballs National Governing Body, and National Native American Law Enforcement Association, held its first ever football camp at Miyamura High School.

Eager high school and mid-school kids came out to learn drills, helmet safety, 26 shoulder tackling skills, and attend workshops, along with three former Washington Redskins players: Richard “Ricky” Ervins, Mark Moseley, and Ravin Caldwell.

Miyamura Athletic Director Linda Anderson said they were approached by the WROAF to see if the school would be interested in holding this first ever football camp at Miyamura High School.

“When I got the call, I was happy so I talked to all the GMCS athletic directors/coaches and all agreed this would be a fantastic opportunity for the area kids,” Anderson said, “The district helped in busing the kids from the surrounding area. This chance happening gets the kids more involved, and the parents. We hope to have better football programs like this for GMCS.”

Riddell Southwest Regional Manager Chris Houdmann, who taught helmet safety features, said he was surprised at the great turnout.

“Had a great turnout you know,” he said. “I’m surprise to see that many kids out here. It’s my first time out in this part of the New Mexico area, and I’m pleased to see this many student athletes participating.”

Often camps like these are held in bigger cities like Phoenix or Albuquerque, making it challenging for rural kids to attend. Washington Redskins Special Programs Manager Kendra Brown lobbied to hold the camp in smaller communities, such as Gallup.

“I had to explain to some of our organizers that if they could start holding them in smaller cities, the kids would come out and the fruit of their effort would show,” she said. “We have been embraced by the community and by the GMCS district … to us that is a success and we’re very happy.”

Mark Moseley, a Redskin’s kicker, from 1974-1987, also saw the need and knows it’s every kid’s dream to meet an actual player.

“A lot of the kids never had the chance to meet a real NFL player, so that’s why I’m here, and I know there’s a need,” he said.

On hand also, was former Redskins running back Richard “Ricky” Ervins, who stands at 5’7.” He said a positive attitude matters more than size. Having played with the Redskins from 1991-1994, he owes his success to his high school coach, who told him once that his size is no failure and for him to pass that story onto others.

“Once they see my stature, I tell them they can do it because they have crazy heart and then they really want to do it,” Ervins said, “That’s my story, and I want these kids to have their own story and to make it happen.”

He said he wishes he could reach more youth with his message, but if he just reaches one, it’s worth it.

“So why not come out and give my expertise to these kids? They have heart, they got soul, and all they need is teaching,” he said.

Another football camp is set for June 20, 21, and 22, in Fort Defiance, Ariz., with the Arizona Cardinals joining in.

For more information visit the website www.wroaf.org

By Dee Velasco
For the Sun

Rating: «« out of 4 stars

Running Time: 107 min.

Sometimes, the term “they don’t make them like they used to” doesn’t necessarily have a negative connotation. This week brings a new title in the sequels-no-one-was-clamoring-for category. Honestly, does anyone look back at 2002’s xXx with an overwhelming feeling of warmth or nostalgia? Well, xXx: Return of Xander Cage assumes that you do. Not only that, but it also doesn’t seem compelled to offer anything fresh or different upon its return.

Truthfully, one can guess the reason that this feature was been seemingly generated out of the blue. Star Vin Diesel’s Fast & Furious franchise is nearing its close. This sequel feels like an obvious and less-than-genuine attempt to start up a new line of films to keep the revenue coming in for a few more years. In has a similar format and plot elements. Were it not for a lack of automobiles on display, one might think they were watching a low-rent follow-up to that series.

What little story there is involves a sinister piece of technology that can alter operating systems and cause satellites to crash to the Earth with the simple push of a button. A new handler (Toni Collette) for the covert xXx program needs “the best” in order to recover the item. She doesn’t believe reports that Xander Cage (Diesel) has died and sets out to find him. It’s a pretty easy task, since the secret agent has spent the past decade on the beaches of the Dominican Republic, performing elaborate stunts in public and sleeping with locals (who look like supermodels); he’s not exactly maintaining a low profile.

Cage decides to take on the assignment, but only if he can recruit new blood (played by an international cast that includes Ruby Rose, Kris Wu and Rory McCann) to help. With the assistance of tech support (Nina Dobrev), the trail leads them to the Philippines, where they discover that some ex... well, ex-xXx operatives (Deepika Padukone, Donnie Yen, Tony Jaa) may be involved. There’s little else to the story other than a lot of posturing between the members and speeches about how they all should unite for the greater good. Between the skateboarding tricks, chases with motorcycles on water-skis and shootouts, there are endless double crosses and random allegiance changes.

Some of the over-the-top action moments are passable, but much of it is edited in a hectic and confusing way with some not-so-special special effects. Thankfully, there is one bright spot. Whenever Yen steps in to use his martial arts skills on foes, the movie improves. He’s the best thing here, with his speedy reflexes and bone crunching lunges. It’s enough to make one wish this follow-up was just about him. Co-star Jaa has a moment or two to shine, but his skills are dreadfully underutilized.

I’m not expecting great acting here, but the writing is pretty leaden and many of the characters (with the exception of Yen) come across as incredibly stiff. By and large, the majority of this tale is played too seriously considering how absurd the material is. Cage walks around with a smug look on his face as every woman he encounters (including a team member or two) throw themselves at him. He barely musters much more than an expression of mild annoyance with each attack. There’s no tension here, no danger created and little in the way of thrills. This is a very hectic and loud movie, but it all simply blurs together.

One cameo towards the close is so larger-than-life that it is funny, there’s an effective singing gag in the final scene and an amusing comment from a cast member, but it’s too little, too late. This is a humdrum and less-than-memorable exercise. The fact that it ends with a team of characters organized to take on new missions filled me with dread. Please, people, let’s not extend this franchise out for four or five more movies. Ultimately, xXx: Return of Xander Cage doesn’t provide enough genuine excitement or even exaggerated, giddy chaos to make any of it worthwhile.

Visit: www.cinemastance.com

By Glenn Kay
For the Sun