“The Port Authority has left no stone unturned, no expense spared, no effort too much to secure the site.”
DOUG FARBER Director, World Trade Center Security
2 PATH Hall
3 9/11 Museum North Tower footprint
4 West Concourse
5 9/11 Museum Pavilion Entrance
6 9/11 Museum ramp
7 Slurry wall
8 3 World Trade Center
9 Greenwich Street
10 9/11 Memorial South Pool
11 9/11 Memorial Plaza
12 West Vent Structures
13 West Street (West Side Highway)
14 St. Nicholas National Shrine
15 Liberty Park
16 Brookfield Place
“We have to live our lives, we have to conduct business, we have to do it as fearlessly as possible, and the public has to understand that the police and those people who are responsible for their security are doing as much as they can to keep them safe and secure.”
JOE DUNNE Chief Security Officer (2012–2014), Port Authority
To avoid employing Draconian tactics that would inhibit business or enjoyment of the campus, as security personnel call the site, the Port Authority has taken a multilayered approach to safety. The Port Authority Police Department (PAPD) is 1,800 strong, with sworn police officers that have dual jurisdiction in New York and New Jersey. Their primary partners at the Trade Center include the New York Police Department (NYPD), the Fire Department of New York (FDNY), and private security guards. Each tower has its own internal security that is commensurate with any Class A office high-rise, as does the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. Beyond that, the PAPD has local, state, federal, and international partners in a vast intelligence community that shares real-time information and expertise.
When the site was rebuilt, Greenwich and Fulton streets were reopened, which was considered a win for planners and a boon for the neighborhood. However, it also raised new security issues and apprehensions that the area would have the uninviting appearance of a fortress. Fears that bulky, obstructive security measures would trump urban planning have been largely alleviated. Street curbs are lined with steel bollards, the waist-high barrier posts that cropped up around many buildings after 2001, that reduce automobile traffic by nearly half and free up the street for pedestrians and cyclists. The Authority worked to make the area as accessible as possible within the confines of security demands.
Vehicular explosive devices are the main concern. Through traffic is restricted on all streets that cross the site. Private cars can enter but are limited to those who are enrolled in the Trusted Access Program (TAP), which allows vehicles to be checked and registered before gaining access. Credentialing and screening of TAP-enrolled vehicles takes approximately forty seconds; they take longer for those not enrolled. Passenger cars enter and exit through eight sally ports on the north and south sides, which bar cars without clearance from entering.
Commercial trucks, vans, and tour buses enter through the Vehicle Security Center, a state-of-the-art screening checkpoint designed by Liberty Security Partners, which runs the length of the Trade Center’s southern border. Trucks and their contents are inspected there via a variety of technologies, typical of those used by Customs to examine cargo arriving at ports and borders, before proceeding to the underground loading docks, where trucks undergo further inspections. As at the sally ports, the trucks’ license plates trigger the TAP, permitting entry only to preauthorized vehicles with confirmed appointments. Perhaps the best indication of the level of security measures taken underground is Liberty Park, the public park on top of the screening center.
In an age when a kid in a coffee shop can use a smartphone to hack a bank thousands of miles away, cyber security is a global problem. Not only teenagers have phones, however. “Someone once asked me what my best security tool was, and I said my phone—the ability to pick up the phone and collaborate with subject matter experts within the security industry,” said Doug Farber, who heads World Trade Center security for the Port Authority. To manage risk, Farber coordinates the authority’s efforts with dozens of agencies that gather constant intelligence. They include the NYPD, a major partner; the Department of Homeland Security; the Joint Terrorist Task Force, a federal investigative body composed of FBI agents and police officers; and the NYPD’s Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, a consortium of downtown businesses and public agencies.
The primary local authority defending against terrorist attacks is the NYPD. Air, land, and sea initiatives are part of a massive citywide security program meant to send one message: Don’t mess with New York City. “We’re the number-one target in the country,” said former police commissioner Ray Kelly, speaking of Manhattan. To protect the lives of New Yorkers and tens of millions of visitors annually, sophisticated technology has been designed specifically for the NYPD’s counterterrorism efforts, which is shared with its partners, including the PAPD. Artificial intelligence, combined with three thousand surveillance cameras located citywide, can track a range of potential threats, from an unattended package to all those, for instance, wearing red shirts that day. Called the “ring of steel,” after a similar program in London, these NYPD surveillance initiatives are intended to look closely, too closely in the opinion of some, at aberrant street activity.
Experts typically speak of CBR—chemical, biological, radiological—defenses that can detect, literally, a molecule of biological matter and provide rapid amelioration. Sensors installed around the site are part of a larger citywide program run by the NYPD and the Department of Homeland Security to detect biological agents, pathogens that potentially can grow, as opposed to toxic chemicals, such as those produced by car exhaust. The World Trade Center towers also incorporate radiation detectors. Additionally, license plate readers, called LPRs, are in constant use for all of lower Manhattan, defined as the area below Canal Street. Collected information is compared against international databases of known terrorists, other criminals, persons of interest, and the rest of us mere mortals. You may want to think twice before parking in that spot.
Psychological hurdles remain for many, especially those, like Joe Dunne, who were there when the original towers fell. “I heard all the sad stories about the last words, and last messages, and what was said that day to one another, and what projects they were in the middle of doing in homes,” he said. “These stories, they’re pretty much embedded in my heart.” He, the PAPD, the NYPD, and scores of others have expended herculean efforts to create a site that is hospitable to remembrance, culture, and commerce—and one that is as safe as possible. 