Then you really had no way to be absolutely certain of his intentions?
None at all.
You had to rely on judgment and intuition, then.
You could put it that way.
Is there some other way you’d prefer to put it, Captain? I’d like to be as clear as possible on this point.
Look, we’d been monitoring conversations between Ryterband and Craycroft for several hours that afternoon. We hadn’t heard Craycroft say, “I’m not going to drop the bombs.” Everything we heard led to exactly the opposite conclusion. Add to that the fact that Ryterband himself was obviously afraid of Craycroft’s intentions-he didn’t seem to know either, any more than we did. But he knew Craycroft a lot better than the rest of us did, and if Ryterband was scared, we had to be scared, too. Add to that the fact that Craycroft was obviously deranged. I mean, nobody ever really questioned that. The point is we knew just one thing for certain: that he was unpredictable. He couldn’t be depended on to do the sensible thing or the logical thing or the compassionate thing. He was listening to the sound of his own private drummer; we couldn’t hear the beat of that drum, and we had no way of anticipating his moves.
Therefore, I take it, you reasoned that you had to assume the worst.
Mr. Skinner, if a stranger points a loaded gun at you, you don’t know for sure that he’s going to pull the trigger. But if you get a chance, you’ll sure as hell duck out of his line of fire. Or, given the chance, you’ll shoot him first.
The law of self-defense.
I’m not talking about the law. I’m talking about natural reaction-common sense. He had a loaded gun pointed at us. And we couldn’t get out of the way. If we could be sure he wouldn’t shoot, that would be one thing. But all we knew was what we could see. We took steps designed to remove the threat. Defend ourselves. Whatever you want to call it. We had to try. Craycroft had a screw loose. He might let fly at any time. We had no guarantee he’d wait until ten minutes after five. We had no guarantee of anything. The sooner we tried to neutralize him, the better-in terms of odds.
Mr. Toombes acquiesced to that line of reasoning?
Yes. But I was the one who talked him into it. If you’re looking for someone to pin the blame on.
I’m not, Captain. I’m only trying to get the facts.
You’ve got to remember, I think, that we had Adler and the FBI chief breathing down our necks, too. They wanted to blow him out of the sky regardless. The difference between our scheme and theirs was at least we were trying to insure that innocent bystanders wouldn’t get hurt.
Yes, I think the record makes that abundantly clear.
And actually there wasn’t much point holding off until the deadline. Suppose we’d waited until ten after five? What were we supposed to do? Let him drop the bombs and then go after him? It was pointless, really. We had to go after him. It was best to do it as fast as possible.
Doesn’t this contradict your earlier statement that you’d decided to wait until the last possible minute in order to feel out Craycroft’s intentions before taking action?
Maybe it does. All of us were rattled. I imagine a lot of people said and did contradictory things that day.
What changed your mind?
The passage of time. Don’t forget, we started talking about neutralizing him quite early that afternoon. At that point it would have been premature to try and shoot him down. I don’t know, maybe we should have tried to get to him before three o’clock. We never had that choice, though. We didn’t have enough time. But the five ten deadline gave us time to set things up, or at least time to try. It was a very simple proposition, actually. Craycroftwas going to do one of two things. He was going to fly away harmlessly at five ten, or he was going to bomb New York City.
And you’d been trying, as we said before, to feel out his intentions?
Absolutely. We’d been on the horn with him constantly, trying to get a rise out of him, trying to prod him into giving us a clue to his decision.
But he gave you no clues.
He gave us nothing at all. He never answered us. Once Ryterband left the bank and drove away with the money, we never heard another word out of Craycroft. I’m sure he could hear us if he wanted to, but it was quite possible he’d simply switched his receiver off. There was another transmitter aboard Ryterband’s boat, of course, and probably around four thirty or four forty-five Craycroft would be listening to pick up Ryterband’s signal that he’d made his getaway clean with the money. But between three thirty and four thirty, he had no reason to be listening to the radio. We probably were talking into a dead phone. But we did try.
Very well. Now, as to the attempt to neutralize the threat, as it was carried out in the air, you’ve indicated that the idea for the scheme came from Sergeant O’Brien and Mr. Harris and that you concurred in the plan, and you then approached Mr. Toombes with it. What was his first reaction?
I had to do a little talking. Finally he saw it was the only chance we had. He agreed we had to try it.
By this time you’d already made arrangements to put some of the plan in motion on your own initiative?
I’d issued orders to obtain the items Harris and O’Brien needed, yes. I hadn’t authorized the actual execution of the plan. But we were fighting against time. We could always decide not to use the stuff. But if we didn’t have it at hand, there’d have been no point trying to get authorization to go ahead. I sent for the chopper, the radio transmitters, the crop duster, and the paint. Then I talked to Toombes.
And Mr. Toombes agreed it was worth a try. What happened next?
Well, we didn’t have the authority to put the thing into operation. We had to go to the higher-ups.
By that you mean, mainly, the military.
Yes. What we were faced with wasn’t a police operation. I don’t suppose there’s an official designation for that kind of thing, but you could call it a counterinsurgency. It required a political decision and a military decision. Several departments were involved.
Did you seek authorization from the FBI?
No.
Why?
Two reasons. First, there wasn’t time to argue with Azzard. Second, the FBI was out of it by that point. Their job was to track Ryterband. They had no jurisdiction in the air. We had to go to the military for that.
To whom in the military? To General Adler?
No. He didn’t have command authority. What happened was we had an open line to General Hawley of the Air National Guard. He had his Starfighters in the air, of course, keeping tabs on Craycroft from a distance. He had been in communication with the Pentagon. I got on the phone with him…
At what time?
About ten minutes to four, I think. I got on the phone with General Hawley and asked him who had the authority to commit his planes to action. He said that order had to come from the Air Force Chief of Staff at the very least, and he was at that moment trying to get through to that office on another line. I explained very briefly what Harris and O’Brien had in mind.
How did General Hawley react to the idea?
He didn’t at first. He’s a cautious type. Evidently he needed to think it over. He said he’d get back to me after he’d talked to the Air Force Chief of Staff in Washington.
But time was getting very short, wasn’t it?
It was nearly four o’clock, yes. We had a bit more than an hour to the deadline. At this time Ryterband was on the highway in Queens, being tailed by Mr. Azzard’s radio triangulation vans. Our own people were assembling the materials Harris and O’Brien had requested. The crop-duster aircraft was on its way from Teterboro to Newark Airport, where we planned to fill its tanks. Several police officers were obtaining the radio transmitters and the electromagnet. The Port Authority helicopter was at the Wall Street heliport pad, warming up. A few minutes after four-just after I’d talked to General Hawley-I sent O’Brien and Harris down to the heliport. I believe they arrived there at about four twenty. In the meantime the paint we’d requisitioned-eighty gallons-had been delivered to Newark Airport by a second helicopter from the Wall Street pad.