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.
This sounds extraordinarily intricate. I’m amazed you were able to coordinate it.
Well, I think it sounds more complicated than it was. The materials were fairly simple. We didn’t require any specially made equipment. That was what was so brilliant about the idea-it made use of fairly common ingredients and put them to extraordinary use.
Now, you’d commandeered most of these materials on your own initiative and authority…
Some of it was on Mr. Toombes’ authority, and the fact that he knew the people he was dealing with at the Port Authority. It was the Port Authority people who arranged for the crop duster, through the New Jersey Mosquito Control Commission.
But as you’ve said, neither you nor Mr. Toombes-nor, in fact, anybody at all inside the bank office that you were using for your headquarters-was authorized to give orders to the military.
Well, we just had to hope for voluntary cooperation.
At what time was contact resumed between you and General Hawley of the Air National Guard?
He called me back at about four ten, four fifteen.
What did he say?
He’d managed to reach the Air Force Chief of Staff in the Pentagon. He’d received a conditional go-ahead to take action on his own initiative if it seemed appropriate. Those are more or less his words to me.
What did he mean by “conditional”?
Under no circumstances were his planes to use air-to-air missiles.
Because that could endanger the city?
Yes. They’re heat-seeking missiles…
We’ve had that explained to us. In other words, the Starfighters could employ cannon or machine guns but not missiles.
That’s right.
What about the risk of striking Craycroft’s armed bombs with cannon or machine-gun fire?
Well, in theory that was covered by Harris and O’Brien’s plan.
In theory.
We didn’t have any precedents, did we?
Now, at this point in time-you must have concluded your conversation with General Hawley at about four twenty Yes. I immediately went to the police-band radio and made contact with Harris and O’Brien. They were at the heliport, they’d just arrived there.
And you told them?
I told them I was issuing the go order. They were to execute the plan.
O’Brien (Cont’d)
I’ll use my notes here, if you don’t mind. All right, it was about twenty after four. Here’s the time-out on everything. The Starfighters were already airborne-had been, for hours. The banana chopper from PA was at the heliport. Another helicopter had delivered the eighty gallons of white paint to Newark Airport, where they’d poured it into the spray tanks of the MCC crop duster. The pilot was a guy named Williston. According to my notes, he took off from Newark in the crop duster at four seventeen. It only took him a few minutes to fly across the Hudson-he just flew straight over, there was no other air traffic in the area.
Except for Craycroft.
Except for Craycroft. All right, Harris and I were going aboard the banana helicopter with the three transmitters and the electromagnet apparatus. It took six men to load the gear on the chopper, and our pilot was worried we might not be able to take off with that much weight on board. Then we got a call from Captain Grofeld.
What time?
Four twenty-five. He said he’d been authorized to issue the go order. We were to establish direct air-to-air radio contact with Williston in the crop duster and with the Air National Guard pilots in the Starfighters. General Hawley and Captain Grofeld would be on the same frequency. Of course we were taking a hell of a risk using open radio channels, but there wasn’t any other way to do it.
What risk?
Well, if Craycroft happened to be monitoring that particular frequency, he’d know every thing we were planning. We’d done our best to fool him, but we had no way of knowing whether it was working.
How did you try to fool him?
Ordinary contact was maintained between the air elements and the ground on the standard Air National Guard frequency. We figured if Craycroft was monitoring anything, he’d be on that band. We kept up intermittent chatter on that band. In the meantime the real orders were being delivered on a different frequency, one we’d designated by coded instructions that Craycroft couldn’t follow. Or at least we assumed he couldn’t. It was the Air National Guard code book, and he wouldn’t have had access to that, since the codes are changed frequently.