Mail:: INBOX: Re: Mike Jacobson and DSM LA Trip AA£MT Pa§e 1 of 3

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Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 16:40:40 -0400
From: "" <bgrewe@9-11commission.gov>^l
To: "" <dsnell@9-11commission.gov>^
Cc: "" <dmarcus@9-11commission.gov>4P,"" <pzelikow@9-11commission.gov>4|,"" <mjacobson@9-
11 commission.gov> 4f
Subject: Re: Mike Jacobson and DSM LA Trip
All:

I have had a lengthy discussion with pan so I won't reargue my case but I do
want to respond to a couple of key points.
First, I find it extremely disturbing that despite the fact that 1) I had a
specific agreement with the front office that for the purposes of the five
field office visits I had priority on Mike's time and that during that time
team la would have access to Mike for at most one day every other week, 2) that
I had specifically previously approached Dieter with a proposal for
coordination on LA that he rejected but he said we could discuss possibilities
later, and 3) had plans to use Mike next week to prepare for Miami, possibly
attend some interviews in NY, and to write up prior MFRS, that no one had the
courtesy to tell me that they planned to whisk Mike away for an entire week in
contravention of any prior agreement. I guess I was going to find out when I
called him to discuss what I needed done that week and scheduled a team meeting
and found that he was across the country and unavailable.
Second, I had already had t9 alter the Miami trip significantly because Team 2
scheduled the Ottawa trip without any consultation with me. I was forced to
lose someone who knew about our team's work and was given instead someone who
has not attended a single interview and thus will essentially be a note taker.
So basically it is clear that despite any long term planning that I attempt to
make, every other team can just ignore having to consult with me and force me
to deal with their schedule regardless of the impact it has on my team's work.
Third, I do not appreciate the gratuitous denigration of my team's work
as "cookie cutter" interviews. They are far from that. And if anyone thinks
the work my team is doing is something a trained monkey can do, then I am
willing to turn the trouble over to someone else and let them try it for a
spell.
Fourth, no one has indicated how many interviews need to be done in LA. why
can they not be completed in a week with the personnel Dieter has? in Miami we
are scheduling four interviews a day for two man teams on certain days, with
two people for five days and four people for three days (once Tamm arrives),
they could complete 32 interviews. Certainly that is more than they have
planned as Dieter scoffed at our plans to interview 37 people as excessive.
Team 6's scheduling is already extremely difficult due to religious holidays,
federal holidays, a wedding, a honeymoon, teaching schedules, and the like.
Having to throw in additional long distance trips to deal with additional
monkey wrenches being thrown into the mix without notice is making my job
virtually impossible within the time constraints we are operating under.
Barbara
>
> At Philip's suggestion, I'm turning to you to resolve what appears to be an
> impasse I've encountered with Barbara regarding the participation of Mike
> Jacobson in Team lA's DSM interviews in LA, now re-scheduled for the week of
>
> September 28. (You will recall that our original plan, as of last week, was
>
> for Mike, Hyon, Raj, John Tamm and me to spend the entire week of the 21st in
>
> LA. The trip has been scheduled due to our access breakthrough with the FBI;

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fail:: INBOX: Re: Mike Jacobson and DSM LA Trip Page 2 of 3

> the hurricane likely precluded any realistic chance of our going next week in
> any event)
> Recent developments in the investigation have seen LA take on critical
> significance for us. Given the scheduling constraints we face -- especially
> my
> upcoming trip abroad with Philip and the others (now set for c. 10/11), we
> have
> no choice but to make the LA trip during the week of the 28th. As I know
> you're aware, Mike's encylopedic knowledge of the extraordinarily complex
> facts
> gathered to date (from both the Joint inquiry and the documents he has
> revi ewed
> with us) makes him indispensable to our effort; simply put, no one knows the
> lengthy roster of investigative subjects the way he does, indeed, a strong
> argument could be made that he should accompany us for the entire week in LA.
> Our need for Mike becomes even more acute when one considers that John will
> not
> be able to join us until after he closes on his new house on Tuesday.
> without
> Mike, Raj, Hyon and I wouldn't be able to double track any interviews until
> John's arrival on Wednesday.
> unfortunately, our LA trip now conflicts with the previously-scheduled trip
> of
> Team 6 to Miami. Recognizing that, as talented as Mike is, even he can't be
> in
> two places at once, I called Barbara last night to attempt to resolve this
> problem, and suggested the following compromise (to which Mike himself has
> graciously agreed): Mike would spend the first part of the week in LA and
> would
> travel to Miami Wednesday afternoon/evening to join Team 6 for the balance of
> its interviews on Thursday and Friday.
> Barbara found this arrangement unacceptable, citing her own staffing concerns
> and the putative need to conduct as many as 37 interviews in Miami during
> that
> week. The reality, however, is that under my proposal, Team 6 still would
> have
> a total of 6 interviewers in Miami: Barbara, Caroline, and Chris H. for the
> entire week, and Peter, Lance, and Mike joining them during the course of the
> week, with this many interviewers, Team 6 will be able to triple track
> interviews on Thursday and Friday at the very least, if (as Barbara tells
> me) ,
> the average interview lasts two hours (which strikes me as more than
> generous),
> this means they should be able to complete 24 interviews on Thursday and
> Friday
> alone, leaving only 13 of the scheduled 37 to be completed by the 3-5 team
> members who will be in Miami during Monday-Wednesday.
> while I appreciate that my proposal will involve some re-alignment of Team
> 6's
> schedule, I believe all of the scheduled interviews can be completed in this
> manner, if, on the other hand, Team 6 still is deemed to be unacceptably
> short-
> staffed, can't they borrow someone from another team? (You will recall that
> several members of Team 8 participated in Team 6's interviews in NYC).
> Barbara

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,ail:: INBOX: Re: Mike Jacobson and DSM LA Trip Page 3 of 3

> refused to consider this alternative as well.

>
> To my mind, the resource allocation question isn't even close, in contrast
> to
> Team 6's essentially "cookie cutter" interviews of FBI and JTTF personnel,
> the
> DSM work we need to do in LA is highly fact-intensive, involving the
> assimilation and mastery of a myriad of FBI counterintelligence and criminal
>
> cases through interviews of the agents responsible for those cases, we must
> have the benefit of Mike's participation -- for at least the first half of
> our
> trip -- to do this job correctly. All of the Team 6 members are now well-
> seasoned by their WFO and NYFO interview experience; I can't imagine that
> they
> would not be able to complete the scheduled work without Mike.
>
> I recognize that my compromise proposal involves some additional work for
> Team
> 6 and potentially for other staff members as well, (it imposes by far the
> greatest burden on Mike himself, and he has willingly accepted this.) But I
>
> submit that any incremental burden, considered objectively, is minimal and
> well
> worth the upside to the Commission in having Mike participate in the LA
> interviews. While I am not at all happy that the new schedule causes us to
> lose Mike for half of our LA work, the circumstances we confront require that
>
> everyone show some flexibility here. I urge you to adopt the my proposal.
>
> sorry to impose all this on you, but we do need a decision. Thanks.
>
> Dieter

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Date: Sat, 4 Oct 2003 13:34:22-0400
From: "" <bgrewe@9-11commission.gov>4P
To: "" <dsneil@9-11commission.gov>4f
Cc: "" <frontoffice@9-11 commission.gov>4?,"" <mjacobson@9-11 commission.gov>9
Subject: Re: DSM interviews at WFO

Dieter:

I do not believe this request is reasonable for the following reasons. First,
you cried wolf over LA and essentially demanded that Mike be made available in
contravention of our previous agreement as to the time he would devote to DSM
matters. This was extremely detrimental to Team 6's previously planned work.
I do not believe it is fair that just because you decide to schedule things at
a particular time that Mike should be expected to drop all Team 6 work. In my
view you already cashed your get out of jail free card.

Second, Mike's work for Team 6 does not just involve writeups and interviews,
there are literally tens of thousands of pages of documents our team --
including Mike -- needs to begin addressing to prepare for the next several
months' interviews and to determine what additional work we need to do to
complete our monograph. He has done none of that to date. Team 6 is going to
be hitting a huge crunch and Mike is essential to that effort.

Third, the agreement was that Mike would be available for DSM matters only --
not all Team la work. When that decision was made that involved only a few
people in San Diego. It was expanded to several people in LA for
understandable reasons. It was never agreed that it would include every other
possible person of interest. Moreover, it certainly does not include anyone who
might have even conceivably assisted the hijackers. It only refers to the few
individuals for which there was evidence that they may have a direct link to a
particular government and therefore be evidence of a link between the
government and the hijackers. I do not believe the WFO interviews are DSM work
as it was defined when it was determined that Mike would assist in Team la's
work and therefore Mike should not be expected to be involved.

Fourth, even if all of the interviews are DSM, the decision to have Mike
involved was due to his prior review of particular individuals and knowledge
about what was known about them. To the extent that you want to expand the
scope of DSM to include people with no apparent link to the government and/or
people that Mike has not previously investigated, you are asking to expand his
role in a way that is contrary to all prior understandings and certainly not
justified. You have the same number of full time staff on your team as I do
(actually more because I don't have Mike full-time)- I suggest that you ensure
that your staff is up to speed and doing their jobs as opposed to demanding I
provide staff from my team just because it is convenient for Team la.

Finally, as you are aware, Monday is a religious holiday so Mike will not be
available. There is a staff meeting Tuesday morning and a briefing Tuesday
afternoon that Mike must attend. Thus, under your proposal Mike would be
available to Team 6 next week for approximately 3-4 hours. That is neither

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Mail:: INBOX: Re: DSM interviews at WFO Page 2 of 2

appropriate nor fair. I need to be able to give him assignments for Team 6 and
ensure that our work gets done.

I suggest you either reschedule the WFO interviews when it is convenient for
you and your team to conduct them or if they are so important, make time
yourself to do them. By the way, I note that the reason you insisted you had
to have Mike last week was because Tamm was not available for two days and you
needed to double track all week to get your interviews done in one week. The
fact is, however, that Tamm was there the entire time. Moreover, as you
finished the interviews in three days, it is clear that even if Tamm had not
been available the first two days, you could have completed all of the
interviews last week with Tamm arriving Tuesday night and therefore Mike was
not essential to your staffing the interviews.

I am sorry, but having had my team's work negatively impacted last week because
of your untimely scheduling, I am not feeling generous this week and do not
consent to turning Mike over to Team la for three days.

Barbara

Quoting "" <dsnell@9-llcommission.gov>:

> Hi Barbara. Hope your Miami trip went well. I wanted to give you a heads up
>
> on our current planning for DSM interviews at WFO next week. So far, we've
> identified 22 agents for interviews, which we won't be starting till
> Wednesday,
> at the earliest (since we need to have a chance to absorb the extensive ACS
> research we're doing right now) and which most likely will run through the
> balance of the week on a double track. Once again, Mike's participation in
> as
> many interviews as possible will be important for us to maximize our
> effectiveness, especially in view of my likely unavailability for much of the

> week due to the impending overseas trip (scheduled to start 10/11). I would
>
> appreciate it if we could have him Wednesday through Friday (10/8-10/10).
> While I know this amounts to a substantial amount of time, I understand that
>
> Mike wants to participate in the DSM WFO interviews, that he is caught up on
>
> his pre-Miami Team 6 interview writeups, and that he is confident he can do
> the
> Miami writeups and be fully prepared for Team 6's Phoenix trip the week of
> 10/20. Please let me know if this is OK with you. Thanks.
> Dieter

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