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For the grid search of the perimeter they established the layout and plotted evidence with pen and paper. Team A completed its f
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For the grid search of the perimeter they established the layout and plotted evidence with pen and
paper. Team A completed its first shift at 7 p.m. By then Adams does not recall the arrival of
the US&R teams. Their arrival may have been during the second shift from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.
Prior experience once again paid dividends. Adams had helped in Africa on the embassy
bombings and with the USS Cole bombing and with Kosovo. This prior experience in Africa
was also shared by the Fairfax County Task Force 1(VA-TF 1)US&R. The Pentagon attack
was the largest remains recovery that John Adams was ever involved in.
The PenRen personnel were great, providing a ready supply of trucks and Bobcats were
available.
The chain of custody was important to document.
Flight 77' s black box was on the first floor near A&E Drive by the night shift team.
They even found a wallet of one of the hijackers in the rubble with a Gold's Gym membership
card inside.
3. Lessons Learned: Adams wishes that the ERTs had linked up with the ICP sooner, as did
Chris Combs.
Communications could have been better in those initial hours. Chris Combs and John Adams
had communications, but not situational awareness of each other..
We could have used someone like Jim Rice or another supervisor.
There was greater emphasis on getting the WFO command center up and running and less
emphasis on getting the on-scene command post stood up.
A point of friction was in preventing Pentagon employees from going back into the building.
ERT protocol changes: (1) more coordination with local with local response teams; (2) now
training with US&R since 9111,never done prior; (3) plans now include having ajoint command
post near by the ICP.
Training is scenario-driven and WMD is now always an aspect of training.
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MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD
Event: John S. Adams, Special Agent, FBI
Type of event: Interview
Date: November 3, 2003
Special Access Issues: None
Prepared by: Mark Bittinger
Team Number: 8
Location: FBI Washington Field Office, Washington, DC
Participants -Non-Commission: John Adams
Participants - Commission: Kevin Shaeffer; Mark Bittinger
UNCLAS
1.John Adam's Background: He has seven years experience with the FBI, all at the WFO. He
worked on counterintelligence (CI) for his first two years, then the drug squad for two years.
. Now he is working on the International Terrorism Squad 6 (IT-6). For five of his seven years
with the FBI he has been part of the ERT, with four of those years as a team leader (one of five
team leaders). His prior experience included working for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
He has a graduate degree in forensic anthropology.
2. Events on 9/11: In the early morning he was out on a search warrant with the gang squad and
made an arrest. They brought the suspect back to the building and a friend informed him of the
WTC attack(s). He immediately turned on CNN. He then heard a coworker say there's smoke at
the Pentagon. A page went out for the ERT to be ready to deploy. He took the 14th Street Bridge
to the Mall Entrance of the Pentagon. Fire trucks from Reagan National Airport were there as
was a lot of chaos. People were evacuating, some were fleeing, a fourth plane was said to be
inbound, they needed to get people away from the building, and during this time the upper floors
of the Pentagon crash site collapsed. Then the "all clear" was announced. Nobody was coming
out of the building.
Coordination was desperately needed. In terms of situational awareness, things were a little
disjointed for the first eight hours or so. John Adams worked more with the ACPD and DPS and
was not aware that Chris Combs was at the Pentagon until around 8 p.m.
ERT team leaders arrived. "Our whole day was a perimeter grid search and organizing
resources." A huge number of people were there to help out and the ERTs broke into a Team A
for the day shift and a Team B for the night shift. Adams was still on-scene at a forward
command post, but it was neither the Virginia State Police barracks nor the Incident Command
Post.
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