Mumbai Attacks: Bombay First Conference @ The Trident - Tape 5
Duration: 01:00:12; Aspect Ratio: 1.778:1; Hue: 8.833; Saturation: 0.083; Lightness: 0.270; Volume: 0.110; Cuts per Minute: 5.149; Words per Minute: 87.502
Summary: Two months after the terrible attacks on our city, a gathering of businessmen, security experts, and politicos meet at the same hotel where gunmen had created havoc.
In the quickly renovated chambers of the Regal Room in The Trident, a 6 hour session takes place where much is discussed - terrorism, surveillance, National ID Cards, higher spending on security and tighter centralization of information gathering networks. The Panel of Experts included the deputy mayor of London, a member of the US 9/11 Commission, a US Dept. of Homeland Security advisor, the head of Security for Deutsche Bank Asia Pacific, a former member of NATO Security, and several counter-terrorism experts. From India, it brought together politicians, a former NSG commando, faces from corporate India, and from the media - Gerson DaCunha and Burkha Dutt. The audience included prominent Indian businessmen, heads of security companies, a member of the Shin Bet, and people from 'concerned civil society'.
Such meetings are usually held in five-star hotels behind close doors with members of the public not having a chance to interact with or interrogate arguments made. We see putting this footage in pad.ma as a way to open up arguments and trajectories, moving away from a totalizing discourse around 'terrorism'... annotations are welcome because slowing down the pace of the discourse and examining it in detail and critically might be our only answer to the media juggernaut.
Mumbai
Trident Hotel, Nariman Point
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Question, audience member: We were talking about enough is enough - after having learnt lessons from 9/11, 7/7 and now the Mumbai attack - I'm sure the entire world is educated about these incidents, unless we're still waiting for more case studies in other parts of the world. I think now is the time when there is a need to implement measures to ensure such incidents do not happen in the future anywhere. We are all the same. After all the discussions, what is the international body doing to ensure that such incidents do not happen after we're sure Enough is Enough? Including India, as well as Pakistan?
Brett Lovegrove: There isn't one international body, and can I say, I don't support there should be an international body. The international co-operation is incredibly strong in the counter-terrorism field - its an incredible small family of counter-terrorism operatives and strategists in police, pvt. sector, military, etc. Why I say there should not be an international body is, firstly, there is nothing standard about terror attacks. There is no golden solution. Also because all the cities are different, different cultures, different modes of doing things - that's one of the consistent messages we're saying. You have to take individual responsibility to solve the problem you face and if we can take learnings back to London from you, we'd be happy to. But I think that's the reason there is no international body.
Richard Barnes:I can't see govts. giving up sovereign control of their police services to an internationall body. There is interpol and a whole range of organizations that talk to each other. Within 24 hours, of the Mumbai attacks, metropolitan police dept. had a full squad of people here at the airport. We had police appeals put up. There was a list of question if you had returned from Mumbai. There is a lot of co-operation. What can we do specifically to prevent this.
Richard Barnes:I took evidence from survivors of blasts on the train - bomb blasts are particular things - they scatter around and impact in peculiar ways. One man who was hurt because he was blown backward against the side of the the train, but he was as close to the bomber as I am to Emily. He saw the hand go in to the bag, press the button to blow the bomb up. Unless we can understand the mentality of the person who can look at someone in the eye, and know that in seconds they are going to kill them, Until we understand how terrorists are trained, etc. we are never going to stop them. Because no one is born a terrorist, but unless we understand that. There is years of work to do.
sorry...last two q's ..
Question, audience member: One question I want to ask is - unlike the local trains in the UK / US, Indian local trains are over-crowded and people are packed like sardines. From your experience, how can we secure our suburban trains? Passengers are not aware of security requirements. There is not even room for people to look around for suspicious objects. Another question, 26/11 was being covered by the media, and this was watched by the terrorists' mentors in Pakistan, who were in turn informing them. Do you have a law to keep the media away from such situations?
Siddharth Bhatia: Brett, since you discussed this yesterday I'd like you to address it.
Brett Lovegrove: There is a common law which is you can arrest people if they are obstructing you from doing your lawful duty.
The media is incredibly mature with how they have relationships with policing departments. Its an unwritten contract that we will give them information when we have it, they will circulate the information because its marketing and hence money, but its a bit deeper than that. When we say to the media "You can have pictures but you must stay here and we will facilitate you as much as we can." but there's some pictures too gory or that are disrespectful to people who've died, etc. and the media respects that. So from a policing point of view, we don't need a law to do that because its a positive partnership we have.
Michael Berkowitz: We spend a lot of time and effort in the emergency response community. If you go back to 9/11, Oaklahama City bombing, TWA, etc - one lesson is how to better to handle media. We have been getting better at it. If you don't feed the media with good accurate reliable information, then they speculate. They also become unruly and jump barriers, etc. With the right protocols, keep them back and treat them as partners beforehand so they understand some of the issues you're wrestling with. Those are the things you can do.
Richard Barnes:There is a love-hate relationship between the police and the media. The police loves to hate the media and the media love to knock the socks off the police. But if you go to Scotland Yard, every office has a wide-screen TV and its tuned into CNN and Sky, because they know that's where you often get the most reliable information. For them to pretend that they are the only source of knowledge is bloody rubbish.
Richard Barnes:Sorry I've got a signal saying ...there will be one more session...and time for questions. This should be my cue to defend the media, but I will not. We will save that for another discussion another time. It wasa difficult situation, everyone tried to do the best they could.
Thank you very much for participating and having this interactive session.
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(tea break)
Barkha Dutt: I was standing outside this hotel and as many of us watching what to this day doesn't feel real. But the sad truth is that it was all so real, its still taking us time to process it. Its going to change how we look at ourselves, the rest of the world, our institutions forever. A lot of anger has been expended. What we're going to do is see how this anger can transform into constructive action. Anger can self-destruct - anger has to perhaps be built into the institutions --
make some assumptions - the US, UK - do they have the same approach to terrorism? What is the bare minimum a safe city needs to have in common? How do things need to change not just on paper, more so, us as citizens.
Barkha Dutt: Let me start with you, Mr. Ramadorai.
One of things spoken about is technology and terrorism - that's strange, because any of us who watch movies, see a counter terrorist on a computer, get the floor plans, etc. Here, we see, it took us a whole night to get the plans. We see technology coming in, but not used enough at all by our government.
Mr. Ramadorai: If you look at the post-9/11 commission - it attributed the attack to a failure of the imagination of the govt., failure to imagine the magnitude of the threat. Mumbai attacks has been India's failure of imagination. Today there is a fear of the unknown. US and UK have been relatively safe post 9/11 and 7/7, possible because of simultanrous measures on several fronts. Choking terrorist funding networks, greater sharing of information, in UK focus was on intelligence-led counter-terrorism, increasing power and authority of homeland security through technology, securing borders in the US.
Mr. Ramadorai: a key has been interception of communication of those communicating with terrorists - all of this is relevant to our country, but our situation is different because several terrorist groups fighting for different causes - Naxals, Bodos, Jehadis - all sharing information and monies and all. We are also too populous and large a nation. We need to focus on reducing the threat, completely eliminating it is not possible. We should be prepared to address it. We need to take several measures simultaneously and implement them ruthlessly.
Mr. Ramadorai: Its a no-brainer to get the implementation plan. We need to have a time-bound national security plan and zero-tolerance is necessary. We need to do risk assessment for the cities and regulation of anti-terror laws need to be put in. Gathering information is where we need to use the technology.
We have talked about National IDs with embedded biometric information, but have not implemented it. Surveillance has non-intrusive capability and we get information from multiple sources, for eg. road information from taxi services,etc. All these shouldd be pooled into a central secure network.
Mr. Ramadorai: Such information should be collected, processed, analyzed and used in decision making. If we don't have this information in real time across multiple databases, its not going to be useful at all. With the NIA being setup hopefully it will bring in the co-operaion between multiple agencies in the country and unified intelligences. And at the back-end we need super-computers to process this information, and unless we have those capabilities built-in, or there is a public sector initiative, we are going to be seeing lack of co-ordination, delays in sharing of information.
Barkha Dutt: Two interesting thoughts - one is to call it a failure of imagination. w Also,hen you talk about national IDs, biometrics, etc. - one asks why does it take this for us to think this is a good idea? Talking about UK, is it really like the movies? Imagine a situation in London where there's a building taken over by terrorists, what is the technology you have that we don't have ?
Brett Lovegrove: I can tell you some things we have, but a lot of things we have are confidential. If something like that happens there, we have trained negotiators and trained commandos - we have a gold-silver-bronze commanding structure. If you are declared a gold, silver or bronze commander you know exactly where you are. That's how good the training is. Technology we have are listening devices, audio-visual devices - we use tera-hertz technology, it allows you to see through clothing, walls, and buildings. So you can see where your targets and victims are.
Brett Lovegrove: Milliwave technology uses a different type of wave, can detect things under your clothing. Our colleagues have been using it for many years. Technology that compares the natural waves we each give off physically is compared to other waves to check whether someone is a threat from a distance. We have managed to get this technology to quite a small portable device, so we can go into crowds and see if there is something that might be a threat. So command structure is important, we used to use the military to respond on our behalf for IRA sieges, for example - but our police are so well trained in terms of specialist training that we just sent the police officers in. So there's an enormous amount of technology there - the best technology is that which uncovers the event before it happens.
Quesion to Ribeiro: Much has been said about police going in, etc. - but the larger question is was there a command structure in place? To begin with there was a misunderstanding as to what the situation was. It seemed to the police as though it was a gang war. It took a while before there was even an understanding there was a terror strike, then it took a while longer for any command structures to be put into place.
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Julio Ribeiro: I returned home at 10 o'clock that night. I put on the TV to see the result of the cricket match - I knew we'd win, but I wanted to check by how much.
(laughter)
But there was no cricket, no score, just this thing that was happpening. I saw the police, and I saw they didn't know what was happening. I told my wife there was a gang-war, and I was not so interested in gang-wars since I retired 20 years ago. Only in the morning did I find out that my good friend Hemant Karkare had died. tThat is how i got involved with what was happening.
Julio Ribeiro: What would I have done if I was the Commissioner of police, could I have prevented it? The answer is No. I could not have prevented it. At that time we were not prepared - no one told us a fidayeen attack was possible against Mumbai. So if I was commissioner, I would have been taken completely unaware. The only thing I would have done differently is that I would be seen and heard, I would have taken charge. Like we did in Punjab. That would be the only difference - I would not have had men under my command who would be able to take on the fidayeen.
Julio Ribeiro: Other strategies and actions, I think we should get civil society involved - we should get the police involved - because today police is quite different from other countries - even policemen in Punjab- they were always alert, but the policemen in Bombay have not had a problem, so they are not alert - we have to make them alert and involved. We have to get disaster management in place - the drills and things, and the very fact that you have to organize it properly - that day it was totally out of shape. Lastly we have to get politicians involved - today they are only involved with power and votes. They need to get involved on our side.
Julio Ribeiro: We have formed a group called the citizens take charge. We want to get civil society involved - we are not asking corporates to give us huge amounts. We are asking individuals to give 100 rupees per month, which is nothing. We are getting individuals involved in their localities, involved with disaster management in their localities. We are in touch with them on the internet - we are going to put pressure on the govt. to make sure they co-operate.
Julio Ribeiro: What is police reform? We want them to be professional and politically neutral. Today even a constable has political godfathers. That has to change - we are going to get citizens all over the city involved in this work - this is in short, what we intend to do.
Barkha Dutt: There was failure to anticipate .. its not clear why .. looking ahead, what is the one thing, in terms of technology, or else, that, if this happens again, we could handle it?
Gen. Satish Nambiar: Let me start by trying to look at the broader picture - one quick lesson that came across from listening to delegates in UK & US - they have put mechanisms into place to prevent this happening again - and the reason is they have definitely identified the threat properly and gone ahead. I'm not sure we have done so yet. The people who've come from the US and UK have given us useful lessons, information and tips, but I don't subscribe to the view that the threat we face is the same as theirs, because the one we face has different connotations. Connotations are the fact that like while the international phenomenen is based in Pakistan or Afghanistan which Bin Laden as the fountain-head. Ours are from the region who have the support of elements in the Pakistan establishment.
Gen. Satish Nambiar: We can draw distinction and take advice and lessons from them. Someone raised the question of what is being done internationally. Internationally, notwithstanding bilateral, etc. - the international community has not been able to come up with a common definition of terrorism. We came up with a definition, offered it to the World Summit in 2005 but didn't come to an agreement on a comprehensive convention on terrorism. You can't get much out of the international community at the moment.
Gen. Satish Nambiar: I would suggest when we look at tackling this problem ,we need to look at this issue - 2,3 aspects need to come out. 1st element has to start with the political leadership of this country. On this, there can be no two opinions . They have to develop a common strategy. If this political leadership has to be forced to come to terms with this on a common platform - it is civil society, the corporate world who have to put constant pressure. With all due apologies to you as a media person, I'm amazed at how the media has deflected from the need for preventive action, in context of what happened on 26/11, and is focussing 'Pakistan.. Pakistan'. I'm sick of hearing that. People like you, who are part of civil society must force this issue.
Gen. Satish Nambiar: At the end I must say, when we take these examples - while they have useful lessons, their templates can't be the same. This is highlighted by the fact that 26/11 stands for 26th November, but 9/11 stands for 11th September. This is reflective of the fact that because we have a different societal issue to address, we can't take these issues the same way because of the different composition of our people. The other aspect that needs some stress is the question of punitive action, etc. - can be discussed at length.
Barkha Dutt: You bring the important point of media attention, and therefore public attention, shifting to an external context. Enough is Enough does not mean Pakistan at all - it just means that domestically we have grown tired of systems that we expected to work better. Bout not being able to drive directly from 9/11 or 7/7 - David, if I can get you in - I'm not sure if UK and US approach this the same way, but are there basic things or certain response systems, which, no matter what the political-social-geographical context, that have to remain the same no matter where?
David M. Olive: One of the risks that we run of coming from across the globe is acting as if have all the answers and we don't. That said, we do believe that there are some universal rules that do apply. We don't have a universal definition of "terrorism", same as we don't for love, but we know it when we feel it and we have a generalized reaction to it. We learned that there is the need to share information better, regardless of where. This was brought to our notice in Washington DC, not in 2001, but a year later - when we had a sniper run around for 14 days randomly kill people - not at all unlike the dispersed situation you had here. What we found is a year later after 9/11 we still didn't have law enforcement communicating with each other. We cant solve people's attitude, but have given people the systems to do it.
David M. Olive: Other thing is that instead of having knee-jerk reactions against the last incident, so as to try and solve the last incident, we have put a lot more emphasis on political will behind the concept of risk-based decision-making, not just threat-based or vulnerability-based. Actually understanding the nature of risk and applying a hierarchial prioritization. One thing we have learned is that more information is better than less. That is a difficult lesson for people to accept, but the more information people have, the more able they are to be responsible for themselves and their own actions. When we are individually responsible, we become collectively responsible and it is not just us placing blame or pointing fingers.
David M. Olive: Information sharing, need to share v/s a need to know. A risk-based approach and creating the systems that allow to answer your first question - the technology to be a force multiplier as opposed to the answer because it needs intelligent people running it. The technology is agnostic as to whether its a shopper or a suicide bomber.
Barkha Dutt: As the only journalist on the panel, one of the things I want to underline is that through 3 days there was actually no co-ordinative spokesperson in the govt at all. At that moment, there were several, selective and contradictory leaks - briefings by different wings of govt. - that's part of strategy, how to deal with information. A small thing, talking about forensics, outside the hotels, it was like a mela - one thing maybe that could be followed could be a simple yellow-ribbon cordon. We don't have a cordon. We had a rassi, a rope put by the police. What risks are we taking, in terms of potential evidence, etc.?
Deepankar Sanwalka: This was brought up in the earlier sessions as well - one of the learnings that came out of this was do we have measures of risk management in place? There has to be someone who will take charge. When 26/11 happened, who took charge? There is a documented process in place - but did that person take charge? Why didn't they? Maybe they didn't understand who takes charge.
Julio Ribeiro: The police commissioner always takes charge. I was police commissioner for 3 years, there was a policce strike, we had a huge problem. There was the assassination of the UK deputy high commissioner, attack on the US consulate, a big communal riot... the police commissioner was in charge, there was no doubt about that.
Deepankar Sanwalka: You talked about ribbon - that's a process ..it was brought out that it was the chief minister who had to take charge...
Barkha Dutt: The chief officer had nothing to do with operations.
Deepankar Sanwalka: Take charge of the situation in terms of coming in front of the media, explaining the situation...the ribbon...that is a process...
Barkha Dutt: Why is a yellow ribbon a process!? I don't understand.
Deepankar Sanwalka: ...its a drill...it means this is a high risk area. Is there awareness down to the lowest levels of general public understand that thats a high risk area, you should not cross that area...
Barkha Dutt: Is the public expected to be aware on its own? In complicated terrorist scenarios like Nariman House, which was taking place in a crowded heavily populated area, can you expect citizenry on its own to stay in their homes and stay off the streets or is it up to the law enforcers to actually make that happen?
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Richard Bingley: Generally how it works in London, is that quite cordons are established. What I would say is the media response is generally quite good, they stayed behind cordons, etc. but there were a few who broke in to get better pictures, etc. I think where we were good in London was that there was an unspoken protocol with the police and politicians to not go ransacking sites and to not put immediately, very insensitive images in the press, although some of them were quite or even too dramatic. That didn't last very long. Quickly the media became very obsessed with 7/7. There is an issue about media taking civic responsibility, they are not just there to be journalists, but are also members of a society just been attacked and victimized and that does involve having self-regulated standards around not showing body parts in news papers.
Barkha Dutt: The question was not about the media - the question is that at every location there were huge crowds.
Satish Nambiar: This is hardly a merited discussion...At each place, setting up a cordon should have been a routine thing. The first thing the police should do is set up a cordon. That only reflects on the fact that despite these individual acts of heroism, and the fact that they are very committed chaps, their training and scope for operation has been severely curtailed by the messing around that they have been subjected to over the years. That's it. That is what has to be rectified.
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Capt. Raghuram, CEO, Mahindra Ltd: 26/11 - the Inside Story
As i was talking to Barkha earlier, its interesting that we have experts form the US and UK, but somebody who is conspicuous in his absence here is perhaps someone from the NSG to talk about what really went on inside those 3 days.
This shows in many ways what happened those 3 days.
This was not a terror attack, it was a military raid. If you look at how it was structured, there were diversionary attacks, strategic strikes, surgical strikes, etc. simultaneously. You must have seen these pictures in various papers are taken from inside during the operations..{slides} this is the group that came in on Thursday morning from Delhi.
Capt. Raghuram: At this poin of time they had no idea how many terrorists there were or where they were located. Whether some of them had thrown their weapons and joined the crowd. They were guarding as many exits as possible. There were multiple exits through which the terrorists could escaped. These buildings were deliberately chosen because they are lateral, as opposed to the President or Intercontinental which are linear buildings. So you can actually enter form one side and get out form the other side.
Capt. Raghuram: One of the reasons it took up to 60 hours to clear the hotels is because each room was physically checked by NSG, etc. That's the Trident, the hotel you are sitting in. The terrorists moved in from this gate, turned right, shot their way in, went through the corridor, went up causeway between Trident and Oberoi, killing all as they moved, went to Tiffin, then Kandahar - climbed up to 21st floor, from where they were blown out by NSG commandoes.
Capt. Raghuram: You must remember, when these operations took place, the NSG team was facing one of three situations - they could have terrorists in the room, guests in the room, or terrorists and guests in the room. Each room-opening had to be done with the same passion and energy level. Friends from Israeli special forces will tell you that the SF basically trained for anywhere up to 7-9 yrs for that one room-opening or aircraft-storming. Here they were doing 600 of them with very limited resources. That's one of the views of the Oberoi..
Capt. Raghuram: As you can see from kind of armament and kind of weaponry they were carrying in terms of sheer scale of ammunition, grenades, credit cards, documentation, opium to numb the pain, GPS systems. This was a very well planned military operation, well beyond the capability of any police force to even start to comprehend, let alone matching up. Let's talk about some lessons. These are very tactical lessons. I'm not talking about the strategic ...I'm talking about the sharp end of the stick.
Capt. Raghuram: Because when this happens again, we will again call up those boys and again they will come back and if comething is not fixed at that level we will again have a similar situation. We need to sharpen sharp end of stick as well. NSG got news that their services might be required from television - official intimation came 2 hrs. later. Then they waited for 9 hours, within their scheduled drill time, before they could get an airlift. As a soldier, i ask, what would it take for the govt or the 8 CEOs who own airlines in this country to say "All aircraft on the tarmac are at your disposal, take the first one and go to Mumbai?" That didn't happen.
Capt. Raghuram: For 9 hours, the troupes were stationed, they were already fatigued when they landed here. So you already are putting your crack units at a disadvantage before contact has been established. Then the "O" group or order group. When they got there, there was no maps, no perimeter control set up, no safe-zone, no sanitisation, no blue-prints of hotel. This meant that a terrorist could have just thrown his AK-47 and walked out and he would have been out with the crowd. He could have been standing the crowd and instructing his men inside. There was lock-down of exits, the maps given were electric circuit maps, they had no information regarding which AC duct would take them where,or which parapet could take their load, etc.
Capt. Raghuram: It is a good point to retrospect on what went right. NSG and many of these organizations are designed by structure to handle one incident or crisis at a time. Here, structurally there were 3 missions asked to be launched simultaneously. They were initially told there would be 2 operations then the 3rd one sprang up. Remember that these 450 commandoes are not room-opening commandoes. The way they are structured, they have heavy support weapons, sniper groups, bomb disposal squads,etc. The actual room openers are only about 70-80 of them who are then divided into 3 different missions where one commanding officer is for 70 hrs simultaneously controlling the operations in all 3 places.
Capt. Raghuram: They are cleaning room after room after room, each room with the same degree of fear, of danger as the first one. In this hotel they cleared the 21st, 20th, 19th and 29 rooms on the 18th floor before they found 2 terrorists in the 30th room. They were the same troupes. For 60 hours there was no backup, they got recycled. There was no food or water, they managed from picking up water and fruits in the rooms, because even if food came, who would take it to them?
Capt. Raghuram: There was no holding troupes, which meant that when they cleared a floor, they had nobody to hand over the charge to. They had to keep denuding themselves right up to the very end. There was pressure from the media, govt, everybody about the time it was taking. Pressure of 'sudden death' which means that even though you have got the terrorists holed up in a room and military strategy will tell you that you basically hold them, you wear them out, you exhaust them, you exhaust their ammunition. But the pressure of sudden death makes you want to do that confrontation.
Capt. Raghuram: Lets talk of some ground realities. There's talk of grand plans being discussed here, the idea of bringing the NSG to every hub, which is the worst thing you can do to that last unit, which incidentally is NSG because it trains for about 16 hours a day. The moment you split them into 4 and bring them to Mumbai they will be a watered up version of Mumbai police. We have to talk about building capability not just cannibalization. Right now we are talking only about cannibalization. Indian army is missing 11,000 officers. This unit, when it went into operation they authorized 33 officers but had only 21 officers when they went into operations. It has taken us 22 years to come to this point. There is no way the govt can raise enough troupes, enough leaders, enough officers in a time-frame we are talking about.
Capt. Raghuram: There are certain drills which the State, paramilitary forces, the fire brigade need to practice together. When the NSG or special forces arrived, they need certain amount of information. Its ironic that in all these partnerships like force one or like setting up these commissions, none of those people are involved. Its going to be back to square-one the next time the balloon goes up you will have the same situation. Fire-brigades weren't rescuing people because they had never practiced rescue while an operation is on. Casualty evacuation was never done in the past during times of combat. These elements need to be thought through and put together before we can actually make a difference in a meaningful fashion.
(applause)
Barkha Dutt: That was very instructive and also instead of talking big, we should talk specifics. NSG finally has their aircraft, but its a shame it should have come to this.
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