UNITED STATES ARMY

CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY

INTERVIEW OF

MAJ TED BOWLING

Fordham University ROTC

126-ORH-I-052

NEIT-126-052

CONDUCTED BY

SFC DAN MORIARTY

The Center of Military History

AT

Fordham University, New York NY

October 12, 2001

TAPE TRANSCRIPTION
2

1 P R O C E E D I N G S

2 SFC MORIARTY: Today's date is 12 October 2001. 

3 We're at Fordham University in the Faculty Memorial 

4 Hall, which is the ROTC Administrative offices. This 

5 interview is being conducted by SFC Dan Moriarty of the 

6 126 Military History and the interview is with --

7 MAJ BOWLING: MAJ Ted Bowling B-o-w-l-i-n-g.

8 SFC MORIARTY: This is the disclaimer I told you 

9 about. I understand that the tape and transcripts 

10 resulting from this oral history will belong to the 

11 U.S. Government to be used in any manner deemed in the 

12 best interest of the U.S. Army, as determined by the 

13 Chief of Military History or his representative.

14 I understand that subject to security 

15 classification restrictions, I will be given an 

16 opportunity to review the resulting transcript in order 

17 to clarify and expand my original thoughts. The Army 

18 will provide me with a copy of the edited transcript 

19 for my own use and subject to classification 

20 restrictions.

21 Is there any conditions or anything you want to 
3

1 put on this, sir?

2 MAJ BOWLING: No. I understand.

3 SFC MORIARTY: Okay. If you could initial where 

4 it says my name, sir, sign here and date here. The 

5 only reason I know what date it is is because yesterday 

6 was the 11th.

7 What's your duty station here, sir?

8 MAJ BOWLING: I'm the executive officer here at 

9 Fordham Army ROTC.

10 SFC MORIARTY: September 11, were you here on duty 

11 when the terrorist assaults occurred?

12 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah. We had just finished PT and I 

13 came back into the office. I was back in the office to 

14 do some work before changing clothes and found out that 

15 it had occurred via the Internet, that there was -- it 

16 said an aircraft had crashed into the World Trade 

17 Center.

18 We of course thought that -- we thought nothing of 

19 it in the sense we thought it was a Cessna that had 

20 crashed into it, so we really didn't know the gravity 

21 of what had occurred until -- even when they said one 
4

1 of the towers had collapsed, it wasn't clear to us the 

2 gravity of what had occurred until we saw on the 

3 Internet -- we don't have live television feed here but 

4 we saw building -- I think it was the first tower, 

5 tower one, collapsing on the Internet on a streaming 

6 video and at that point we all just -- we realized that 

7 it was a history-changing event.

8 SFC MORIARTY: Did you try to go through chain of 

9 command to find out what response you should be taking?

10 MAJ BOWLING: At that point we did. We called our 

11 higher headquarters and they said stand tight, they had 

12 no guidance for us. Of course, the number one 

13 consideration we had was hey, are we -- could this be 

14 that we're under attack? If so, will we receive 

15 orders? If we do, we need to be here to receive them.

16 Now, in hindsight, the right thing to have done 

17 would be to have loaded up our vehicles and moved 

18 quickly to ground zero to assist, but at the time we 

19 just did not know what was going on and at the time, 

20 looking back and putting myself in the context of my 

21 boss and my boss's boss, in that context, the right 
5

1 decision was made to keep us where we were at.

2 SFC MORIARTY: So that there was a firm chain 

3 of --

4 MAJ BOWLING: Firm chain of command and if we were 

5 officially required to perform some duties, we would be 

6 here to receive those orders.

7 SFC MORIARTY: Do you have any communication 

8 assets, any radios or (inaudible) or anything like 

9 that?

10 MAJ BOWLING: We would have been on our own with 

11 our own cell phones and since cell phone services was 

12 just about -- literally cut off at that moment, 

13 communication would have been impossible. Once we left 

14 here, that would have been it. Nobody would have heard 

15 from us again for a long time.

16 SFC MORIARTY: How about the students, now? Did 

17 they come to you for guidance or --

18 MAJ BOWLING: A lot of them did and that was very 

19 complicated for me because I did not want to order any 

20 of them down or even -- to be honest with you, at the 

21 time, I did not even want to advocate their official 
6

1 participation.

2 I went as far as encouraging them as individual 

3 citizens, as American citizens, to do what they could 

4 and if that was in a volunteer role to do so. But we 

5 had actually no guidance from cadet command and because 

6 these are not actually -- most of our cadets are not 

7 contracted, only about 30 to 40 percent are contracted, 

8 if something were to happen them, for example, down 

9 there under the -- not being officially contracted, the 

10 Army's obligation to them would be very unclear.

11 But I did encourage them as individuals to go 

12 down.

13 SFC MORIARTY: Did you take any steps for security 

14 here at the University?

15 MAJ BOWLING: We worked with security to make sure 

16 that the building was secure. They completed -- they'd 

17 been working on putting a new gate in for about a year18 and-a-half and lo and behold, suddenly the gate came in 

19 that very day.

20 SFC MORIARTY: Was the gate right here?

21 MAJ BOWLING: That was the big gate you have right 
7

1 there.

2 SFC MORIARTY: How about -- it seems to me that 

3 you're vulnerable from --

4 MAJ BOWLING: We did keep trucks out on that day 

5 only. We prevented trucks from coming in because of 

6 that threat.

7 SFC MORIARTY: What did you do, have somebody 

8 standing down there?

9 MAJ BOWLING: Security put in some type of a 

10 barricade.

11 SFC MORIARTY: Okay. So they wouldn't let 

12 deliveries in.

13 MAJ BOWLING: There was absolutely no -- I mean, 

14 there was no reported threat here. They just wanted to 

15 take precautions.

16 SFC MORIARTY: Uh-huh. Which seemed to be prudent 

17 that particular day, particularly after you learned 

18 about the Pentagon attacks and the aircraft in 

19 Pennsylvania.

20 MAJ BOWLING: Right. Right.

21 SFC MORIARTY: I mean, it became -- because -- I'm 
8

1 a journalist in my civilian life. I'm a managing 

2 editor of a newspaper and we initially got the report 

3 that a small aircraft had crashed in --

4 MAJ BOWLING: Right.

5 SFC MORIARTY: -- and we thought the same thing 

6 you thought, a Cessna, a Beechcraft or something like 

7 that and some idiot was just -- you know, had a heart 

8 attack or whatever. And then AP stopped sending stuff 

9 and then they started going alert, alert, alert, alert, 

10 alert, alert. They weren't sending anything, they were 

11 just sending alert, alert, alert.

12 MAJ BOWLING: Holy cow.

13 SFC MORIARTY: And we've never seen that before. 

14 So we were hooked on -- I mean, we stopped -- what we 

15 had done, we had the newspaper all put together, the 

16 front page because there had been a big fire in the 

17 town next to us and ripped that all apart and this came 

18 up. But we didn't realize the extent of it ourselves 

19 until almost 10:30.

20 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah. I don't think -- yeah. About 

21 10:30 is when everybody realized the gravity of what 
9

1 had occurred.

2 SFC MORIARTY: It seems that you have a 

3 complicated structure here, you know, because these 

4 cadets are also students.

5 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah.

6 SFC MORIARTY: And you say only 40 percent -- you 

7 have what, I was told about a hundred and some odd 

8 cadets?

9 MAJ BOWLING: A hundred and some odd cadets. 

10 That's right.

11 SFC MORIARTY: And only about 40 percent of them 

12 are actually --

13 MAJ BOWLING: Are contracted.

14 SFC MORIARTY: Now, is that the same thing as 

15 standing up and putting up your right hand and 

16 swearing?

17 MAJ BOWLING: Well, it is. Understand that 

18 they're not under the UCMJ, for example.

19 SFC MORIARTY: Oh, really.

20 MAJ BOWLING: But they do have -- they are 

21 contracted, they do carry ID cards. They're in the 
10

1 USAR control group once they do that.

2 SFC MORIARTY: Okay.

3 MAJ BOWLING: They're in the USAR control group. 

4 Even then, it would be questionable for us to advocate 

5 them participating in a dangerous rescue effort like 

6 that. It certainly hasn't been done before. Well, 

7 maybe the cadets at New Market, the Civil War, but in 

8 our modern day of litigation it's an extremely tough 

9 decision under the circumstances.

10 So a lot of them did participate, but on their 

11 own. They did.

12 SFC MORIARTY: Well -- because I talked to a 

13 couple of kids before, you know, as we were walking 

14 around and I was told a lot of them wore their T15 shirts. Does it say Fordham ROTC or something?

16 MAJ BOWLING: Well, those are not official T17 shirts but they did wear T-shirts. A lot of them 

18 wanted to volunteer at ground zero. To get into ground 

19 zero, you had to have some form of identification, be 

20 somehow credentialed, even in the -- day one was chaos, 

21 but even starting on day two, they didn't want non-
11

1 credentialed people down there for obvious reasons. 

2 There's too much opportunity for looting. And so they 

3 needed so many people that the T-shirt was enough 

4 credential that they were associated with some type of 

5 military organization.

6 SFC MORIARTY: Okay. So that got them in.

7 MAJ BOWLING: That got them in.

8 SFC MORIARTY: And they were working down there.

9 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah.

10 SFC MORIARTY: Now, does anybody have a firm 

11 number of the number of cadets who participated in that 

12 volunteer effort?

13 MAJ BOWLING: You know, we do not at this point 

14 but I anticipate if you were to -- you would find that 

15 about 20 were involved, about 20 of our cadets.

16 SFC MORIARTY: The fact that you don't, is this an 

17 official decision not to pursue that issue?

18 MAJ BOWLING: I think de facto, yes. De facto, 

19 yes, it is an official decision to leave this -- we 

20 want those individuals to receive the proper credit for 

21 what they did. However, we maintain the fact that they 
12

1 went down as individual citizens to go down there. So 

2 as an organization, unless we're requested to provide 

3 that information by the Army, then it's really not a 

4 concern of ours.

5 SFC MORIARTY: Okay.

6 MAJ BOWLING: Organizationally.

7 SFC MORIARTY: Sure. Sure. And I was also told 

8 that on the second day, the same students -- it was 

9 recommended that they no longer wear the ROTC T-shirts. 

10 Was that direction coming through the cadet leadership 

11 itself?

12 MAJ BOWLING: You have to understand, I mean, from 

13 a military standpoint, at least from my perspective, 

14 things were very chaotic. I understood at first that 

15 there was a general officer from the National Guard 

16 down there. Then I heard no, it was a colonel.

17 The story I got was on day two there was a 

18 lieutenant colonel from the National Guard running 

19 around with a clipboard threatening to take people's 

20 names down that weren't supposed to be down there. 

21 People were -- this is a very sensitive issue. What is 
13

1 the military doing, what is the military not doing down 

2 there.

3 Looking back, in hindsight, there should have been 

4 a large initial push to try to get military help in 

5 there. That initial push should have ended probably 

6 around day three or four when enough firemen were on 

7 hand to do the job at that point to pull the military 

8 out.

9 But at the beginning, there was absolutely none so 

10 it was the right thing to do to provide the assistance, 

11 but people -- responsible military officers were 

12 concerned about a couple of things. A, from a -- this 

13 sounds petty, but are these people in the line of duty? 

14 What would happen if something occurred to one of 

15 them?

16 SFC MORIARTY: Sure. Sure.

17 MAJ BOWLING: Because this is day two or day 

18 three. This is not the first day emergency, okay?

19 SFC MORIARTY: Right.

20 MAJ BOWLING: The second thing is nobody really 

21 knows, even at this point, what the Army's position is 
14

1 on assistance in New York City. So these things sound 

2 petty but in a sense they're really not. It was kind a 

3 -- in a sense maybe what happened here was a defining 

4 moment, the chaos that we had from a military 

5 perspective as far as who was supposed to be assisting, 

6 who wasn't, should we have been sent in immediately to 

7 help, because as an Army officer, I know now that was 

8 my place of duty on the day that it occurred. Instead, 

9 I was here.

10 Like I said, I do not begrudge my superiors, okay, 

11 because I would have made the same decision in that 

12 context. In the end, maybe it was the wrong decision. 

13 Maybe we should have been down there helping. So 

14 these concerns from all sides, from the National Guard 

15 side, from the active Army side are, I think, certainly 

16 warranted and so I don't begrudge these people.

17 At the same time, you know, my visit -- my work 

18 that I did down there was as an individual citizen 

19 also.

20 SFC MORIARTY: Oh. You actually did go down?

21 MAJ BOWLING: Yes, I did.
15

1 SFC MORIARTY: On what, day two or --

2 MAJ BOWLING: Day three.

3 SFC MORIARTY: Day three? All right.

4 MAJ BOWLING: We had people here that went down on 

5 day two. To the best of my knowledge, nobody went down 

6 on day one. We were hold -- at least from a cadre 

7 perspective, as I say, we were holding people here. 

8 Day two, there were cadre members that went down. 

9 Specifically, we had our recruiting operations officer 

10 and commandant and cadets went down --

11 SFC MORIARTY: Oh, excellent.

12 MAJ BOWLING: -- to assist on day two. And on day 

13 three, I went down to -- for about nine hours.

14 SFC MORIARTY: From an organic point of view, 

15 there seem to have been a lot of cross connections 

16 going on and people started to do stuff and stop, and I 

17 don't think there was ever any clear chain of command. 

18 We've been told that some of the units that showed up 

19 on the site was because their captain couldn't get a 

20 definitive answer from anybody.

21 MAJ BOWLING: So he just made a decision.
16

1 SFC MORIARTY: So he just said go.

2 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah.

3 SFC MORIARTY: In one particular case, the captain 

4 and a civilian careerist, an assistant district 

5 attorney, and in a civilian job, he was on site. And 

6 he was talking to his retention NCO, a full-timer, that 

7 finally just said are people showing up? And he said 

8 yeah. And he said okay, bring them down.

9 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah. Yeah.

10 SFC MORIARTY: And again, I don't know -- and the 

11 other thing that's happening and -- I don't know -- are 

12 you involved in it at all -- is this process that's 

13 developed, because we never had contingencies for this, 

14 to the best of my knowledge.

15 MAJ BOWLING: Right. This is something we just 

16 never considered.

17 SFC MORIARTY: Well, it was in a funk that we just 

18 -- who would dare do this to us.

19 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, we never 

20 considered it at all and -- but I'm interested to see 

21 how this all turns out and where the National Guard, 
17

1 the Army -- where the total Army falls now underneath 

2 the homeland defense plan that will certainly develop 

3 now.

4 SFC MORIARTY: That's going to be an 

5 interesting --

6 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah. It certainly will. But, you 

7 know, the -- you still -- you know, you look back and 

8 you think what we should have done as opposed to what 

9 we did do. The fact that we all went in there and left 

10 is not any -- is not as a result of any planning that 

11 we did or anything else. It's pure luck. The fact 

12 that none of the individuals who went down there were 

13 killed is pure luck.

14 You know, when we were down there working, about 

15 once every four hours the building behind us would 

16 start growling like somebody's stomach. They'd put the 

17 sirens on, everybody would run away. There was 

18 absolutely no guarantee that that building wasn't going 

19 to collapse. And the fact that it didn't was more 

20 coincidence, I think, than anything else.

21 The fact that -- you know, I saw cadets, I saw 
18

1 fellow officers on top of piles of rubble. The fact --

2 you can basically -- this is pixie sticks, you know.

3 SFC MORIARTY: Right.

4 MAJ BOWLING: When a fireman cuts off one of the 

5 girders, there's nothing that says that that pile 

6 wouldn't have collapsed and crushed everybody on the 

7 pile.

8 SFC MORIARTY: Shifted.

9 MAJ BOWLING: Right. So there was certainly an 

10 issue with having people in that environment that 

11 aren't trained to be in that environment. And we're 

12 not, you know. We can organize but, you know, when we 

13 were down there, things were still so chaotic, they had 

14 these giant water cooled saws that would cut through 

15 metal.

16 SFC MORIARTY: Uh-huh.

17 MAJ BOWLING: Well, they were sitting everywhere 

18 and somebody -- they assumed since I was in the Army 

19 that I knew how to work one. Hey, Army, grab the saw. 

20 Well, I wasn't sure how to work it but SGT Shanahan 

21 (phonetic) in there knew, so SGT Shanahan was the saw 
19

1 man, cutting through girders and stuff, you know.

2 SFC MORIARTY: Yeah. That's scary.

3 MAJ BOWLING: Nobody knew. Nobody knew. And he 

4 had no idea what the structural effects on the pile 

5 would be by cutting through the girder that he was 

6 cutting through. So there's a lot of issues that we 

7 faced there. We wouldn't put -- we would never put 

8 soldiers in unnecessary danger.

9 Was this unnecessary? From my perspective, 

10 looking back, it wasn't unnecessary. Every bucket of 

11 dirt that we hauled out of there was a chance that 

12 somebody might have been found. And that's how it 

13 turned out.

14 SFC MORIARTY: They did find survivors the first 

15 couple of days.

16 MAJ BOWLING: Right. Well, after day three. I 

17 was down digging on day three. There was no survivors, 

18 to the best of my knowledge, found after that point.

19 SFC MORIARTY: Yeah. Yeah.

20 MAJ BOWLING: But there's certainly, you know, 

21 those issues, too. And as you can tell, I'm struggling 
20

1 -- I've been struggling since this began as far as not 

2 just the decisions of my superiors but my personal 

3 decisions, whether I did the right or the wrong thing. 

4 Did I do the wrong thing in waiting till day three to 

5 go down. Should I not have gone down at all. These 

6 are things that, you know, I'll always have to live 

7 with and simply wonder about.

8 SFC MORIARTY: Well, I mean, getting back to your

9 other issue, how do you train -- even the firefighters 

10 that were down there who are much better suited for 

11 that type of work because of their experience, it's so 

12 overwhelming. That site is so overwhelming. That 

13 devastation is to such an extent that I don't think 

14 that anybody was prepared for that.

15 MAJ BOWLING: No. Even when I was down there, you 

16 know, most of the senior leadership in the battalions 

17 surrounding -- in Southern Manhattan were dead. So 

18 there was captains that had come in from the outside

19 and captains from battalions in the boroughs that were 

20 just putting together operations with people that maybe 

21 they were their firemen, maybe they weren't. They were 
21

1 the only ones who knew anything about structure so they 

2 were moving around trying to figure out what might 

3 cause what to collapse.

4 SFC MORIARTY: Okay.

5 MAJ BOWLING: But nobody really knew. They were 

6 the closest thing to control that was out there.

7 SFC MORIARTY: When did the construction workers 

8 start to come on the site?

9 MAJ BOWLING: They were there when I got there and 

10 specifically I know the metalworkers union guys were 

11 there because I worked with a couple of those guys. 

12 They had some acetylene and a couple of them seemed to 

13 be skilled with these saws, too. But they must have 

14 arrived on day two.

15 SFC MORIARTY: Yeah. We talked to a couple who 

16 had been working in Washington and what happened, they 

17 got in their car and they drove up to the Local in 

18 Manhattan and got sent down to the site.

19 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah.

20 SFC MORIARTY: But as far as the ROTC program and 

21 the cadets go, there is nothing -- I mean, would there 
22

1 be a role for them in the home defense?

2 MAJ BOWLING: I don't think for the cadets. I 

3 don't think that's the job of a cadet. I don't think 

4 the job of a cadet is to have to worry about an 

5 operational mission. I really don't think so.

6 SFC MORIARTY: Okay.

7 MAJ BOWLING: You know, cadets are cadets and they 

8 fall in a sense under the Army structure, so you never 

9 say never. But I really think that any role that the 

10 Army has in this shouldn't be planned around the 

11 participation of ROTC cadets. I don't think so.

12 SFC MORIARTY: No. No.

13 MAJ BOWLING: Their job is to learn to be 

14 officers, not to worry about participating in 

15 operational real-life activities.

16 SFC MORIARTY: Not to be checking baggage at an 

17 airport.

18 MAJ BOWLING: No, that's -- they'll do enough of 

19 that, I guess, after they get (inaudible).

20 SFC MORIARTY: (Laughter). Well, that's possibly 

21 true, particularly if they're in the National Guard.
23

1 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah.

2 SFC MORIARTY: Now, do these students go into 

3 regular Army for a number of years or can they go into 

4 the National Guard and Army Reserve?

5 MAJ BOWLING: No. In fact, it's 50/50. We 

6 service the total Army. We provide officers for active 

7 duty, the Army Reserves and the National Guard.

8 SFC MORIARTY: Okay.

9 MAJ BOWLING: So it's a mixed bag.

10 SFC MORIARTY: What's the difference, the 

11 scholarship level?

12 MAJ BOWLING: No, not really. A four-year 

13 scholarship has the opportunity to go to active duty or 

14 they can convert to a National Guard or Reserves if 

15 they opt to.

16 SFC MORIARTY: Oh, I didn't know that.

17 MAJ BOWLING: Most people think if you join ROTC 

18 that you have to go active duty and that's not the 

19 case. I mean, you have to go to your six-month officer 

20 basic course but after that you can come back and work 

21 for Chase Bank in Manhattan and work one weekend a 
24

1 month for the Army.

2 SFC MORIARTY: Oh. I didn't realize that.

3 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah. It's a good opportunity.

4 SFC MORIARTY: I was in college in the late '60s, 

5 early '70s. It was a totally different environment. 

6 And I didn't come into the military until long after 

7 that.

8 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah.

9 SFC MORIARTY: Were there any other issues that 

10 the cadre discussed in the aftermath of this incident?

11 MAJ BOWLING: Well, you know, it's funny. This 

12 happened -- once again, this sounds trite, but this 

13 happened in a tremendously significant administrative 

14 time here at ROTC. Up here we do sessions and it's a 

15 long, complicated administrative process where a lot of 

16 documents have to be signed in order for the cadets to 

17 become assessed and get their branches.

18 And the deadline for that was 11 September. We 

19 had to get those things in. So actually on the evening 

20 of 11 September I had to drive to Fort Dix with those 

21 packages.
25

1 SFC MORIARTY: Okay. Okay.

2 MAJ BOWLING: And so the show went on, as it 

3 should. As it should. 

4 SFC MORIARTY: Yeah.

5 MAJ BOWLING: You know, the Army continued to 

6 function and so I drove down there. Kind of a spooky 

7 ride, I'll tell you. I got stopped about seven times, 

8 talked my way onto the Garden State Parkway since I was 

9 in the military -- the Jersey Turnpike, rather.

10 SFC MORIARTY: Were you driving the (inaudible)?

11 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah, I was. I think that's the 

12 only reason I was able to get down there and I 

13 delivered those things. But driving by (inaudible), 

14 seeing the fires and the smoke in Manhattan was just 

15 really very effective to see that from New Jersey, you 

16 know, looking across the river at it.

17 But, you know, our discussions -- certainly we did 

18 in the next few days discuss to what extent we could 

19 help. In the end, the battalion commander did decide 

20 that he was going to advocate volunteering, not at 

21 ground zero, but he advocated officially that ROTC 
26

1 cadets volunteer at the Javitz Center, and that would 

2 have involved handing out food and stuff like that.

3 SFC MORIARTY: That's where the fire and police 

4 were going to coordinate?

5 MAJ BOWLING: Well, fire and police usually 

6 stopped by the Javitz Center to get -- it was a huge --

7 it's run by the state, of course. Most of the state's 

8 operations were out of there and most of the --

9 everything from the Timberland Corporation donating 

10 boots to Fruit of the Loom giving underwear, everything 

11 was operating out of there.

12 So even the first day when I was walking down to 

13 ground zero and I -- the first day I was there walking 

14 down to ground zero, walking past these places, 

15 constantly people -- hey, you're in the Army. We need 

16 this, we need that. Can you get us some small 

17 forklifts? We're trying to get these equipment off. 

18 You know, we've got to have help. And, you know, we 

19 were helpless.

20 A, we didn't. B, we had no way to communicate 

21 with people. The cell phones --
27

1 SFC MORIARTY: Still weren't working.

2 MAJ BOWLING: -- still weren't working. So, you 

3 know, there was all these donations, trucks full of 

4 bottled water and you couldn't get the darn stuff off 

5 of the trucks. I helped out a little while with one 

6 truck, just taking crate after crate by hand --

7 SFC MORIARTY: Oh, unloading it?

8 MAJ BOWLING: -- off of these trucks. Yeah. So 

9 the cadets were doing -- ended up doing some of this 

10 type of work. And this wasn't until probably day five 

11 when we got them involved officially. Our cadets were 

12 in there working as volunteers, as individual citizens, 

13 down at ground zero. That was beginning on probably 

14 day two. You'd have to talk to them.

15 SFC MORIARTY: Okay. And then at day five you 

16 went as a unit?

17 MAJ BOWLING: Well, we didn't go as a unit but the 

18 colonel addressed the corp of cadets and he advocated 

19 them going down in pairs, a minimum of in pairs to the 

20 Javitz Center where they were requesting volunteers at 

21 the time.
28

1 Just a day after that, they had so many volunteers 

2 that they requested that people not go down to the 

3 Javitz Center. But we did have -- I remember one day 

4 we had as many as 14 cadets at the same time that went 

5 down to the Javitz Center to help out. So that was --

6 I think that was appropriate.

7 SFC MORIARTY: And it also seems to be a certain 

8 issue of pride, too, in the fact that these young men 

9 and women --

10 MAJ BOWLING: Sure. You know, they wanted to 

11 help. You know, from the very first day, on the 

12 afternoon of day one I had people in the office, what 

13 are we supposed to do, what can we do. And I kind of 

14 discussed general orders with them, i.e., we're here at 

15 our post and we will stay at our post until properly 

16 relieved. And we had not been relieved. Nobody was 

17 here to do our job and we had not received orders so, 

18 like I said, I don't think we did the wrong thing that 

19 day.

20 SFC MORIARTY: I think a lot of people were torn 

21 and I think that that trans -- I think it went right up 
29

1 to the general.

2 MAJ BOWLING: Right.

3 SFC MORIARTY: And I think that they were waiting 

4 for the governor to do something officially --

5 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah.

6 SFC MORIARTY: -- to declare martial law.

7 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah.

8 SFC MORIARTY: And I know that there was -- I've 

9 been told by two of the people I've interviewed that 

10 there were radio reports earlier in the morning, around 

11 10:00 or 11:00, putting Guards on alert. And a lot of 

12 the young troops took that to mean report to your 

13 centers.

14 MAJ BOWLING: Yes.

15 SFC MORIARTY: So they were all going to their 

16 armors.

17 MAJ BOWLING: Right.

18 SFC MORIARTY: And then they started showing up 

19 down at ground zero and the police were under the 

20 impression that martial law had been declared and were 

21 in some cases --
30

1 MAJ BOWLING: Standing back and --

2 SFC MORIARTY: -- letting the Guard do it.

3 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah. Yeah.

4 SFC MORIARTY: It was a really bizarre situation.

5 MAJ BOWLING: Right.

6 SFC MORIARTY: And the chain of command -- not 

7 just the military but the police chain of command, fire 

8 chain of command, they were -- the fire chain of 

9 command, obviously because they lost so many of their 

10 senior leaders was disrupted.

11 MAJ BOWLING: Right. Yeah.

12 SFC MORIARTY: But the police, I think there was 

13 so much confusion and then so many different police 

14 agencies came on.

15 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah. And I think one lesson we 

16 learned from this, to be honest with you, is that at 

17 least within -- with a situation of this -- even this 

18 scope and magnitude, that the civil authorities can --

19 they can handle law enforcement. I think that would 

20 have been a terrible mistake to have declared martial 

21 law in that area. The New York City Police Department 
31

1 handled it magnificently. As far as I know, until the 

2 night of day three or day four, there was no looting at 

3 all.

4 SFC MORIARTY: No. No.

5 MAJ BOWLING: Somebody tried to break into the 

6 Brooks Brothers store on day four and they got 

7 arrested. But they were unsuccessful.

8 SFC MORIARTY: Yes. Yes.

9 MAJ BOWLING: So I think that whoever -- if it was 

10 a conscious decision not to declare martial law, it was 

11 the right decision. The military involvement in this 

12 should have been more along the lines -- more immediate 

13 lines of equipment, logistics and support. Whatever 

14 engineering units were nearby, whatever types of 

15 assets, transportation assets were available should 

16 have immediately been put into play.

17 SFC MORIARTY: Okay. Has there been a change in 

18 the psyche of your cadre and your cadets?

19 MAJ BOWLING: Well, that's what all the newspapers 

20 are coming in and interviewing us for because they 

21 write their papers, the angle they want to hear is yes. 
32

1 Things are totally different now. And we have picked 

2 up new cadets since that time. Actually, I know of 

3 nine that have joined the program since that point, 

4 okay.

5 However, the program has been growing rapidly so I 

6 don't know if all of those -- let's say that these were 

7 individuals who probably had a high propensity to join 

8 the program and this may have kicked them over the edge 

9 into the program, but people are -- they want to talk 

10 about it. They want to know what their role would be 

11 and I have to explain to them over and over again that

12 as cadets, their job is to get a college degree and 

13 become the best commissioned officers that they can be.

14 SFC MORIARTY: Yes.

15 MAJ BOWLING: They're interested, you know. They 

16 all want to know. Being on the streets here in New 

17 York City is an interesting thing because this is not a 

18 military town but it's a highly patriotic town. People 

19 don't understand that. So, you know, being in uniform 

20 downtown in the city at Grand Central Terminal, you get 

21 high fives from people and you never got that before.
33

1 There's always an undercurrent of patriotism but 

2 you don't have that --

3 SFC MORIARTY: Yeah. It's very visible, very 

4 vocal.

5 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah.

6 SFC MORIARTY: Yeah. I've even had a fireman come 

7 up, put his arm around and me and thank me. Here's a 

8 guy who was probably down there, you know, and it's 

9 disconcerting when New Yorkers get that friendly.

10 MAJ BOWLING: (Laughter.) Yeah. Let me tell you, 

11 people are much more polite over the last month. 

12 People are honking less, people are nicer on trains. 

13 It's amazing.

14 SFC MORIARTY: There's been a change in their 

15 character. No, the reason I ask that question about 

16 your cadre and about the cadets is that we're talking 

17 with line units and infantry units. There has been a 

18 change that -- these are from senior NCOs that are 

19 telling me this, that a lot of the junior guys 

20 (inaudible) had been considered (inaudible) probably 

21 the senior NCOs to be dirtbags.
34

1 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah. Yeah.

2 SFC MORIARTY: All of a sudden they're standing 

3 tall.

4 MAJ BOWLING: Right.

5 SFC MORIARTY: And, you know, attendance at drills 

6 and all that kind of stuff --

7 MAJ BOWLING: Seems to have improved.

8 SFC MORIARTY: It's improved considerably. You 

9 had people who had been getting out, who had been 

10 discharged the previous couple months, all of a sudden 

11 showed back up and extended (inaudible).

12 I think we've touched on a couple different 

13 things. Is there anything -- you know -- I mean, 

14 because the questions we've been asking other line 

15 units was, you know, about chain of command, about 

16 communication, about op orders. Obviously those issues 

17 really don't apply to you and your situation.

18 MAJ BOWLING: No, it's a different situation. I 

19 think for us it's more -- instead of an organizational 

20 factor you have maybe more of a human factor here and 

21 as a non-commissioned officer or an officer, what is 
35

1 your responsibility, what is your role in this kind of 

2 situation.

3 I mean, I've always felt like if I was on a train 

4 and somebody stood up with a gun and was about to hurt 

5 somebody, that it would be my responsibility before 

6 anybody else's in the train to jump on him, you know. 

7 That's just because I'm in the military.

8 In this case, I felt like it was my responsibility 

9 just as much as any of these firemen or policemen to be 

10 down there and at the same time I just had on the other 

11 side of me pulling on me the fact that I was in charge 

12 of an organization that is very capable of making these 

13 decisions. They've done it for over 200 years. And 

14 the moment that my services are needed down there, they 

15 will call me.

16 Well, they didn't, but my services were needed.

17 SFC MORIARTY: So there was a crisis of a personal 

18 nature.

19 MAJ BOWLING: Yeah. I think for us it was more of 

20 a personal nature.

21 SFC MORIARTY: Okay. Is there anything you want 
36

1 to add to this discussion, sir?

2 MAJ BOWLING: No. It's very interesting. 

3 Unfortunately, I have to get back to work but I 

4 appreciate you guys taking the time to come down and do 

5 this and record a very interesting -- what I think may 

6 be a pivotal point here in the way we handle these 

7 types of issues from a military perspective.

8 SFC MORIARTY: And I'm dying to see how the home 

9 defense -- because from a National Guard point of view 

10 -- I don't know if you know anything about the National 

11 Guard (inaudible) --

12 MAJ BOWLING: Well, I know -- I'm a co-manager on 

13 staff (inaudible) so I know how the structure works.

14 SFC MORIARTY: So you know the role that the 

15 governor (inaudible) plays.

16 MAJ BOWLING: Sure.

17 SFC MORIARTY: And for home defense, it seems that 

18 the National Guard is an ideal tool for that particular 

19 mission.

20 MAJ BOWLING: Right.

21 SFC MORIARTY: But they're going to have to do 
37

1 something to streamline it and that would -- may 

2 diminish the (inaudible) control of the governor and 

3 the (inaudible) headquarters. So those are going to be 

4 issues that we're waiting to see because we have a 

5 vested interest in seeing how it happens.

6 MAJ BOWLING: Right.

7 SFC MORIARTY: Well, thank you very much for your 

8 time, sir.

9 MAJ BOWLING: Thank you very much. I enjoyed 

10 talking to you.

11 (The interview was concluded.)

12 * * * * *