9/11, FDNY & the Fight for Truth with Author Joe Calderone

This episode features author Joe Calderoni discussing his new novel, Don't Look Back: The 343 FDNY Firefighters Killed on 9/11 and the Fight for the Truth.

FMC Fast Chat takes you inside the news so you can be in the know in 30 minutes. Hosted by Fair Media Council CEO and Executive Director Jaci Clement, Fast Chat features notables in news, media, and business.

Thank you for joining us. Our guest this time around is journalist turned author Joe Calderoni. So Joe, thank you for joining us today.

Thank you for having me.

I actually have your book right here in front of me.

Oh, good visual.

I'm one of the lucky people who got an early copy of it, so I thank you for that. But we want to talk about your book today, not only what it's about, but also dive into kind of behind, behind the scenes of how it was put together. And capitalizing a bit on your former career as a journalist, because our listeners in particular are always interested in going behind the scenes of news topics. So first up, we really owe it to the audience. Can you give a synopsis of what the book is actually about and maybe why I would buy it as a gift for the upcoming holiday season?

It's a great holiday gift. Absolutely. Thank you, Jaci, for that setup. So the book is, is fiction. First of all, it's historical fiction. But it is fact-based. It's actually kind of a category called faction, where you don't really know where the fiction ends and the facts begin. But it is very much based on what happened at the World Trade Center 21 years ago. And it follows the mother of a probie who was killed on 9/11 as she teams up with a local reporter— surprise— from a fictional tabloid New York City newspaper as she tries to get answers about what happened to her son and the other 342 firefighters who perished that day at the World Trade Center. And she goes up against City Hall. She is involved, obviously, with the news media. And then another strong character— there's 2 strong female characters in the book, One is a whistleblower and one is the mother of the probie. And the reporter involved, Juan Gomez, the fictitious reporter, he teams up with a City Hall aide who helps unravel this, this mystery of how it could possibly be. And of course, this is the fact part, that 343 firefighters from the FDNY perished on the morning of 9/11. And it goes into some of the serious problems that the firefighters had that day communicating, specifically by their handy-talkie radios. We all see them, you know, they carry them clipped to their chest so that they can quickly communicate with each other. And the book is based in part on the 9/11 Commission Report. The 9/11 Commission was actually unlike what we see today. It was a bipartisan effort and it was very well done, in my opinion, very well done effort. And they documented the international and the national implications and root causes of 9/11. But they also spent time looking at the city's response. In Chapter 9 of the 9/11 Commission Report, they detail some of the many challenges that the firefighters had that day. Among them, the communication issues. The radios, in short, didn't work the way they were intended. And it seems pretty clear, again, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, that the Mayday call to evacuate, for instance, there were guys in the North Tower who were even unaware that the South Tower had come down. So, you know, some people may have heard the Mayday call, some people may have not, but it certainly was a contributing factor into the deaths of the 343 firefighters.

Okay, so you said it is historical fiction, but now what category? It sounds like it falls into the category of a thriller or—

It is a thriller. It is a thriller. I, I, and I'm, I'm, uh, repeating what readers have now said online on Amazon. It's available on Amazon, so you can read their reviews, but it's very fast-paced, uh, and, and that was how it was intended to be. And it does take you into the world of, uh, most of it is post-9/11, by the way. The opening chapters are The morning of the attack, but very quickly it pivots to the struggle that the families had, because I wanted to tell that story. I wanted to tell the story of not only the firefighters who perished, but the struggle that their families had after the fact as they tried to get information out of City Hall and other sources about what really happened to their loved ones. And it is that story, and also behind the scenes media-wise, there is a fictitious tabloid newspaper, and there are editors involved, and reporters involved, and sources. So the relationship between sources and reporters, and how that all plays out, and the political side, what's happening inside City Hall in the months after 9/11, All of that is, is very much part of the book.

Okay, so take us back to 21 or 22 years ago. What were you doing at that time?

So I was the— I spent 25 years as a reporter and editor for Newsday and New York Newsday. At the time of 9/11, I was the investigations editor for the New York Daily News. We had a small team of investigative reporters, really a good team, I might add. And, and so I had done some stories about the fire department prior to 9/11, so it was just kind of natural for me to dig in on that end of it. And so I, I actually covered the fire department in the months after and the weeks after 9/11. You know, I still remember when I first heard from one of my sources. I think it was the, the night of 9/11. that they had lost upwards of 300 firefighters. It was just an unbelievable number to me. It was, you know, there's no other fire in New York City history that even comes close to that tragic number. So that's where I dug in, and I did some stories in the weeks after 9/11 about the radio malfunctions, and the book grew out of that. And I also got to know some of the families. some of the mothers and the widows who became very active. They became a very potent, as you know, a very potent political force. And they showed up at the 9/11 Commission hearings that were held around the city. And they became, and still today are, a potent force. You know, now, unfortunately, we're getting to the point where we're almost about to lose as many firefighters from diseases that they got from working on the pile as we lost on the day of the attack. And they've been very instrumental to families in making sure that those firefighters, retired and otherwise, have the health benefits they need to get the care that they deserve.

Fair enough. Yeah. Now, though, at what point, though, when you were covering 9/11 as a live story, did you say, wait a minute, I think there's a book in here somewhere?

Yeah, so it really took years later. The book took me 10 years to write and get published. It was a long slog, I have to say. I had never written a novel before. All of my background is as a journalist doing nonfiction. But I felt 21 years later, in terms of why I went the fiction route, I felt that in order— I wanted to get into the heads of the firefighters and some of the families.

Mm-hmm.

And in order to do that, that's almost impossible to do in a nonfiction setting. So I thought I could tell the story better as a fictional— in a fictional setting. And also, as I said, the facts of the communication failures are in Chapter 9 of the 9/11 Commission Report. But unfortunately, very few people have read Chapter 9 of the 9/11 Commission Report. It's a pretty thick document.

Yeah.

So my hope was that by putting the elements of that into a fictional thriller, that it would bring to the fore and bring more readers to the topic and be able to appeal to a wider audience.

Okay, but wasn't part of you kind of— I'm wondering if you were torn because of your background with fact-checking and it needs to be accurate versus now you can go off and you could just let your imagination run wild.

Well, it was quite freeing, I have to say. You know, as a novelist, you do get to make up dialogue and you get to make up characters. And so that actually, the dialogue kind of came somewhat easy to me because of all my years as a reporter. You know, you develop an ear for the soundbite. You kind of, during an interview, you almost know, oh, that's going to be, you know, that's going to be it. That's going to be the soundbite. But what was difficult for me was the plot structure and the character development, and all of that came much more difficult for me to do. But I had the benefit of a good editor. About halfway through the process, I did hire a good editor, and I think he helped drag it out of me. So it was, it was A challenge, and but I think it worked out. It's you know critically it's gotten it's gotten some very good reviews. People magazine, a lot of local press, dance papers, the Herald Southampton Press, others, the chief, the civil service chief. They've all written good reviews about it, and online, you know, the reader reaction has been positive. So because again, as a first-time novelist, you never really know.

Right.

How it's gonna play, and you're kind of, you know, sitting on the edge of your seat like, is this gonna bomb or what? So luckily it hasn't bombed. It's been pretty much a critical success. Uh, I'm not sure it's been a commercial success, uh, just yet, but it was only published, uh, 3, 3 or so months ago.

Yeah, okay. So tell me a little bit about, though, from your perspective, who's your favorite character, favorite character in the book?

So I guess I have 3 favorite characters, and that's Juan Gomez is the reporter, and he's a, you know, he works for a New York City tabloid, so I certainly identify with him. And then there's Mary Sullivan, who's the whistleblower, who's a City Hall aide, and she's instrumental in helping to ferret out some of the information that helps Juan publish some stories about what happened. And then Sarah Murphy, who is the mother of the probie who died. And all of the characters are a compilation of people I met or reported on over the years, not just during 9/11. And that was another reason I wanted to do the book and do it in a fictional way. Because as a reporter— and I covered City Hall for many years for New York Newsday and also for the Daily News— You meet so many interesting characters along the way. It's one of the great benefits and joys of being a reporter from all walks of life. So I wanted to be able to draw on all of that. And I think I put together composite characters that take you through City Hall, that take you through the New York City media market, and some of the tensions that arise between government officials, elected officials, reporters, sources, whistleblowers, So my favorite characters are those, those 3. 2 very strong female characters who are instrumental in unearthing what happened, and Juan Gomez, who's the erstwhile reporter who I hope to keep alive if I get to write a second novel, because I think I can move him around the city. You know, one of my favorite authors is Michael Connelly.

Mm-hmm.

Wrote the Lincoln Lawyer and the Botch series.

Yeah.

And he's a former LA Times crime reporter who's now a very, very successful novelist. And, you know, he has these recurring characters. So he's one of my heroes as an author, and I think I can do the same. He writes what's called the criminal procedural, police procedural books, right? And this is really a reporter procedural book. That's what Don't Look Back really is, because it, it, as I said, it opens up with the attack, but it very quickly gets into Juan Gomez and how he goes about unearthing this story and all of the efforts that he goes through. So it really is, for those who are media savvy, uh, I think it's a good read, uh, because it, it is a reporter procedural as they interact. There you go. Thanks again.

Well, I'm curious though, the name of the book, Don't Look Back, Why is it named that?

Yeah, so, uh, thank you for that good question. Uh, so when I was a reporter at, at the Daily News covering this in the, in the weeks after, you know, you're, you're checking with all your sources, every person you ever, uh, met, uh, who might have anything to do with it, and you're also checking with the official, uh, spokespersons, the PR people for all the agencies, the FDNY, Port Authority, the NYPD, City Hall, you know, OEM, all of the agencies that played a role down there. And they actually all kind of were singing the same song, officially anyway. And that was, don't blame us. This wasn't our fault. It was the terrorists. They drove the planes into the building. Don't look back. And all that is true, right? Of course, the terrorists were the folks who caused the disaster. But, you know, reporters are— part of their job is to look at, well, what was the response? How was the response? Was it up to snuff? And that was the recurring— it was pretty clear that they had gotten together and scripted what they thought the response should be. And that's how the title of the book came.

Okay. All right. So how long did it take you to actually Complete?

So it was really a 10-year project off and on. I mean, I didn't quit my day job, thankfully, uh, or else I, I would have been unemployed and without an income. So, uh, and I count in the 10 years also it took me, you know, I got more than 20, uh, rejections. I had to buy a whole new file cabinet just to hold the rejections, uh, and anyone, uh, who was out there in the media who's thinking, I gotta— I got a novel in me, I got a book, you know, go for it. Don't be deterred, because all you need is one agent and one publisher to say yes. And you just, you know, being persistent is a quality, good or bad, of most good reporters I know. And you just need to apply that if you're trying to get a book published, because I finally did get one agent who actually— half of the agents didn't even respond.

Right.

But I got one agent who responded, who read it, who understood it. His name is Ed Breslin. And he took another few months, but he found a publisher, Post Hill Press, who took a chance on a first-time novelist. And we were able to get it into print. So it was a long process. And— but, you know, actually seeing it in print and seeing people react to it is worth the effort. And bringing— more importantly, bringing, I hope, some light to this issue of what happened to the firefighters that day. This is obviously one of the most covered events in the history of New York City and in the history of the world, but I always felt that what happened to the firefighters, that story had not truly been told. And what happened to the families and the family's efforts to unearth what happened to their loved ones, I thought that story had not been fully told. And so I hope my goal was to shed some light on those topics.

Yeah.

And well, you mentioned it's gotten some great reviews online and from media who have reviewed it, but have you heard from any of those family members? Have they read the book?

So some of them have, yes. I haven't heard from all of them. You know, there's a whole 9/11 community out there. Certainly would like to hear from more of them. I'm not sure that it's fully saturated that community yet. I hope it will. I know some of the first responders who have read it, you know, have reacted well to it. So I'm very pleased about that. We had an event at NYU, and I had a firefighter who was involved in the FDNY administration, actually, who came and was very grateful that we had written the book because I actually, I do teach at NYU. I teach investigative reporting there. And my students now, you know, it's 21 years later, they have no personal memory of the attack, or if they do, it's a very faint one. So as this firefighter who showed up at the NYU event said, he said, it's very important that we keep alive what happened and that people don't forget about it. So there are many, many nonfiction books that have been written, obviously, about 9/11, but I'm hoping that this historical fiction book will maybe add to that record of what happened in a different way, taking a different, a longer lens, a historical fiction lens on it.

Yeah. And now, do you feel like you were able to completely tell this story, or is that what you're leaning toward with another book coming out?

So, you know, there's so many facets to 9/11. You know, it's like the Pearl Harbor attack. You know, how many books, movies have been written about the Pearl Harbor attack or the Titanic for that matter? I think it's a historical event along those lines. So there are so many different angles you could take, and this was just one of them. But, you know, at the end of the book, there is— some people have said, oh, I'm foreshadowing, and maybe I am. There's a discussion at the very end about what happened to the people who worked on the pile, uh, and, and the sicknesses that they've come down with since, and then their effort, uh, their fight to get, uh, justice for them, uh, and the help that they needed. So maybe that's a way to go. I haven't committed yet.

Okay, fair enough, fair enough. Yeah, I'm wondering though, from your perspective, when you talk to students who didn't live through this event, What is their impression? Do they have any idea the size and the magnitude of what this meant for America?

Yeah, I'm not sure they do fully. You know, I'm not sure that it— and this is another debate that's going on separately from my book per se, but there are some folks who say, oh, you know, 9/11 should be in the school curriculums now. It should be mandated. You know, I think you have a similar debate about the Holocaust and other major historical events that some people would rather we forget about, right? If you're a Holocaust denier, uh, maybe you don't want it taught in the schools. But obviously, I think most people recognize that these are important events that our students should know about. So, um, I, I personally think it's obviously a, a very important event in New York history and the history of the nation and the world. It changed our outlook, our foreign policy. We entered a war, a 10-year war over it. Day to day, it completely changed how we go about our day-to-day business, just in terms of security. You didn't used to have to take off your belt, your shoes—

Yeah.

—go to an airport. So even though they may not realize it, 9/11 had a lasting impact on how we live. and how the United States deals with other countries.

Now, how did you ever become a journalist to begin with?

So I went to the University of Maryland, College Park. I started, like many of my colleagues, I started working on the student newspaper, and I just got bit by the bug. You know, once you get ink in your system, it just— to me, it was an opportunity every day to learn something new, And that was just irresistible. The people you meet along the way and the topics that you're able to dive-bomb into and learn about. And then eventually, you know, also, you know, I was part of the Watergate era. Woodward and Bernstein were superstars, and I was very much in that, in the wake of that. And so that's certainly what inspired me. And eventually, After a lot of beat reporting and, you know, nights and other kind of reporting, I did get to join the investigations team at Newsday, which was a pretty vaunted group led by Bob Greene at the time, the legendary Newsday editor. And, you know, I always joke that I went to the Greene Graduate School of Investigative Reporters because there's a whole flock of us out there who were trained by Bob Greene. And he had very specific and rigid training requirements. So benefited from that tremendously and did get to spend a fair amount of time as an investigative reporter, which means really that you get more time. The difference between a regular reporter and an investigative reporter, other than instincts and some skill, is you have the luxury of delving into a topic for weeks, even months. at a time, and that is a great privilege.

And you're teaching investigative reporting to students now?

I am, at the graduate level at NYU, and I'm always heartened by the quality of students that we get and by their dedication, and that there's just the mere fact that there's people who still want to do this kind of work, because it's, as you know, it's a difficult media landscape, right? So many Newsrooms have cut back on staff and budgets. But, you know, they find a way. They find a way, those who really want to do this kind of work. So I try to just give them the tools that will help make them better reporters, whether they become investigative reporters or any other kind of reporters.

Yeah. Well, now the tools, though, must have changed dramatically between the time you were the student reporter, right?

Well, yeah, I actually, you know, I do make them read All the President's Men. And The Secret Man, which was Woodward's relationship with Deep Throat. And I, you know, back in the Watergate days, they were on typewriters. They did not have cell phones. They didn't have the internet. But many of the tools have changed, you know, for sure. And many of the tools are great assists to reporters. But also, one of the, one of the points I try to pound into them is that a lot of the skills and a lot of the craft has not changed. And that is, you know, by going to a scene and using all 5 senses, not just— sometimes when I have dialogue with students like, did you talk to that person? Oh yeah, I talked to them. Well, did you actually talk to them? Well, I texted with them or I emailed. I like— so you didn't actually interview them. You know, there's a There's a disconnect, a generational disconnect sometimes, and I try to emphasize that there is no substitute for shoe leather and going to a scene and going to actually see somebody in person and having that dialogue with them, because you're going to learn so much more than if you're just emailing or texting.

Yeah. Now, the persistence you show as a reporter, though, must be helping with the marketing of the book now, which I, I'm guessing— how much of that falls on the author?

Yeah, uh, almost everything, you know, unless you are Michael Connelly or some other very well-known author. You know, the publishers— I mean, I'm grateful to Post Hill Press for, for publishing the book, but— and they were very straightforward with me from the beginning— they just don't have the resources. They, they pour— most publishers will pour their resources into they're big-name authors. So if you're a first-time author, you're pretty much on your own in terms of trying to generate publicity, and it's very important to do so. So I kind of knew that from the get-go. My publisher was very straight with me about that, which I appreciated. So yeah, I am— have spent considerable amount of time just trying to get the book out there and doing Uh, you know, podcasts like this. And, uh, luckily it has gotten some, some good, uh, notices, and, and the press, uh, was interested in the topic.

Yeah. Now, what out of all of this though has been the biggest surprise for you?

How hard it is to get the word out that the book exists. Really, it is very difficult. Uh, there's just, just so many. When you go on Amazon You know, they have the Amazon rank. It's like 500,000 books or more than that, literally more than that. So, you know, I'm in a category. I'm in historical fiction. I'm a thriller. So the categories get smaller, but they're— you're just competing against so many other authors. And again, as a— essentially a no-name author, which is what I am, a first-time author, it's just very, very difficult to— to get attention for the book.

Now, that must be a little humbling, though, given, you know, you had quite the journalism career. You couldn't just walk around with your Pulitzer Prize and look at me, I am accomplished. None of that was working in the book world.

Well, it did help me, I think, help me get an agent and help me get a publisher. I think certainly those credentials and certainly all the skills that I took out of that helped me get the book done. But, you know, my buddy Ellis Henneken, you know, was an old Newsday pal and is a very accomplished author. I lost track of how many books he's authored or co-authored. But he said, you know, we used to write for newspapers and you'd publish a story and, you know, 200,000 people would see it in a couple of days or more, and then it would be passed around. He said, with a book, it's not that way. You know, if you get— you sell 3,000 books, you're considered a success. So I've taken his words to heart, and it's only— the book came out the end of July, so I hope I'm still in the honeymoon period and I still have time to get some attention. I've been told, again, I think this, I wrote it this way, but I think it would make an excellent Netflix— or big screen movie, given the topic and the characters involved and the fast pace. So, I, you know, my goal is to, is to try to get it to the big screen.

Okay. And what about in real life, though? I mean, are you hoping this book somehow resonates with not, not just the families, but what would be the next step after that?

Yeah, very much so. I mean, the, the book is dedicated to the 343 firefighters who perished. And my hope is, is to get it to a wider audience so that people don't forget what happened and that we don't repeat the mistakes of what happened that day. And there were many mistakes that were made that day that I think contributed to the death of the 343 firefighters. You know, most, most people in the towers self-evacuated. If they were below the fire floors, most of them self-evacuated. So what happened to the firefighters and the fact that they— some of them didn't hear the Mayday call and they didn't have the right equipment? The radio malfunctioned. There's something called a repeater system that was installed, but it's unclear whether it was turned on or not. It didn't work properly all the time. So the signal inside a 110-story building made of glass and steel, you know, the radio signal doesn't on its own transmit.

Yeah.

Did they have the right equipment? You know, this was the second time the Trade Center was attacked. There was a '93 bombing, as you know. Did they learn from that? Did they implement changes that would have made the communications better? Part of the book is to make sure that, that doesn't happen again.

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