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(NEW YORK) In the years since the Sept. 11 attacks, a rising chorus of New Yorkers has demanded a hard-edged probe of the city's emergency response, a public airing of shortcomings that would assign responsibility for a series of systemic flaws.
They may be disappointed when the national commission investigating the attacks meets Tuesday in a university auditorium in Greenwich Village.
The commission is expected to describe serious gaps in communication and coordination between the police and fire departments. But members of the commission and others familiar with its work said it would also seek to dispel what they called misconceptions that cast the city's rescue efforts in a poor light.
What's more, New York's efforts to improve emergency response since Sept. 11 will be cited as a national model, despite charges from victims' family members, firefighters and others that poor communication and cooperation between the police and fire departments has not improved, commission members said.
"They've made their evaluation and made corrections and made their preparations. I think the rest of the country has a lot to learn from the New York experience and I hope we play some role in disseminating that experience," said Lee Hamilton, the commission's vice chairman and a former Democratic congressman from Indiana.
"The picture that emerges will make people feel better about the New York authorities," said one person who helped produce a pair of reports to be delivered Tuesday morning, speaking on condition of anonymity because its findings were not yet officially released. "There's more good news in the story than embarrassment, for sure."
That portrayal may not be well received by relatives of the dead, many of whom believe that long-standing problems in the city's emergency response systems led to deaths in the towers.
"If the public understands that some of this could have been prevented, that there were systemic failures, perhaps that will help push change and reform," said Monica Gabrielle, who lost her husband.
Among a host of questions, relatives of the dead want to know why the twin towers' rooftop doors were locked on Sept. 11. Some workers were rescued from the north tower by helicopter during the 1993 trade center bombing.
Whether or not the doors were locked on Sept. 11, emergency officials have told commission researchers that heavy smoke and fire, along with a cluster of antennae on the north tower, would have made rooftop rescue virtually impossible.
"There is almost no possibility that anybody could have been rescued from the roofs," the person familiar with commission findings said.
Congress established the Sept. 11 commission to examine what led to the attacks and advise ways the government can do a better job of tracking terrorists and responding to an attack. The 10-member bipartisan panel is to issue its final report on July 26.
Last month, commissioners heard from President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, former President Bill Clinton and ex-Vice President Al Gore, as well as national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
The panel will release its findings on planning and emergency response on Tuesday as current and former officials of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the New York fire, police and emergency management departments, the Homeland Security Department and the Arlington, Va., fire department sit down for two days of testimony at the New School University.
Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his heads of fire, police and emergency management are expected to portray the city's efforts that day as a flexible, cooperative response.
While some 2,749 people died, Giuliani, widely seen as heroic for his stewardship of the city through the crisis, has described the efforts -- in which 25,000 people were saved -- as the "greatest rescue mission in the history of the United States."
Current New York fire, police and emergency management officials are expected to testify Tuesday that relationships between the agencies have improved.
Police and firefighters fought for months over a set of rules governing which agency holds sway in emergencies ranging from water rescue to biological attack. The rules were completed last week and announced Friday. Sept. 11 commission members say those rules and other improvements could form part of a set of recommendations for national emergency response standards.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly is expected to emphasize New York's continuing vulnerability to terrorist attack, citing the case of a Pakistani-born truck driver, Iyman Faris, who was accused of plotting to cut through the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge and sentenced last year to 20 years in prison. Kelly also plans to cite the case of Uzair Paracha, a Pakistani man accused of aiding al-Qaida by agreeing to help terrorists sneak into the United States, an official familiar with the commissioner's prepared testimony said.
Here is a list of witnesses in the expected order of their testimony:
TUESDAY
-- Alan Reiss, former director, World Trade Center; currently deputy director of aviation at Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
-- Joseph Morris, former chief, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department
-- Bernard B. Kerik, former commissioner, New York Police Department
-- Thomas Von Essen, former commissioner, Fire Department of New York
-- Richard Sheirer, former director, New York City Office of Emergency Management
-- Raymond W. Kelly, commissioner, New York Police Department
-- Nicholas Scoppetta, commissioner, Fire Department of New York
-- Joseph F. Bruno, director, New York City Office of Emergency Management
WEDNESDAY
-- Rudolph W. Giuliani, former mayor, City of New York
-- Dennis Smith, author, "Report from Ground Zero"
-- Jerome M. Hauer, former director, New York City Office of Emergency Management
-- Edward P. Plaugher, chief, Arlington County Fire Department
-- Michael R. Bloomberg, mayor, City of New York
-- Thomas J. Ridge, secretary of Homeland Security
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