WTC Disaster Site Litigation file cover sheet

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL Letter to General Counsel Mark Hoffer ATTORNEY-CLIENT COMMUNICATION WTC Evidenee Collection Project

It is important, however, for us to note that, while DEP has contributed much material and been extremely cooperative with this Project, ongoing legal due diligence and disclosure requirements make it necessary that we never consider our collection efforts fully completed (at any agency). It remains possible that issues may arise at some future date in litigation or other matters arising from the WTC terrorist attacks that require your agency’s assistance and we may from time to time need to collect additional or subsequently generated WTC-related materials from DEP.

For example, we collected materials from certain ongoing projects relating to 9/11. We understand that some files are “live” and, therefore, material may or will be added to them. In particular, we had to collect the Asbestos Control Unit’s asbestos training and certification files, which are both exceptionally substantial in volume and under constant use, in phases so as to minimize any inconvenience to the unit. Indeed, we greatly appreciate the courtesy and cooperation Asbestos Control extended to us during this “mini-project” that, of necessity, continued for months beyond the rest of the collection project at DEP. We also understand that some agency personnel continue to generate material that may be potentially relevant to WTC matters. As such, we may need to review/recollect these files and other materials in order to ensure that we have all WTC-related materials.

There are a few additional follow up matters that we would ask the Office of Legal Affairs to bear in mind. In order to ensure that the integrity of the evidence we collected is preserved and remains accessible, you need to emphasize to those from whom we have collected, as well as their supervisors, the importance of retaining the materials, paper and electronic, that the WTC Unit collected. To that end, I am attaching as Exhibit A to this letter a list of the DEP personnel from whom we collected materials and a general description of the materials collected. Whenever we returned materials to any DEP custodian, we provided the custodian with a copy of the retention letter attached as Exhibit B. The letter advised the custodian that he or she must contact the Law Department rather than dispose of any of the materials.

We would greatly appreciate your sending a brief notice to the senior officials of each DEP department informing them of the retention policy for WTC materials. Please feel free to contact us if you would like us to draft an explanatory memo for your convenience.

The Law Department has collected a series of back up tapes for archived email. We are cataloguing and copying these back up tapes and will return them to DEP’s IT Director as quickly as possible.

The work conducted by DEP and the Law Department on this Project, not to mention the level of cooperation involved, has been monumental. Many DEP officials, including Bureau of Environmental Compliance Deputy Commissioner Robert Avaltroni and Assistant Deputy Commissioner Michael Gilsenan, Asbestos Control Unit Director Krish Radhakrishnan, Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Charles Sturcken, Executive Assistant to the First Deputy Commissioner Michael Egan and HAZMAT Unit Director Mustafa Fawzy, have provided the WTC Unit with invaluable assistance. Assistant General Counsel Frank Schiano of your office always made time to answer our questions and assisted us with a broad variety of matters. The consideration extended to us by so many DEP officials and staff, and the pride they showed in

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