[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/nyregion/21NUMB.html[/url]

Toll From Attack at Trade Center Is Down Sharply

November 21, 2001

THE TOLL
Toll From Attack at Trade Center Is Down Sharply
By ERIC LIPTON
he official count of the dead and missing in the attack on the World Trade
Center has fallen sharply in the last few weeks to below 3,900, a total
that is nearly 3,000 fewer than the number city officials, in the first
weeks after the towers fell, feared had perished.
City officials said yesterday that the trade center tally, which dropped
by at least 200 over the last weekend alone, could continue to fall,
perhaps to 3,000, as duplications and errors are resolved. Unofficial
compilations by news organizations, using information from companies, the
airlines and other sources, so far have reached no higher than 2,950.
The culling of the official list of those killed in the twin towers and on
the hijacked airplanes has been proceeding quietly since late September,
when the estimated toll reached its high of about 6,500. But this process
has taken place largely out of public view, with everyone from world
leaders to military officials to newspaper columnists and talk show hosts
continuing to believe and assert that 5,000 to 6,000 people died in the
attacks on the towers and the Pentagon and aboard the airliner that
crashed in Pennsylvania.
In the last several weeks, in speeches and interviews, Gen. Richard B.
Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State Colin
L. Powell have cited the loss of 5,000 or more people in the attacks. Don
Imus, the radio talk show host, put the number for the trade center alone
at 6,000 during a television interview on Saturday.
But for weeks, if one used the city's own numbers for the dead and missing
in the collapse of the towers, it has been clear that such numbers were
wrong. Using the figure released yesterday, the death toll for all three
attacks could not be higher than 4,142, and could fall to 3,245 as the
city's revisions continue. Either figure would be greater than the total
number of Americans killed at Pearl Harbor, 2,400.
"Thank God so many of these people are alive and well," said Charles V.
Campisi, the chief of the New York Police Department's Internal Affairs
Bureau, which is supervising the count.
A State Department official in Washington said he was unaware that the
number of dead or missing in the trade center attack had decreased so
markedly. He said he would bring up the matter with the secretary of
state's staff and the press secretary. What is important, he added, is
that a still-horrific number of people died on Sept. 11. "It is not to
obfuscate or create any more sympathy, because regardless of whether or
not it is 3,900 or 5,000, the magnitude and severity of the events on
Sept. 11th are clear," said the official, who asked not to be identified
because his comments had not been cleared with the department.
The final numbers of those killed in the Pentagon attack and the crash in
Pennsylvania have been known for weeks: 189 died at the Pentagon,
including 64 on American Airlines Flight 77; and 44 died on United
Airlines Flight 93, which crashed outside Pittsburgh.

But the city's numbers have been in considerable flux since the first days
after the attacks. Yesterday, city officials said the continued large
declines in the list of presumed dead were largely a result of identifying
people whose names had been registered as missing in the days after the
attack, but who in fact survived or were not even in New York that day.
In many other cases, individuals who died in the attack have been listed
more than once, like a woman who until yesterday was in the city's
database under her maiden name and her married name, Chief Campisi said.
Dozens of names have also dropped off as foreign consulates reduced claims
of the number of people from their countries who they once believed might
have been at the trade center at the time of the attack.
The foreign consulates still list a couple of hundred of their citizens as
missing in the trade center attack, and city officials said that this was
one area in particular that could lead to further reductions in the total.
As of yesterday, there was some confusion among city and police officials
about what the actual city count was. Police officials, who have been
working with the city's medical examiner's office and the state courts to
improve the accuracy of the list, said they believed the current number of
dead and missing to be 3,702.
But the mayor's office put the number at 3,899 and said that the process
of incorporating the information from the courts and the medical
examiner's office was not yet finished. Nonetheless, the mayor's figure
still represented a drop of several hundred from late last week.
City officials would not estimate when they expect to be finished refining
the list of missing and dead.

"We are closing in on it," Chief Campisi said.
An official with the city's Law Department who has been coordinating death
certificate applications on behalf of victims' families said she expected
the final number of dead at the trade center to be between 3,000 and
3,700. "The bottom line here is that it seems as if there are fewer people
dead than we originally thought," said Florence A. Hutner, senior counsel
at the department.
Researchers and scholars, news organizations and charity officials have
all spoken of the fundamental need to establish as accurate a figure as
possible for the number of people killed. While most people understood
that the city's list of the dead and missing was a work in progress, the
knowledge that the toll was going to wind up substantially lower than once
feared has been slow to take hold in the public consciousness.
General Myers has repeatedly cited the 5,000-dead number during briefings
on the action in Afghanistan, and Secretary Powell mentioned it on Monday
during a speech on the Middle East in Louisville, Ky. "It is 69 days since
Sept. 11th, when cold-blooded terrorists turned civilian airlines into
flying bombs and used them to kill 5,000 innocent people," he said.
"That's four or five times the number of people who are assembled here
today."
Mr. Imus, in an appearance Saturday on CNN's Larry King Live, asserted
that "these idiots, these terrorists, flew an airplane into the World
Trade Center and killed 6,000 people." Armstrong Williams, the radio show
host, and Chris Matthews, the CNBC talk show host, have used similar
numbers in the last week.
Chief Campisi would not comment on the numbers being cited elsewhere, but
was committed to reaching a reliable final figure for the city, and the
history books. "I would love to finish today, sure," he said, "but we'll
do this until we're confident we have the numbers right."

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company