Federal assistance to fire departments had been approved by Congress a year before the terrorist attacks

Bill Manning Closes National Memorial Service in Washington, D.C.

$elling Out the Investigation 

Bill Manning, editor of Fire Engineering Magazine had this to say about the official investigation.

"Fire Engineering has good reason to believe that the "official investigation" blessed by FEMA and run by the American Society of Civil Engineers is a half-baked farce that may already have been commandeered by political forces whose primary interests, to put it mildly, lie far afield of full disclosure."
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In 2006 Manning joined Fire Apparatus & Emergency Equipment magazine. The publisher, C. Peter J￸rgensen. in an article about him had a few interesting things to say.

"Manning was the editorial voice of a nation of firefighters for years and he brought fire service influence on national politics to an unprecedented level. In that regard, his role in advocating the creation and congressional passage of the FIRE Act legislation was a particularly important achievement.
The FIRE Act of 2000 has been the basis on which hundreds of millions in Federal aid has been distributed to local fire departments since 9-11-2001 through grants from Homeland Security.
Most firefighters aren't aware that the first ever Federal assistance to local fire departments had been approved by Congress a year before the terrorist attacks and already funded at the $300 million level for the year 2001. It was due to people like Bill Manning at Fire Engineering and lobbying by the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) that the mechanism to get Federal money to local departments based on need was already in place when the 2001 attacks occurred, Jorgensen added."

106th Congress Public Law 503