Never Forget: Secret Service remembers September 11

It's been 20 years but I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a beautiful day. The sky was blue. The sun came out. There was peace. He was serene. I don't like to talk about the day. I probably already spoke. About this today more than in the last 20 years. Things can happen on a beautiful day at any time. My story is easy compared to others. I crashed into the world in New York. I was based at Seven World Trade Center number seven World Trade Center, which was right across from the north tower, which is our largest office, so it was concerning that we pulled the fire alarm.

I ordered everyone to evacuate the office. our staff were evacuating the lobby towards seven world trade doors onto Vesey Street. There was debris scattered all over the street. Things were falling down and at some point I ended up in the back of our building and I just remember hearing an engine-like noise. oh my god oh my god oh god there's another one that looks like a second plane at that moment we knew this wasn't an accident you knew hundreds of people had just died you could feel the tremendous amount of heat and all this debris was falling on us so I looked up and I started to see people falling from buildings and that was the sound.

I will

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the sound of bodies hitting the ground. I will

never

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seeing people holding hands. while they were jumping and there was nothing you could do to help those people i thought the world was coming to an end it's hell on earth it's hell on earth there's no way to describe it vice president cheney was in the white house and alone I remember us trying to track down where all our protectees are, we took the protectees away from the main targets, God bless the victims, their families and the United States, we needed to move the president as quickly as possible, get him to Air Force One, get him up . in the sky you can see the armed guards on top of the white house keeping watch we had to remove the first lady from the capitol the decision was made we are going to move her here to the

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headquarters my responsibility that day was the security of the Vice President I just put on the headset and I turned on the radio and I heard the radio call and it was a plane approaching the White House the West Wing of the White House has been evacuated I jumped up I started running I pressed my microphone and I told Jim Scott what He knocked him down now and actually grabbed him by the belt and told him: let's go down, he's starting to arrive.

It sounded like a freight train coming down the street. A monster, a metallic monster. It was absolute chaos. All you can do is remove the debris. the tower just falls on us and you come out of the dust on the other side and then you think okay, now we have to see who we can help and what needs to be done. Tommy Armis comes to mind, Tommy Armis. Treating the wounded in ambulances was an unmanned fire truck and four officers were fighting fires. We still had people in our desk area. I ended up planning phones, the Sky-Tail two-way paging system, communication, of course, depended entirely on our lifeline being that desk in New York that tower is starting to burn somewhere in this process the page arrives move north to chelsea piers at all costs i don't know how long i'm going to last here it's too dangerous the tower is leaning if the top falls it will land on seven until then i was still getting pages from eugene gervich they weren't leaving and i said let's go, let's go here I had to order them to leave and finally they did and that's when we heard the tower collapse, all the sirens you had heard and all the whistles you had heard disappeared, it was pure silence and we headed to Chelsea Piers.

At some point I took a coast. a guard boat and a Nassau County police boat, they put together this little navy of theirs and we brought four boats and a ferry to Manhattan. We put him on a boat and took him to Hudson. We had buses waiting there on foot. swimming boat was getting home, it wasn't until I was finally able to walk on Chelsea Pier and we found an office that had a hard line and we were all lined up in the hallway waiting to use the phone. I was able to get through and I called my mom and I said mom, I'm alive, that's what happened, his mom called me and told me that she had heard from him, you know, I went home, I'm glad to get home once The dust settled and we began. taking names and just trying to account for you know for each and every individual i remember we're at chelsea piers that's when i first found out about craig miller missing to join dale i'm kathleen matthews and we want to take you back several hours or so at 10 in the morning, when a plane crashed into the Pentagon.

Researchers are still examining a crater in Pennsylvania tonight. That's all that remains of United Airlines Flight 93. The president began this day in Sarasota, Florida, where he was heading to Promote his agenda on education, then flew to Louisiana, then flew to Nebraska, and finally, when the US Secret Service and law enforcement thought it was safe bring him back to the White House, I remember we were all watching one of the Marines land in the south. ground and watching President Bush get off and head straight toward the oval, the president doesn't say anything as he walks by, you could see the seriousness, the determination on his face, and I think we all knew that this was going to be something that was going to happen. pass. to shape our lives and the history of our country, some sources have led us to believe that the president would return directly to Washington.

We had been punched in the nose and no one was going to scare us. Nobody was going to kick us out. The work continued. work had to continue, we couldn't just stop what we were doing, we had to get offices, we had to get equipment, we had to make sure everyone was okay, leads that were coming in that needed to be analyzed, so we created working groups Among the FBI ATF we had to recreate all our cases, we lost everything, they even brought a couple of limousines from DC, they put them right in front in case someone showed up, we had some armored limousines, quickly the protection started arriving because everyone wanted to come to visit us. new york city and visiting ground zero it was announced that the president was coming to new york on friday this is wednesday one of the things was we had to find a way to get a motorcade there i remember standing with the advance team from the ppd that came up around the debris field trying to figure out where we could put the president we were making this work the president was going there and this is where they train us we're going to do the job you had the smoke you had the rubble you had the flames you have to remember , I mean, he got to the pile, there were still bodies being pulled out of the rubble, one of the people in the crowd said it wasn't coordinated, no, I mean, it was a shout from behind.

I can hear you to the rest of the world. I was five feet from the president working on my counter-surveillance. It was a very proud moment. You knew that at that moment a sleeping bear had been awakened. It was just an incredible sight, very emotional. And then the moment it was over, I had to put everyone on the bus and I had to take them back out that day, those three or four months after that day were probably the hardest time of my life, you know, I think In many ways it made me a better agent because I think anyone who was at work that day realized that we have a job to do for the country and for the American people.

I continued working at ground zero for two months until November. I worked there every day. We spent, you know, a lot of time at the landfill sifting through rubble for human remains. You just wanted to have closure for Craig Miller's family and you want to have closure for all the thousands of people that were there. To do for him what we would like someone to do for us, we worked very hard here with the city to recover Craig Miller's remains and it took us a few years. A true hero, obviously, a war veteran doctor and a great family man, we lost him. day and represented the

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very well no matter what grade you were in, what title you had, what your responsibilities were, everyone, especially the administrative staff, wanted to help and do the right thing, even in the days that followed, you know, we all pulled together and and We did everything we could to help.

I feel bad for my wife at the time because she couldn't really relate to what was going on and why I was staring at the wall or the TV. May you stay with me, I just know that there is no way to get that memory out, there will be no way, so I have to live with it, that was the true tragedy of 9/11, the human loss and the impact on the families, but I I am very grateful to this day, I am grateful to have worked for an agency that treated me like a protégé that day.

You know, the guys and girls, everyone you know, pitched in and, you know, they all worked together and it was a great experience. honor, it's just a heavy thing to carry, you know, every day, I do it and I'm fine, but I just want people to remember those who are no longer with us, not only in New York but in the pentagon and shanksville, um , everyone who missed that day, please never forget that those people value everything they have because every day is a blessing and especially now, in such a polarized world, just take stock of what is important, family Friends, share your emotions.

People know that you care about them, that you love them, and because in the end that's what matters to you.