It was Joe Biden Camo Harris Donald Trump and JD Van Dam who this week put politics aside for a moment to attend a memorial service on the twenty-third anniversary. Like the 911 attacks, I remember exactly where I was on that September day. When I was evacuated from the State Department, I walked to the Potomac River. I can see smoke coming out of the Pentagon. When a hijacked jet hit the building, but I didn’t know what happened until I got a call from the CIA a few weeks ago that a young Navy officer who had nearly died at the Pentagon that day when he was on a Navy ship early in the new year, who had launched the first direct attack on al Qaeda, ended up joining the small team that eventually tracked down Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 911.
Who killed nearly three thousand Americans and almost killed Kevin Schaffer. It’s a remarkable story. One that only the CIA has ever told. Met on the cloud at the Pentagon memorial, that day was like a September day in two thousand one. When Kevin Schaefer was inside the Pentagon’s Naval Command Center. Looking at the whore in New York. When we saw the second plane, which very clearly I remember there were some audible gasps throughout our command center space. So it seems like this is some kind of concerted effort to attack the World Trade Center that’s going on.
It was not three shock and disbelief but no indication that the Pentagon would be next. But thirty-four minutes later at nine thirty seven we believe at that moment a plane has crashed into the courtyard. Sale for that particular each side of the building for that American Airlines flight seventy seven went through the building. I felt the explosion and the initial explosion felt like it came from behind me and it threw me to the ground, I knew I was badly burned. And everything around me was blown to pieces and in flames, everybody on the plane died instantly. One hundred and twenty five people were dead inside the Pentagon, forty two of them in the command center. With Schaefer I remember being on the ground and putting out the fire. Putting my hands on my head.
I thought maybe it was water from jet fuel and debris and things that were poured on it. There was nobody left around me. So in that moment I realized I was going to have to fight with the club. Then fight a big fight through the darkness and thick black smoke. Schaefer I saw a ray of daylight, oh my dear and as I run out into the space. The daylight was shining. And I crossed the threshold. From the carnage behind me to the relative st in front of me and there in the light Sergeant First Class Steve Workman found himself they were right there.
As I was walking through that threshold and our eyes met and for a brief moment and I called out to him and told him the best he needed. Give me some help and he took me. Took me to a maintenance cart and we went, looking for about half. Then the twenty-nine-year-old’s body was sued deep burns. His hands and arms included, they wanted to cut off the wedding band. I wore my left hand and my navy, when the class ring which was both arrangements of my right hand or much to me. When they were cut off. So I screamed stop, I was able to gather my willpower.
Take off my wedding ring to my class, often I would hand them to a nearby nurse. I thought now you can move to save my life. It was my last, conscious member of the lover when he woke up his skin and lungs were burned by fire jet fuel. The pain that was almost unbearable, the burning pain beyond description the day I like and and the color white hot pain really only we have them pain and infection the doctors were not sure. He would survive into the morning October lost twice due to my injuries and flatline, but they brought me back each time. I came back even stronger.