WASHINGTON — When American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon’s western facade at 9:37 a.m.on Sept.
11, 2001, FBI agent Jack Hess rushed to the scene.His wife, Sandy Hess, also an FBI agent at the time, ran to pick up their 1-year-old son from daycare — and was pregnant with their second child.“If you were married in the bureau and had kids and needed to get to those kids, one person would respond to the Pentagon, and the other person went home,” she told NBC News in an interview this week.
“He was a supervisor on a terrorism squad.He went, and I don’t think he would have wanted it any other way.” In the aftermath, Jack’s role was to secure evidence for the FBI’s investigation into the attacks.
He was one of about 4,000 FBI employees who responded to the crash sites in Virginia, New York and Pennsylvania.While he only spent a matter of hours in direct contact with the hazardous debris in Arlington, he would later be diagnosed with Stage 4 kidney cancer, an illness classified as “caused” by his exposure at the Pentagon, according to the certification process determined by the World Trade Center Health Program.
FBI agents, firefighters, rescue workers and engineers work at the Pentagon crash site on Sept.14, 2001, where a hijacked American Airlines flight slammed into the building three days prior.Cedric H.
Rudisill / DoD via AFP via Getty Images fileHe died of the disease in 2023, at just 64 years old.On Sept.
11, 2001, 2,977 people died in the collapse of the twin towers, at the Pentagon or on United Flight 93, which crashed in a Pennsylvania field.But scores of others who worked in the wreckage have died from illnesses in the years since.
At the FBI, more than 400 people have 9/11-related illnesses and at least 33 have died from 9/11-related cancers, according to the bureau.Jack and Susan Hess with their family in New York City.Courtesy Hess familySandy and Jack Hess met early on in their careers at the FBI and worked together for...