 Greetings from the National Archives flagship building in Washington, D.C., which sits on the ancestral lands of the Nacotch Tank Peoples. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to tonight's discussion on American Phoenix, Heroes of the Pentagon on 9-11. Journalist Phil Hirschkorn and author Lincoln M. Starnes will be joined by Benjamin W. Starnes, Lieutenant Colonel Marilyn Wills, Army Sergeant First Class Christopher Brayman, and Army Sergeant Major Tony Rose, all of whom were in the Pentagon on 9-11 and performed acts of rescue. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two upcoming programs you can view on our YouTube channel. On Friday, September 10th, and we'll present the discussion on a life of selfless service, sacrifice, and civic engagement honoring the life of Cyril Rick Rascola. Although Rascola perished in the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, he is credited with the saving and lives of 2,700 fellow employees of Morgan Stanley and inspiring all those around him. On Tuesday, September 14th, at noon, we welcome back David M. Rubenstein to discuss his latest book, The American Experiment, Dialogues on a Dream. Through interviews with some of our nation's greatest minds, both surprised winning historians, diplomats, music legends, and sports giants, the book looks into the inspiring story of America as a grand experiment in democracy, culture, innovation, and ideals. Twenty years ago, on a bright blue sky Tuesday morning, the world was dropped by the incredible news of the attacks on the World Trade Center in the Pentagon. Here in Washington, people streamed out of their buildings, stunned to see clouds of smoke rising above the Pentagon just across the Potomac River. Our guests for tonight's discussion were eyewitnesses to the September 11th attack on the Pentagon and contributed to the rescue of survivors. Their stories are included in Lincoln-Starn's book, American Phoenix, which is an account of the attack on the Pentagon told from the perspective of those who were there. The National Archives presents this 9-11 commemorative programming in conjunction with an exhibit of children's letters to victims, first responders, and recovery workers from the Red Cross 9-11 Recovery Program Collection. The exhibit is on display in the rotunda of the National Archives through October 6th and is online at archives.gov as well. Our moderator, Phil Hirschkorn, spent 25 years reporting and producing stories for national news networks, CNN, CBS, PBS, and Fox. Hirschkorn led one of the first CNN field crews dispatched to the World Trade Center on 9-11 and appeared in the CNN documentary, America Remembers. He extensively covered the investigation of the attacks, including the work of the 9-11 Commission and the rebuilding of the Trade Center site. Now let's hear from our panel. Thank you for joining us. Well, thank you, David, for that introduction. Let me go around the horn and just by name remind everyone who's with us. We have five guests joining us, including the author of the book, Lincoln Starnes, and four other people who are at the Pentagon on 9-11. If you haven't figured it out by now, Ben Starnes is a relative. It's Lincoln's brother. We also have with us Tony Rose and Christopher Brennan and Marilyn Wills. You can see them all on the screen. This is a pandemic world, so we're probably all used to this array of live events, though it is, of course, second choice to all being in the same room with a live audience that we can hear breathing and interact with, but we will make do as we all have for 18 months. I want to thank the National Archives for asking me to do this. Recently, with my producing partner, Allison Gilbert, we just put together our own film called Reporting 9-11 and Why It Still Matters. That's a theme for tonight, why it still matters. Our film, which is also streaming with our producing partner, Wondrium, is a journalistic take, an oral history of the day, that covers all three sites, including the Pentagon, including some people I may quote from tonight as I ask my questions. But the focus tonight, as you heard, is this book, American Phoenix, Lincoln's book. And let me take a moment before we get to the other four guests and bring in Lincoln to talk about why you wrote this book. This was the first book you wrote, and really your day job is something not as a historian down there in Georgia. Lincoln, what was your motivation to put together this book, this sort of riveting oral history told through these participants and others in the book? Well, the motivation of the people right here, and I'm honored to be with them. I feel like I know them, like they're members of my family or something. Because when I wrote that book, I put myself in there with them. And I tried to experience what they experienced. And it's an honor to be with them, first of all. But when you ask me as far as what a motivation was, the genesis for the book was a conversation I had with my brother in 2002. And he had been there that day and he wanted to record his memoirs and those of his colleagues, Jim Golf and Ed Lucci. And so they were the first three people interviewed. And then I realized I didn't have enough material for a book, so I just decided to write a book on my own. And I'd never had any training in investigative journalism or anything like that, or that sort. And I just began interviewing people, just cold calling. And by the way, just full disclosure, what's your day job down there in Georgia? Not a historian? I'm a FedEx courier. I deliver packages all day long, pick them up and deliver them. Well, welcome to the world of citizen journalism. Let me take a moment and just briefly, and I should do ladies first, but since you mentioned your brother first, let's get that out of the way and then we'll go to Marilyn. I'd like each panelist to just take a minute or two. So everyone gets to know you a little bit cuz it's gonna be a long hour with a lot of different people talking. So just for our early traction, Ben's starting with you. What was your job on 9-11? What was your plan for the day? Say before 8-46 or 9-37 when planes hit buildings. And what was it about your military career, cuz you were all in the military, up to that point that in a sense prepared you for what was about to happen? And then let's start with you. Thank you, Phil. I was a vascular surgery fellow. So I had already completed a general surgery residency in the army at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. And was doing my fellowship. I had already done a utilization tour in Germany for two years. I had been deployed to the war in Kosovo. So I had one combat deployment already. And as a former military surgeon, I've seen some pretty horrific stuff. I was, what was I doing that day? I was seeing vascular surgery clinic. We had a very busy clinic that day. And I had just seen a post-op carotid patient. And when I heard that a plane had hit the tower, I told my intern, I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, we don't have time for current events. I want you to pick up a chart, go see a patient. And after the second tower was hit, then we knew something was going down. So, and then the day changed permanently. And just so people get their bearings, Walter Reed is not close to the Pentagon, but it's not that far either. How many miles and how did you end up getting there when the decision was made that folks like you could be of use at that place? So the old Walter Reed Army Medical Center was only seven miles from the Pentagon, just north in the north part of DC. Now it's in Bethesda, it's been moved over to Bethesda. But I got a call from Jim Goff, who was the assistant chief of surgery. He knew that I had experienced triage and casualties. And he told me, Ben, a plane has just hit the Pentagon. I need you to go lead a surgical team to the site and to triage patients there. I went down to the emergency room and got on a bus. The commanding general Michael Dunn and a chaplain came on board the bus. They said a prayer for us. And then we had a police escort that headed off into the city. And we went out into the city and the city was in chaos. Every siren in Washington DC was going off, every single siren. People were in gridlock in the streets. The cars were just stacked in front of us. And it was a troubling sight because you saw people that had briefcases and were dressed like businessmen or businesswomen. And they were sitting on the sidewalks weeping because their world had just been disrupted. They, we all knew that we were under attack and there was nowhere to go. It was gridlock. And then I can go into the next events of what we did to get to the city if you want. But I don't want to take up too much time. Sure, we'll come back to that in a moment. Marilyn, Tony and Chris, of course, you were all in the building working at 846 when Tower One was hit in New York and 9.03 when Tower Two was hit. And you were still in the building in a sense going about your business, but probably clearly distracted. Marilyn, remind us, what was your job that day? What were you doing? And what about your career prepared you for what was about to happen? Oh, well, great question. So my job, I was the Congressional Affairs Officer for the G1, which is the person, the senior personnel chief, Lieutenant General Maude. And we'll talk about him a bit later. What was I doing that day? I will tell you that initially I got up as I always do. It was beautiful. But for some reason that morning, my family didn't pray. So I just kissed my girls on the cheek and my wife is my husband. And I took off because I knew I had a meeting to attend at the Pentagon at 9 o'clock. So that's what I was doing that day. And how did the military prepare me? I was a military police officer for over 30 years. And that's until I retired. But as you know, in the military, we change jobs several times. But being a military police officer, it will prepare you for the things that are unknown. And I will tell you one more thing I want to add. When I was in college, I had a professor tell me once and I never forgot it. He said, always know your exit before you enter a building. And so for strange reasons, I would go into the Pentagon different ways so I would know how to get out of that building, not knowing that that would help me on September 11. Thank you, Marilyn. Tony, same questions, please. I picked up my three stooges, Maude, got my cup of coffee, operations NCO and I were talking about getting a conference ready for our counselors worldwide. I was a senior sergeant major in the G1 for retention program, not too far from Colonel Wells. And we got called to come down to the general's office, take a look at the phone general accent. We got there and they were watching the reruns of what was going on in New York on TV. We went back to our desk only about 20 feet away. I told my options, you know, we need to change our plans for today. We need to be careful before careful to get out of my mouth. The building shook as I thought we're the center of an earthquake. Uncle Sam and three stooges went one way and I went flying into a wall another way and the whole day changed. Thank you, Tony and Chris, just to get things started, where were you when the plane hit and Tony just alluded to? What was your job and what were you planning for the day and what about your military background, prepared you for what was about to transpire? Well, I was the aide to the general of the army for the chief of staff of the army. I was also a procurement agent for them. I actually, my duty before being stationed at the Pentagon was I was in the Ranger Regiment, second of the 75th as an airborne ranger. And so we had many different hats that we had, you know, had learned throughout my military career and one of them was seesaw combatant to rescue. So, you know, being stationed at the Pentagon was completely out of my skill set. And when I got stationed there, it's funny that they didn't know what to do with me. It was just really funny because the generals were having me sit down and hey, Sergeant Braiman, what about this particular equipment or what about this particular uniform? Or, you know, does it work or all that stuff? Because of being a combat soldier my entire military career, I had no idea that, you know, that type of job existed working at the Pentagon, working for the four star general. And, you know, I have many multiple hats. I also have, I'm also a certified sous chef, so I tell everybody I'm an airborne ranger cook. So, you know, it's kind of funny to me, but, you know. Now, Lincoln, I hope you and I, the archives don't get in trouble. It seems to have an army heavy panel here. But obviously, you know, Air Force Marines, Navy, all have personnel in the Pentagon. From the work you did putting this book together, what can you say in terms of the size of the Pentagon, how many people work there, what they do when we're not at war? Give us a sense of what you learned and put in the book in terms of that kind of background, Lincoln. Well, it was originally, the building was originally envisioned by Franklin Bell and Roosevelt and General Brown Somerville. And the problem they had was they needed to consolidate all of the different branches of the military into one, you know, one building because this was on the eve of World War II. And so we're right just after we got into it. And so they needed to be able to consolidate all those branches because they were spread out all over Washington, DC. So if you wanted to go to the army, you had to go to one building, the Navy, another building where the Marine Corps would have been. That would have been the only place because Marine Corps is a subset of the Navy or under the Aegis of the Navy. And so that was really the primary reason why they built it, where they did. But, you know, having a building that big and a distinctive five-sided building presented a very large target for the enemy. And where it sits, I mean, it's just right out there in the open, you know. So as far as being clandestine, it wasn't very good choice. Right, it's like a big, it's also like a big or was a big sort of concrete block, right? Because of the steel shortage during the war. Well, they needed the steel for ships. So they created ramps inside the building so you could walk from one floor down to the other on the ramps. You know, they increased the use of concrete and decreased the use of steel because it gave them, I think it gave them enough for a couple of aircraft carriers, you know, which they sorely needed. So. And yet there's been a multi-year innovation that was just winding up, I believe, in 2001 where they did add steel rebar and reinforced the building, particularly on the side of the building where American Airlines Flight 77 hit. So it hit that E-ring and it went at least what to the date of the E-ring? Almost to the courtyard. The cockpit with the dead terrorists in it was found right in the A&E drive right near the courtyard. So it made it all the way almost through the building, like a knife through butter, essentially. Right under our window. Right, yeah, it went in right under where Tony was. And the reason that the Army is to focus and then the Navy is because that's where it hit, you know, it hit the Army. You know, the Marine Corps got a little bit of it and the Navy, you know, their command center was under there, you know, was in there. But it was the Army that really got hit. That's why you have so many Army officers, you know, that were affected. Well, Tony, let's go back to you and then to Maryland. So the plane literally crashes right under your office, right under your floor. What did you do next to escape? I didn't. I was thrown into a column. I was injured. Next thing I know I'm laying on the floor and there's a wall of black smoke rolling over me. It starts turning red. It starts flowing like a river toward the windows that are right next to my office area, which were the very windows that Maryland was leading her team to and eventually rescued people through. So the aircraft went right under our office when it blew up. I rolled over on my stomach once I could start hearing, went through the old 4-H concept, head, heart, health and hands. I could hear, I could see my body worked and all my training, even before military, at home with mom, dad, grandma, you look after other people. When I could hear other people calling for help, I knew I had to do something and started that day. Myself and Lieutenant Korea got on her stomachs, low-crawled beneath the smoke and started working away, clearing and sending people behind us back toward the doors. I went in and out of the building five times that day. The last time I was in, I attached myself to the FBI and to the fire that allowed me to stay in. I stayed there for four hours after that. We'll come back to your rescue efforts in just a few minutes. Marilyn, the plane was awfully close to where you were in that conference and I think it's okay that we can be blunt at this point in time 20 years later, but sadly some of your colleagues were killed immediately and then others like you were able to manage to get together and get out. You can pick up the story from there, please. Yeah, sure. To give some perspective of the Pentagon, I was on the second floor of the E-ring, which is the most exterior ring that the senior officers, our general officers, their offices will be. So being on the E-ring, I was on the inner E-ring in a conference room that we normally have every week with my chief of staff, Colonel Phil McNair. We had no idea what was going on in New York because our meeting commenced at nine o'clock. So as Colonel McNair called on the Congressional Affairs Officer myself to speak immediately, the lights went off, it became immediately dark, you didn't hear anything. When I talked to another officer who sat across from me, he said, Marilyn, you couldn't see the fireball over the top of your head that I know had to have singed the top of my hair. But it knocked me to the opposite side of the room because of the blast. So I'm on the E-ring in this conference room, dark, filled with smoke, hot. And I knew that there was a door on the E-ring exterior. I went to that door. But when I went to that door, it would not open. I touched it and it was very hot. So I knew there was a second door that I could exit. As I crawled across the room, because I was on the left side and I was blown to the right side, I crawled back to the left side of the room. Someone had a hold of my pants. And I said, who are you? Who are you? And she told me who she was, Lois Stevens. And I told her, hold on, where I go, you go, do not let me go. We're gonna get out of here. So no longer was it about getting Marilyn out, but I had someone else who was a civilian who I was charged with getting out of that building. We crawled, I can't tell you how long, it seemed like forever. And it was a Dilbert form is the way I'd like to explain it. As we crawled through desks and chairs and cubicles had been overturned, as we crawled out of the room, if we crawled to the right, I can promise you we wouldn't be here today because that is what you see when you see on the television. The whole building had fell apart. I crawled to the left and I continued to crawl and until I knew that was a window further down the hallway. All the way from the earring to the C ring is where we crawled. At one point, Lois stopped to say she couldn't go any further because her nautilons were melting on her legs and I told her we have to go. She said, no, Colonel, you go ahead, I'll just, no. I know I'd never leave anyone. So I told her to get on my back and we commenced to crawl again. But as we stopped, I didn't know that there were people behind her who I was responsible for at that time. And so we got to this window eventually on A&E Drive at the C ring and the window wouldn't open because in the Pentagon, the window's a bomb of blast. And that's for a reason, not for a plane flying through, but for other reasons. So it was a young soldier standing there and I saw a printer. I told him, throw the printer into the window. And he did so, but it fell right back onto my thighs and to my lap. And we continued to try to throw that printer in and the window didn't budge. So Colonel McNair, myself and his name is Specialist Petrovich at the time, we continued to beat the frame and the frame eventually popped open and the smoke just bellowed out of that room, out of the window. And we could see the folks down on A&E Drive and they were saying, jump, we got you, jump. And that's where I'll pause now if there are any questions from that. You jumped from the second floor window into the arms of someone else there. Is that right? And he also caught many other people. Is that my understanding from Lincoln's book? Absolutely, there was one lady who was holding my arm saying, no, I can't go, I can't. I'm like, yeah, you have to. So I pealed her fingers off of me. She fell. And unfortunately when she fell, she injured him because he fell because she fell out well in her arms and legs. She broke her leg and he was injured in that catch of her. There was another lady, Lois, she was lowered out and he called her. So he caught, I know, three or four people coming out of that window. Was that the big John, Tony, excuse me? That was absolutely Commander Powell. Commander Powell, that's right. I was down at the ring at that time as I was watching Colonel Wills getting people out of the window. I don't even know how she was breathing with that smoke coming out of there like that. She looked like she was literally on fire and Colonel Powell was just taking them and then later on he got the name Big John because he literally put himself between a falling building and us as rescuers as we were trying to pull people out of rubble. Yeah. He was a great person. Yeah, he was the right place at the right time on that day. They should have an exhibit down at the UNTCL Museum and support Pierce on him because he's a legend. Yeah. He was a legend that day for his actions that day. He never blinked. He saw the smoke, he saw us and said, I'll catch him, just get him out of there. And he did just that. He caught them. And then Marilyn's story wasn't quite over. Your colleague, Lucia was intimately involved in sort of the next phase, if I may say so, of her survival. Can you pick up that there? Because I don't think Marilyn remembers it. I think she was unconscious pretty much from smoke inhalation. If you could finish the rest of that and then I want to ask you about what you did as well. Sure. So it's funny, Ed Lucia, who still works at Walter Reed, I just spoke to him a few days ago. He's in Italy right now. I hope he's been able to log in and watch this. But Ed basically took Marilyn Wills when he found her and put her in his car and started to drive her to the hospital because he knew she was going into acute respiratory distress and she needed an airway. And I believe what happened next was he saw an ambulance going by and he knew that she was fading and he pulled over his car, stopped, waved down the paramedics because he knew they had airway equipment in there, pulled Marilyn out onto the sidewalk and intubated her, put a breathing tube in to control her airway right there on the sidewalk. And then they put her into the ambulance and then took, whisked her away to the hospital. So, and Marilyn, I understand that you've never even met Ed Lucia. Yeah. Well, I'll introduce you to him. He's a great guy. And we have that on tape. That's one of the, only one of two taped interviews we have and Ben and I interviewed him in a bar in Georgetown, D.C. And he talks all about that. Yeah, I'd love to meet it. Because that part of the story, I didn't know. Yeah. It's in Lincoln's book. And Ben, you sort of took charge in a sense of what was going on on the lawn. Many of us have seen the pictures of 22,000, perhaps 25,000 at peak work in the Pentagon, exiting, it was a mass exodus. I want to ask you two questions. At one point there was sort of a false alarm of another plane coming in that led to a panic, I believe, it's fair to say, on the lawn. And then please explain that. And then once that sort of dissipated, the order that you helped impose on the triage to help people who were burned and suffering smoke inhalation and worse injuries. So the first thing that I saw when our bus, our police escorted bus got to the Pentagon, our bus driver was understandably a little bit anxious. And so he drove up over some barriers and right onto the grounds of the Pentagon and drove all the way up to the wall that was on fire and dropped us off right next to the fire. And it was so hot there that we actually had to walk away from the wall of the Pentagon because the heat was so intense. And I saw something that was very unusual. I saw a fire truck that was on fire. And I thought to myself, this is crazy. Did the fire company get too close to the building and all of a sudden the fire trucks on fire? Well, it actually happened to be a fire truck that it was protocol when the president was landing at the Pentagon, which George Bush was supposed to be landing at the helicopter pad at the Pentagon later that day to then drive over to the White House. It was protocol to place a fire truck on the helicopter pad just as a safety security measure. And when the airplane came in, and this is well described in the book, Link has interviewed Alan Wallace. Alan Wallace was the fireman who pulled the truck out. He saw the plane coming into the Pentagon and started to run away from the wall of the Pentagon and got caught by this massive fireball that burned the buckles of his suspenders into his back. So that's what I saw when we got there. And not too much longer after that, there were two instances where someone got on a bullhorn and said, there's a second plane inbound, evacuate the premises. And people started screaming and I looked around and I saw this guy with a blue jacket that had the yellow letters FBI on the back and he was running to an underpass. And I decided to follow him. And I was looking up in the sky, I remember looking up over Arlington Cemetery and that area and looking for a plane coming toward me. And I was trying to figure out, okay, if it comes from this direction, I'll just jump in this ditch to avoid a fireball. That happened twice. Then when we finally got back and started to organize, there were people everywhere. That's one of the themes of the day is that people came out of the woodwork to help. There were tons of people around and lots of medical personnel. We divided our patients and well, basically divided our teams into four groups. And I looked around and saw a bunch of people that I knew, but I asked, first of all, who has advanced trauma life support training, ATLS training, few people raised their hands. They were all surgeons. I pulled them in and I said, okay, you're in charge, I put people together. So I would grab one person, grab another person, put them together. I said, you're a team. I want you to be in charge of this section. So we had the delayed, the immediate, the minimal and the expectant. The expectant are those who are expected to die and you would put those patients on comfort measures. So I put the pathologist and the pharmacist who had a case of morphine in charge of the expectant category. I put the orthopedic surgeon in charge of the delayed category. The delayed, they need treatment. They have lacerations or broken bones, but they're the walking wounded. They can carry litters and be litter bearers. The immediate are those who need immediate life saving treatment, like Marilyn who need an airway. They need airway to be able to ventilate or those who have uncontrollable hemorrhage. And then the minimal are those who have minimal injuries and also could be treated at some point down the line. So it was kind of a very chaotic situation. Tony's on the inside. I'm on the outside. Tony's trying to get patients to us on the outside. The reality of it is, is that most of the patients that we could help had already been evacuated to nearby hospitals. And it was a recovery operation at that point. But what was going on inside the Pentagon? Those are the stories that need to be told. Tony Rose's story, Marilyn Will's Christopher Brayman story. Those are the stories that no one's heard before. And just one more fact check with you, Ben. In the end of the day, not that many people went to Walter Reed or other hospitals for injuries. That's correct, that's correct. So most of the people that were killed were killed instantly. Remember there was a red vein going on at Pentagon and there were normally supposed to be around 4,500 people in that wedge of the Pentagon, but only 800 people were in there because of the renovations that were occurring. So. Tony, I think I lost count reading Lincoln's book. Was it five times or more? I think you may have actually said so earlier. Going back into the building and you kept going back, even as the fire got worse, even as firefighters and other uniformed people tried to literally stand in your way and said, you can't go there, it's too dangerous. Can you explain what you did and why? They were my friends, co-workers, family really in that building. And I'm works to the drama, a higher general that's on this earth. And as long as I'm living, I'm supposed to be helped know the people. And good Lord says, he knows me so well, he knows the number of hairs in my head. I didn't have any more then than I do now. So three or might as well get up and go to work. I was hurt, but I didn't know that I was hurt. I didn't know that till 12 o'clock at night. I dislocated my shoulder. I had strapped on my chest. I had busted my left knee and all of us were getting burned from the smoke and from wires melting, ceiling melting, things falling. But there was this drive that you knew people were certain places and you had to help them. A mentor and friend, Larry Strickland was not far from where Colonel Wills was. A great respect for that man. I knew I had to get to him as best as I could. Other people needed help. And a couple of times security people tried to stop us, but it was a very simple statement. Get the hell out of my way. My friends are in there, we're gonna go get them. And we did. There's people that we brought out that would have died. In fact, two people were being led out by Colonel Wills, Regina Grant and Tracy Webb. They in the smoke had got disjointed from that train. Colonel, I have no idea, ma'am, how you made it down that Dilbert hallway. No idea, because we were having a hard time getting in. But then got dislocated and had gone into another corridor and had come up against one of the fire doors that was closed. They did not know it was a door. They thought it was a wall and they were at that point ready to give up and die at Middlesow until we heard something in the smoke. Got that fire door open and got them out so that they could get to the outside. And it was just like that all day long, you would hear something where someone would say, we know so and so was in this area. And we would go as far as we could go to find them. We couldn't stop. You had to keep going. And it's, and Bill, if I can add on Tony, what Tony said, even though, you know, I gave a little abbreviated version at that windowsill when I was given an order by my colonel to get out of the window. That was the order I did not want to obey for that very reason. I knew there were others in there. I knew Regina was still in that building. I knew she was a part of our train but she wasn't there when we got to the window. So I shared with Colonel McNair. She's gotta not be far. We gotta go back. And we both tried and we knew we couldn't breathe. We couldn't see. We knew it was suicidal but we didn't want to leave because we knew people were there. And there's just something to never leave anyone behind. Where we found her from where she got dislocated was a 40 feet away in an opposite direction and had the colonel left the window, she would not be sitting here right now because when that smoke started coming in then it was boiling hot, torching everything it touched. Tony, so few people actually saw in real time the plane hit the building and unlike the situation in New York, there was no video of that for the longest time. Later on, years later, there was one security camera, surveillance camera, I think it was on a lamp post or a light pole outside the Pentagon which later was released, put some conspiracy theories to rest with that. It was shown in the Masawi trial in 2006, the only trial we've had in America for 9-11. But Tony, what did you see that day with regard to a plane when you got to the courtyard? Because I think it's important that people know. I was one of the first five people that were there and Lincoln, I have to tell you, you've done your research so well, you could have been right there with us the way you described it. When that plane came under the colonel's office area, blew up under my office area, exited the C-ring and blew up against the B-ring wall, there was just a huge hole that smoke was just coming out of. When we got to that B-ring wall, there was part of a fuselage and part of a wheel. And I've been in the Army 31 years from infantry to engineers. I've never seen a missile with a wheel on it. We knew it was a plane and the carnage was just terrible. Body parts, building, plane, all together. We absolutely knew at that point it was an aircraft. And this is gonna be a little disturbing but I'm gonna bring it up because we're being candid 20 years on. When you mentioned body parts, Tony, did you at one point come across what appeared to be a child's body part? Would you mind explaining that if you don't mind? The, when the building collapsed that colonel talked about, when it collapsed, there was five floors of latrines, waterworks, everything collapsed. There was all kinds of filth and water all over the place. And in the ring between B and C, it's like a canal, a cement canal. And of course it's got drains in there. Fire water was coming in from the departments from the outside from where Ben was at. It was getting high. And colonel, commander Powell and I noticed that some of the things floating by were body parts. We tried to pick some things up and put them on bricks or whatever we could out of the water. And at one point I picked up a child's hand and I had no place to put it except in my pocket. So it stayed there for a little while until like somebody with a body collection bag could get it from me. But at that minute, I just got so mad that someone would attack my family, my country, my home. I mean, I would have ripped off their heads and spit down the hole if I could have got close to them. It was just a cold rage that here's an innocent child, somebody's kid, you know, born forever. Yeah, it was bad. I'm gonna read this to summary sentence, which no one has said. The Pentagon attack killed 184 people, 53 passengers, which included some children and six crew members on board American Airlines Flight 77 and also 125 military and civilian personnel inside the building. Before I come back to you, Lincoln, I wanna ask Marilyn just to weigh in on one of those people was someone called Max Belki. And I know you knew him, Marilyn, but let our audience know who he was and in a sense had already been part of American history before that. Max Belki was just an awesome, an awesome person. But so you know who Max Belki was. He was the last, the last person to come out of Vietnam who was in the meeting with me initially, but he was called over to the E-Ring to General Maud's office. He sat in that area right where the plane entered that building for Max Belki and General Maud and General Maud's staff who were over there, including one of my dear friends, Marion Server. I work with Marion every day. And we would talk about her relationship with her daughter the same way I would want the relationships with my daughters. And it was very difficult, but Max was just an awesome person to know and to know that he was the last one to come out of Vietnam and to have lived his life and to end it in this way. And all of those people, all in 184, of course the memorialized now at Pentagon with individual benches and that acknowledgement. Did either of you, Marilyn or Tony or Ben, learn something new in Lincoln's book that you hadn't known before in terms of, for example, Marilyn's story, not even knowing the name of the doctor after she jumped from the window and was caught who later saved her life on the road? Oh, absolutely. That part of the book really opened the pages for me to let me know the rest of the story. I could share what happened in the building but I would tell you, Lincoln, you told me so many other things in that book that I did not know. That was one. And then secondly, just how bad I really was. I was really ready to go back but then an immediate injury that I just learned from Ben, I knew I couldn't. You didn't do it. Yeah, just so many things to open up for me. And Lincoln, because we've lost our connection, it appears with Christopher Brayman. Could you share with me how he, like Tony, kept going back into the building and what he encountered from what you recount in your book on that day over and over again, well into the night? He was like a machine and they had to literally shut him down at the end or he would have just kept going until he dropped dead, essentially. He was finding, I mean, he ended up, when the DC fire got there, there was a standoff between Chris and Major Theodore Henderson outside and they were faced off with the DC fire and the DC fire said, you can't go in. And they said, we've got people in there and I know they're right inside the building and we're going in there. And they broke through the ranks of the DC fire and got inside and the fireman pulled them back out of there. They had to literally pull them back out of there. And later on, they went in and they found a whole stack of people in one area that were all dead. They were just inside the, well, if they'd allowed them to go in, they could have saved them. But that's not to cast dispersions on DC fire because it's a classic standoff when neither side is right or wrong. They were doing their job and the military was like, we're not gonna leave our people behind. And that's a classic unreconsizable situation. And I didn't ever want to portray the DC fires being a bad guy. It was just a situation. They were just doing their job trying to save lives, but they just didn't understand the military mindset. At least the ones that had never been in the military. So Chris basically, they had to come to him and tell him that he had to leave. And as he was leaving, he passed a Red Cross area and he saw a little girl with her mother. There was no father there. And that little girl stayed on his mind. He got home and he showered and he told his wife, I gotta go back. And one of the most powerful scenes, along with the scene of Tony finding a child's hand, I would say is when he raced back to the Pentagon in his car and it finally came down. And he just basically lost and rode to the side of the road. He was exhausted. I mean, he'd been going in and out of there with no sleep. His whole uniform was covered in human tissue and blood. And I don't know, I'm humbled by him and by Tony, by Marilyn, all my mother, all these people that were there. You know, it was true heroism. Because a hero doesn't think, how am I gonna get out of here? He thinks, how am I gonna get all these people out of here? That's the only difference. And you don't ever know whether or not that you're gonna react that way until it happens. And it happens just like that. And that's when you find out something about yourself. Absolutely. A lot of people who survived the Pentagon, including people on this panel and people in your book have nightmares. Some have PTSD. And I wanted to see if I could ask you, Marilyn and Tony, if you've had something that's sometimes called survivor's guilt over the years. Marilyn? Yeah, you know, that was the initial thought after I was brought back to consciousness and been in Walter Reed. Why me? There were approximately 16 of us in that room. Why didn't we all make it out? Why Marilyn? Why was I given that charge? A gentleman sitting in my chair with Marilyn is no longer with us. Why wasn't I sitting in that chair? Why him? So I had to deal with that for a very long time. That survivor's guilt is difficult. I was seen by a psychiatrist for several years because I wasn't the same. I was angry. I would get upset with my daughters and my husband for no reason, so I thought. And that reason was not dealing with what had happened to me. PTSD, yes. Do I have nightmares? Yes. Can I still smell what I smelled when I went back into that building 14 days later? Yes. Do I see ghosts walking down the hallway when I was in that building? Yes. All of those things happened to Marilyn. When I went back as a colonel in the Pentagon and had to sit on the earring when they opened the airways to have planes fly over that building. Did I do that? Yes. Was it difficult? Absolutely. But it was something about being in the military that I will say, not only prepared me, that showed me that I could, that I could continue to serve, that I could continue on with my life. But those things are even still there today. I still suffer with some of this PTSD. Loud noises, I'm startled, it just frightens me. So Tony, go right ahead. Yeah, PTSD is really there. When I retired from the military, I went back and got my degree in psychology and became a licensed therapist. Sort of selfishly because I knew I needed help myself but also to be able to help other people and help first responders in military. But really for myself, immediately after 9-11, we didn't have counselors. The military put the cone of silence on. We wanted the rest of the world to focus on New York, Shanksville, on everything else but us. We didn't want them to see America's arm of might being hurt. We went back the next day, 10,000 of us. Hurt, looking for friends, recovering bodies, securing documents, helping each other. You would turn around to ask someone for help and realize that person had just died less than 24 hours earlier or was not yet found. Sometimes I hate 4th of July. I can smell a burnt hamburger and immediately, I'm right in the middle of that smoke again. Strudel effect. My wife and I have been married 46 years. She does not walk into a room that I'm in without saying knock, knock because I will respond out of fear. And it's not something you control. We record those acts in all five of their senses. Some people remember the blue sky. Some remember a taste of coffee. Some remember a handshake or a smile. We won't forget it. It will just go away slowly in various ways. But it's with us for the rest of our lives. And I can see and smell and think of every one of those people just as clear today as I did then. Just as clear as I can see that little hand in sleep is there and people should not forget because it's not if it happens again. It's when it happens again. That's simply because of the people who are classified as their enemies that do not like our country. Their mode of operandi is you can't leave a job unfinished and our friends still at Pentagon are watchful, wondering when their time will come. That's the way it is folks. And Ben, of course, besides these psychological scars, post-traumatic stress syndrome, many people had horrible physical injuries, life-changing physical injuries, burns. Oh, yeah. How do those people fare two decades later? Medically wise. Yeah, they're permanently damaged. The integument, which is the skin, that's the largest organ in the body by far. The surface area of any one's skin is a large component of the body. And to have facial burns where your eyes are burned shut, to have the creases of your mouth burn, your ears burned off, these patients have chronic pain. You have to go through multiple, multiple operations to skin graft or to put different types of skin substitutes on their bodies. They're in just terrible, terrible pain. It's so painful to have burn injuries. Anyone that's ever burned themselves, even a minor burn knows that to be true. But yeah, it's difficult. And one note on PTSD, it's interesting, Marilyn, you say that olfactory hallucinations are the, that's the sense of smell, are the earliest signs of PTSD. And I remember coming back from a combat deployment to Iraq where I was at a lecture and I was seeing picture battlefield on the battlefield and it was a breakfast meeting and I started to notice, I was, I looked at the guys around me, I said, do you smell that? And they're looking at me like I'm crazy. And I found out later that it was, you know, olfactory hallucinations. I was in the battlefield and that went away. I don't have that happen to me anymore. It was very fresh after coming to the battlefield. I'd like to add one other thing to what you're saying, Ben, and you're so right. There's so many of the injuries that we don't see too, besides just the PTSD. In 72 with the 82nd airborne, I broke my neck and back and had paralysis from the chin down for quite a while till they wired me back together. So I love doctors, okay? You're my heroes. But on 9-11, when I was blown back into that wall, I hit the same C-71 neck area and re-injured it and the shoulder that, you know, 25 years before was finally healing, except for the arthritis. And now every month, I have to get a shot in the Stala ganglion to help relieve the pain to be able to stay mobile because there's injuries inside that happen to re-injuries. It's interesting because not only did everything happen that you all have talked about, going back the next day, 14 days later, but the smell was still there, while it was still an awful attack site and crime scene. I remember that the Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld, felt it was important to actually have a press conference on 9-11 that evening to show that America's military was still going. And then, of course, remarkably, compared to New York, for instance, where it took 10 years to rebuild anything within one year, the Pentagon was rebuilt. And I believe you were there for that ceremony. What was that like to be there just one year later to see the physical reconstruction occur? Marilyn? You know, it was mind-blowing. We knew it was something that had to be done to show the might of the military that we're still here. The better news is, all of the construction teams, engineers, workers, people just came out to feed those construction workers to help build that building. It was worth the weight of a year, but it was also worth showing the might of the military that, nope, that bruised us, but it didn't stop us. Look at us now. We're back in our building in less than a year, which speaks of the hearts of the American people. I'll just share this quick story. My parents are in Louisiana. When this happened, all flights were grounded. They couldn't travel. They got in their car and they drove 26 hours from Louisiana to Washington, D.C., never paid for gas, never paid for food because they were telling people, my daughter was in the Pentagon. People were helping them out. That shows the resolve of the American people. That's what I know about America, and that's what made it so great to have that building redone in one year. And we're back in there. It was a warm feeling of national unity at that time. It brought us together as a country, ironically. And it gave us hope. You know, we can live maybe 30 days without food, seven days, depending on conditions without good water. But like we all saw in 9-11, some people died because they didn't have hope. You can't live five minutes without hope. And it led our nation to know that we were strong and we were a family and we were gonna keep going on. That's one thing that I learned about Marilyn is she's one that shines in that regard because she let those ladies that she were in that darkness with her, it was her keeping her head and giving them hope that they would get out of there. Absolutely. That was so admirable, so incredible. But there were a lot of people like that. That's why that chapter is called A Voice in the Darkness because that's all they had to go on. You know? That's very true. And I knew the smoke was getting me, but I had to let them hear my voice. That you're gonna be okay, we're gonna get out of here. Even those in my mind, I don't know if I was saying what I was thinking, but they never know that. We were gonna get out of here. That's God, that was God moving through you. Absolutely, the Holy Spirit. Like it worked through Tony, like it worked through Craig Powell, like it worked through Christopher Brayman. When I said in his book, the inscription I put on there was that God could not always be with his children. So he put heroes on the earth to look after them. That's right. Amen. And Lincoln, our other panels are too modest, but I think you alluded to this in the book. A lot of people receive medals for valor, purple hearts, that kind of thing. What can you tell us about that? Well, a medal is an exterior thing, it's what you wanna call it. It's just a manifestation of what's in their hearts. That's what's most important, is what was in their hearts. You know, their hearts were pure. They were willing to risk their own lives to get other people to save them. And like I said, you don't know if that's in you until it happens. Until something like that happens suddenly and you have to react. And the people that reacted that way know that they were pure of heart. And the ones that didn't, well, you know what I mean? I'm not, like I said, I'm not passing any judgment, but you don't know what you're gonna do. I don't know what I would do. I would like to believe that I would react like Marilyn or Tony, but I don't know that until it happens. And that's just the truth of it. I don't think anyone does until a time comes. I think that's the question that every warrior has got on their mind. What will happen when that first round is fired? Right, because it's real and because you're life, you're staring death in the face. And that's totally different than anything else you're used to, you know? I just wanted to invite each of you to have sort of a closing thought as we're winding this down now or time is running out, unfortunately. But you know, there's so much we could continue to talk about 20 years, 9-11, easily one of the most consequential days in American history, immediately ending 3,000 lives, deeply affecting thousands and thousands of more directly, affecting the whole country, leading to at least two wars and other conflicts that we've been involved in. And so much unfinished business, including justice for 9-11 families and victims and all of us. Ironically, as we speak tonight, again, after many years of delays, proceedings in a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay, or rebooting, if you will, about five people accused of having a direct role in these horrific attacks. What is the takeaway that you want our audience to think about as we get to Saturday, this 20th anniversary, along the lines that I just sort of laid out? Tony, why don't we start with you? I've never been back to the Pentagon. I can't bring myself to do that yet. I've been by there going to Andrews Air Force Base on my way to Guantanamo. I'm one of the witnesses because I saw the nose cone. I can say it was an airplane. I looked at those five individuals. I was supposed to be there this year, with illness and COVID's taking care of that, but I hope the day comes when those individuals see the justice they deserve. I hope America realizes that none of us stand alone. We all have to look after each other. We are really a family and we need to care, not walk by when someone needs a hand or is hurt, but stop and take a moment and be their angel, be their hero, because there's gonna come a time when all of us is gonna need one. I know people are gonna be there for me, just like Marilyn and Craig Powell and Chris because they're family. I hope people don't forget that. Marilyn? You know, my hope and desire is that we make sure our young children, our young adults know what happened on September 11th. They weren't born. All the naysayers who say it wasn't a plane, we were there, we saw it. Additionally, I gotta talk about the book, get the book, read the book, it's in there. And just know that there is hope for America. Right now we're a country crying. We need to be with each other. We need to join this country back together the way it was before. And just love and put hope out there. But pray and consider those families who lost their loved ones, those mothers and daughters and children and all of the loved ones who were lost. And then pray for us as well as every year we discuss this, we know our lives are a history book but consider praying for us as well because we have to carry this torch for the rest of our lives. And I got one PS for you, Ben and Lincoln. God bless you both for doing this. Phil and your team for bringing it together. This is not fake news. This is real people talking about real events that people need to remember and hear the truth. And God bless you for telling it. Thank you. Ben, a final thought for you please. Make sure you mention it. Thank you Ed. I wanna talk about it. Okay. So thanks Phil. We've had a couple of book signing events where I stood up in front of crowds of people and I don't typically get emotional but as I started to speak to some of these people and tell the story, I found myself becoming very emotional and I couldn't figure out why. And I guess it's just natural but to look back and to have, to trace everything back to that one day and the power of that day and the impact of that single day on the last 20 years, I've taken care of soldiers on the battlefield that were dead, had their legs blown off. I've operated on soldiers that were wounded, sent them home with no extremities or with terrible injuries. And all of it traces back to that day and how we responded on that day. And I'm proud of the way America responded to that, those attacks on that day. I'll say that this is American history and that's the reason that Link and I brought this book to the present. You know, when we originally published it or when Link finished it back in 2004, nobody was interested in publishing another book on 9-11. Nobody had an appetite to read about 9-11 anymore. And so we shelved the project and it came time for us to resurrect it and for the 20th anniversary. And these stories, we need these inspirational stories. We need these stories, particularly now, the way our country is, the condition that our country's in right now. And I'm really proud of my brother for writing this amazing book. It's got fantastic reviews. I had a friend come up to me the other day and say he gave a copy to his father. And his father said, that's the best book I've read in 10 years. So I'm proud of you, brother. And thank you, Phil, for putting this on. And Lincoln, let's give you the last, last word. American Phoenix, the Pentagon rising from the ashes. America, in a sense, rising from the ashes. What's the, there it is. Everybody's gonna hold up. I can hold it up too. It's published by Girl Friday Books, Seattle-based publisher. What should people be thinking about that? I have one question for our enemies, any enemy of this country. And that is, where's the Napoleonic Empire? It's gone. Where's the British Empire gone? Where are the Nazis gone? Where are the Soviet Russians gone? This country stood for 245 years, right? About 245 years. And what is the strength of this country? It's the fact that this country is protected by God and it's the American people and the Constitution of the United States of America. And if you think you're gonna beat that, you're wrong. This country will not be defeated. It will never be defeated. And it will lift all other countries in this world up to its level, to where everyone loves everyone else. And we have a very beautiful world one day. And that's coming. You get a bank on it. One thing I got from my desk that day, that local Sam should just burnt up. That's right. You're right. Lots of stories like that, like the flag and no one's are Murphy, Murphy's office, the Marine. It was standing up, the panallel went recovered with Chris Grayman. He was just standing up there on that precipice. The whole building had blown away from it, but that flag was still standing there. That was a very good sign. It was a divine sign. Well, everyone we're out of time. I wanna thank our panelists, the author, Lincoln Starnes, his brother, Ben Starnes, Marilyn Wills and Tony Rose. And for a while we had Chris Grayman, all who were in the Pentagon in 9-11. I wanna thank Tom Nastic from the National Archives as well as Karen McNally-Upston and Katie Myers for helping to organize this panel. If you missed any part of this program or wanna watch it again, I believe it'll be up on the National Archives YouTube page. Thanks to our audience for tuning in and keep on clicking. If you wanna watch it again on the internet, it's up there forever. That's all. I'm Phil Hirschkorn, thank you all for watching and good night.