9/11 Inside the Pentagon

[jet engine roaring] [music playing] You could see a fireball coming through the floor.

Then the rooms start to fill up with smoke.

Immediately you could not see your hand if it's right in front of your face.

It was that dark.

The tiles were falling.

The--The walls were crumbling.

You're trying to catch a breath.

[sirens blaring] [helicopter thrumming] "We can't get out of here."

"God, I'm gonna die.

God, take care of my girls."

ANNOUNCER: "9/11: et engine roaring] [music playing] It was blue skies, a nice day in September.

Uh, we came to work.

Nothing particularly outstanding in the news that day.

At the Pentagon, I was the Assistant Building Manager.

Um, I was responsible from A to Z.

Uh, lights on, place warm, just about anything you needed done at the Pentagon.

We all went to our normal jobs.

Shortly after, uh, my assistant came up to me and told me that I might want to come out and see what was going on.

One of the Trade Center towers was smoking, uh, on the screen, and she had said it just got hit by an airplane.

I was at--working at the firehouse that morning.

We were having our, uh, shift meeting, and, uh, one of the guys' wife's calls and says that, "Hey, something happened in New York.

A plane flew into the World Trade Center."

I grew up in New York, and I was like, "Oh, planes aren't supposed to be flying near the World Trade Center."

You know, it's just not in the flight path.

So we turn the news on, and, um, sure enough, you know, the building is--is on fire, and it was like, "Wow, that's insane."

This was my third tour of duty in the Pentagon when I was a Navy Captain, and I was the Special Assistant to the Vice Chief of Naval Operations, who is the number-two admiral in the Navy.

We have a TV in the Vice Chief's outer office, and you could see in the video, perfectly clear day.

This is no navigational m-malfunction.

The pilot can see where he's flying.

The pilot knows exactly what he's doing.

We knew that this was intentional from the beginning.

[sirens blaring] [onlookers screaming] ONLOOKER: Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

I worked at the Boston Air Traffic Control Center.

I was the military liaison, and after the second impact by United 175, then things got really, really, uh, confusing, chaotic.

MAN: They're working on it.

It wasn't when she went on fire.

The feeling of losing control to a controller is like those times just before you fall asleep and you feel like you're falling and then you catch yourself.

And it's-- it's kind of scary for a half a second.

Well, I felt that for about two hours.

I believe it was close to 4,000 aircraft that were in the sky already.

You had to coordinate each one individually, and after the two impacts, any aircraft that made any uncharacteristic action at that time was gonna be perceived that it could possibly be a hijack.

American 77 was, uh-- departed Dulles for Los Angeles, and somewhere along the way in Indianapolis Center's airspace the hijackers turned off its transponder so you could no longer see the aircraft with our radar, uh, turned the aircraft around, headed back toward the east coast.

CONTROLLER: And we also lost American 77.

American 77... American...

I was a reporter for "The Washington Post."

My assignment was, uh, covering the Pentagon as an installation, a large military installation, in the Washington region.

We have just been attacked in--in an act of war.

This is the military's command center.

And the Pentagon, when it was built, there was criticism at the time that what the military was creating was the--the world's largest bombing target.

You can't really get a grasp for how big the Pentagon is until you see it from the air.

The Pentagon, in a way, is five separate buildings that are built next to each other.

See, it's these five wedges.

You also have five rings that divide it up further.

By any measure, it's the biggest office building in the world, a building with 17 miles of corridors, a 35-acre roof, a building where 20,000 people would go to work every morning.

Always chilly in the building.

I always had my sweater.

The military gives you a black sweater to wear.

Told my office-mate, "Marian, I'll see you."

I went off to the meeting that was not far from our cubicle, and Marian stayed in the office, continuing to, um, um... process her work that she had to do for that day.

The meeting had started at 9: 00, and so we had no idea what was going on in the country at that time.

MAN: Headed toward us.

And we get a report that a large aircraft is six miles south of the White House, so right away, I'm like, They need to know."

We got a call from the Navy Command Center.

I picked it up, and it was the duty watch captain, Gerry DeConto.

And Gerry and I had been fellow physics majors at the Academy, and he was a good friend, and Gerry said, "A plane has been hijacked out of Dulles Airport.

That's all we know."

And so, "Got it.

You know, keep us-- keep us informed."

I was one of three firefighters assigned to the Pentagon heliport fire station.

The fire station is located approximately 20 feet west of the Pentagon itself.

That morning, the fire chief from Fort Myer will call.

He said, "Something like what has happened in New York City "could possibly happen in this area.

If it did, you would likely be responding to it."

My office was on the E Ring, the outermost portion of the Pentagon, the part with the windows, so you can actually look out.

And I realized, uh, the White House is very difficult to see from the air.

It's not all that big of a building.

The Washington Monument, symbolic, but silly.

Capitol building would be symbolic, but there aren't a lot of people in the Capitol building.

And--And I just kind of thought out loud, and I said, "It's coming here.

It's gonna hit us."

I had received an email from security that advised me there was no change in the security posture and we would be remaining the same at this time, but they would get ahold of me if there was a change.

CAPT.

TOTI: And so, um, we wait for a report from the Command Center, anything.

No, nothing.

Then I say to my boss, "I'm gonna go down there."

And my boss says, "Stay put.

Let em work.

They'll call when they have something."

And so, um, I didn't go.

We were conducting our meeting, and it got to my turn to pass information out.

I went back to my desk and sat down.

Suddenly you-- you hear a sound.

COL. WILLS: It was my turn to speak.

That's when you heard a loud noise.

CAPT.

TOTI: And the sound grows in intensity, and you recognize, "Yeah, th-that's an airliner."

A flash or something over to my left will catch my attention.

When I look up, I see the airplane.

And it keeps getting louder and louder, and you say, "Is this really happening?"

I turn my back to the airplane, and I am running.

This is not the way my life is supposed to go.

Is this how it ends for me?

And then before you can even really think much more... [jet engine roaring] I felt a jolt.

I was blown to the opposite side of the table.

A loud explosion.

Feel the pressure from the explosion and then almost immediately I feel the enormous heat generated by the fireball.

Trying to grab on to something for stability.

And you can see a clear split and a fireball coming through the floor.

And then you heard, like, particles of concrete falling on the false ceiling above.

And then you realize, "I'm alive."

What just happened?

What is going on?

Fire alarms, control screens turn on, and they were counting up.

It was like several hundred thousand square feet of Pentagon just burst into flames.

[music playing] WALLACE: Everything in front of me is on fire.

The fire truck is a big blaze.

There's nothing but a field of burning debris.

CAPT.

TOTI: The hall outside our office starts to fill not with smoke, but with dust falling from the ceiling.

CARTER: And as I stepped out of the Command Center, you could see drywall dust rolling down the hallway.

It looked like a fog coming in.

The side of my face, down my arm, and on my back were burned, but I didn't know that.

It was just time to get out of the building.

Then the rooms start to fill up with smoke.

You could not see your hand if it's right in front of your face.

It was that dark.

climb over the radio consoles, plop down in the driver's seat.

My plan is to take it over The fire truck, however, will not move.

As a matter of fact, it never moved.

The back of the fire truck has got a blaze on it probably 50 feet high.

I and two of the officers in the room run out.

There were no people in the hallway.

Couldn't figure out why there's no fire alarm going off.

We have to get out of here.

The closest door that was to me was burning, flaming hot, so I knew not to open that door.

I knew windows were on the C Ring on the second floor, and that's the way I started to crawl.

CAPT.

TOTI: We're running down the E ring, and the smoke's getting thicker and thicker, uh, to the point where we're having trouble seeing, and then suddenly, the building was missing.

Uh, there was just a big hole there where there was just a building not a minute ago.

VOGEL: I mean, this is the military's command center.

You have a building that needs to swing into action to start dealing with this new war.

As a reporter, your instinct is to go to the scene.

And as I got closer, there was this enormous black plume.

In the middle of this beautiful blue-sky morning in Washington, you had this-- this ugly plume of black smoke.

From where I was standing, you could see these Navy personnel who had come to help pull people out of the damaged area, which was the Navy Command Center.

You could see the water between ankle and half-calf deep.

It wasn't occurring to me it was jet fuel.

The plane struck the building right at about a 40-degree angle.

The wings pretty much disintegrated upon impact, uh, but the fuselage blew open a hole in the wall, in the limestone facade of the Pentagon, and--and the rest of the aircraft followed in and continued all the way through the E Ring, the D Ring, the C Ring.

When the plane came through it, if you can imagine a room full of partition furniture, and you have this force coming through there.

It's taking all of that furniture and people-- people and everything.

This hole where it popped out was kind of into that area where everything had been shoved into.

Um... yeah.

CAPT.

TOTI: I left the building through what's called the Mall entrance, and--and first thing you could see obviously is smoke and flame.

And as I get closer and closer, I see bits and pieces of something littering the grass, the field.

And the first thing that was recognizable was a big piece of the fuselage.

Um, it was white with a big red A on it.

American Airlines.

And then I came around the outbuilding, and then it was like a dream sequence, because, uh, there before me were some, um, either dead or gravely injured people laying on the ground.

[sirens blaring] I see the fire truck, and it's on fire.

I look, and the fire truck cab door is open, and in there, I see what looks to be a body slumped over the steering wheel of the fire truck.

And when I run up to him, he--he kind of sits upright, and I realize he's not dead.

I think I--At this point, I have my face down in the dash trying to determine what's wrong with the fire truck.

The fire truck will not move.

Eventually I will make a radio call.

I simply say, "Foam 61 to Fort Myer.

"We've had a commercial airliner crash into the west side of the Pentagon."

I was a Captain with Arlington County Fire Department.

We're stationed at, uh, Crystal City.

Whether it's a medical emergency, a fire alarm, anything, we're the first ones there.

When we pulled up, there were--there were a lot of people exiting the Pentagon, a lot of confusion.

The instinct of a lot of people who work at the Pentagon is to to run to the sound of the guns, run to the smoke, run to the fire, and that's what a lot of people did.

Going in and, you know, pulling strangers out of cubicles, just catching people who were trying to--to get out windows, all kinds of--of heroism.

People absolutely risking their lives to go back, you know, after they'd escaped themselves and go back to get others.

We realized, to use Navy language, our "shipmates" were in there.

We need to go in.

Fire Department says you can't go in.

You're not qualified.

You're not outfitted.

It was a very emotionally charged atmosphere, but, uh, they were eager to try and tell us, "Hey, this is where this person is.

There is how you get here."

So then we started drawing diagrams for them.

"Okay, um, like you to go check the Navy Command Center."

Gerry was in there.

There's another good friend, Pat Dunn.

And you have no idea whether they're still alive or they're dead.

CAPT.

HANNON: That's when we went to work.

If they were in an office that was cordoned off, they still might be okay.

Uh, we entered to the right of where the plane came in.

COL. WILLS: As I crawled out, I could feel like something was pulling me.

I'm just yelling out, "Who is that?

Stay with me.

Hold on to me."

'Cause you couldn't see anything, so I'm figuring if I'm talking, you could hear me.

And I'm saying, "If anybody else is there, "join the line.

We're getting out of here.

Hold on.

Hold on."

I'm talking so much that my mouth is now drying out.

And I grabbed my black sweater, and I just kinda sucked on it, because it's wet.

Not knowing it was jet fuel.

ONLOOKER: Oh, my God!

Oh, my God!

Sir, let's go.

Sir!

VOGEL: As you have the tower collapsing at the World Trade Center, you have a--a situation at the Pentagon where you have a fire that is only getting worse.

Uh, you have an unknown number of victims, people trapped, and it could be getting worse in a hurry.

When we were crawling down the, uh, corridor, um, conditions started deteriorating.

The smoke started pushing out a little more forcefully.

Uh, the temperature started to rise, and there's more, uh, cracking and popping going on, and there's very, very limited visibility.

We were probably about 12, 15 feet away from the door we needed to get to.

And then all the sudden, uh, a very loud noise.

We started hearing what sounded like, uh, you know, an earthquake sound.

Building materials and ceiling tiles, everything came crashing down on us.

And then--And you could see that the-- the building started collapsing in on itself.

[radio chatter] This is area one to command.

We have had structural collapse on the heliport side.

Said we have structural collapse next to the... CAPT.

HANNON: A very loud noise, a lot of debris falling on us.

I was concerned that we weren't going to, uh, make it out.

Did one of the crew get injured or killed?

CAPT.

TOTI: But you know there's more people in there.

You wonder how far this collapsing is going to progress.

Are adjacent walls gonna tumble in?

[sirens blaring] Are they trapped?

Um, what's going on?

VOGEL: When people are looking at the building on television cameras, that gash looks quite small, looks almost like a pinprick, but in reality, the sheer size of the destruction is equivalent to a large shopping mall.

It's an absolutely horrific scene.

We were kinda scattered, We got back together.

And it's-- Emotions are up and down.

You know, you-- you find out that, no, everybody's okay.

That's a good feeling.

Okay, we're good.

We made it through this.

But the people were still in there, and you're trying to save somebody, and you were not able to save 'em.

That sticks with ya.

VOGEL: You just have a very tenuous situation at the Pentagon.

In a time of great chaos, uncertainty, fear, and unknown, you need the Pentagon to function as--as a command center, but you have more jet fuel inside the building that's starting to ignite.

You have an unknown number of victims, people trapped.

[yelling] An enormous rescue operation is getting underway with more and more first responders and more urban-rescue type, uh, personal.

[overlapping chatter] Primary goal of the recon team is to find victims that are trapped, that can't get out by themselves.

Our mission is-- is to find them and assist the rescue team in removing them safely from the building.

Uh, when they are going into the building, um, I have to help assess what's going on with the structure.

Is it safe to go into this particular area?

And try to help them find the safest way to do their job.

REGAN: And as we were driving in, um, building's still on fire.

TITUS: Smoke was the thing I remember and that the closer we got, the more we could see.

REGAN: As we arrived, we could see the streetlights so this is the first visions that we see of the Pentagon.

TITUS: I was feeling anxious about what I'm going to do, what--what I was gonna be asked to do, 'cause I didn't know if I was ready.

I had--I had no field experience whatsoever, and it looked like it was a very intense situation.

[over radio] And at this time, we've got people who are coming out of the Pentagon, who are injured.

CAPT.

TOTI: And I was running on adrenalin during this period of time.

I had this kind of tunnel-vision thing where I don't remember things that were happening on the periphery.

I only remember exactly what I was staring at, like I was looking through a soda straw.

I thought I saw a movement inside this door that-- where the smoke was billowing out.

It was a woman.

We half-lifted, half-dragged her, um, out of the building, and--and she was one of these where her skin was coming off in sheets.

You want to grab her arms, but as you do, the skin comes off.

And--And so then you think, "Oh, I gotta let go.

But wait.

No, we gotta get her out.

What do I do?"

So you just do the best you can, grab clothes, grab whatever you can.

The first ambulance pulled up, and you call them over, and you need oxygen.

Guy pulls out one oxygen bottle.

You've got five, six people laying down on the side of the road here.

Who do you give it to?

So I'm leaning over this woman, and she seems to be struggling.

And she says, "Am I gonna die?"

And I said, "No.

What's your name?"

And she said, "My name is Antoinette."

And I said, "You're not gonna die, Antoinette.

"Uh, we got a helicopter coming.

We're gonna put you on it."

and put her in, and-- and I yelled at her, "I'll see you in the hospital."

And, uh, actually it turned out I never got to see her in the hospital.

She died before I was able to visit her.

REGAN: The timeline is very critical, because the longer they're trapped, the less likely they are to survive.

So, uh, we went in right to the left of where the plane had hit the building.

We walked into a really, really bad scene.

REGAN: We were met with a chest-high pile of debris.

There--There was pieces of--you know... bodies everywhere.

Lots of debris and smoke.

Smoke kills you pretty quickly, uh, particularly when it's as heavy as it was in the Pentagon.

Usually when, you know, a building's on fire, we could just ventilate the building.

We'd break a window to let the smoke out.

Many of the windows were still in place.

They were blastproof windows.

There was no opening these windows.

I mean, we beat 'em with sledgehammers.

The high heat makes it less likely for people to get out, and these windows just kept it in there like a giant oven, yeah.

In my mind, not being an expert, I--I was thinking how could anyone survive this?

[coughing] COL. WILLS: We continued to crawl.

And as we continued to crawl, one lady was just ready to give up.

And when she said she could not make it anymore, was like, "Oh, yeah, you're going.

"I am not telling your children "I left you.

Get on my back.

I'm gonna carry you out of here if I have to."

It seemed like we crawled forever to get to this window.

I had no light to see anything.

What led me to that window, I knew it was in that direction, and there was the smallest little pinhole of a light, and I just kept crawling straight to that window.

And once we got to the window, we just start kicking it and beating on that window.

I came down the corridor.

I looked up to the next floor level, and there was two or three people in the window, and a person was banging on the window, and it would not even crack or give way.

This young soldier, I will never forget him.

It was a printer not far from us at this window, and he threw the printer at this window, and it just bounced right back in my lap.

VOGEL: The Pentagon had been newly renovated, and the renovations had included blast-resistant windows.

And they're designed not to come out, not--not to open.

The reason they did that was because of several terrorist acts, Most of the people that were killed inside the embassy were killed by glass traveling at 100 miles an hour.

VOGEL: These blast-resistant windows have saved lives and protected a lot of people inside the building, but they're also preventing I start blaming myself.

I brought these people to a window, and we can't get out of here.

And I'm like, "God, I'm gonna die.

God, take care of my girls."

I knew that they're trapped, they can't get out, so I decided I would try and find another way up there.

There was a stairway there close.

Uh, it was so hot that the paint was blistering on the wall, and the, uh, steps were burning my feet through my shoes, and, uh...

I did not get to those people in the window.

And the guy threw the printer again.

The frame popped open just a bit, and the smoke just barreled out of that room.

And we were beating on the win-- really, the window frame... and the window finally opened.

And down below, the people, they looked up, and they saw all of the smoke.

They were like "Jump!

Jump!

Jump!"

I just knew there were more people, and I told my colonel, "Sir, there are people in here.

We can't go."

My colonel said, "This is an order.

You get out of this window right now."

That was the first order I wanted to disobey, but I knew I had to.

And the guys were down there, and I crawled down them.

They carried me to a triage, and that's as far as I remember.

I am told the rest of the story.

Sorry.

[overlapping chatter] VOGEL: I'm trying to find out about, you know, the people inside the building, what's going on with rescue attempts.

You know, I--I felt a pit in my stomach as you--you didn't know, uh, what was gonna happen next.

SCOGGINS: We needed fighters up in the sky as quick as we could.

Uh, there were basically just the two F15s at Otis and the two F16s at Langley that were available.

But you just can't call up and say, "Hey, I need some of your planes."

The protocols on 9/11 were designed for a different purpose.

It was done through the FAA channels, uh, back down through the Pentagon, through NORAD, and back to the military so they could prepare for probably an act of war, but an act of war where enemies were attacking from outside the boundary.

They weren't designed for an internal strike, and they just didn't work under these conditions, because nobody was prepared for what happened on 9/11.

So we were trying to get 'em off the ground as fast as we could, and, uh, there was still a lot of confusion going on during all this time period.

Getting preliminary reports that United 93 just... We had found out later that United 93 had gone down in a field in Pennsylvania.

But the Pentagon and the FAA Command Center and FAA Headquarters continued to watch this track, and it continues towards Washington, D.C. VOGEL: The nation's future safety depends on the Pentagon being able to-- to function as the--the military's command post.

The National Military Command Center, anytime that the nation is attacked, is a place where a lot of important decisions are gonna be made.

This is where the--you know, the communications is based, so a lot of what needed to be put out around the globe was--was there at the Pentagon.

It--It had to keep functioning.

[sirens blaring] We had various areas in the building that are just absolutely die on the sword, last to leave the ship type of organizations.

And I received a phone call that the National Military Command Center had smoke coming in through the ventilation system, making it very difficult for them to work.

We needed to get the fire put out, but broken pipes caused us to pump about a million gallons of water into the incident scene.

By losing our water pressure, we couldn't provide the firefighters with firefighting water.

We needed to get that pressure back up, or we were gonna have more serious problems.

[over radio] Forward to command.

Go ahead.

Yes, sir.

Fighting a jet fuel fire is completely different than fighting an office building fire.

The jet fuel burns a lot hotter than your normal combustible material, and it was everywhere.

[helicopter thrumming] The fires continued to pop up, because it was hot enough in there for things to reignite.

It was happening all over the Pentagon.

[sirens blaring] The guys were looking for survivors.

REGAN: We call out and say, "Hey, Fairfax County Fire.

Anybody here?"

hoping that, you know, if somebody had locked themselves in an office or were trapped underneath the debris, then we would stop, listen.

99 out of 100 times, you don't hear anything.

The internal damage was much more significant than what you see from the street.

I--I had to remember to focus on my job, because I--I sometimes would get stuck on thinking about the horror of--of what's going on around me.

Um, those of us that were working inside realize that we're not likely to find anybody else alive in the building.

VOGEL: There were all kinds of speculation from-- from the start to the number of casualties.

At first, people were saying, "Well, it could be, uh, dozens," and then we'd hear hundreds, and then some people were saying thousands.

Uh, and that of course was-- was completely chilling.

Um, and then you had the real terror as these reports would come in of another plane you know, heading towards the Pentagon.

Security runs out with radios, and they said, um, "There's another plane coming in."

Get back!

Everybody back!

Everybody back!

[overlapping chatter] REGAN: We have a code that if you hear a three blast, it means evacuate the building.

We were inside working.

We hear three blasts.

[over radio] Evacuate at 500 yards away from the building.

All units, evacuate 500 yards away from the building.

CAPT.

TOTI: Based on the Twin Towers, um, a second plane into the Pentagon made sense.

And, uh, we gotta get these people out of here, you know?

And so we-- we put, like-- we stuffed these ambulances We're in there trying to fight the fire, and we have radio commutations, and the battalion chief is telling you to evacuate, evacuate immediately.

[over radio] Evacuate at 500 yards.

Get back!

Get back!

They got another inbound plane!

CARTER: It was a cascading-- one seemingly bad thing after another after another.

We were advised by security over our radios that we had three additional airplanes inbound with an E.T.A.

of about 20 minutes to impact at the Pentagon.

VOGEL: You still had fire threatening the National Military Command Center.

That's why the Arlington Fire Chief wanted to evacuate, but, you know, they were essentially refusing to leave.

There was also fire on the roof that was threatening the antenna complex, which a lot of these communications were based.

CARTER: We knew we had to close off the pipes down in the tunnel to get the water pressure back up to restore these systems, so we had to make a big decision at the time.

Six of us stayed in the Pentagon and went down into the steam tunnels to start isolating chill water piping, steam piping, and all necessary to start building our water pressure.

These weren't, uh, warriors.

These weren't combatants.

These were plumbers, pipe fitters, electricians.

They're just normal, everyday people, and these people did not hesitate.

When we went down 'em, they were full of smoke where you couldn't even see.

I was using the armpit of my suit coat to bury my face in, to--to try and breathe through the material to cut down on some of the acrid smoke.

And all the time, you're hearing the radio go off, "Estimated time to impact 17 minutes.

Estimated time to impact 11 minutes.

9 minutes."

[jet engine roaring] CAPT.

HANNON: We don't know why we're being evacuated at first.

We get to the center courtyard, and, um, they say that there's another plane inbound and it's, you know, gonna hit the Pentagon in two minutes.

[siren blaring] CAPT.

HANNON: And you're--you're in a center courtyard.

It's half a mile to the outside.

You have all your gear on.

You're not gonna make it.

You know, even--You know, an incredible athlete's not gonna be able to make it out that quickly.

We came out of the tunnel, uh, and went back up into the center courtyard.

There was this big tree right there, so, um, I knelt down, said a prayer.

[jet engine roaring] And about that time, was when we started hearing, uh, a rumble.

Remember feeling a lot of comfort, because as I look left and right, there were a lot of other people on their knees.

And it was coming louder and louder, and--and I remember just every hair on my body standing up on end.

It was, uh-- I just wanted my wife and kids to know that if I did die, I was dying doing something I love doing.

You couldn't tell what direction it was coming from, and it just kept getting louder and louder.

[applause and cheering] Then almost instantaneously all these military guys are starting to cheer.

And it was a fighter.

And, okay, I'm pretty confident they didn't hijack any fighters, so I think we're gonna be okay.

After I seen it pass, it went from being the most horrific moment in my life to probably the most relief I've felt.

I felt a great exhale, and I said, "I don't think anything bad's gonna happen next."

He came over, you know, dipped his wing, and then, you know, it was like, "Whew.

Now we're-- Now we're safe."

Now all we have is a fire to fight.

One of the tracking systems that we used is a--a general overview of the air-traffic system.

However, what it's showing is not live traffic.

It's showing traffic based on history.

If an airplane crashed or if an aircraft had impacted the ground, the system would continue to show that aircraft on its last route of flight.

So they're trying to put fighters to go up and intercept it.

Uh, they're launching for a ghost.

The aircraft doesn't exist.

Time to move, fellas.

It created a lot of issues that day.

You get the team here.

CAPT.

HANNON: There was still fire up on the roof.

We were told to find an access, get up there.

Uh, we stood at the peak, and we looked out over the devastation and couldn't believe we were actually seeing, uh, the Pentagon in this condition.

Somebody's, you know, decimated this fortress.

Early afternoon, I got a call on my cell phone, which kind of surprised me, 'cause nobody had my personal cell phone number, and lo and behold, it was the Joint Staff Office calling, asking if the building was stable, if-- that we thought things were under control.

Of course, we're still burning, uh, but as far as systems, we felt we had stabilized things pretty good.

Uh, I don't know if it was a coincidence.

I got the call, and within an hour or so later, uh...

It's an indication that the United States government is functioning in the face of this terrible act, uh, against our country.

I should add that the briefing here is taking place in the Pentagon.

The Pentagon's functioning.

It'll be in business tomorrow.

When, uh, Rumsfeld announced that it would be normal-- "normal" has big quotation marks-- normal day of work the next day, uh, we understood that the meaning behind this was showing the world and showing the American people that the Pentagon was bruised, not broken, able to continue on.

We had that same feeling that it was important to us that the Pentagon was not broken.

We would continue to go.

COL. WILLS: What do we do, tuck tail and leave?

No.

We gonna continue to work.

We're open for business.

VOGEL: The Pentagon has never been closed since the day it opened.

In the 60 years up till 9/11, it had never closed for a minute, and it never closed on 9/11, and it's never closed since.

But as the days started to go on and-- and the reality of what had happened sunk in and, you know, the knowledge of who had been lost began to become more clear, uh, there was some-- there were tough times for--for a lot of the people working there.

CAPT.

HANNON: I don't recall what time it was that we came off the roof, but the next thing I remember is being on-- in the back of this Wheaton Rescue Squad ambulance, and I was transported to the hospital.

Um, they said I had some smoke inhalation and dehydration, and, um... the emotional, uh, toll was a factor as well.

When I did get back to the Pentagon, it was real pressing to me that I had to make it back to that room when the fire was out and see what I couldn't see the day before.

Feeling guilty, not getting those-- that group of people out of there, it was one of those things you just have to do, have to--have to face it and move on.

When you have a man-made disaster, to see somebody who expects just to go to work one day, that just wants to make a living and have a nice life and--and to have it taken away from them like that, it's just... what is it?

What do you call it?

Yeah.

I do feel if the fire truck would have been responsive as--as it should have been, it would have made a difference in the fire, the spread of the fire... and it might have made a difference in how-- in somebody else's life, allowing that person to-- I, um--But it just didn't happen that way.

I've heard it was, like, 102 minutes.

It felt like an eternity for me.

Um, we felt out of control.

I think a lot of people felt that way on that day, as far as controllers.

I know I felt that way.

I felt like I was always trying to catch up.

We just never caught up.

Not a lot of people got to see what happened inside the Pentagon.

Um, not just the horrors of what's going on inside the building, but the community rallying around.

That's when I started to get emotional.

And, um, there were people there with flags and signs.

They were there just to support us.

I had already reached the decision that I was going to retire from the Navy.

Wrote a letter requesting retirement and dropped it in my boss' in-box the evening of September 10.

After I was, uh, put in charge of the recovery effort on September 12 for the Navy, I went back into the Pentagon that day to clean the offices of classified material and, uh, remembered that letter I had dropped in his in-box and, uh, went and pulled it out and tore it up.

COL. WILLS: Every day, I think of Marian, Dwayne, all of those people that were in my office.

Ron, his wife was pregnant.

She had just told him she was gonna have a boy.

He was killed, because he was in the office with my general.

So she and I are still friends, and we just love on that little boy.

He looks so much like his father.

He's getting ready to be 15 years old.

CARTER: One of the things that was so important to me on that day was the team that had chose to stay with me that day, uh, to stabilize the Pentagon and keep it going.

None of these people hesitated.

This is not something that they ever prepared for in their mind.

They were just normal people who went to work for eight hours a day, and they were my heroes that day.

This--This is it.

[crying] [fire crackling] Hi.

How are you?

14 1/2 years, I didn't know who you were and whether you were alive.

When I walked up and looked up and there you were-- and I thought that, uh, you didn't make it because you couldn't break the window out.

Yeah.

to maximize the chances of people getting out of the building.

Yeah.

at a window and see some...

Thank you.

Thank you.