In this episode of Mike Drop, host Mike Ritland interviews a guest who says he was a junior US Secret Service agent working out of 7 World Trade Center on 9/11. The guest describes feeling the impact of the first plane at 08:46 while in the locker room, evacuating hurriedly without key gear, and joining other agents who improvised as first responders with trauma kits as communications failed. He recounts treating a woman with severe burns when the second plane struck, describing debris and jet fuel raining down and prompting him and two colleagues to enter the North Tower to help evacuate civilians.
Inside, he says he carried an exhausted woman down the stairwell with help from another evacuee, then returned upwards alone to look for colleagues. Around the 30th floor, he recalls encountering numerous firefighters and hearing a commander order them to “go back up”; he says he assumes some later died, while stressing he did not grasp the attack’s full magnitude at the time. He also recounts telling evacuees, mistakenly, that “nothing can bring these things down”.
The guest says he phoned his wife from a payphone in the North Tower lobby and that, minutes later, she watched the South Tower collapse on television believing he was still inside the complex. He describes being near the base of Tower 2 when it collapsed, running as the dust cloud overtook the street, and then calling survivors towards a narrow alley where sunlight pierced the darkness. The conversation ends with him connecting that “light” moment to his later Christian faith and public speaking.
An unnamed Secret Service agent guest recalls using payphones in the World Trade Center 1 lobby to place a collect call to his wife while helping people evacuate. He says he left immediately after the call, but she did not know that and believed he had died when she saw Tower 2 collapse about 13 minutes later.
Read this moment →An unnamed Secret Service agent guest says he encountered injured, exhausted New York City firefighters on about the North Tower’s 30th floor. He recalls hearing a fire commander tell them to gather their gear because they were going back up, and says he later assumed many may have died that day.
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