WASHINGTON — When American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon’s western facade at 9:37 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, FBI agent Jack Hess rushed to the scene.
\n\nHis wife, Sandy Hess, also an FBI agent at the time, ran to pick up their 1-year-old son from daycare — and was pregnant with their second child.
\n\n“If you were married in the bureau and had kids and needed to get to those kids, one person would respond to the Pentagon, and the other person went home,” she told NBC News in an interview this week. “He was a supervisor on a terrorism squad. He went, and I don’t think he would have wanted it any other way.”
\n\nIn the aftermath, Jack’s role was to secure evidence for the FBI’s investigation into the attacks. He was one of about 4,000 FBI employees who responded to the crash sites in Virginia, New York and Pennsylvania.
\n\nWhile he only spent a matter of hours in direct contact with the hazardous debris in Arlington, he would later be diagnosed with Stage 4 kidney cancer, an illness classified as “caused” by his exposure at the Pentagon, according to the certification process determined by the World Trade…
Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/