Sept. 11 devastation still killing FBI agents
WASHINGTON — FBI agent Dave LeValley was driving to work in Manhattan when he saw the first jetliner strike the World Trade Center on a bright September morning 17 years ago. He quickly parked his car and sprinted to the scene, where he scoured for evidence and helped survivors while dodging falling debris and bodies.
When the first tower collapsed, he dove into a bodega, escaping with his life. What he couldn’t outrun: the toxic cloud of dust.
“We saw him a couple of hours later, and he looked like a snowman, covered head to toe in that stuff,” said Gregory W. Ehrie, a fellow FBI agent who spent several weeks with LeValley digging in the rubble.
LeValley, who joined the FBI in 1996 and rose to lead the bureau’s Atlanta office, was diagnosed in 2008 with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. He died in May, age 53, from a different form of cancer that had metastasized to his brain. FBI officials and health experts say both were likely caused by carcinogenic fumes and dust after the Sept. 11 attacks.
In all, 15 FBI agents have died from cancers linked to toxic exposure during the investigation and cleanup, the FBI says. Three of them, including LeValley, have died since March — a rash of deaths that has reopened traumas of the worst terrorist attacks in U.S. history.
“It’s like bin Laden is still reaching out from the grave,” said FBI agent Thomas O’Connor, president of the FBI Agents Association, a service and advocacy group for active and former agents. “It affects us all in serious ways. People are dying, others are sick. Those that are not yet sick wonder: Is that headache, is it really cancer? Is that sore hip really cancer?”
The 15 agents’ deaths, which the FBI says occurred in the performance of their duties, are only a tiny part of a much larger tragedy. More than 7,500 emergency responders, recovery and cleanup workers, and volunteers at the three Sept. 11 crash sites have been diagnosed with various cancers, according to the World Trade Center Health Program administered by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
New York City says more than 300 firefighters and police officers already have succumbed to cancers and diseases related to the attacks.
Alongside police and firefighters, FBI agents combed the rubble for victims and clues at the crash sites — the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pa. Scores of agents also spent 12-hour shifts sorting debris in warehouses and at the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island. Most did not wear safety gear because agencies did not understand the danger in the poisons unleashed by burning jet fuel and other hazardous material, according to O’Connor.