Sept. 11 is still killing FBI agents

The facade of one of the towers of the World Trade Center lies in ruins as workmen work in the early morning hours on Sept. 14, 2001.

of the worst terrorist attacks in U.S. history and sparked fresh anxieties.

“It’s like bin Laden is still reaching out from the grave,” said FBI agent Thomas O’connor, who is 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 forms of cancer, according to the World Trade Center Health Program,

which is administered by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

New York City officials say that more than 300 firefighters and police officers already have succumbed to cancers and other 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 appropriate 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, who heads the FBI agents’ association.

More than a dozen current and former agents who responded to the crash sites now have cancer, he added.

O’connor’s organization has urged agents to sign up for the federal health program, which provides medical monitoring and treatment to more than 71,000 former responders and 16,000 other survivors. He began to weep as he described watching his wife, Jean – also an FBI agent, who had rushed to the crash site at the Pentagon – open an envelope containing her test results.

She got good news – she was just fine. “You have no idea the stress this causes,” O’connor said, “every day.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray has eulogized the three agents who died this year and said the deaths have profoundly affected him and his agency.