My name is Greg Saathoff and i'm a psychiatrist I am professor of emergency medicine and public
health sciences here in the school of medicine at the University of Virginia. I also serve as the
psychiatric consultant to the FBI's behavioral analysis units I had been scheduled to
give a four hour presentation at the FBI academy on September 11th, the assistant special agent in
charge had asked me if I would speak to a large group of FBI agents about post-traumatic stress
disorder and two medical students actually were working with me on my elective and so I told them
that I could take them out to the FBI academy on that day and as we were driving uh on 95 North
my phone rang when I picked it up it the speaker came on and uh this was a one of the assistants at
the FBI academy and she was very apologetic she said i'm not sure that we can get your uh your
presentation um onto a um a disc to present your slides because of what's been going on around here
and so I said Pam is there some kind of problem? And she said well I guess you don't know but
two planes have hit the world trade center and one of the towers just fell
down and they think the other one might come down so I turned the radio on and
it was a newscast one newsman talking to another and saying this is just a a horrific site this is
just a a terrible site who would have ever thought that this would happen at the pentagon. And the
three of us at the same time as we are headed towards Quantico said the Pentagon? The world
really changed in in a major way I was asked more and more to consult regarding issues relating to
to terrorism and international terrorism I had been involved in working on domestic terrorism
cases and that was part of my role. Also, I would say that I was really honored to be asked by the
chief of the fire department here in Charlottesville to
to go to New York to pick up the 9/11 steel some years later and to go up to New York uh with uh
members of our fire department to accept that was really an extraordinary privilege and honor.
There's no way that anyone who has been affected by 9/11 can approach this topic
except with the greatest of humility the stories the most important stories
won't ever be told because of the people whose lives were were cut short.