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 sight this is
just a a terrible sight 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.