Special Agent J.M.

Special Agent J.M. worked at the Bureau’s forensic recovery operations at Staten Island, N.Y., after the attack on New York City on September 11, 2001. She also worked at the Command Post near Ground Zero until it closed at the end of May 2002.


Video Transcript

I volunteered to go to the landfill so we could start working on the debris field there.

So when I got out there I started working on the midnight shift. So I was working overnight.

We had teams of ERT agents and support employees coming in from around the country. We had agents from all other federal agencies, as well as many many people from New York City Police Department.

Each day we coordinated with each other because we were working jointly there in a completely coordinated effort.

Each day they received a report back with analysis and details of the findings that we had brought to the ME's office or to the authorities related to when more personal items were found.

So, each night we were able to review a record that indicated any human remains that were able to be identified. So we would know the actual identities of the remains that were found at the landfill.

Those analyses would come with pictures, and, so we would get the human remains that were found on a particular day. You know, we found out two days later, for example, the name of that person and we would also have a photograph of that person, in most cases.

What became a really difficult part was because we knew by then, by this time, that we had lost some people with the FBI, New York City Police Department, Fire Department, and many other agencies.

But as the identities of the other victims came in on these analyses, we realized how many more people we knew who had been victims on 9/11.

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