Retired FBI agent recalls attack, response
SEAVILLE – Special Agent Dan Garrabrant was expecting Sept. 11, 2001, to be a quiet day at the Newark FBI office.
Within hours, the agent with just three years on the job would be in charge of logistical support to respond to the terror attacks that stunned the nation.
Garrabrant spoke of that fateful day as the guest speaker at Upper Township’s Patriot Day ceremonies in Seaville.
He framed it by talking about his “entry on duty” date in the FBI, an important date in an agent’s career. It was Dec. 7, 1997, the 56th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War II.
“I remember driving to the FBI Academy that morning, thinking about what it must have felt like to be an American citizen when your country was suddenly under attack,” he told the audience gathered on a warm sunny morning Sept. 11 at the Sergeant William R. Godfrey Memorial Park at Osprey Point. “Little did I know what I would one day experience. But I will never forget.”
Twenty-four years ago, on a similar sunny, warm morning, he was on the 21st floor of the Newark FBI office facing lower Manhattan when his supervisor told him a plane hit one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. The supervisor told him to put everyone on standby and start recall procedures for the Evidence Response Team as a command post was being stood up.
As Garrabrant started working three phones at once, staring out the window at the smoke in the distance, he saw a speck in the sky that he lost behind the buildings in Manhattan. Moments later he saw a “massive burst of smoke and debris” at the other tower.
He didn’t hesitate. He called his team members to get back to Newark immediately. The command post called him to tell him it was a second plane that hit the World Trade Center and to recall everyone.
With the command post in direct contact with Washington, D.C., he heard the updates in real time:
– “We have an additional rogue aircraft inbound — possible heading to D.C.”
– “Fighter jets en route. Twenty minutes to intercept…”
– “Fifteen minutes to intercept…”
– “Rogue aircraft is down.”
Garrabrant called Major John Sheard of the New Jersey National guard Aviation Unit, telling him to activate the emergency plan so he could get the guard to move New Jersey State Troopers and FBI agents in case of other attacks.
The FAA was grounding all aircraft after the two planes hit the Twin Towers, another hit the Pentagon and a fourth hijacked plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers rebelled.
But the FBI needed its assets so Garrabrant got the FAA Control Center to give codes allowing flights for their inbound assets that otherwise would have been forced to land near New Brunswick.
“Minutes later,” Garrabrant told the rapt audience, “I looked out the window and saw something I will never forget: an Apache attack helicopter, two Black Hawks, a UH-1, and an OH-58 flying into Newark — at eye level with my building. And all I could think was: This is war.”
In the hours after the attack, the now-retired special agent said it was decided Newark would run logistical support for the 9/11 response because the New York office was no longer operational.
“And yes — the guy who had been working six phones at once, with only three years in the Bureau, was suddenly in charge of logistics and operations,” he said.
Garrabrant added the investigation revealed 19 of the 21 hijackers of the four planes had lived at some point in New Jersey and one of the hijacking teams left from Newark Airport.
The work, he said, never stopped as the FBI executed search warrants and worked 16-hour days.
“And the losses piled up,” Garrabrant said, getting emotional at the memories.
“My friends from Rescue 1 — all gone. FBI Agent Lenny Hatton — gone. Jeremy Glick, one of the young men I had coached in summer wrestling camp — gone, on Flight 93. A classmate from high school — gone,” he said.
Garrabrant spoke of a one of the “human moments” in the aftermath, when his friend John came to him in anguish because his brother, head of security at the World Trade Center, was missing and the family could not understand why he wasn’t found. “They just wanted to see.”
He drove family members into lower Manhattan.
“We walked around the rubble piles under the glow of tower lights.
Children walked hand in hand, clutching teddy bears, escorted by FDNY and NYPD — there to say goodbye to a missing parent,” Garrabrant recounted.
“John turned to me and thanked me. His father put a hand on his shoulder and said quietly, ‘We can go now. He’s not coming home.’”
The former agent who now lives in Egg Harbor Township with his family, said he never went to a funeral because he wouldn’t allow himself to be distracted.
“I was driven to work, to do whatever was needed,” he said.
By January 2002, the response shifted back to New York, but he was haunted by a question: “Why?”
He got his answer in September that year, when he and two agents he trusted were told they were going to Afghanistan to do something he said was unprecedented: get access to 1,500 enemy combatants who had not before been questioned.
That fall, he said, he deployed to Afghanistan with a group of Special Forces officers who worked six days a week. They encountered enemy detainees of two types: “hard-core fighters willing to die for their cause, and local Afghans forced to fight under threat of death.”
He came to realize that in that land, “they had nothing. No freedom to worship. No freedom to marry. No freedom to travel, to study or even to choose their clothes. No freedom even in how long they grew their beards.
“Freedom itself was the enemy. And that was the why.”
Garrabrant wrapped up his talk by asking the audience to remember 9/11, the sacrifices made, heroes lost and prices paid.
“And never forget how lucky we are — to live, to love, to worship, to travel, to believe as we choose. Never forget how lucky we are — to call the United States home,” he said. “Remember. Never forget.”
Garrabrant retired from the Northfield FBI office in 2023. The audience gave him a standing ovation.
Osprey Point resident James Joyce hosted the event. Upper Township firefighters and EMS members were represented, Cape May County American Legion Commander Bill Archer placed a wreath to honor victims, American Legion Post 239 Vice Commander Ray Lambert performed Taps and Jim Offner was the guest vocalist, leading the audience in song.
Upper Township Committeeman Tyler Casaccio also spoke of the sacrifices made and how 9/11 has defined his generation much as Pearl Harbor and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy defined previous generations.
“As we look back at that day, we honor all those who lost their lives and made the ultimate sacrifice,” Casaccio said. “The courage and heroism of first responders and ordinary citizens that day represented the best Americans had to offer.”
He added, “In the weeks that followed, I saw a country become united again, rallying around each other about what it means to be Americans. In this crazy, divided time, I hope we never forget the unity and patriotism everyone felt Sept. 12.”
– STORY and PHOTOS by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
