Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News (b)
Special Agent Scott McDonough was helping scientists monitor a massive landfill to ensure heavy debris would not cause a catastrophic collapse. That meant taking photos of it from the sky in an FBI helicopter.
For just over three weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, McDonough, then an FBI pilot, flew a helicopter over the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island, New York, as well as over the World Trade Center rubble in Manhattan. He kept the helicopter door open to take those photos, choking down contaminated air that made his throat burn.
Crews sent pieces of the buildings and other heavy debris on barges down the Hudson River to Fresh Kills, a landfill about the size of 1,500 football fields. There, other FBI personnel processed the large and complex pieces of evidence.
“One of the big concerns is we were putting heavy fill—concrete, cement, metal from these buildings, into a landfill that was made for regular garbage,” McDonough said. “We did multiple photo flights a day trying to help the scientists prevent an environmental catastrophe.”
Nearly 16 years later, in August 2017, McDonough was diagnosed with cancer. He’s one of more than 100 FBI personnel who’ve gotten sick as a result of their response to 9/11. (There may be more, but informing the FBI of an illness is voluntary.) Seventeen FBI personnel have died as a result of these illnesses.