Like Blee, O’Connor and his FBI colleagues knew Al Qaeda was responsible as soon as a plane struck the World Trade Center. “Everybody thought, ‘that fucker,’” O’Connor recalled, referring to bin Laden. Minutes later, an agent teaching a training course at a local Fire Department called and said smoke was rising from the Pentagon. O’Connor and another agent, Scott Stanley, sped the four miles to the iconic building in Arlington that houses the US Department of Defense. The streets were largely deserted. As they got close to the Pentagon, they saw people streaming out of the sprawling building.
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