25 years after 9/11, USMS remembers

“The Sept. 11, 2001, tragedies at the Pentagon, New York City, and rural Pennsylvania are imprinted indelibly on our collective psyche,” former U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) historian Dave Turk wrote in a retrospective a dozen years ago. “Many of us remember exactly where we were the moment we heard or saw on our TV screens or out our windows the devastation of that Tuesday morning.”

Each year the U.S. Marshals Service pays tribute to a few heroes among us who responded so quickly and selflessly to assist those who were faced with the enormity of loss of life and institutions. 

Deputy U.S. Marshals (DUSM) responded immediately, helping evacuate buildings, setting up triage areas, and securing critical infrastructure.

At Ground Zero and New York Deputy U.S. Marshals from the Southern District of New York rushed from nearby offices to the WTC site, guiding people to safety before and during the collapses. 

In the National Capital Area, USMS personnel deployed to the Pentagon to assist with recovery efforts and provided critical security at airports and federal courthouses nationwide. 

In the years following the deadly attack, four USMS employees suffered line-of-duty deaths due to 9/11-related toxic exposure illnesses and are officially recognized on the agency's Wall of Honor:

• Deputy U.S. Marshal Zacarias Toro Jr. died June 14, 2015, from cancer linked to his recovery work at the WTC site. He received the USMS Purple Heart.
• Deputy U.S. Marshal Kenneth J. Doyle died July 26, 2017, from illness developed after assisting with search and rescue and site security at Ground Zero immediately following the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks. Doyle was a Navy veteran and had served with the USMS for 21 years. 
• Property Officer Vaughn Aiken, who served 22 years with the agency, died on Sept. 3, 2018, from cancer developed after assisting at the WTC immediately following the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks.
• Deputy U.S. Marshals Betty Ann Pascarella, who served 34 years with the USMS, died April 6, 2020, from cancer developed after her assignment to search and recovery efforts at Ground Zero. 
  All four individuals are also memorialized at the U.S. Marshals Museum.

Never forget

Manny Puri, who retired in 2021 as Assistant Chief Inspector in the Southern District of Florida and served on the USMS Critical Incident Response Team, was part of the response in NYC after the attack.   

“Every year as September 11 approaches, part of me freezes in time,” he posted to his social media on Sept. 3, while revisiting NY.

For those of us who responded to Ground Zero, there are memories that never faded. I remember a place almost completely devoid of color. Everything and everyone covered in the same gray dust. The silence between the noise. And the smell. Something I can only describe as a butcher shop that had caught fire. It is a smell I pray most people will never know, and one that those of us who were there will never forget. 

I remember the bucket brigades. Hand to hand, bucket after bucket, moving debris and fragments of what had been people’s lives just days before. A photograph. A piece of clothing. Something from an office desk. And sometimes things you knew immediately were not simply debris.

Twenty-five years later, certain images, sounds and smells can put me right back there. That’s the strange thing about experiencing something like 9/11 firsthand. The calendar keeps moving, but a piece of you remains frozen in that place and time.

And September 11 did not stop taking lives when the towers fell.

All these years later, we continue to lose first responders to illnesses connected to what they were exposed to at Ground Zero. Friends, coworkers and fellow first responders who survived that day and the days that followed, only to pay a price years later.
Vaughn Aiken. Betty Ann Pascarella. Kenneth Doyle. Zacarias Toro.

Their names matter. Their lives matter. They are reminders that for thousands of first responders and their families, the toll of September 11 never truly ended.

I don’t share this for recognition. I was one of thousands of first responders, service members, volunteers and ordinary Americans who simply went where we were needed.

I share it because September 11 should never become just another date in a history book.

September 11, 2001, was 25 years ago, but to us it feels like yesterday.

Never forget.

Melanie Rube (center) retired in December 2022 as a Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal in Oxford, Mississippi. She also recently shared her experience and some photos.

Everyone has their 9/11 story of where they were when the planes hit the towers…I was an advisor at the U.S. Marshals Academy for the BDUSM 104 class. The students had graduated CITP (Criminal Investigator Training Program) and were days into the USMS Academy when the towers fell. On 9/12, a “conair” jet picked up the instructors, advisors, and students and we flew to NYC. The smoke was still billowing thick from the wreckage of the towers as we flew past. The students were given their badges and guns along the way. They weren’t students anymore but Deputy U.S. Marshals about to be thrust into the world’s spotlight. We were divided into two groups - JFK Airport and LaGuardia Airport. For five weeks we all pretended to know more about airport security than we actually did. I was over the security for the US Airways terminal and its security employees. Many of my friends who were NY Deputy U.S. Marshals were on the Bucket Brigade at Ground Zero. One described the smell as a butcher shop that had caught fire. Their stories are horrific. We have lost Deputy U.S. Marshals to 9/11 cancers and others are still battling the effects of the cancers. I physically came home in mid-October 2001, but my mental state remained in NY for a year. No one came home without scars. Most of them no one could see. Being a part of this nightmare was something none of us asked for, but I do thank God I was allowed to be. Please tell the stories of 9/11 to your children and grandchildren. NEVER EVER FORGET.

A sidewalk tribute to the heroes.

The Photograph

The USMS first responders in New York are represented by a now-famous Associated Press photograph of Deputy U.S. Marshal Dominic Guadagnoli (who retired as a Senior Inspector in 2020 after serving 27 years with USMS) carrying out a wounded victim from the wreckage. 

"I've got you. You're going to be OK," he recalled to the Marshals Monitor shortly after the event. The act was instinctive of USMS personnel—and symbolic in the words. That is why the photograph means so much.

What happened around the photograph was heroic. 

Of the Deputy U.S. Marshals at Ground Zero, Guadagnoli's partner, John Svinos (who retired as a Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal in 2022), recalled, "...we parked a few blocks away and we rushed through the crowd down to the base of the towers. As we were getting to the area, the second plane struck..."

Svinos was knocked down by falling debris and navigating through blinding smoke, he said. Temporarily losing track of Guadagnoli, Svinos found a New York Police Department officer who led him far enough from the scene to avoid the tower's collapse. The district office had already assembled a search party, and a triage had been set up. Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Ralph Burnside grabbed Svinos and began cleaning his wounds before he recognized his own subordinate. Svinos added it was "amazing to see these guys putting themselves in danger to come look for us." 

Thankfully, Guadagnoli found his way back to Foley Square.

Although this is a snapshot, there were many heroic actions by USMS personnel that day and afterward, most unseen by the press. 

Personnel included those from the Southern District of New York, but also the Special Operations Group and the Investigative Services Division. The Technical Operations Group's Bill Hufnagel and Investigator Bill Sorukas (who retired as Chief of the Investigative Operations Division in 2015) combed rubble for remains in hopes of identifying as many of the missing as possible. 

Deputy U.S. Marshal Bill Snelson (retired as Associate Director for Operations in 2017) and Tex Lindsey (retired as Chief Inspector in July 2021 after 30 years of service) hurried from the Eastern District of North Carolina and worked with U.S. Customs staff to secure the nation's airports. 

Eastern Virginia's Deputy U.S. Marshal Michael Pyo (who retired as Chief inspector in 2023), with a newly graduated K-9 assistant named Beacon, was assigned to the Pentagon only days afterward. They sifted through wreckage there for a time, then were assigned to airport details. 

"I ran from [the] Pentagon, to National, to Dulles," Pyo said, recalling the pace of the response.

Because of the agency's familiarity with air piracy, which was a USMS program from 1969 to 1973, airport security was a natural fit. 

We changed a great deal after Sept. 11, 2001. However, the U.S. Marshals Service showed its mettle in and after crisis, Turk wrote.

As the oldest law enforcement agency nears its 237th year, its personnel can remember these contributions to heal the shock and sadness. "Justice, Integrity, and Service" can all be found there.

Artifacts and photographs detailing the U.S. Marshals Service 9/11 response—including a piece of World Trade Center steel—have been preserved and are on display at the U.S. Marshals Museum. 

In December 2019 the USMS Southern District of New York donated four items in honor of the USMS responders on 9/11. The donation included a piece of WTC steel and three shadow boxes featuring a signed copy of “The Cathedral,” a famous photograph of the south wall of the WTC after the attack; photographs of USMS response efforts; and the American flag that had flown at the WTC site on Sept. 24, 2019, for the agency’s 230th anniversary. 

Then-U.S. Marshal for SDNY Michael Greco said the donated items captured the courage of the U.S. Marshals who put their lives on the line to protect our country. “We’re proud to share these items with the United States Marshals Museum so people from all over the world can reflect on these brave individuals’ actions.”