When American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, FBI agent Jack Hess rushed to the scene. His wife, Sandy Hess, also an FBI agent at the time, stayed behind with their one‑year‑old son and was pregnant with their second child. “If you were married in the bureau and had kids and needed to get to those kids, one person would respond to the Pentagon, and the other person went home,” she told NBC News.
Service that cost a life
Jack served as a supervisor on a terrorism squad, helping secure evidence for the FBI’s investigation of the attacks. He was among roughly 4,000 FBI employees who responded to the crash sites in Virginia, New York and Pennsylvania. Though he spent only a few hours in direct contact with hazardous debris at the Pentagon, the exposure later proved fatal.
In 2017 a routine check turned into an emergency hospital visit when doctors discovered a tumor on his kidney. The World Trade Center Health Program later certified his stage‑4 kidney cancer as caused by his 9/11 exposure. Jack retired from the bureau in 2009 and never suspected his health would be at risk.
Widow’s plea for better screening
Sandy Hess recalls the shock of the diagnosis: “I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, what?’ This is a man who’s never been sick a day in his life.” When a doctor asked about Jack’s work history, she was told, “There has been a huge increase in kidney cancer since 9/11.” She adds, “Nobody had any kind of protection on. It was an emergency situation. We had a mission.”
Jack himself warned other responders to get screened. In a 2019 FBI video he said, “Don’t be afraid to go out and get screened and find that something’s wrong, whether it’s related to 9/11 or not. Seventeen years is not too long. Eighteen or 19 years probably won’t be too long. You can still get sick from this.”
Call for more proactive health care
Four years after his public plea, Jack died in 2023 at age 64, surrounded by his wife and four children. Sandy says the FBI continues to encourage first‑responders to register for the World Trade Center benefits screening program, but she believes more thorough CT scans could catch cancers earlier than the yearly physicals currently covered.
“Some of this could have been avoided had a scan been done, and maybe he would have had stage 2 cancer… but why does he have to wait for a death sentence?” she asked. The FBI acknowledges that more than 400 of its employees have 9/11‑related illnesses and at least 33 have died from related cancers.
Legacy of courage
Jack’s family remembers him as a hands‑on father who taught his children to appreciate what they have. “He left a legacy of courage, determination and selflessness,” Sandy says. As the nation marks the 25th anniversary of the attacks, the Hess family hopes Jack’s story will spur better health monitoring for all who answered the call on that fateful day.
Original reporting: Dallas TX News (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
