9/11 FLASHBACK: Donegal man witnessed Pentagon attack on way to work
“Our boss had been on the plane we had heard crashing. He was one of the victims”
As we prepare to mark 25 years since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a remarkable eyewitness account from an Inishowen man offers a chilling reminder of how the events of that morning were experienced by people caught up in the unfolding chaos.
A quarter of a century ago, Malin Head man Owen Doherty was travelling to work in Washington DC, when he witnessed the attack on the Pentagon from a bus.
At the time, he had no idea that the huge explosion he had just seen was part of an unprecedented terrorist attack across the United States – or that his own boss was among those who had died aboard the hijacked aircraft.
Mr Doherty’s account was first published in the Derry Journal on Friday, September 14, 2001, just three days after the attacks on New York and Washington.
Looking back through that report 25 years later, the extraordinary circumstances of that morning remain stark.
An Inishowen man has described how he witnessed the terrorist attack on the Pentagon from a bus, only to find out hours later that his boss had been on board the plane which was deliberately flown into the building.
Owen Doherty, from Malin Head, was travelling towards the bus station outside the Pentagon on his way to work on Tuesday morning, when he saw an explosion which he at first took to be a car bomb.
He said: “The bus station is attached to the Pentagon and we were just coming over the bridge towards it when we saw this big cloud of smoke and the bus swerved off to a different station. It was a massive explosion and then a scene like a giant bonfire. The place was still covered in smoke at 10 o’clock that night. There were pieces of debris everywhere.”
When he reached work at a call centre in Washington, Owen became aware of the dual attack on the Twin Towers in Manhattan before learning that the incident he had witnessed had also been part of the biggest terrorist attack in recorded history.
He said: “A few hours later we were at work when we were all told to go home. On Wednesday a little memo was sent around telling us that our boss – the financial officer for the company – Stephen Jacoby, had been on the plane we had heard crashing. He was one of the victims.”
Mr Doherty said he and his workmates were stunned to have witnessed such a major tragedy.
Describing conditions in the immediate aftermath, he said that from his workplace he could see that the inferno at the Pentagon was still smouldering.
“But it is now impossible to go near the Pentagon without ID. The security is mad.”
His account also captured the atmosphere of fear and anger which had begun to spread across Washington and Virginia in the days following the attacks.
Mr Doherty said that many people’s thoughts were already turning to revenge and warned that immigrants from the Middle East were rapidly becoming victims of spreading hatred.
He said taxi drivers from Muslim countries were afraid to leave their homes, while murmurings of racial attacks were beginning to be heard.
“These men may well be just family men, but they are afraid for their lives now.”
“A lot of people are angry and are pissed off with Afghanistan which they believe sanctioned the attack.”
In the days immediately following September 11, the full scale of the tragedy was still becoming clear, with thousands of people dead in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania.
Mr Doherty said the only thing he could compare the attack to was the Omagh bombing.
“I have a friend whose brother was killed in the Omagh bombing, and the feeling of devastation and shock over here reminds me of that, although the extent of these attacks is unbelievable.”
Twenty-five years on, his words provide a haunting snapshot of the shock, confusion and fear of September 2001 – recorded just days after a morning that changed the world forever.