Retired FBI agent shares 9-11 story
ADAMS TWP — Jim Knights lives a quiet life in the township today, but 15 years ago he was at the front line of the deadliest attack on American soil.
Knights was an on-site project manager for the FBI’s new building on Pittsburgh’s South Side, which was nearing completion in the fall of 2001.
He along with his fellow agents approached the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, not knowing what was to come.
However, they all soon received a message from the old FBI building in downtown Pittsburgh that the World Trade Center’s north tower had been hit and soon after the south tower.
“Back then, we had alphanumeric pagers,” Knights said. “We asked what that meant. Was it an airline? Was it a private plane? Who knew? Things unfolded quickly.”
The FBI building was evacuated, although Knights stayed behind. He also received a call from his wife, Dorothy, who saw the first tower come down on TV.
“It was stressful,” she said. “Nobody knew what was going to come out of it.”
However, she received word of the United Airlines Flight 93 crash in Shanksville from a former foreign exchange student of theirs in Japan.
“They were watching TV live in Japan at the same time,” Knights said.
Jim Knights was soon contacted by a member of the evidence response team asking for help with supplies in Somerset County, where United Airlines Flight 93 went down.
Knights was given supplies such as lumber, wire mesh and screws from a home improvement store to set up sifting screens before making the 90-minute drive from Pittsburgh to Somerset, near Shanksville.
Knights said the first thing he noticed in Shanksville was the long lines of cars being controlled by state police. Several hundred officers from different agencies, including the FBI, state police, Civil Air Patrol and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, were involved.
Knights said he also noticed charred tree lines from where the plane crashed. However, he did not go to the wreckage itself.
“That’s all there was, charred trees,” he said. “There was some degree of shock as to what had happened.”
Knights returned to the site last year to participate in an oral history project.
“I looked around and said ‘I don’t need to come back here again,’” he said. “This is not the place it was when I was first here. It’s changed, and I don’t need to see it again.”
He said he doesn’t get asked often about his experience.
“I was glad he came home and was safe,” Dorothy Knights said. “I worried something would happen to him. And I also felt bad for all those loved ones who didn’t come home.”
Jim Knights said the one takeaway from Sept. 11 was that it helped unite the country.
“It didn’t matter whether you were conservative, liberal or independent, black, white, male or female,” he said. “Everybody was pulling together. It’s a shame it didn’t last.”
He was in the FBI for 26 years before retiring in November 2009.
