Fighting Back, Building Back

DEA Fights Back

DEA FAST and KCO agents. DEA Photo — From left to right and top to down: A drug seizure from FAST Joint Operation XI. DEA special agents deployed to the Kabul Country Office. FAST in action in Afghanistan.

DEA created the new Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Team (FAST) in response to the attacks. Deployed in 2005, FAST was a paramilitary operation supporting U.S. and allied forces targeting narcoterrorist organizations like al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

DEA’s Kabul Country Office (KCO) supported these efforts. The KCO and FAST worked together with coalition forces and local counterparts to dismantle and destroy drug trafficking organizations and assist in training local drug law enforcement forces.

This coalition executed countless operations, seized tons of heroin, opium, and dangerous precursor chemicals, as well as weapons and munitions. They captured narcoterrorists who were extradited to the U.S. and convicted.

Building Back and Remembering

Feelings of national unity, patriotism, grief, and a drive to act motivated recovery and initial memorialization. Today permanent memorials, museums, and a restored Pentagon building and new World Trade Center complex demonstrate the country’s resilience while acknowledging its profound loss.

One World Trade Center. Wikimedia Commons.

The Pentagon was repaired in under a year. Department of Defense.

The National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial. National Archives.

Visitors at the Wall of Names and Memorial Walkway at the Flight 93 National Memorial. National Park Service.

The National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial was dedicated on September 11, 2008. Benches for reflection are dedicated to each victim. The impacted section of the Pentagon building was repaired in under a year through the Phoenix Project. Construction workers toiled around the clock to complete rebuilding ahead of schedule, in time for occupation by September 11, 2002.

25 Years Later: DEA Staff Remember 9/11

“It's hard to believe it's been 25 years. I always remember looking in my closet, and I'd see the mint green suit I was wearing on 9/11 hanging there, knowing I was never going to wear it again. Finally, after years, I donated it. That was just a constant reminder, seeing that.”

“And you have to remember too, right around that same time, that was when the anthrax letters were coming in to Congress, to celebrities, and that was when the D.C. sniper case was going on. And it just felt like the world was coming apart at the seams for a minute.”

“They would replay stuff over and over again on TV. They'd talk about the Pennsylvania plane where they were like, “Let's roll,” and all of that. So, it kind of gave you that self-empowerment. Like, if those people could do that, we can do that. And we're gonna do that. We're not gonna be victims.”

“You were in this building across the street from someplace that a plane just hit, and you didn't know if you were going to be next.”

“And then we just sat there, all just looking at the TV, dumbfounded. Just couldn't believe what was going on.”

“A few weeks later, I remember taking my 1st flight. When I walked into BWI, I was taken aback by the sight of the National Guard with their rifles over their chest and ammo and the bomb-sniffing dogs. That's when it really struck me. The world was never going to be the same again.”