Running Toward The Danger: The Story Of Rick Rescorla

Rick Rescorla was the director of security for the financial services firm Morgan Stanley at the World Trade Center. After serving a number of years in the British Army, he entered the Vietnam and rose to the rank of colonel in the Army before entering the private sector, where he worked in corporate security. He later moved to New Jersey in 1985, and joined Dean Witter Reynolds at their offices at the World Trade Center in Manhattan where he was employed as head of security. He would at times defer to his American friend from Northern Rhodesia, Daniel Hill, who was trained in counterterrorism, in 1990 Rescorla asked him to visit the World Trade Center to assess its security. Following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Rescorla invited Hill to New York, where he hired him as a security consultant in order to analyze the building's security. Rescorla was in the North Tower on September 11th 2001 and when the Port Authority announced that people return to their offices, he grabbed his bullhorn, walkie-talkie, and cell phone, and began systematically ordering the roughly 2,700 Morgan Stanley employees in the South Tower to evacuate. Rescorla died when the North Tower had collapsed at 9:59am.