They have been a few of 9/11’s largest names. Where are they now?

Rudolph Giuliani was a hero earlier than he was a punchline. Lisa Beamer was a spouse and mom earlier than she grew to become an emblem of Sept. 11 — and although her movie star handed, her widowhood can not.
In the aftermath of the planes falling from the sky, America and the world have been launched to an array of personalities. Some we had recognized nicely, however got here to see in numerous methods. Others have been thrown into public consciousness by sad happenstance.
Some, like Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammad Omar, are lifeless. But others have gone on to guide lives which are postscripts to Sept. 11, 2001. Here are just a few of the boldface names of that tumultuous time — what they have been then, and what has occurred to them since.
RUDOLPH GIULIANI
THEN: Mayor of New York City, he was a hero of the second — empathetic, decided, a spotlight of the nation’s grief and a continuing presence at floor zero. “The number of casualties will be more than any of us can bear ultimately,” he mentioned on Sept. 11. Oprah Winfrey pronounced him “America’s Mayor”; Time journal declared him “Person of the Year.”
SINCE: After suggesting that his expiring time period be prolonged as a result of 9/11 emergency — an concept that was roundly dismissed — Giuliani went into non-public life, however not all that non-public. He launched a worthwhile safety agency and ran abortively for the Republican nomination for president in 2008. His adventures as a supporter of and agent for President Donald Trump are nicely documented, and resulted within the suspension of his legislation license in his dwelling state.
BERNARD KERIK
THEN: New York City’s police commissioner. Bald and stocky, he by no means left Giuliani’s facet within the days after Sept. 11 — and adopted the mayor after he left workplace, becoming a member of the Giuliani safety agency.
SINCE: President George W. Bush appointed Kerik as Iraq’s interim minister of the inside in 2003 through the Iraq battle, and nominated him to go the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2004. He withdrew from consideration when it was revealed that he had employed an undocumented employee as a nanny and housekeeper; there adopted a sequence of authorized troubles, together with convictions for ethics violations and tax fraud. He was pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2020.
GEORGE W. BUSH
THEN: The forty third president of the United States, Bush was knowledgeable of the 9/11 assaults whereas studying “The Pet Goat” to second graders in Sarasota, Florida. He spoke to the nation that night time and visited floor zero three days later, grabbing a bullhorn to declare: “I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people – and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” His assist within the polls reached 85 p.c.
SINCE: The War on Terrorism begat the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Bush’s demand that the Taliban “hand over the terrorists, or … share in their fate.” He had lengthy retired to grease portray in Texas when Navy SEALs killed bin Laden, and when President Joe Biden pulled U.S. forces from Afghanistan. In August, he mentioned he was watching developments there “with deep sadness.”
RICHARD CHENEY
THEN: While the Secret Service performed “hide the president” with Bush on Sept. 11 — he was shuttled to army bases in Louisiana and Nebraska, for worry of terrorist assaults — his vp hunkered down in a “secure, undisclosed location,” a bunker contained in the White House the place he helped direct the federal government’s actions. Cheney grew to become a fierce advocate of an unbridled response to the assaults, utilizing “any means at our disposal.” He pushed for the 2003 battle in Iraq. The interrogation method often called waterboarding was a correct option to get info from terrorists, he mentioned — not torture, as its critics have lengthy insisted.
SINCE: After 5 coronary heart assaults and a 2012 coronary heart transplant, Cheney has lived to see his daughter, Liz, win his outdated congressional seat in Wyoming and change into GOP persona non grata due to her criticism of Donald Trump.
COLIN POWELL
THEN: A former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell was confirmed unanimously as secretary of state in 2001. He would go on to make a persuasive case earlier than the United Nations for army motion towards Iraq, claiming that Saddam Hussein was constructing weapons of mass destruction. The battle was waged, Saddam was toppled and killed, Iraq was destabilized; no such weapons have been discovered.
SINCE: Powell has constantly defended his assist of the Iraq War. But the lifelong Republican had little use for Trump, endorsing Hillary Clinton in 2016 and talking in assist of Biden on the 2020 Democratic conference. He left the Republican celebration after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
THEN: National safety adviser to Bush. In the summer season of 2001, she met with CIA Director George Tenet at his request to debate the specter of al-Qaida assaults on American targets. The CIA reported that “There will be significant terrorist attacks against the United States in the coming weeks or months.” Rice would later say that the data was outdated.
SINCE: Rice succeeded Powell as secretary of state and has since returned to Stanford University as provost, then as a school member. In 2012, she additionally grew to become one of many first two girls allowed to hitch the Augusta National Golf Club.
JOHN ASHCROFT
THEN: Attorney common throughout Bush’s first time period. In the wake of 9/11, he was the administration’s prime advocate of the USA PATRIOT Act, which gave the federal government broad powers to analyze and prosecute these suspected of terrorism. But in 2004, whereas mendacity in an intensive care unit with gallstone pancreatitis, he refused the administration’s entreaties to overrule a Justice Department discovering that the Bush home intelligence program was unlawful.
SINCE: After leaving workplace in 2005, Ashcroft grew to become a lobbyist and guide. His appearances as a gospel singer (and songwriter — his tune “Let the Eagle Soar” was carried out on the second Bush inauguration) have tailed off.
JOHN YOO
THEN: As deputy assistant legal professional common within the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Yoo offered a lot of the authorized underpinning for the War on Terrorism. He argued that “enemy combatants” captured in Afghanistan needn’t be given prisoner of battle standing; that the president may authorize warrantless wiretaps of U.S. residents on American soil; that using “enhanced interrogation techniques” like waterboarding was inside the energy of the president throughout wartime.
SINCE: Yoo is a professor on the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. He stays a powerful supporter of presidential prerogatives; in 2020, his e-book “Defender in Chief: Donald Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power” argued that Trump’s imaginative and prescient of the presidency was in keeping with that of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton.
KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED
THEN: Leading propagandist of al-Qaida, labeled the “principal architect of the 9/11 attacks” by the 9/11 Commission. He was captured in 2003 by the CIA and Pakistan’s secret police, then spirited to CIA prisons in Poland and Afghanistan and eventually to Guantanamo. Under duress — some known as it torture — he confessed to involvement in almost each main al-Qaida operation, together with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the killing of journalist Daniel Pearl, the 2001 assaults and others.
SINCE: His trial date has been postponed many times. He stays at Guantanamo, indefinitely.
HAMID KARZAI
THEN: Interim chief after which elected president of Afghanistan within the wake of Sept. 11, he managed the fragile balancing act of remaining on pleasant phrases with the United States and the West whereas unifying his nation’s many factions — not less than for a time. More than as soon as, he known as the Taliban “brothers,” and the later years of his presidency have been marked by friction with the United States.
SINCE: Karzai has survived quite a few assassination makes an attempt, however when his second time period expired in 2014, the passage of energy to his successor, Ashraf Ghani, was peaceable. Ghani would lead the nation for nearly seven years, till he fled within the face of the Taliban’s triumphant return.
HOWARD LUTNICK
THEN: The chairman of the inventory buying and selling firm Cantor Fitzgerald would have been within the firm’s workplaces on the prime of One World Trade Center, however he took his son Kyle to the primary day of kindergarten. A complete of 658 of the corporate’s workers — two thirds of its New York City workforce, together with Lutnick’s brother Gary — perished. Within three days, Lutnick had established the Cantor-Fitzgerald Relief Fund for his firm’s victims.
SINCE: The fund has disbursed greater than 1 / 4 of a billion {dollars}, together with cash for different victims of terrorism and disasters. Twenty years later, Lutnick stays the corporate’s chairman.
LISA BEAMER
THEN: After 9/11, Lisa Beamer grew to become the face of the day’s mourners, and a reminder of the day’s heroism. Her husband, Todd, a former faculty baseball and basketball participant, is believed to have led different passengers in an assault on the hijackers of United Airlines Flight 93 that introduced the airplane down earlier than it may crash in Washington. His exhortation of “Let’s roll!” grew to become a rallying cry. His widow made 200 public appearances within the six months after the assaults.
SINCE: Lisa Beamer co-wrote a e-book, “Let’s Roll! Ordinary People, Extraordinary Courage,” and established a basis in her husband’s reminiscence. Donations dwindled, and Beamer receded from public view. The couple had three youngsters, and all attended Wheaton College, the place their dad and mom met. All are athletes, like their dad: Dave, 3 years outdated when his father died, was a soccer quarterback; Drew, who was 1, performed soccer, as has Morgan, born 4 months after the assaults. Morgan was her father’s center title.