The Order He Refused to Obey

On September 11, 2001, when the first plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center, the Port Authority broadcast a message to everyone in the South Tower: stay at your desks. Rick Rescorla, Director of Security for Morgan Stanley, ignored it.

A decorated combat veteran of the Vietnam War's Battle of Ia Drang Valley in 1965, Rescorla had spent years preparing for this moment. After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, he studied the building's vulnerabilities and predicted that terrorists would return with a more devastating attack. He drilled Morgan Stanley's 2,687 employees in evacuation procedures so relentlessly that many grumbled about the interruptions.

Now, with smoke filling the Manhattan sky, those drills became the difference between life and death. Rescorla grabbed his bullhorn, moved floor by floor through the South Tower, and guided nearly every one of those employees to safety. Witnesses remember him singing — Men of Harlech and old Cornish folk songs — steadying terrified people with a voice that refused to break. When the last groups reached the street, Rescorla turned and went back inside. He was last seen on the tenth floor, heading up. He did not come out.

Of Morgan Stanley's 2,687 employees, 2,674 survived.