By Col. Rob Maness, USAF ret
STARRS Board of Advisors
On ‘Rufo & Lomez,’ Col. Rob Maness tells Christopher Rufo and Jonathan Keeperman what he saw inside the Pentagon — and why he thinks America is in danger again.
America today, warns Maness, is in the same vulnerable position it was on September 10, 2001. Between “importing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of [Islamists] over the last 25 years with a very poor vetting process” and corrupt “intelligence agencies,” Maness says he’s “very concerned” for the country, because “in many ways, we’re at September 10, 2001.”
. . . . In those days, Maness was a major — “the coffee guy,” he laughs.
“I walked by the day-care center every day up into corridor 8, into my office area, which was inside the National Military Command Center. And, you know, at the time I was getting there, the kids were being dropped off … and I always enjoyed watching them and the parents and all that stuff because I had little kids of my own,” he recounts.
“I just walked in and said, ‘Man, this is going to be a fantastic day,”’ he adds.
It wasn’t long before he discovered how wrong that prediction was.
That day, he explains, marked the start of America’s “global nuclear war game.” Maness’ real job, he explains, was in the Joint Staff’s nuclear operations division, which trained the aides with access to the “nuclear football book” and oversaw the doomsday plane.
“A lot of my leadership and teammates were out at different nodes around the world for command and control of nuclear forces because we were kicking that exercise off that day,” he tells Rufo and Keeperman, “and that was literally happening at the moment the airplanes hit the towers.”
After the first strikes, Maness’ on-site team “stayed on duty” to “help with the command and control decision-making.” They were “ordered out” of the Pentagon just after the third plane hit.
Once evacuated, Maness immediately turned his attention to helping the wounded.
“I just started helping do what I could for the first aid and those kind of things until we got asked to go back inside the courtyard because the fire trucks couldn’t get inside and the building’s roof was burning,” he recounts.
“I estimate probably between 100 and 200 people … split up into two teams and went to those inside corners, and we started helping continue to fight the fire [and] see if we could find anybody alive.”
To hear more of Maness’ story, watch the video below:
Transcript from September 11, 2025:
“Thank you very much, Sean, for having me on. Let me first extend my condolences to Charlie Kirk and his family. We lost a great American who believed in debate for resolving our differences instead of violence like the Islamists brought to America on 9/11.
And that day, yesterday, will change America forever, just like 9/11 did.
I was at work in the Pentagon inside the National Military Command Center at the time all the attacks started to occur. We just went to work when we saw that these were actual attacks on the United States of America.
Our job was to start coordinating the response and find out who did it. I was honored and privileged to get the opportunity to do that.
But that day, all of us that stayed in the building and then later evacuated out of the building, were just— what I saw and witnessed from other Americans and from immigrants even that had stopped on the highway was amazing. The response to save people’s lives, get people evacuated.
And then a few hundred of us went back inside the building to get into the courtyard so we could fight the fire and look for other survivors near the crash site where I worked, right where the cockpit stopped in between the B and C rings for most of the rest of that day.
Those folks that I was able to work with were just absolutely wonderful Americans, and they displayed the courage that Americans always display at a time of crisis.
If you think about it, most of us were in uniform, but some retired military that were now government civilians.
The headquarters of the most powerful armed forces in the history of mankind had just been struck by a strategic attack. We didn’t know who the enemy was and we didn’t know what was going to come next.
And every one of those men and women, to a person, voluntarily stayed, took care of the wounded, made sure they were transported, took care of the crash site. Got to help get the fire out until we were ordered out of the building later that evening.
Then the next day, I went right back to work in the Nuclear Operations Division in the National Military Command Center and was honored and privileged to be asked to help put the plan together and find out who did this and then put the response plan together and give that advice to the Secretary of Defense and the President of the United States as part of that team.
It was amazing and courageous–what Americans do.
That’s what Charlie Kirk stood for. What he did was go to places and talk to people that opposed the view of America. He convinced and persuaded a lot of them through that. We’re very proud to be friends with him.
HOST:
Wow. Just hearing you recount what happened that day, I mean, it really speaks to the American fighting spirit and willingness to rush into danger to help fellow Americans. So thank you for, for bringing us back to that moment. And you’re right, even tying it to present day where there would have been, you know, members of Charlie’s own security team who rushed toward him to assist. And of course, the powerful prayers that would have been lifting him up during that very intense moment when we weren’t sure what was going to happen next. That came from all across the country. If we just wanted to leave with this, Rob, maybe a message that you’d like to share with Charlie Kirk’s family, understanding that you had— you did share a relationship of sorts with him, or at least the messages that he shared with curious college students?
MANESS:
Yeah. Charlie’s greatest attribute, in my opinion, was his faith in Jesus Christ and his willingness to talk about that faith, but talk about it in the context of the United States of America. and what America stands for. He used those ideas and knew them very well to persuade people that opposed him and opposed his ideas on these college campuses.
When I met him, he was still a teen. He had just started Turning Point USA, and he was going to campuses where I wanted to go as a U.S. Senate candidate in those days. I was being told by consultants, those people are never going to vote for you. Well, they did vote, and they voted for Donald Trump in 2024. Charlie Kirk and his team and those of us that support him are the reason why they did that.
His faith as a Christian is the key to all of that success, though. And that’s what I would leave with them, is have faith that you will see him again. He’s waiting for us. And I’m sure in some way he will talk God into influencing the events of the future. A million Charlie Kirks were made again yesterday. And it’s going to be even more impressive what happens with America as we move forward.
Nearly 15 Years After 9/11, Retired Colonel Meets the Man Whose Life He Helped Save
Col. Rob Maness finally met the man he helped save after terrorists attacked the Pentagon on September 11, 2001
Every day for almost 15 years, Col. Rob Maness wondered about the badly-burned man he’d tried to keep conscious on a gurney after terrorists flew a 757 airliner into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
Did he make it? Was he still alive? Was he able to fully recover and live a happy and fulfilling life?
“It’s something I’ve always thought about, but I never had an answer,” Maness, 54, now living in Madisonville, Louisiana, and running for the U.S. Senate as a Republican, tells PEOPLE. “It was always a mystery.”
Until now.
Last week, while attending the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Maness, now retired from the Air Force, was told that former Texas governor Rick Perry wanted to meet with him and several other veterans.
After shaking Maness’ hand, Gov. Perry told him, “Rob, I want you to meet somebody. He was in the Pentagon on 9/11, too.”
The governor introduced him to Brian Birdwell, a state senator from Granbury, Texas, who had been severely burned on the right side of his body in the attack and required 39 surgeries.
As Birdwell, 54, relayed his story and mentioned that a stranger had helped hold his IV line and talked to him while he was waiting to be transported to a hospital, Maness knew: This was the man he had thought about daily since that horrific morning when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.
“When I realized that I was looking at the same gentleman, I started to cry and told him I was so grateful that he was still alive,” Maness tells PEOPLE. “We hugged each other and neither of us could believe that we were talking again. What are the odds?”
Birdwell, then working as an Army lieutenant colonel, was returning from the men’s room to his desk in the E Ring at the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. on Sept. 11, when he heard a loud roaring sound that he thought was a bomb.
“A nanosecond later, I was tossed through the air like a rag doll just 15 or 20 feet away from where the nose of the 757 hit the building,” he tells PEOPLE. “I thought for sure that I would die.”
His clothes burned away and his name tag melted, Birdwell was rescued by four men and taken outside to a makeshift triage area, where a doctor gave him a shot of morphine and put an IV in one of his feet because his leather shoes had protected the skin there.
Col. Rob Maness, who was one of the last people to escape the building, had just helped an injured Navy petty officer walk to the emergency treatment area when a chaplain called him over to help Birdwell.
“He was in really bad shape – it didn’t look like he was going to make it,” Maness tells PEOPLE. “I was told to stand there and hold his IV because it was leaking. He was in such tremendous pain and was ready to pass out, so I kept talking to him, trying to comfort him and keep him awake. After I watched them take him away to a hospital, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. He was the last survivor I saw that day.” . . . (read the rest)
What Was The American Military Doing The Morning Of 911? | The Rob Maness Show EP 242
This show was supposed to only be about my guest’s unique experiences on 911, some of which overlap with my own knowledge but I was asked by a fellow survivor of the Pentagon attack to put the facts of my story out in order to push back on the conspiracy theories around the aircraft that hit the building because many of us feel it disrespects the dead and their families. Here is what I posted initially on X “I personally identified the Boeing 757 engine, cockpit, and airframe parts of the American Airlines aircraft that hit the Pentagon on Sep 11, 2001 during my response to the site from my office in the building. I was there all day with plenty of time to use my 20 years of experience (at the time) investigating aircraft crashes to confirm the initial reports.”
Col Rob Maness Speaks Out On 911 Pentagon Attack 911
Col. Rob Maness In Studio Briefs Us on How Close We Are to Nuclear War & What He Saw On 911 & What He Personally Saw On 911 At the Pentagon Regarding the Plane Wreckage
STARRS Board of Advisors member Colonel Rob Maness, USAF (Ret.) worked his way up from the enlisted ranks to full Colonel and retired from active duty in 2011, ending a 32-year career in the military. He led numerous combat operations, including as a B-1 bomber squadron commander in Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. He served as the Installation Commander of the 377th Air Base Wing at Kirtland Air Force Base, NM.
Maness was serving in the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon during the September 11, 2001 attack. Following that, he was selected for the Joint Chiefs of Staff Future Operations Group, where he advised senior national leaders and helped reorganize global Defense Department commands in 60 days.
His staff assignments included Deputy Director at Air Force Global Strike Command, where he produced the first strategic plan for a 28,000-person nuclear force in eight months, and Pentagon roles in which he authored theater nuclear war plans and presidential decision tools that shaped U.S. deterrence and warfighting policy.
Following military retirement, Rob worked as an executive in a Fortune 500 energy corporation. Today he leads Iron Liberty Group LLC as CEO and Founder, providing leadership, organizational, and safety consulting, and produces independent media through a streaming television program, social media platforms and his website.
He serves on several nonprofit boards, chairs a political action committee he founded and a nonprofit, was appointed Senior Advisor to the Department of War for Senior Service Colleges in 2026, and serves as a Commissioner on the Gulfport Redevelopment Commission.
He holds a Master of Public Administration from Harvard, a Master of Arts from the Naval War College, a Master of Science from Air Command and Staff College, and a Bachelor of Science, cum laude, from the University of Tampa. Rob is most well-known as the host of the Rob Maness Show. RobManess.com
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