Rick Rescorla, a Cornish-born American soldier, served in Northern Rhodesia (current-day Zambia) and Vietnam, in the process becoming a staunch anti-communist. He first became famous at the Battle of Ia Drang, where a photo was taken that later appeared on the cover of the book We Were Soldiers Once . . . And Young. He then settled down in the US and became a security guard for Dean Witter Reynolds in the World Trade Center. While working there, he and his friend Daniel Hill spent some time assessing the security of the WTC. They both predicted that it could be effectively bombed by putting an explosives-laden truck in the underground parking lot, which Islamist terrorists did in 1993.
After that, Rescorla predicted that the Towers would be vulnerable to an airborne attack and advised his employers to move out of the building to a safer and cheaper location in New Jersey. His advice went unheeded, and Rescorla was last seen on September 11, 2001, trying to evacuate people from the South Tower. The US Department of Homeland Security instituted an award in his honor called the Rick Rescorla National Award for Resilience.
