ARLINGTON, VA – The first video captures the eerie, mundane moments of that morning.  

Through the windshield, viewers see vehicles speeding by, then halting in bumper-to-bumper traffic along Interstate 66. A sign shows they’re about 5 miles from the Pentagon. Inside the car, someone says, “you can smell it.”  

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Jude Coke and her two crew members, cameraman Billy DeWeese and firefighter Christopher DeWolf, were creating an emergency responder training video with the Baltimore City Fire Department when they learned of the attack at the Pentagon. They changed their mission and raced to the scene.  

Coke, DeWeese and DeWolf embedded with the Arlington County Fire Department and for three days documented the evolving disaster response. They were the only civilian camera crew allowed near the burning building, according to Coke.  

Twenty-five years later, some of their rare footage is being released to the American public. Coke partnered with the 9/11 Legacy Foundation, an education-focused nonprofit, to create a six-part documentary covering what they witnessed. The series is the first of its kind.

Since April, they’ve released the three- to seven-minute videos once a month.  

On the timing, Coke said this year’s anniversary provided the impetus to get the footage in front of the public. 

“This needs to happen. This needs to be preserved,” Coke said. “This needs to be shared with the American people and the world.” 

What’s in the footage?

The videos show search crews combing the Pentagon’s charred corridors, and interviews with firefighters working to contain the disaster. 

In some scenes, responders pick up pieces of American Airlines Flight 77. A police chaplain delivers a poignant prayer. Another clip shows service members recovering a Red Marine Corps flag that stood untouched on the building’s fourth floor where the walls had collapsed. 

Coke used her team’s story to guide people through the events, starting with how they ended up on the scene. 

Months earlier, Coke was laid off from a corporate video producing job. Sept. 11 was her first day working with a production company on emergency training films.

When they arrived at the Baltimore fire station, it was clear it wasn’t going to be a normal day. All the leaders were huddled around a television, watching news about the first attack at the World Trade Center. 

As the tragedy unfolded, Coke’s boss urged the team to get as close as they could to the Pentagon.  

“I was already nervous about my first day,” Coke remembered. “I don’t think anything prepared me for that.” 

Once on scene, the weight of their duty to history pushed them to stay, despite the dangers.

“We were granted an immense responsibility to capture this event in the most responsible way we could,” she said. “In the aftermath of that event, we couldn’t control what happened to us, but we could control how we responded to it.” 

An urgent moment 

When Coke arrived home to Texas after 9/11, she created an hourlong training video with the footage, then shoved the tapes into a cold, dark corner of her home. There, they collected dust for nearly two decades.  

As the 20^th anniversary approached, Coke felt a nagging obligation to ensure the scenes she and her teammates risked their lives to film were preserved. A few calls with former colleagues revealed she possessed the only surviving set of the recordings. 

She again felt the weight of stewardship.  

Short clips from the footage had appeared in a few documentaries. But the raw footage hadn’t been digitized or given to historical institutions keeping the memory of 9/11 alive. Cook and her video crew’s story also had never been told.

She reached out to officials at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City to ensure they received copyright access to use the entire archive of footage, then was put in contact with Chris Meek, founder of the 9/11 Legacy Foundation.  

He asked her to produce a film. Coke new instantly which stories she wanted to tell.  

“I’ve carried this with me for over two decades. Being there, it changed my life,” Coke said. “The footage and the human stories inside of it have been within me.” 

Though she hopes to eventually make a full-length documentary, Coke said she treated this project as the last way the film will be viewed. 

She hopes it will be used to educate the next generation and is working with the Pentagon Memorial Fund to officially house the footage at a planned visitor education center near a memorial honoring the victims.  

More than anything, she said, she hopes people see it and understand the fortitude of first responders after 9/11. 

“We all have a choice,” she said, “to bring that light when darkness hits.”