This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.
Rudolph Giuliani was a hero before he was a punchline. Lisa Beamer was a wife and mother before she became a symbol of Sept. 11, and though her celebrity passed, her widowhood cannot. In the aftermath of the planes falling from the sky, America and the world were introduced to an array of personalities. Some we knew well, but came to see in different ways. Others were thrown into public consciousness by unhappy happenstance. From Dick Cheney to John Yoo to Hamid Karzai, each played a role in a historical event unlike any that had come before.
FILE – In this Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2001 file photo, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, center, leads New York Gov. George Pataki, left, and Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., on a tour of the site of the World Trade Center disaster. While stumping for Donald Trump in Ocala, Fla., on Oct. 12, 2016, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani accused Hillary Clinton of falsely claiming to have been in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. It isn’t clear what Giuliani was talking about. On many occasions, Clinton has described being in Washington, where Congress was in session, on Sept. 11 when hijacked jets began striking the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Flights were still grounded on Sept. 12, 2001, but Clinton traveled to New York City the next day aboard a federal plane. There, she circled the smoldering World Trade Center in a helicopter, then toured ground zero with Giuliani and Pataki. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File) 
FILE – In this Thursday, Oct. 22, 2015 file photo, former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik attends a forum on criminal justice reform in the Old Executive Office Building on the White House complex in Washington. President George W. Bush appointed Kerik as Iraq’s interim minister of the interior in 2003 during the Iraq war, and nominated him to head the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2004. He withdrew from consideration when it was revealed that he had employed an undocumented worker as a nanny and housekeeper; there followed a series of legal troubles, including convictions for ethics violations and tax fraud. He was pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2020. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File) 
FILE – In this Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001 file photo, White House chief of staff Andrew Card whispers into the ear of President George W. Bush to give him word of the plane crashes into the World Trade Center, during a visit to the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Fla. (AP Photo/Doug Mills, File) 
FILE – In this Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2001 file photo, from left, Secretary of State Colin Powell, President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Henry Shelton attend a meeting with the National Security Council in the Cabinet Room of the White House. While the Secret Service played “hide the president” with Bush on Sept. 11 — he was shuttled to military bases in Louisiana and Nebraska, for fear of terrorist attacks — his vice president hunkered down in a “secure, undisclosed location,” a bunker inside the White House where he helped direct the government’s actions. (AP Photo/Doug Mills, File) 
FILE – In this Monday, Sept. 17, 2001 file photo, Secretary of State Colin Powell speaks during a news conference at the State Department in Washington, discussing the diplomatic aspects of the previous week’s terrorist attacks. (AP Photo/Hillery Smith Garrison, File) 
FILE – In this Monday, Dec. 9, 2019 file photo, former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney speaks to the audience at the Arab Strategy Forum in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, warning that “American disengagement” in the Middle East will benefit only Iran and Russia, indirectly criticizing President Donald Trump’s pledges to pull forces out of the region. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili, File) 
FILE – In this Thursday, Sept. 27, 2001 file photo, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft meets with reporters at FBI headquarters in Washington, where he released photographs of the 19 suspected hijackers. In the wake of 9/11, he was the administration’s prime advocate of the USA PATRIOT Act, which gave the government broad powers to investigate and prosecute those suspected of terrorism. (AP Photo/Joe Marquette, File) 
FILE – In this Nov. 11, 2019 file photo, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shakes hands with UAE Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei at the opening ceremony of the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition & Conference (ADIPEC) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Rice succeeded Colin Powell as secretary of state and has since returned to Stanford University as provost, then as a faculty member. In 2012, she also became one of the first two women allowed to join the Augusta National Golf Club. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili, File) 
FILE – In this Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001 file photo, Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser, waits for President Bush to arrive on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File) 
FILE – In this Wednesday, July 25, 2018 file photo, Specialist Peter Giacchi, right, talks with Bloom Energy board member Colin Powell, center, and company officials on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during their IPO. Powell has consistently defended his support of the Iraq War. But the lifelong Republican had little use for Trump, endorsing Hillary Clinton in 2016 and speaking in support of Biden at the 2020 Democratic convention. He left the Republican party after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File) 
FILE – In this Monday May 13, 2019 file photo, former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft speaks at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund Annual Candlelight Vigil, to commemorate new names added to the monument, during a ceremony at the National Mall in Washington. After leaving office in 2005, Ashcroft became a lobbyist and consultant. His appearances as a gospel singer (and songwriter — his tune “Let the Eagle Soar” was performed at the second Bush inauguration) have tailed off. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File) 
FILE – In this March 1, 2003 file photo obtained by The Associated Press, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is seen shortly after his capture during a raid in Pakistan. The leading propagandist of al-Qaida, labeled the “principal architect of the 9/11 attacks” by the 9/11 Commission, he was captured by the CIA and Pakistan’s secret police, then spirited to CIA prisons in Poland and Afghanistan and finally to Guantanamo. (AP Photo/File) 
FILE – In this Sunday, Dec. 16, 2001 file photo, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, right, meets with Hamid Karzai, the new interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. Karzai managed the delicate balancing act of remaining on friendly terms with the United States and the West while unifying his country’s many factions — at least for a time. More than once, he called the Taliban “brothers,” and the later years of his presidency were marked by friction with the U.S. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Pool, File) 
FILE – In this Nov. 19, 2020 file photo, former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for President Donald Trump, speaks during a news conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington. After suggesting that his expiring mayoral term be extended due to the 9/11 emergency — an idea that was roundly dismissed — Giuliani went into private life, but not all that private. He launched a profitable security firm and ran abortively for the Republican nomination for president in 2008. His adventures as a supporter of and agent for Trump are well documented, and resulted in the suspension of his law license in his home state. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File) 
FILE – In this Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021 photo released by the Taliban, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, left, meets with senior Haqqani group leader Anas Haqqani, and others in Kabul, Afghanistan, after the Taliban seized the capital. Karzai has survived numerous assassination attempts, but when his second term expired in 2014, the passage of power to his successor, Ashraf Ghani, was peaceful. Ghani would lead the country for almost seven years, until he fled in the face of the Taliban’s triumphant return. (Taliban via AP, File) 
FILE – In this Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2002 file photo, Howard Lutnick, standing, chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, watches trading conducted on the trading floor of the company’s New York office. The company lost about two thirds of its nearly 1,000 employees headquartered in the World Trade Center when the towers collapsed after attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File) 
FILE – This Monday, Dec. 8, 2008 courtroom drawing by artist Janet Hamlin and reviewed by the U.S. military, shows Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, center, and co-defendant Walid Bin Attash, left, attending a pre-trial session at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. Mohammed is the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. His trial date has been postponed again and again. He remains at Guantanamo, indefinitely. (AP Photo/Janet Hamlin, Pool, File) 
FILE – In this Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2002 file photo, a woman looks a copy of “Let’s Roll!” by Lisa Beamer at Sam’s Club in West Windsor, N.J., after it went on sale. Beamer’s husband, Todd, died when hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 plunged into the Pennsylvania countryside on Sept. 11. Before the crash, a cell phone operator heard Todd Beamer say “let’s roll” as he and other passengers attempted to overpower the hijackers. (AP Photo/Daniel Hulshizer, File) 
FILE – In this Sept. 16, 2001 file photo, David Beamer, his brother, Andrew, and his mother, Lisa, pose for a photo in their Cranbury, N.J. home. Lisa’s husband Todd Beamer, in picture at right, was the passenger aboard the United Airlines Flight 93, who led other passengers to take action against hijackers, according to an operator who talked to Beamer just before the plane crashed in a field in western Pennsylvania on Sept. 11. (AP Photo/Brian Branch-Price, File)
