Man who checked in 9/11 hijackers reflects on 15 years of guilt

Hardly a day goes by when there's not some kind of reminder, says Allex who was an employee at Dulles Airport

Fifteen years after the 9/11 attacks, an airport worker who checked in two of the hijackers who flew a plane into the Twin Towers, opened up about the guilt and his long road to recovery.

Vaughn Allex was an employee at the Dulles Airport in Virginia when he checked in two brothers who arrived late for the American Airlines Flight 77 to LA -- realising only later that they were the ones responsible for 184 deaths.

Recalling the incident, Allex said, "Hardly a day goes by when there's not some kind of reminder." A day after the attack, when FBI agents showed Allex a list of passengers who were on the flight, Allex realised Salem and Nawaf Alhazmi were the two brothers who arrived late, and later hijacked the flight along with three others.

"I looked at the FBI agents and they looked at me and they knew, and I just went, 'I did it, didn't I?" Allex said. They said, "You did what?" I said, "I did it, I put them on the plane,"' he recalled, adding that regardless of both the FBI and FAA assuring Allex that he did nothing wrong, it was difficult for him to repress his guilt and the anger of his colleagues.

PHOTO SOURCE: HANDOUT

People at work refused to talk to him. According to NPR's StoryCorps, Allex said, even support groups were of little help.

"How do I sit in a room with people that are, that are mourning and crying and they're like, 'What's your role in this whole thing?"' he asked. "What could he say to them? 'Well, I checked in a couple of the hijackers and made sure they got on the flight."'

However, Allex did not give up -- he quit his job in 2008 to join the Department of Homeland Security. 15 years after the incident, Allex finally feels he is gradually coming to terms with the series of events.

"I feel like in some ways I've - I really have come out of a shadow over the last 15 years," he told NPR. "And I'm - I'm back in the light now," he said.

This article originally appeared on Mail Online