SSA chief and IRS CEO Frank Bisignano recalled his 9/11 experience at Citigroup on Breitbart News Saturday, calling himself 'a different type of first responder.'
The post Exclusive: Frank Bisignano Recalls 9/11 at Citigroup as ‘a Different Type of First Responder’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Frank Bisignano, the commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) and CEO of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), recalled his experience at Citigroup during the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in an interview Saturday, describing himself as “a different type of first responder.”
Speaking with host Matthew Boyle on Breitbart News Saturday one day after the 25th anniversary of the attacks, Bisignano said he was the chief administrative officer at Citigroup that morning at the time, overseeing operations, technology, and business continuity for a firm with roughly 16,000 employees in lower Manhattan.
Bisignano said he was in a meeting when he saw the damage to the towers and moved to evacuate his people.
“When I looked in I saw a big hole in the building and I saw everything you can imagine,” Bisignano said. “I made a call to Tom Jones, who was a fabulous executive, and told him he needed to get out of Seven World Trade.”
The commissioner said he also called senior executives Sandy Weill and Bob Druskin, instructing them to leave “at all costs.” He said all but six of the company’s lower-Manhattan employees survived. Citigroup lost 1.3 million square feet of real estate at 7 World Trade Center, according to the agency’s official account, and later relocated more than 16,000 displaced workers.
Bisignano said he had to keep the financial systems running.
“I had to make sure that the financial systems continued running as we were the number one financial institution in the world,” he said, noting the government bond market opened within a day.
The commissioner said he was diagnosed with throat cancer roughly a decade later, an illness his SSA bio attributes to time spent at Ground Zero.
“September 11 changed the course of my life,” Bisignano said in a statement marking the anniversary.
The interview came as the Trump administration touts economic gains ahead of the November midterms. Bisignano credited the Working Families Tax Cut Act with delivering what he called the largest dollar value of refunds ever recorded while increasing revenue, saying 90 percent of refunds reached taxpayers in less than 21 days.
His comments followed a Breitbart News “State of the Economy” event on September 8, where Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pointed to record tax refunds and a surge in business formation.
“We’re fueling innovation across the country,” Bisignano said. “This is a long-term set of investments we’re making for America.”
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