Marco Greenberg says his best friend Danny Lewin would be “incensed” by America’s fractured response to the terror attacks that killed him.
Greenberg, 62, the CEO of PR agency Thunder11, has spent nearly a quarter century keeping alive the memory of Lewin, the first confirmed victim of September 11, 2001. The childhood friends grew up together in Israel after Lewin was born in Denver and moved there at age 14. Greenberg watched Lewin win the “Mr. Teenage Israel” bodybuilding title, rise through the Israel Defense Forces’ most elite counterterrorism unit, and eventually become a Ph.D candidate at MIT whom Greenberg called “the smartest guy in the room.”
By the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Lewin, 31, had already co-founded Akamai Technologies, a company that made the internet faster and more efficient, and had become a newly minted billionaire. He lived in Brookline, Mass., with his wife and their two young sons, ages 8 and 5.
Lewin boarded American Airlines Flight 11 at Logan Airport for a business trip to Los Angeles. He sat in seat 9B in business class, directly behind lead hijacker Mohamed Atta. The 9/11 Commission Report concluded that Lewin, having served four years as an IDF officer, “may have made an attempt to stop the hijackers in front of him, not realizing that another was sitting behind him.” The report identified his probable killer as Satam al Suqami, a 25-year-old Saudi.
“He fought back with his own bare hands,” Greenberg said of his friend, describing the 5-foot-9 ex-commando as “180 pounds of rock steel” who was “armed with only a blackberry and laptop.” Greenberg believes Lewin was killed roughly 20 minutes before the plane struck the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. “They surrounded him – his throat was slashed and dead before they hit the tower.”
Greenberg has found some solace in reports that Lewin struggled against four terrorists. Now he wants Lewin’s story to serve a broader purpose. “It’s using his story to inspire others to take risks in life,” he said.
The friends once joked about Lewin’s limitless potential. “I always said to Danny, ‘You’re either going to be the next Bill Gates or you’re going to be the next prime minister of Israel – or both,” Greenberg recalled. He believes Lewin would have become “a household name if he lived,” comparing his trajectory to that of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin.
But Greenberg’s recent statements carry a sharper political edge. He argues that Lewin would be sickened to see the 9/11 anniversary recast as an ideological battleground, with some voices vilifying the United States and terrorist ideology finding new audiences among younger generations. “Danny would be incensed not just over the political divisiveness today,” Greenberg said, “but of how it’s been sanitized.” He specifically objects to watered-down phrasing like “the events of 9/11.” “It’s not a TV miniseries – it was a vicious and shocking attack on civilians,” he said.
Greenberg also tied this perceived sanitization to what he called a “woke blame game” that has emerged in public discourse. “Danny called it like it is – rather than the tragedy unifying the country, it’s now all about being divisive,” he said. “He’d be very disappointed, but not surprised, to see how truth has been turned on its head.”
Despite his bluntness, Lewin was no bigot, Greenberg emphasized. “Danny was not PC, but he was so respectful of other humans of every creed and religion,” he said. “But he would call it like it is – he would make a sharp distinction between Islam and radical Islam. He knows that’s the malignant ideology that murdered him.”
The transformation of 9/11 memory into political ammunition has become a recurring theme as anniversary commemorations approach their 25th year. For Greenberg, the distortion hits personally. To see the origins of terror twisted and his friend’s sacrifice repurposed for ideological ends would have shaken Lewin profoundly.
Greenberg has remained vocal as the anniversary approaches, determined that Lewin be remembered as both hero and visionary rather than a footnote in a contested history. The “hero commando” had already “transformed the internet,” according to one book about his brief, meteoric career.
The 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks will be commemorated in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.