An American flag that turned up in Washington state two years ago is believed to be the flag that was raised by firefighters above the site of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

The Everett Police Department, with help from forensic experts, made the assessment after the flag turned up in 2014. The flag will be donated to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

Still, the mystery about how the flag turned up nearly 3,000 miles away from New York. The flag disappeared from Ground Zero during the site cleanup.

The police investigation began in November 2014 when a man, who identified himself as “Brian,” dropped off a flag in a plastic bag that he said was given to him by a widow of a 9/11 victim at an Everett fire station. According to Q13 Fox, the man said for some reason he thought the flag was from Ground Zero.

“This flag was turned in with a story. Reported to be the iconic flag raised at Ground Zero September 2001,” Everett Deputy Police Chief Mark St. Clair told Q13 Fox.

The detectives' investigation included DNA analysis, photographic comparisons and eyewitness identification. Washington State Patrol Crime Lab scientist Bill Schneck was tasked with figuring out whether the flag was from Ground Zero.

“Oh my gosh! I figured it was incredibly patriotic for one thing. Just to know I’m looking at something this important,” Schneck said.

He said that he began to examine the particles from the flag and compared with the dust particles captured from Ground Zero after the attack and during the cleanup. He also analyzed the original photograph.

“If you look at the original photograph from 9/11 you see a certain black electric tape holding two lines together and they had the same general profile so I knew then, well, this could be it,” he added.

Schneck said he analyzed his findings over and over again and is now certain that the flag was from Ground Zero.

He said he was invited to the ceremonies that are set to take place Sunday to remember the 15th anniversary of the terror attacks, but he declined saying that he’s no hero and that Americans should all remember the victims, first responders and the families involved in the attacks.

Everett police have asked the public to help find the man who dropped off the flag.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from Q13 Fox.</s>Flag firefighters raised at ground zero returns to site

NEW YORK (AP) — An American flag that firefighters hoisted at ground zero in the hours after the 9/11 terror attacks returns to the World Trade Center site after disappearing for more than a decade.

The 3-foot-by 5-foot flag goes on display Thursday at the Sept. 11 museum in New York.

It was the centerpiece of a photo that became a defining image of patriotic perseverance. The image shows three firefighters raising the flag over the rubble.

The flag was turned in two years ago by an as-yet-unidentified man at a firehouse in Everett, Washington.

Painstaking tests and examinations indicated it was indeed the same Star Spangled Banner.

The History Channel will air a documentary about the flag's recovery on Sunday, the 15th anniversary of the attacks.</s>NEW YORK (AP) - An American flag that firefighters hoisted at Ground Zero in the hours after the 9/11 terror attacks returns to the World Trade Center site after disappearing for more than a decade.

The 3×5-foot flag goes on display Thursday at the Sept. 11 museum in New York.

It was the centerpiece of a photo that became a defining image of patriotic perseverance. The image shows three firefighters raising the flag over the rubble.

The flag was turned in two years ago by an as-yet unidentified man at a firehouse in Everett, Washington.

Painstaking tests and examinations indicated it was indeed the same Star Spangled Banner.</s>Go inside the chaos and courage of the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York in "9/11: Fifteen Years Later," airing Sunday, September 11, at 8p ET

(CNN) On September 11, 2001, amid the burning ashes of the World Trade Center, three New York City firefighters hoisted a small American flag removed from a nearby yacht. It was 5 p.m. on a day that would radically change the course of history.

The image, captured by a former photographer from The Bergen Record, became a symbol of hope and resiliency in the face of unimaginable tragedy.

But within hours of its raising, the flag disappeared from the World Trade Center site.

The iconic flag is now back in New York City, 15 years after it went missing.

It will be displayed near the entrance of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, built on the site of ground zero.

Its reappearance is as mysterious as its disappearance.

The original flag was "either misplaced, stolen or secreted away by unknown forces in the chaos of ground zero," according to Michael Tucker, who produced, wrote and directed the film with his wife, Petra Epperlein.

When an official was sent to pick up the original flag a week or so after 9/11, he apparently received a larger flag which was flown at subsequent events, the film's director said.

That was the flag that flew over Yankee Stadium during a 9/11 Prayer Service on September 23, and fluttered over the USS Roosevelt as the aircraft carrier sent missions over Afghanistan.

A man who only identified himself as a retired Marine named "Brian" turned it over to a local fire station in November 2014.

The only other information Brian gave was that he had been given the flag on Veterans Day 2007 by a man who had received it from the widow of a 9/11 firefighter, said Everett Deputy Police Chief Mark St. Clair. Brian then vanished.

Among those who died on that fateful day were 343 firefighters.

Everett detectives launched a search for Brian. They even released a sketch of him to the local newspaper in the hopes that he would be identified and could provide more helpful information about the flag. However, their efforts proved futile.

DNA discovered on electrical tape on the flag's halyard did not match DNA from any of the three firefighters who raised the flag on 9/11, or the owners and crew of the yacht where the flag had initially flown.

At the Washington State Patrol laboratory, forensic scientist William Schneck spent weeks analyzing photos, the flag's fibers and thousands of dust particles -- comparing them to a pure sample of World Trade Center dust taken from a New York City fire truck at ground zero.

The composition of "pulverized building material" was a match. According to the lab report, the flag and its accompanying ropes had been exposed to the World Trade Center dust cloud in September 2001.

"We wanted to be thorough and complete and be able to have the investigation stand independently," said Everett Detective Jim Massingale, a retired Army Ranger. "We knew it would be scrutinized."

A retired New York Police Department officer who now works with the Everett Police Department held the flag as it was being packaged to return to New York City.

"He actually grabbed onto that flag, held it up to his face and smelled it, and turned and looked at me and said, 'That's the smell that I remember from that day,'" said Detective Michael Atwood.</s>NEW YORK (AP) - An American flag raised at Ground Zero on Sept. 11 in a defining moment of patriotic resolve took its place at the site Thursday after disappearing for over a decade.

The 3-foot-by-5-foot flag took a symbolic and curious journey from a yacht moored in lower Manhattan to the smoking wreckage of the World Trade Center, then to a firehouse about 2,400 miles away in Everett, Washington — and now to a glass case at the National Sept. 11 Museum.

“In a museum that’s filled with such deeply powerful artifacts, this newest of artifacts is certainly one of the most emotionally and historically powerful,” museum President Joe Daniels said as the display was unveiled Thursday, three days before the 15th anniversary of the terror attacks.

The flag’s absence, he said, “just felt like a hole in the history of this site.”

The flag is the centerpiece of one of the most resonant images of American fortitude on 9/11. After plucking the flag from a nearby boat, three firefighters hoisted it amid the ashen destruction as photographer Thomas E. Franklin of The Record of Hackensack, New Jersey, captured the scene. The Pulitzer Prize-winning picture inspired a postage stamp, sculpture and other tributes.

Meanwhile, the flag was signed by New York’s governor and two mayors and flown at Yankee Stadium, outside City Hall and on an aircraft carrier near Afghanistan — except it wasn’t the right flag. It was bigger, and by 2004, the yacht’s owners had publicly broached the error.

By then, officials had no idea what had happened to the real flag.

They were in the dark until November 2014, when a man turned up at an Everett fire station with what is now the museum’s flag, saying he’d seen a recent documentary about the mystery.

The man, who gave firefighters only the name “Brian,” said he’d gotten it as a gift from an unnamed National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration worker who’d gotten it from an unidentified 9/11 widow.

The detectives gathered surveillance video and circulated a police sketch, but they haven’t found the man or been able to confirm his explanation of the flag’s provenance. DNA tests of material found on electrical tape wrapped around the flag’s halyard didn’t match the firefighters or other people known to have handled the flag.

But a forensic expert analyzed dust on the flag and halyard and found it consistent with Ground Zero debris.

Meanwhile, the detectives scrutinized photos and videos of the flag-raising and consulted one of the yacht’s former crew members to compare the flag’s size, material, stitching, hardware and halyard.

Taking all the evidence together, “we feel it’s very likely the one captured in the photo,” said Massingale, now with the Stillaguamish Police Department on the Stillaguamish Tribe’s reservation in Washington.

The yacht’s owners, Shirley Dreifus and the late Spiros E. Kopelakis, were so surprised when first told the flag might have resurfaced that Kopelakis wondered whether the call was a prank, Dreifus said. She and Chubb Insurance donated the flag to the museum.</s>U.S. returns to 1 World Trade Center 15 years after attacks

NEW YORK, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The U.S. federal government on Friday marked its return to the rebuilt 1 World Trade Center, moving its New York City offices back to Lower Manhattan 15 years after the Sept. 11 attacks that had reduced the site to rubble.

"Today is meant to be an uplifting day, a sign of our determination to move forward," said U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson at an event on the 63rd floor.

Also known as the Freedom Tower, the 104-story 1 World Trade Center is the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere, at 1,776 feet (541 meters).

Construction began in 2006 and the building opened in 2014 when media company Conde Nast, the anchor tenant, moved in. About 67 percent of its 3 million square feet is now leased.

The federal government was one of the first tenants in the original World Trade Center in the 1970s, said Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Executive Director Patrick Foye. The General Services Administration had leased space at 6 World Trade Center before it was destroyed in the attacks.

The government became the third tenant in the new building when the General Services Administration signed the lease on its behalf in 2012.

On Sept. 11, 2001, four U.S. commercial airplanes were hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center's twin towers, as well as the Pentagon building near Washington D.C. and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people.

The federal government's return to the World Trade Center sends a "message to the entire world that we will never, ever renounce our values or be afraid," New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

More than 1,000 employees of the GSA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol had moved into the space by March, a spokeswoman said. The lease for the approximately 220,000 square feet is $15 million per year.

Still, not everyone was happy about the return of government agencies to the building. In 2015, six GSA employees sued to try to block the move, saying they feared the rebuilt tower would again be a target for possible attacks. A federal judge in Manhattan threw out the case in June.

In Washington on Friday, members of the U.S. House of Representatives gathered on the exterior steps to the chamber for a remembrance ceremony and sang God Bless America.

Recalling "that terrible day," House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, spoke of the first responders "who went rushing into danger when the whole world was running away from it."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, told the assembly that because of the first responders' heroic efforts, "Americans rose united" from the rubble of the attacks.

For one of those first responders, Michael Byrne, a former New York City firefighter who is now a senior FEMA official, the return of federal government employees to the World Trade Center site is deeply personal.

At the event in Lower Manhattan, Byrne said that as he walks past the memorial to his office each morning, he bids "hello" to friends who died in the 2001 attacks and asks for their blessing.

"We feel the renewed commitment in this beautiful building to continuing the mission for which our former friends gave their life," he said. (Reporting by Hilary Russ; Additional reporting by Richard Cowan in Washington; Editing by Bernadette Baum)</s>A flag rises in one of the most iconic photographs of Sept. 11, 2001. Three firefighters took it from the Star of America yacht in the Hudson River and raised it on an angled pole amidst the ruins of the World Trade Center.

Within five hours, the flag was gone, but it lived on in the photograph by photojournalist Thomas Franklin, a symbol of hope and resilience following the terrorist attack.

The flag resurfaced two years ago, and today is being introduced at the National September 11 Memorial Museum, three days before the 15th anniversary of the attacks. But what happened in those missing years is unknown. The first clue is a man only known as Brian. No last name, no address, no phone number.

Brian arrived at a fire station in Everett, Washington on Nov. 4, 2014, according to HeraldNet. He was holding a plastic bag with a 3-foot by 5-foot U.S. flag inside and a halyard -- the rope and the brass and silver hardware used to hang the flag on a pole.

Brian told the firefighters he had been watching a documentary on historical artifacts, and one segment detailed the missing ground zero flag. He said he was a Marine and was given the flag in honor of his military service on Veterans Day 2007. Before that, he said the flag was with an employee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who had been given the flag by a 9/11 widow.

John W. Cutter, who was a member of the New York Police Department’s criminal intelligence section and retired as a deputy chief in 2004, said in a History Channel program to debut Sunday that flags used at burials typically do not include halyards.

“This leads me to believe that he received the flag in some other fashion and is afraid to say how he got it,” Cutter said.

Brian told the firefighters he would like the flag returned to the people of New York City. He said he didn’t want a reward or publicity. Then he left. Multiple attempts to find the man since then — including a police sketch and scouring surveillance footage — have failed.

Detectives Jim Massingale and Mike Atwood took over the flag investigation, with the Everett police department keeping it secret. They quickly learned the flag originally belonged to Star of America yacht owners Shirley Dreifus and her husband, Spiros Kopelakis. Their insurance company reimbursed them, after the flag was taken by the firefighters on September 11, and subsequently lost.

The detectives sent the flag in for forensics testing and found out by Christmas that the debris residue on the flag was consistent with the dust from ground zero.

“We got to handle the flag several times. It was pretty powerful,” Massingale said. “It was powerful to hold it in your hands.”

The flag matched in size, nylon material and stitching to the one in the September 11 photo. Certain oddities about the halyard, tape and rope in the September 11 photos matched as well.

The yacht’s second mate, Monica Rosero, flew out to look at the flag and halyard in Everett. She said the black electrical tape on the rope was the work of her late husband and she was 80 percent sure it was the same flag.

A former FBI agent and art fraud expert said priceless paintings are less scrutinized than the flag in Everett was, according to HeraldNet.

“I feel very strongly that’s the halyard in the photograph,” Massingale told HeraldNet, saying the same about the flag.

The two breathed a sigh of relief on Aug. 4 when a museum curator came to the police station to collect the flag and halyard, knowing it was headed back home to Manhattan.

Shirley Dreifus told The New York Times she was saddened that her husband died two years ago and could not share the news. She said he had called it “the icon of the century.”

“It’s truly amazing,” Dreifus said. “In fact, ‘stunning’ is the way I put it.”

But 13 years of the flag’s life remain a mystery.

“We didn’t have an agenda. We were never pressured to say it’s the flag,” Massingale said. “People will draw their own conclusions based on the investigation.”</s>9/11 flag believed to be lost found in Washington state

EVERETT, Wash. (AP) — A U.S. flag that turned up in Washington state in 2014 is believed to be the flag that was raised by firefighters above the site of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

The finding comes after a two-year investigation by the Everett Police Department, with assistance from forensic experts. The flag will be donated to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

Exactly how the flag wound up in Everett, a city about 30 miles north of Seattle, is a mystery. The flag disappeared from ground zero during the site cleanup. The police investigation began in November 2014, when a man dropped off a flag at an Everett fire station.

Former Everett Police Detective Jim Massingale told ( http://bit.ly/2cbtGrC ) The Daily Herald "the flag is likely the same flag."</s>A U.S. flag that turned up in Washington state in 2014 is believed to be the flag that was raised by firefighters above the site of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

The finding comes after a two-year investigation by the Everett Police Department, with assistance from forensic experts.

Former Everett Police Detective Jim Massingale, one of the investigators who worked on the case, told The Daily Herald 'the flag is likely the same flag.'

It will be donated to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, and is set to be unveiled at the museum on Thursday during a ceremony in New York.

Exactly how the three-foot by five-foot flag wound up in Everett, a city about 30 miles north of Seattle, is still a mystery.

On September 11, 2001, the flag was captured in an iconic photo taken by photojournalist Thomas Franklin as three New York City firefighters held the banner above the rubble of where the World Trade Center twin towers once stood.

The firefighters had taken the flag from the Star of America, a nearby yacht moored in the Hudson River, owned by Shirley Dreifus and her husband Spiros Kopelakis, according to The Daily Herald.

Using electrical tape to bind together two lengths of rope, the firefighters raised the flag in what would later become an image of hope following the terrorist attacks.

The photo was printed around the world, was turned into a stamp and won several awards including 2002 Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Breaking News Photography.

But within five hours of the flag and its halyard being raised and captured in the mage by Franklin, it disappeared from ground zero during the site cleanup.

At the time, no one at the scene had known it had gone missing, and another flag had surfaced that was believed to be the one from the Star of America.

That flag was taken on the USS Theodore Roosevelt through a tour of the Middle East, and on April 1, 2002 was raised formally in front of New York's City Hall.

However, when it was returned to the yacht's owners in the summer of 2002, Dreifus along with crew members realized it was not the original flag.

The flag returned to Dreifus measured three feet by eight feet, but the one from her yacht measured three feet by five feet - and the start of the mystery began, according to Gothamist.

The police investigation began in November 2014, when a man who said he was a former Marine who served in Iraq had dropped off a flag at an Everett fire station.

The man, who only identified himself as Brian, handed a plastic shopping bag to firefighters, telling them he had watched an episode of Lost History on the History Channel.

During the show, host Brad Meltzer had detailed the disappearance of the flag at ground zero.

Brian claimed he had the flag and halyard, which he said was given to him by an employee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

He said the employee had received the flag from the widow of a 9/11 victim, according to the Daily Herald.

Brian said he was given the flag from the employee in honor of his military service on Veterans Day in 2007, and hoped the flag would be returned to New York.

However, with the flag still having some of its equipment and rope attached to it, a detective told the History Channel he had doubts the flag had originally come from the widow of a 9/11 victim, according to Gothamist.

In the meantime, the flag was stored in a separate evidence room with stricter protocols and was kept secret by Everett police while forensics experts tested it for its authenticity.

Over a two-year period, the detectives' investigation included DNA analysis, photographic comparisons and eyewitness identification.

Among tests for authenticity included a chemical analysis of trace evidence from the flag and halyard.

The New York City fire also department provided DNA from the three firefighters who raised the flag, but DNA found on the flag did not match those snapped in the photo.

Investigators had also made an attempt to compare the DNA of others who might have handled the flag, including Monica Rosero who worked on the yacht.

Rosero and Dreifus also sent personal items that belonged to their late husbands for testing, but nothing definite came back.

Rosero, who was flown to Everett by The History Channel, said she was 80 per cent sure the flag was from the yacht, noting she was more certain about the halyard.

Detectives also studied hundreds of photos of the flag for any similarities between it and the flag in Everett.

Investigators also tried to locate Brian, releasing a sketch of him in the hopes of finding him.

It has finally been determined after two years that there is enough evidence from the witness reports to trace evidence that proved the flag was the one from the yacht.

'I feel very strongly that's the halyard in the photograph,' Massingale told The Daily Herald, with his former partner Everett Police detectives Mike Atwood adding 'I'm even more confident.'

'It all just lines up,' Deputy Police Chief Mark St Clair said.

The flag was donated to the the National September 11 Memorial & Museum by Dreifus, the surviving owner of the Spirit of America.</s>Clinton to visit ground zero on 9/11 anniversary

NEW YORK (AP) — Hillary Clinton's campaign said Friday she now plans to visit ground zero to mark the fifteenth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks.

Clinton will arrive at the memorial Sunday morning before the annual moment of silence at 8:46 a.m., marking the moment that the first plane struck the skyscraper's north tower, her spokeswoman Julie Wood told The Associated Press on Friday.

Clinton, who was a senator from New York when the attacks took place in 2001, had not previously indicated that she would visit the memorial for its annual commemoration. But her campaign notified officials at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum late Thursday that she would like to attend the morning's events, according to a person briefed on the decision but not authorized to speak publicly before her visit was officially announced.

The former Secretary of State is not expected to make any public remarks.

Her Republican rival, New York native Donald Trump, is not slated to attend. A spokeswoman for Trump declined to discuss the celebrity businessman's schedule for the day.

Both campaigns have confirmed they intend to halt television ads for the anniversary, keeping with a tradition of avoiding partisan presidential politics on 9/11.

A spokesman for the September 11 memorial told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the museum had not heard from either candidate that they planned to attend but indicated that a last-minute change would be welcome. Clinton's decision to mark the anniversary at the World Trade Center site has a precedent: in 2008, the last time an incumbent wasn't running for the White House, Barack Obama and John McCain set aside their political differences to make a joint appearance at the site in New York.

Trump and Clinton are the first New Yorkers to become their parties' nominees for president since nearly 3,000 people died in the Sept. 11 attacks. Both candidates have made their experiences that day part of their campaign narratives.

Clinton has frequently highlighted her efforts — including in a campaign ad released Friday — to aid those affected by the World Trade Center collapse. She made frequent trips to the attack site and her staff has highlighted her efforts to help secure medical benefits for first responders sickened at ground zero.

Trump, meanwhile, has said he donated construction equipment to the recovery effort and gave $100,000 to the memorial after touring it for the first time earlier this year. But he also received widespread criticism for claiming that "thousands and thousands" of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated when the towers toppled, a claim for which there is no proof.

The lower Manhattan memorial — now a peaceful open space flanked by soaring new skyscrapers — has hosted President Barack Obama and other elected officials at previous commemorations but in recent years, including Sunday, the speakers at the event will largely be family members of the deceased.

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The Police Department of Everett, Washington, identifies and returns the American flag from the September 11 attacks to Ground Zero, the World Trade Center site in New York City.