Major John L. Plaster (born 1949) is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces soldier regarded as one of the leading sniper experts in the world. A decorated Vietnam War veteran who served in the covert Studies and Observations Group (SOG), Plaster co-founded a renowned sniper school that trains military and law enforcement personnel in highly specialized sniper tactics. He is the author of The Ultimate Sniper: An Advanced Training Manual for Military and Police Snipers, The History of Sniping and Sharpshooting, and Secret Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines with the Elite Warriors of SOG, a memoir of his 3 years of service with SOG.

Plaster graduated from high school in 1967. He was trained as a communications sergeant in the Special Forces. He served three combat tours in Vietnam as a member of SOG, leading intelligence-gathering and recon teams in North Vietnamese Army-controlled areas of Laos and Cambodia and along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. He was wounded once, and decorated four times, eventually receiving a field commission in recognition of his combat experience. He retired from the military at the rank of Major.

Katherine Anne "Katie" Couric (born January 7, 1957) is an American journalist and author. She serves as special correspondent for ABC News, contributing to ABC World News, Nightline, 20/20, Good Morning America, This Week and primetime news specials. Starting on September 6, 2012, she will host Katie, a syndicated daytime talk show produced by Disney-ABC Domestic Television. She has anchored the CBS Evening News, reported for 60 Minutes, and hosted Today and reported for Dateline NBC. She was the first solo female anchor of a weekday evening news program on one of the three traditional USA broadcast networks. Couric's first book, The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons from Extraordinary Lives was a New York Times best-seller.

As of May 2012, Couric also has a web show for ABC News, entitled Katie's Take, airing weekly on Yahoo.

Couric was born in Arlington, Virginia, the daughter of Elinor Tullie (née Hene), a homemaker and part-time writer, and John Martin Couric Jr., a public relations executive and news editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the United Press in Washington, D.C. Her mother was Jewish, but Couric was raised Presbyterian. Couric's maternal grandparents, Bert Hene and Clara L. Froshin, were the children of Jewish immigrants from Germany. In a report for Today, she traced her paternal ancestry back to a French orphan who immigrated to the U.S. in the nineteenth century and became a broker in the cotton business.

Cyril Richard "Rick" Rescorla (May 27, 1939 – September 11, 2001) was a retired United States Army officer of British birth who served with distinction in Northern Rhodesia as a member of the Northern Rhodesia Police (NRP) and as a soldier in the Vietnam War as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army. As the World Trade Center security chief for the financial services firm Morgan Stanley and Dean Witter, Rescorla anticipated both attacks on the towers and implemented evacuation procedures that are credited with saving many lives. He died in the attacks of September 11, 2001, while leading the evacuation efforts.

He was born Cyril Richard Rescorla in Hayle, Cornwall, England, UK, in 1939. In 1943, his home town of Hayle served as headquarters for the 175th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. 29th Infantry Division, largely composed of American soldiers from Maryland and Virginia preparing for the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Young Rescorla idolized the American soldiers, and wanted to become a soldier because of them.