Twenty-five years ago today, some religious zealots proved their love of humanity by hijacking four planes and flying them into buildings or the ground killing around 3,000 people. A great many questions arose, like why did they do it? Or why was the Bush administration asleep at the wheel? And later, why is America invading Iraq when the attack by Al Qaeda came from Afghanistan? One question, to which most already knew the answer, was “is the air by the smoldering pile that used to be the Twin Towers safe to breathe?” One lungful of it proved it was not, but the government in its desire to keep people calm, lied. Earlier this week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani released 170,000 documents including proof that the authorities knew the air was bad and told people it was safe.
It is not too late to bring charges. Mayors Giuliani, Bloomberg and diBlasio need to testify under oath. More people have died of cancers and other diseases caused by exposure to the air in Lower Manhattan than died in the attack. Justice demands a full investigation and charges against the liars.
“For too long, New Yorkers have had to fight for access to records that should have been available to them in the first place,” Mayor Mamdani said in a statement.
“The devastating truth is that the suffering did not end once the smoke cleared and the dust settled,” Mr. Mamdani also said at a press conference. “People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air.”
Ben Chevat, executive director of 911 Health Watch, said, “For 25 years, four different Mayoral administrations kept from the public, the US Congress, and the city council documents showing what the city actually knew about the danger of the toxic chemicals in lower Manhattan and western Brooklyn after the World Trade Center collapse, even as city officials continued messaging to the public that the air was ‘safe and acceptable’.”
Michelle Goldstein, a City Hall staffer at the time, sent a memo to Deputy Mayor Robert Harding that read in part:
According to the Law Department, there are approximately 35,000 potential plaintiffs as a result of the events of September 11 and it is estimate that 10,000 would file a claim.
Currently, the Tort division handles approximately 8,000 lawsuits per year. A major
concern is that if these cases make it to court, the judges and juries will be biased in favor of plaintiffs (even though the City seems to have a strong defense) and therefore, award substantial damages to compensate individuals for their loss.
She proposed, or more likely was told by lawyers to propose, a “Congressional Fund for the Victims” or a federal indemnification arrangement. The worry was “We have been advised that the City will need to convince Congress that it has a ‘compelling need’ to be bailed out, something in the order of a likelihood of bankruptcy without federal protection. By advocating this we may be inviting litigation.”
There is the motive. The Giuliani administration feared they would lose money from the litigation despite the fact that the city did bear some responsibility, not for the attack, but for the clean-up operations. The so-called “Harding Memo” details various grounds for lawsuits against the city, and the concern that a New York City jury would be biased against the city government was valid.
None of this justifies the lies about the air quality to the people working in Lower Manhattan. Mayor Mamdani has released the City records, but the federal and state governments have information that is still under lock and key.
This journal bears special hostility to the then-head of the EPA, Christie Todd Whitman. On September 14, 2001, she said, “The good news continues to be that air samples we have taken have all been at levels that cause us no concern.”
It just so happens that I went to the Pile on September 14, 2001, and the air burned my throat, made my eyes water. It smelled of burned paper, pulverized concrete, electrical fire and human excrement (3,000 bowels voided at the same time). People were wearing surgical masks two decades before Covid-19. There was a fine dust on almost everything, dust that included things like asbestos and lead. I left thinking the people down in the Pile doing the work were in danger.
That is not to say they were unwilling to work. The union guys did 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week. What they needed was hazmat protection, and they did not get it. The governments (city, state and federal) did nothing to help on that front. It was a chaotic time, and lots of things go wrong in such times. What should not happen, though, is lying about the dangers.
President Obama got bin Laden. The question is will anyone get Ms. Whitman and the rest of the bunch who killed with their lies? The next president needs to release the 9/11 Files.