NEW YORK—In the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks on Manhattan and D.C., New York City officials—along with Republican President George W. Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency—hid the threat of toxic fumes, asbestos particles, ashes, dust, and flaming jet fuel from the public, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Sept.8.
That exposed the first responders, firefighters, and others, plus residents, office workers, and even school children in lower Manhattan to dangerous and often fatal illnesses, including rare cancers.
That’s especially true for the workers who spent months afterwards combing through the rubble of the World Trade Center, seeking the remains of the almost 3,000 people who died there when the Twin Towers collapsed into what was called “The Pile.”
In the weeks following that day, 25 years ago, thousands of the first responders, including many building trades workers, unknowingly inhaled that toxic mixture. More than 10,000 people have died since in illnesses linked to work at the site.
Now the city is exposing that not only did the Bush administration say the air around Ground Zero was safe to breathe—after Bush brushed off the al-Qaeda threat detailed by the CIA a month before—but that city officials, led by GOP Mayor Rudy Giuliani, echoed that line while searching for ways to avoid city liability for the illnesses and deaths.
“People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air. And then when they began to contend with the symptoms of the illnesses that followed, the government that had not hesitated to send them into harm’s way was nowhere to be found,” said Mamdani.
He announced the city had found a cache of 170,000 documents in 68 boxes in a locked disused storeroom, revealing the role of the city’s prior administrations.
Mamdani expects more documents will be found and more people will come forward to apply for funds from the federal program which covers the medical bills, disability payments, and survivors benefits for 9/11 victims and their family members or survivors.
The 9/11 payments go to some 140,000 people in all 50 states, but that doesn’t include many lower Manhattan residents exposed to the dust, gases, asbestos, and ash blowing into their homes and apartments as the Twin Towers crashed, or to then-school children, now adults, who could seek aid.
The results have been millions of dollars in medical bills, an extraordinarily high number of deaths from rare illnesses including unusual cancers, permanent disability for thousands of people—both Pile workers and residents of Lower Manhattan—and years of family suffering, often aggravated by political opposition to their aid.
President Donald Trump and his supporters in government have opposed extending that aid to many in need. As the city announced its new findings, Trump has not come forward with any promises of continued or improved federal aid to the victims.
The survivors who worked on The Pile and kept inhaling those fumes continue to die even now. The latest was on Sept. 3. Following a wake of several days and a mass, Fire Fighters union Local 94 buried 28-year veteran John Marsh of Engine Company 242, who retired 12 years ago. His 9/11-related illness was not disclosed.
The Fire Fighters from New York City Locals 94 and 354 were called to rush to the Twin Towers after the commandeered jets hit the buildings that morning. A third jet hit the Pentagon in the D.C. suburbs. A fourth jet crashed in rural Pennsylvania, killing everyone, when the passengers fought the hijackers aboard the plane.
Only when Mamdani took questions after his remarks did the name of Republican Rudy Giuliani, then known as “America’s Mayor” for his response to the disaster, arise. One questioner asked whether Giuliani, who later became infamous—and disbarred—for lying to lawmakers about Trump’s vote fraud accusations, should face criminal charges. Mamdani said prosecutors will decide.
Other mayors since Giuliani knew about the cache of documents and the efforts to avoid city liability, he explained. “This was multiple mayoral administrations refusing to release documents that New Yorkers were owed,” he said. The questioner had asked specifically about the responsibility of Mamdani’s predecessor, scandal-scarred conservative Democrat Eric Adams.
Added the sole union leader to speak at the Sept.8 session, Tom Hart, president of Operating Engineers Local 94: “You can’t heal what you don’t reveal.” His members also dug through the rubble or manned the cranes to move the debris.
Giuliani and Republican Christine Todd Whitman, Bush’s EPA administrator, both said the air around The Pile was safe to breathe and the first responders didn’t need personal protective equipment, particularly masks and respirators.
Instead, Whitman said then and repeated to news media on Sept. 8 that the city was responsible for air quality warnings around the Twin Towers site. The documents, which will be indexed and put online for public perusal, showed Giuliani administration officials discussing how—or if—the city could avoid legal liability.
In an interview with CNN, Whitman also said she recommended no protection based on initial advice from EPA scientists, without detailing that advice.
The New York press conference topped several statements from union leaders as the 9/11 anniversary neared. The AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department used the occasion to oppose measures to weaken airport security, particularly privatization of the Transport Security Officers, the airport screeners.
The Trump administration wants to let thousands of the officers go and eliminate their union contracts and protections, along with those of a million other federal workers. It also wants to privatize the TSO workforce at two major airports, including Washington National, with more to follow.
“We must never forget why passenger screening was federalized in the first place,” said Greg Regan, the department president. “Prior to 9/11, airport screening was contracted out by airlines and airport authorities” to private firms, “with insufficient focus on comprehensive threats,” he explained.
“This system failed to detect the hijackers’ weapons, a catastrophic lapse.” That’s why Congress federalized screening through the Transportation Security Agency.
“Efforts to haphazardly privatize the TSA would abandon the lessons of Sept. 11 and reopen the very security gap that made the attacks possible.”
Mamdani and officials who spoke at the City Hall press conference made it clear that city inaction, including refusal to release the cache of documents earlier, was wrong.
“The devastating truth is that the suffering did not end once the smoke cleared and the dust settled. For so many New Yorkers who lived or worked or studied near Ground Zero, and for the thousands of others who worked on The Pile, recovering those we lost and clearing the rubble, that was only the beginning of years of hardship and illness that would follow,” Mamdani said.
“It would be one thing if government had stood alongside survivors and provided them with everything they needed at every step of the way. And yet, we know that could not be further from what actually happened.
“The September 11th victim compensation fund, which provides survivors with the compensation they so deeply deserve, exists today because of those on this stage and beyond who returned to Washington again and again for nearly a decade—often while struggling deeply with the illnesses they could not afford to have treated—to beg their government to come to their aid as they had come to ours,” the mayor concluded.
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