‘They Don’t Want People to See’: Group Challenges City’s Delays in Releasing 9/11 Health Documents
The outgoing Adams administration is continuing to suppress documents showing what the city government knew about the air at Ground Zero following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
By Steve Wishnia
Mayor Eric Adams’ administration won’t turn over records sought by 9/11 Health Watch while he’s in office.
For the tenth time since the group filed a Freedom of Information Law request in September 2023 for documents showing what the city government knew about health hazards in the Ground Zero area in 2001, the mayor’s office told them it was unable to provide them “due to the volume of requests that we have received.”
The message, sent Dec. 1, told them they could expect a response Mar. 19, 2026. 9/11 Health Watch filed an administrative appeal of that decision Dec. 10, on behalf of surviving relatives of two firefighters, a police detective, and a Lower Manhattan resident.
“These public records concern risk assessments made by the city for the reopening of lower Manhattan and public schools in September 2001, and the city’s knowledge of airborne toxic hazards, existing at that time,” the group said. “We also requested documents explaining why the mayor sought liability protection from toxic-exposure claims while the city assured the public that the air was safe.”
The key question is: “What did the city know and when did it know it?” According to 9/11 Health Watch, when Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney requested similar documents in 2022, representatives of the Adams administration told the House members’ staff that it would only release them if it received protection against liability lawsuits.
That, 9/11 Health Watch director Benjamin Chevat told Work-Bites, “indicated those are documents they don’t want people to see.”
Toxins in the air at the site included carcinogenic asbestos and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, along with lead and lung-clogging particulates such as soot. As of December 2023, almost 6,800 people—rescue and cleanup workers and volunteers, and people who lived or worked in Lower Manhattan—had died of cancer and other illnesses related to exposure to them, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control. The Fire Department announced in September 2024 that the deaths of 32 members from “World Trade Center illnesses” had brought those ailments’ toll to more than 360 members. That exceeds the 343 firefighters killed when the two towers collapsed after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s administration “never meaningfully enforced federal requirements that those at the site wear respirators,” the New York Times reported in 2007.
“As one of the many first responders at Ground Zero on 9/11 and in the weeks that followed, Mayor Adams has been unwavering in his commitment to ensuring victims, their families, first responders, and survivors receive the care and services they deserve,” a spokesperson for the mayor’s office responded. “While we cannot comment on the specifics of pending litigation, the city has begun turning over documents to plaintiff’s counsel, and both parties are working out a schedule to continue this process.”
The Lost-Found DEP Records
9/11 Health Watch is also seeking a court order for officials of the city Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to testify about why they denied the existence of records about Ground Zero health hazards. The DEP told 9/11 Health Watch several times that it could not satisfy the FOIL request for reasons such as “this agency does not have the records requested” and “the records do not exist.” It also sought to have the courts dismiss the FOIL request.
Things changed after the City Council passed a resolution in July “directing the Department of Investigation [DOI] to conduct an investigation to ascertain the knowledge possessed by mayoral administrations on environmental toxins produced by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.” In September, a lawyer for the city told the State Supreme Court judge handling the FOIL-dismissal case that DEP “has located multiple boxes that are believed to contain at least some responsive records.”
That amounted to 68 boxes worth of papers. On Nov. 17, 9/11 Health Watch, two of its lawyers, and Councilmember Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan), sponsor of the July resolution, reviewed the first 24 boxes, which contained about 5,000 pages of records “concerning DEP’s response to the 9/11 attacks.” They largely consisted of records of testing the air and surfaces in and around the ruins for asbestos, metals, and other contaminants, according to court papers filed by the lawyers.
The boxes also contained a 2002 message from Jesse Levine, then assistant chief of the city Law Department’s World Trade Center Unit, instructing city employees to “DO NOT DISPOSE” of any of those documents, because “they must be preserved to serve as evidence in the event future WTC-related legal actions are brought against the city.”
According to the 2007 Times article, in October 2001, Deputy Mayor Robert M. Harding received a memo from his assistant warning that the city might face as many as 10,000 liability claims connected to 9/11, including “toxic tort claims.”
The 9/11 Health Watch group reviewed a second batch of boxes on Dec. 15.
“We remain dedicated to getting 9/11 victims and their families the answers they need,” Adams’ office told Work-Bites. It issued the same statement when the DEP said it had 68 boxes of records.
“If this dedication is genuine, we ask and expect the city to make the responsible DEP officials available for questioning by our attorneys as to why they initially denied there were any records,” 9/11 Health Watch responded.
“We do not have a single page from the other agencies,” it added.
When the March deadline for releasing the documents arrives, Zohran Mamdani will be mayor.
“Mayor-Elect Mamdani can be the mayor who after 25 years answers the question: What did the city know about the hazards caused by the toxic chemicals at Ground Zero, and when did it know it?” Chevat said in a statement. “He can do that by ordering his yet-to-be-named Corporation Counsel to release the ‘Harding Memo’ and the data that went into drafting it, by supporting and fully cooperating with the City Council’s DOI investigation, and by making sure DOI has the funding to do its job.”