By: Zaika Yesmin
Ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept.11 terrorist attacks, New York City (NYC) Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the release of more than 170,000 pages of city records detailing the government’s response to the attacks and their aftermath on Sept. 8 at City Hall.
“The very least our city owes the families, survivors and first responders whose lives were forever changed by the Sept. 11 attacks is transparency and accountability,” said Mamdani at the press conference. “For too long, New Yorkers have had to fight for access to records that should have been available to them in the first place.”
The release settled two long-running lawsuits brought by the advocacy group 9/11 Health Watch and included the long-referenced Harding Memo, a set of documents known as the “68 boxes” that went unlocated until 2025 despite repeated Freedom of Information Law requests.
At the press conference, Jon Stewart, former host of “The Daily Show” and longtime advocate for 9/11 first responders, said he wanted to be “fair to the city,” noting officials didn’t publicly acknowledge the toxic air until Oct. 2001.
Stewart criticized past administrations, citing a memo titled “Legislative Alternatives to limit the City’s Liability relating to 9/11/01,” which he claimed was “the city covering their ass,” during the press conference.
John Feal, founder and president of the FealGood Foundation and author of “I Will Follow You Anywhere,” said the release, while historic, contained no “smoking gun”, in an interview with CBS News.
“There was just smoldering facts that we knew that the air quality wasn’t safe,” Feal said. He noted that nearly 10,000 people have died of 9/11-related illnesses since the attacks, and that of the 155,000 people enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program, more than 57,000 have a certified cancer diagnosis.
“That’s one in three [victims],” said Feal. The “Harding Memo,” an Oct. 2001 memo from then-Deputy Mayor Robert Harding, indicated the city knew of the air quality dangers and its own legal liability even as it publicly declared the air safe, according to ABC News.
An undated internal letter to Harding also listed potential grounds for lawsuits against the city, including health advisories that led people to return to the area too soon, rescue workers being given faulty equipment, and police failing to secure businesses from looters, according to NBC News.
Another document showed asbestos on the facade ledge of 15 John Street, away from Ground Zero, in July 2002, ABC News reported.
A separate memo from early in the Michael Bloomberg Administration, five months after 9/11, warned that the city was “leaving itself open to a barrage of lawsuits” and urged officials to “discontinue telling people to clean their apartments with wet mops and rags,” according to NBC.
New York City Corporation Counsel Steven Banks said the City’s Department of Investigation is now looking into what officials knew, when they knew it, and why the information appears to have been withheld, according to NBC.
Banks added that the 170,000 pages released are only the first batch of what could total millions of pages, many of which had been out of the city’s possession for years after being turned over to the WTC Captive Insurance Co., the federal World Trade Center insurer.
Nearly 6,000 people have died of 9/11-related illnesses since the attacks, according to advocacy group 9/11 Health Watch, ABC News reported.
According to 9/11 Health Watch, city officials had stonewalled the group for years, keeping the documents out of view of the public, Congress, and even the New York City Council.
The group’s attorneys said they first uncovered the “Harding Memo”, not through the city, but in a search of 300 boxes of records held in a private collection in Texas, according to the Daily Caller.
The memo itself, sent by City Hall lobbyist Michelle Goldstein to then-Deputy Mayor Robert Harding in October 2001, warned that the city’s Law Department expected as many as 35,000 potential plaintiffs to sue over Ground Zero-related injuries, according to Asbestos.com.
Goldstein recommended that the city push Congress to create a victims’ compensation fund or seek federal protection from future claims, specifically flagging the risk of “toxic tort cases that might arise in the next few decades.”
Just five days after the attacks, the Giuliani administration publicly stated that residents faced a “very low risk” of short- or long-term health effects, even as those internal warnings circulated behind closed doors, according to asbestos.com.
Mamdani framed the release as an ongoing effort, not a one-time disclosure.
“This portal is part of our administration’s enduring commitment to honor those we lost, care for those living with lasting health consequences, and give thousands of New Yorkers the answer they’ve been asking for.”