Mamdani Expected to Announce Release of 9/11-Related Documents
· Time
As the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York City approaches, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has directed the public release of a trove of documents related to the tragedy.
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Mamdani is reportedly set to address the release of the pages on Tuesday. The documents look into the city's investigation into air quality in Lower Manhattan following the attacks on the World Trade Center. In June, the mayor allocated $34.2 million of the city’s $126-billion budget for the 2027 fiscal year to create a public portal of these documents.
“So many of these New Yorkers are ones who made the decision to run towards Ground Zero,” Mamdani told CBS News last week. “And for that, they have suffered medically, and the city should be there for them.”
The New York Times, which had early access to the documents and also reported that the first batch will be released Tuesday, said the trove includes “air quality reports, contamination records, and correspondence among city officials.” Some of the pages were among the documents reportedly found in 68 boxes stashed in a city office, which advocates argue had been kept away from the public for years.
While the Times said that the documents offer only a smattering of reports taken around ground zero and many are “presumably absent,” the so-called Harding memo from 2001, which reportedly displayed city leaders preparing for potential liability to thousands of residents over their claims of toxic air, is believed to be among the pages.
A spokesperson for the mayor told NY1 in July that the portal is expected to host millions of documents, and the mayor’s office has said that additional documents will be added on a rolling basis.
TIME has reached out to Mayor Mamdani’s office for comment.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed on 9/11, but more people are believed to have been killed by diseases related to the attack. The World Trade Center Health Program, which provides no-cost monitoring and treatment for covered 9/11-related health conditions, said thousands continue to be diagnosed with ailments resulting from their exposure to dust, smoke, debris, and the traumatic events.
The city’s Fire Department released a report on Sept. 1 detailing the lasting effects of the 9/11 tragedy on first responders. More than 12,000 FDNY members have been diagnosed and certified with at least one related physical or mental health condition, including cancers, according to the report.
What do we know about the content of the documents?
The documents the Times obtained reportedly included records related to 15 John Street, near the collapsed World Trade Center, which purportedly detected asbestos—at times exceeding acceptable limits—about a year after the attack.
Among the pages was also an audit from November 2001, submitted to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which reportedly showed high concentrations of benzene, a cancer-causing substance, in the air near the towers.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said that exposure to these contaminants increases the risk of developing health conditions, such as illnesses concerning the airways and digestive systems. The CDC added that after the attacks, around 400,000 people were exposed to these contaminants and other factors that increased their risk for such conditions.
Why Mamdani is under pressure
The release of the documents coincides with Mamdani drawing calls from families of victims of the tragedy and some Republican politicians not to attend the 9/11 remembrance event in New York City on Friday.
In July, 9/11 widower Giovanni Galante began a petition against Mamdani’s attendance, citing concerns over “Mamdani's public positions, associations, and responses to rhetoric that many perceive as hostile.” The petition cites Mamdani’s refusal to condemn those who say “globalize the intifada” as one of the issues. The petition also references Mamdani’s appointment of Ramzi Kassem, who worked for the Biden Administration, as chief counsel to the mayor. Kassem served as legal counsel for Ahmed al-Darbi, who plead guilty to charges stemming from a 2002 al-Qaeda tanker bombing plot and who is the brother-in-law of one of the hijackers in the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.
Former New York Gov. George Pataki told a local CBS affiliate on Thursday that Mamdani should first reject Hasan Piker, who previously earned public ire over a comment that the U.S. “deserved” the attack. Mamdani has already denounced Piker’s comment.
Rudy Giuliani, who was the mayor of New York in 2001, told right-leaning news organization Newsmax that Mamdani should skip the event. “Having lost friends there and being very close to many of the families, it offends me that he's coming,” Giuliani said. The former mayor also attacked Mamdani’s religion, Islam, and baselessly suggested the mayor was supportive of Muslim extremist ideology.
Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor who was nine years old when the attack happened, has long faced Islamophobic comments. Speaking to the Times last year, Mamdani lamented how the 2001 attacks had made anti-Muslim prejudice “a fact of life” for Muslim-Americans, claiming: “It was this horrific day that was also, for many New Yorkers, the moment at which they were marked an ‘other.’”
Before Giuliani’s comments, Mamdani signed city executive orders designating Sept. 11 a New York-wide "Day of Remembrance and Service" and updating emergency preparedness procedures. But the signing caught the ire of some critics after Mamdani handed the 9/11 ceremonial pen to Kassem.
Despite the pushback, Mamdani still plans to attend the commemoration on Friday.
“I’m proud to be the mayor of this city,” Mamdani said. “I love this city. I love this country. And what I want this week to be a focus on is on the families whose loved ones were stolen from them 25 years ago in the horrific act of terror of September 11th, and a focus also on the first responders who gave everything they could to this city and to the people who came together to try and help their fellow New Yorkers.”