By Bob Hennelly 

For years now, members of Congress and 9/11 WTC advocates have been rebuffed in their bid for the records maintained by the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations about what they knew and when they knew it regarding the deadly air in lower Manhattan and western Brooklyn following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Three days after the 9/11 attack, Christine Todd Whitman, then-head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, told reporters, "The good news continues to be that air samples we have taken have all been at levels that cause us no concern." Two years later, an investigation by the EPA Inspector General found that the agency "did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement" when it did.

On Wednesday, New York City Council Oversight Committee Chair Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan) is convening a hearing on a bill she hopes changes that. Resolution 560 is a binding resolution that relies on an obscure provision in the New York City Charter that would empower the City Department of Investigation to obtain and review all those documents at issue.

“This is a novel approach because obviously other approaches like asking the Mayor’s office---asking the Corporation Counsel for the information as to what New York City has in its files regarding 9/11 concerning  the toxics that’s been killing people has not proven effective,” Brewer told Work-Bites. “The reason to get the information from the city files  is it might  help clarify what the issues were and help us address the ongoing health issues.”

Brewer also maintains that the city officials, past and present,  be held accountable for “what the city did or didn’t do.”

“There are already over 130,000 people who are in the World Trade Center Health Program and it’s important for everyone to know what they were exposed to and what the city knew when because people were in and out of the zone at different times,” Andy Ansbro, Uniformed Firefighters Association president told Work-Bites.

Ansbro added, “The fact that the city and Rudy Giuliani were conspiring to keep what they knew a secret at the same time people were being exposed is the real crime here. I think we can all agree in the early days it was a free-for -all and we were doing everything we could. But had we known about the seriousness of what they knew, perhaps safety protocols would have been more strictly enforced and adhered to.”

In the latest denial, Mayor Eric Adams cited concerns over the city’s potential legal liability should it make the files public.

“New York City must weigh the costs of such a review against the potential benefits, which are likely limited,” Adams wrote.

On 9/11, the FDNY lost 343 members. In the years since, the occupational death toll for firefighters is closing in on 400. The number of overall 9/11 WTC disease deaths has now exceeded the close to 3,000 death toll from the day of the attack.

Overall, close to 130,000 first responders and civilian survivors are enrolled in the 9/11 WTC Health Program with thousands suffering from multiple conditions related to their exposure to the toxic air quality the day of the attack and during that clean up that extended into May of the following year.

It was the EPA’s Inspector General that pierced the EPA’s false narrative. On Friday, President Donald Trump summarily fired 17 Inspector Generals in violation of the law that requires Congress get a 30-day advance notification.

In 2003, the EPA IG reported that “Air-monitoring data was lacking for several pollutants of concern. The report flagged that President George W. Bush's White House Council on Environmental Quality heavily edited the EPA press releases "to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones."

The IG found that the Council described the readings as just "slightly above" the limit, despite samples taken indicated asbestos levels in lower Manhattan were double or even triple the EPA's limit.

When the agency watchdog tried to determine who had written the press releases, investigators "were unable to identify any EPA official who claimed ownership," because they were told by the EPA Chief of Staff that there was "joint ownership between EPA and the White House," which gave final approval.

Back in the final months of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration,  the then chairs of the U.S. House Oversight Committee and the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney wrote the City of New York  requesting the release of any documents in the city's possession pertaining to what it knew about the air quality in and around the World Trade Center in the days, weeks and months following the destruction of the World Trade Center by terrorists and the toxic conditions it left behind.  

Nothing was forthcoming.

In April of last year, Representatives Jerrold Nadler (NY-12) and Dan Goldman (NY-10) once again wrote Mayor Adams requesting the release of the 9/11 WTC files.

"Instead of simply releasing the requested documents, the City continues to publicly contradict itself. In 2001, while then-Mayor Giuliani’s administration publicly stated that the air was safe to breathe, they were privately predicting 10,000 liability claims for injuries from toxic exposures.,” Nadler and Goldman wrote.

Nadler and Goldman referenced an October 2001 memorandum to Deputy Mayor Robert Harding that asserted “the city was facing up to 10,000 liability claims related to 9/11, including toxic tort cases that might arise in the next few decades.”

At the time, the Giuliani administration did not contradict the EPA's pronouncements that the "air was safe to breathe." For a number of years, into Mayor Bloomberg's tenure, the city steadfastly dismissed the occupational health concerns expressed by the unions representing workers who were on the front lines of the response and clean-up that followed.

Joseph Zadroga was the retired chief of police of North Arlington, NJ. His son NYPD Detective James Zadroga, for whom the original 9/11 bill was named, died in 2006 from his World Trade Center-related health issues. 

Joe Zadroga maintained that the City of New York and the NYPD’s refusal to concede that his son’s illness was a result of his 9/11 WTC illness compounded the family’s suffering. The elder Zadroga died in 2024 in a traffic accident.

"We didn't get the acknowledgement people were getting sick until after he died," Zadroga said in 2022. "Luckily, he died in New Jersey so when the Medical Examiner did the autopsy he put on the death certificate he died of all of the contaminants from 9/11 and that blew it all wide open. Prior to that, all the editors and producers—Senators—members of Congress—anybody you would talk to—were told to leave the story alone."

At a particular low point right after Zadroga's death, billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg went so far as to say that Zadroga was not a hero, but a drug addict. He subsequently apologized to the Zadroga family.

At the very end of the Biden administration, a deal that would have provided permanent funding for 9/11 World Trade Center Health Program that was part of a much larger spending bill brokered by House Speaker Mike Johnson. It blew up after President Trump and Elon Musk attacked the last minute pact as bloated.

WBAI will broadcast the City Council hearing at 10 am. Wednesday.

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