Records? What Records?

After Decades of Denial, City Lawyers Admit They Have Files About September 11 Health Risks

Attorneys representing the administration of Mayor Eric Adams have acknowledged that the City possesses records that have been sought for decades, concerning what the municipal government knew about environmental health risks in weeks and months following the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

This new development arises from multiple Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) filings requesting these documents, and the unanimous enactment by the City Council earlier this year of Resolution 560, which compels the City’s Department of Investigation (DOI) to open a formal probe “to ascertain the knowledge possessed by mayoral administrations on environmental toxins produced by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and to submit a report to the Council thereon.”

On September 16, an attorney at the City’s Law Department, Saarah S. Dhinsa, wrote to State Supreme Court James G. Clynes, noting, “Respondent [the City] previously filed a… motion to dismiss on the grounds that the agency had conducted a diligent search for responsive records and reported that none were located at that time.”

She continued, “recently, however, Respondent has located multiple boxes that are believed to contain at least some responsive records. In light of this development, Respondent respectfully withdraws their pending cross-motion to dismiss and requests an additional 30 days to file an answer to the… Petition.”

This marks a dramatic turnaround by the City, which had claimed for many years that no such records existed. In response, one plaintiff in the suit, Benjamin Chevat, executive director of 911 Health Watch (a nonprofit that seeks to ensure the federal government’s long-term commitment to the health and well-being of September 11 responders, survivors, and their families) says, “at base, the public records pertained to risk assessments made by City agencies when reopening Lower Manhattan and public schools in September 2001. Why did the City assure first responders, recovery workers, returning residents, students and office personnel of safe air quality while simultaneously lobbying for federal ‘liability protection’ against thousands of toxic exposure claims it anticipated? What did the City know and when did it know it?”

In a court filing, he says, “we direct the Court’s attention to an astounding ‘about face’ by the City with respect to its September 11th archive, one that raises troubling concerns about compliance with the Freedom of Information Law. This development warrants a hearing, with testimony taken from City witnesses, as to the sufficiency and diligence of the search conducted when responding to the subject FOIL requests. Although it denied the existence of documents responsive to 9/11 Health Watch’s 2023 FOIL requests, and would not provide the materials to New York’s Congressional delegation, more than four-years ago, the City is now flooding DOI with responsive September 11th records, less than two months after the passage of Resolution 560.”

Mr. Chevat also enumerates new questions that 9/11 Health Watch wants the City to answer, such as, “from where did these responsive records, materializing now and being disclosed to DOI, originate?” and “how was the City able to withhold these public records from the United States Congress?” and “why did the City deny the existence of these records when rejecting [the original] FOIL request?”

In the decades since September 2001, the administrations of four mayors (those of Rudolph Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio, and Mr. Adams) have refused to reveal what those records contain. In July 2022, Mr. Adams took a tentative step that had been blocked by his three predecessors, and announced he was willing to consider releasing documents concealed by the administrations of Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Bloomberg, and Mr. de Blasio about information that City Hall had in the weeks following the disaster. But two months later, the Mayor reversed this stance and refused to make public these documents unless City government was first granted immunity against any lawsuits that might arise from them. A year later, when members of New York’s congressional delegation demanded these records, Mayor Adams wrote to the federal legislators, acknowledging that such previously unreleased documents existed, but refusing to hand them over, citing ‘litigation risks.’ He added that increased federal funding and new legislation creating legal protections for the City might cause him to reconsider.

Although Mr. Giuliani said little in public about the dangers posed by environmental toxins at the World Trade Center site during the three months that remained in his tenure after September 11, 2001, one indication of his frame of mind might be gleaned from an action he took two months after the disaster. In November 2001, the Mayor urged members of New York’s Congressional delegation to help pass the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, which specifically capped “the liability for all claims against the City of New York as a result of such attacks to no more than the City’s insurance coverage or $350 million.”

Without adequate warning of the dangers posed by more than 2,500 contaminants (including asbestos, lead, mercury, dioxins, crystalline silica, cadmium, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, along with pulverized concrete and glass) now known to have filled the air and coated every surface for hundreds of yards in all directions, thousands of first responders and cleanup workers flocked to the site, and tens of thousands of local residents returned to their homes. In the decades since, the death toll among these groups has surpassed the number killed during the actual attacks, while the count of those sickened by conditions now linked to exposure to World Trade Center debris is now many times the tally of the dead.