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NEW YORK — As New Yorkers returned to Lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mayor Rudy Giuliani assured them that the air was safe. Within his administration, officials were discussing whether contaminated areas should reopen, why workers remained inadequately protected and how to shield the city from lawsuits that could arrive decades later.

Nearly 25 years later, those internal discussions are receiving renewed scrutiny through a release of approximately 170,000 pages of city records. Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the disclosure Sept. 8, alongside settlements with 9/11 Health Watch over access to the documents.

“People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air,” Mamdani said at the announcement. Giuliani’s staff has denied a cover-up and blamed federal officials for the safety assurances.

The new public archive brings together environmental records, mayoral files and documents that survivors and advocates spent years seeking. Some had already emerged through reporting and litigation. Their inclusion in a larger collection now allows the public to trace the gap between what city officials said about safety and the risks they discussed among themselves.

Public assurances, private warnings

On Sept. 28, 2001, Giuliani acknowledged that testing occasionally produced unacceptable asbestos readings but described those results as isolated. “The air quality is safe and acceptable,” he said, according to a contemporary CNN report reproduced in a collection of public statements filed in the records dispute. His assurance offered a clear answer to people weighing whether they could return to their homes and workplaces.

https://youtu.be/DzrR0AlU-1Y?si=ZgXU0krE-8kKrQBU&t=330

Watch Giuliani make the statement in archival footage featured by Democracy Now, at approximately 5:31.

The city’s Health Department continued that message into October. An Oct. 5 statement said particulate measurements remained below levels of public-health concern despite smoky conditions and said those conditions posed no long-term health risk to the general public. Inside the department, however, officials were still confronting disagreements about whether particular blocks near Ground Zero were ready to reopen.

An Oct. 6 memorandum by Associate Commissioner Kelly McKinney described pressure from building and business owners to reopen more of the restricted area. Emergency managers considered certain blocks suitable for reoccupation, while the Department of Environmental Protection remained concerned about air quality there.

At a meeting the previous day, DEP Commissioner Joel Miele acknowledged two consecutive days of fiber counts below his department’s concern threshold. Truck routes, the debris pile and other conditions nevertheless left DEP uncomfortable with reopening. McKinney wrote that afterward, he was told the mayor’s office was directing emergency managers to open the areas the following week.

McKinney also reported inadequate compliance with worker protections and gaps in the safety contractor’s authority over police, firefighters and visitors. His account places unresolved hazards and a reopening directive within the same administration. Although the memo does not establish that Giuliani personally read it, it records concerns within city government while public assurances continued.

Preparing for lawsuits

City officials were also considering what would happen when people brought claims over their treatment during and after the disaster. In the Harding memo, reproduced in a February court submission, Michelle Goldstein outlined legislative options for Deputy Mayor Robert Harding to limit the city’s liability. The document is undated, but court filings identify it as an October 2001 memo.

It estimated approximately 35,000 potential plaintiffs and 10,000 claims involving unsafe workplaces, inadequate equipment, cleanup problems, property losses and health advisories. Among the possibilities were claims that official advice caused people to return too soon and suffer toxic exposure or emotional harm. The memo also contemplated economic losses from returning too late, so the 10,000 figure covered several kinds of lawsuits rather than a medical forecast of future illnesses.

Officials considered federal compensation, indemnification and other protections, including measures addressing toxic-exposure litigation that could arise decades later. The potential costs of the disaster were already being examined inside City Hall while New Yorkers were still deciding how to resume their lives.

By November, Congress had enacted a liability protection for the city. Section 201 of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, signed Nov. 19, 2001, limited municipal liability for claims arising from the Sept. 11 aircraft crashes to the greater of the city’s insurance coverage or $350 million. The insurance provision meant the applicable limit could exceed $350 million.

The legislation protected city finances against claims arising from the disaster, but the memo alone does not establish how particular provisions reached Congress. Correspondence with lobbyists and federal officials could show who sought the protections and what information they used.

Giuliani points to Washington

Responding to an NPR inquiry about the disclosure, Giuliani’s staff blamed the Environmental Protection Agency for saying the air was safe. The staff characterized the federal assurance as a mistake and said “no one covered it up,” NPR reported Sept. 8. That response follows years in which Giuliani and his allies have defended the administration’s handling of worker safety.

A 2007 campaign statement preserved by the American Presidency Project cited repeated instructions to wear respirators and Giuliani’s early advice about masks and goggles. Former Deputy Mayor Joe Lhota said the administration had worked to protect workers and denied that city officials blocked the EPA. The dispute over those instructions has always extended to whether workers had suitable equipment and whether officials ensured it was used.

Federal officials’ assurances had serious shortcomings of their own. The EPA’s August 2003 inspector general report found that the agency lacked sufficient data and analysis to support its sweeping Sept. 18, 2001, declaration that the air was safe. Information about several pollutants was missing, and the White House Council on Environmental Quality had influenced releases by adding reassurance and removing cautionary language.

The watchdog found no evidence that the EPA concealed monitoring results. It also reported that later assessments generally supported conclusions about long-term outdoor air quality, although with qualifications absent from the initial assurances. Those later assessments could not supply the evidence officials lacked when they first told the public the air was safe.

The federal record also distinguished outdoor monitoring from conditions at the worksite and inside contaminated buildings. Residents hearing broad reassurances and workers being instructed to wear respiratory protection were receiving different messages about danger. The city’s own decisions about access, reopening and worker protection remain part of that history, alongside the EPA’s failures.

Families kept asking for answers

For people living near the World Trade Center, those decisions reached into their homes. Lower Manhattan resident Mariama James told FOX 5 New York in 2023 that she had been covered in white dust and that her apartment was contaminated because its windows had been open. Her family continued living in the affected area and cleaning what the collapse had left behind.

“They told us the air was clean, the air was safe,” James said. She described relatives returning to work and said her family had suffered from 9/11-related cancers. Years before this week’s announcement, she was asking the city to explain what she and her family had been breathing.

The consequences extend well beyond the irritation described in early public reassurances. The World Trade Center Health Program’s covered conditions include asthma, chronic rhinosinusitis and interstitial lung disease, along with numerous cancers, including lung cancer, mesothelioma and leukemia. Coverage requires certification under the program’s rules, including consideration of the relationship between a person’s exposure and illness.

The program’s quarterly figures through June 30, 2026 listed 145,275 current members, including 56,692 survivors. The remaining membership included general responders, FDNY responders and personnel associated with the Pentagon and Shanksville sites. These preliminary administrative figures describe people enrolled for monitoring or care, including many who now live outside the New York metropolitan area.

Thousands of families have already lost someone to the illnesses that followed the attacks. In her Sept. 1 update, city Department of Investigation Commissioner Nadia Shihata acknowledged more than 5,000 deaths from 9/11-related cancers and illnesses. Meanwhile, families of people killed in the attacks themselves are still receiving answers: USA Herald recently reported on a forensic breakthrough that identified another 9/11 victim nearly 25 years later.

The search led to Texas

Survivors’ demand for an explanation eventually sent lawyers searching far beyond New York. On Feb. 5, 9/11 Health Watch announced that it had obtained the Harding memo from investigative reporter Wayne Barrett’s papers at the University of Texas at Austin’s Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.

The organization said its lawyers contacted the center in December 2025 and that staff located the document the following month. It had not appeared in an index covering hundreds of boxes. Although the memo’s existence had been referenced in earlier reporting, including a 2007 New York Times article, obtaining a copy allowed advocates and the public to examine its wording directly.

A document addressed to a New York City deputy mayor had thus reached the public through a reporter’s archive in Texas. Its recovery became part of the larger fight to obtain the city’s own records, a fight that continued long after Giuliani left office.

In its statement on the settlement, 9/11 Health Watch traced the effort through congressional requests, Freedom of Information Law demands and lawsuits. Members of Congress sought records beginning in 2021, the group said, while successive mayoral administrations resisted releasing information about environmental hazards.

The organization also said the city had systematically collected and preserved relevant records in 2002, yet later denied that responsive documents existed. According to the group, questioning a records official under oath revealed that requests had been denied without appropriate searches. Those allegations concern what later administrations did with the evidence, as well as what the Giuliani administration knew when the exposures occurred.

The city says its new portal includes material from 68 boxes located in 2025 despite earlier requests. Mamdani’s fiscal 2027 budget includes $34 million to create and maintain the archive, with further records under review for release. The allocation supports the disclosure project, separate from medical care or compensation for affected people.

The records still to come

The agreement gives advocates a continuing role in determining what appears in the archive. Under the settlement signed Sept. 2, the city must search for documents shared with lobbyists and federal government liaisons during September, October and November 2001 to seek immunity or liability caps. Located records must be posted publicly.

Monthly meetings with 9/11 Health Watch through August 2027 will address production totals, source agencies, subjects and additional searches. A public log must identify responsive records withheld from release. The agreement also records a May 28 ruling that DEP arbitrarily and capriciously denied the group’s information request.

The cases will not be finally dismissed until the portal has operated for 12 months and the city has made specified progress. If officials fail to substantially fulfill their obligations, advocates can seek to restore the cases after notice. That leaves a route back to court while the search continues.

A separate Department of Investigation inquiry will examine what mayoral administrations knew about toxins produced by the attacks. Shihata said in her September update that the investigation remained in its preliminary stages, with $3.81 million allocated across this fiscal year and the next for an investigative firm with public-health experience.

The department was procuring that assistance and hoped to have the firm in place this fall. It had begun approaching agencies to identify relevant records, and Shihata committed to a public report and continuing updates to the City Council. The release of documents therefore comes before the independent investigation’s findings.

Access to care remains part of the fight

While investigators reconstruct the decisions made in 2001, survivors seeking help today have a more immediate use for some city records. The administration plans dedicated personnel to help retrieve employment and school records that can establish where applicants were during the exposure period. Those documents can support applications to federal programs with different rules and requirements.

The World Trade Center Health Program and September 11th Victim Compensation Fund provide different forms of assistance. The health program offers eligible monitoring and treatment, while the compensation fund addresses eligible economic and noneconomic losses from physical conditions. Each requires its own application; enrollment in one does not automatically enroll someone in the other.

The VCF’s claim-filing deadline is Oct. 1, 2090, but individual registration deadlines can arrive much earlier. People do not need to be sick to register, and registration preserves their ability to pursue a future claim, subject to the fund’s requirements. Survivors seeking assistance need to check both deadlines rather than rely on the distant final filing date.

The records release cannot change the advice New Yorkers received in 2001 or the years families spent seeking an explanation. It does give them access to internal discussions about the risks, the reopening decisions and the prospect of future lawsuits. Over the next year, the city has committed to releasing more of that history — including records of what officials told Washington when seeking protection from the claims they anticipated.