{"id":788349,"date":"2026-05-11T08:25:56","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T08:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/788349\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T08:25:56","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T08:25:56","slug":"new-york-city-must-release-the-wtc-files","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/788349\/","title":{"rendered":"New York City must release the WTC files"},"content":{"rendered":"

This morning in the courtroom of Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice James Clynes, lawyers for the city will try to defend the indefensible stonewalling they been engaged in for years over records related to the health and environmental and legal risks posed by the 9\/11 destruction of the World Trade Center by Al Qaeda\u2019s terrorist attack, producing a toxic plume that covered downtown, sickening and ultimately killing thousands.<\/p>\n

The records were created under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, now himself suffering from WTC ailments<\/a>, and kept secret by Mike Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio, Eric Adams and now, Zohran Mamdani.<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s top lawyer, Corporation Counsel Steve Banks, has, to his credit, promised under oath, twice, to release the records<\/a>. His words are good as gold, but the lawyers who work for him need to get in line, starting with this morning\u2019s court hearing.<\/p>\n

Instead of following Banks, city attorneys are denying that any records exist.<\/p>\n

On March 20, Jeffrey Lowell, a lawyer for the city, wrote in response to an administrative appeal of a legally-enforceable Freedom of Information Law request from WTC health advocate Ben Chevat that there were no records and closed the matter<\/a>, which prompted a lawsuit. That case, before Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Alex Tisch, is just starting.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s case was begun in June 2024 against the city Department of Environmental Protection for withholding WTC records. After long saying they didn\u2019t have anything, DEP eventually produced 68 boxes holding 340,000 pages. Pretty good trick to go from zero to 340,000 pages.<\/p>\n

Not in that stack was the Harding memo<\/a>, a note shortly after 9\/11 to then-Deputy Mayor Bob Harding laying out the city\u2019s possible legal exposure to the WTC disaster. Lowell, in his March 20 denial, says that they have nothing, including the Harding memo, but thanks to the late Village Voice reporter and author Wayne Barrett, who seemingly kept better records than the city\u2019s own lawyers, we do have Harding memo. How can city attorneys like Lowell make such nonsense statements?<\/p>\n

Among the papers in those 340,000 pages from DEP was another memo, call it the Levine memo<\/a>, from Jesse Levine, the assistant chief of the WTC Unit in the Law Department under Michael Cardozo, Bloomberg\u2019s corporation counsel. The subject is \u201cWorld Trade Center File Retention,\u201d which Levine addresses to \u201cDear NYC Employee.\u201d<\/p>\n

It says in full: \u201cThese original World Trade Center documents have been collected and scanned by the New York City Law Department. DO NOT DISPOSE OF THESE DOCUMENTS: they must be preserved to serve as evidence in the event future WTC-related legal actions are brought against the City.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you would like to dispose of any of these documents, contact me directly at the New York City Law Department. If appropriate, the Law Department will arrange for the pick up of any documents that you no longer need.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlso, in the event you are planning to leave your current position, please email me to inform me of the identity of the new custodian of these documents.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you for your cooperation.\u201d<\/p>\n

So every city agency was asked to send their WTC documents to the Law Dept., which scanned and returned the originals to the agencies. Yet city lawyers say that there are no documents?<\/p>\n

On a separate track, the mayor and City Council Speaker Julie Menin must make sure that there is $3 million budgeted for the Department of Investigation and new Commissioner Nadia Shihata to fully examine what happened with the WTC records as required under a resolution authored by Councilwoman Gale Brewer.<\/p>\n

Four months from today will be the 25th anniversary of 9\/11. More victims have now died from the toxic fallout than from the impact of the two airliners and the collapse of the towers. Banks and his aides going through millions of possible records to find the relevant ones for release should keep their eyes on the calendar and instruct his lawyers to tell the full truth to the judges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This morning in the courtroom of Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice James Clynes, lawyers for the city will…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":788350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,1269,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-788349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-opinion","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116554995218568310","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}