On the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, some of the most defining court reckonings in the aftermath are still far away.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the attacks, awaits prosecution with four other accused co-conspirators in Guantanamo Bay, but a military commission trial is at least two years away. Many legal experts question whether one will happen at all.
In Manhattan, the Saudi government is fighting to avoid a civil trial through an appeal inside a courthouse in the proverbial shadow of the World Trade Center early next month.
New York City’s Department of Investigation just launched a probe to pin down what officials knew about the air quality after the towers fell, and its official verdict is still years away. That investigation is taking place only because the city has finally decided to settle lawsuits attempting to uncover the information, rather than fight them.
Even 25 years later, the search for justice, transparency and accountability for many 9/11 families feels like a developing story. Here are the important dockets that remain open.
‘Toxic exposure’
Earlier this week, New York City published an online portal featuring more than 170,000 pages of documents about the toxic air quality that followed.
“People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at a press conference on Tuesday.
The newly disclosed air quality reports were released pursuant to settlements with the group 9/11 Health Watch, which uncovered a long-reported but never-published document known as the Harding memo.
Just three weeks after the attacks, Rudy Giuliani’s deputy mayor Robert Harding received a memorandum with the subject line “Legislative Alternatives to Limit the City’s Liability related to 9/11/01,” informing him that as many as 35,000 plaintiffs could sue the city for, among other things, “toxic exposure.” (Ultimately, more than 102,000 people filed claims with the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.)
In the public sphere, Giuliani’s office had assured New Yorkers as soon as Sept. 12, 2001: “The air is safe as far as we can tell of chemical and biological agents,” an official line that continued for months.
9/11 Health Watch’s executive director Benjamin Chevat commended Mamdani for breaking away from the litigation stonewall of four of his predecessors, and comedian Jon Stewart, a longtime advocate for 9/11 families who stood by Mamdani’s side at a press conference on the settlement, expressed outrage about previous city officials “covering their ass.”
“These people had to fight — sick and dying — for years, and I’m not saying that the information may have changed the outcomes unfortunately for their families,” he said. “But I guarantee you it would not have been the struggle that it was to get people to recognize that what they all knew and what we all knew who live in downtown Manhattan is that there was poison in the air and on the ground and in the window sills and in your air conditioners and covering your pets and your clothes. And it stayed there for months. Everyone knew, and now it’s very clear that the city knew as well.”
Although the existence of the memo was first reported in the New York Times in 2007, 9/11 Health Watch obtained it and made it public for the first time in its lawsuit.
As for the mountain of other files uploaded into New York City’s new portal, a prominent attorney for 9/11 victims saw nothing game-changing in the trove so far.
“What's happening now is a lot of media hype around these documents that are being disclosed, but what's in them is essentially nothing new — at least to the lawyers that were involved in the litigation, the scientists that were involved, and the medical personnel that were involved,” attorney Robert Grochow, a senior partner at Cannata, Hendele & Cannata, told All Rise News.
Still, Grochow believed that a review of the files in aggregate could lead Congress to reconsider drawing the boundaries of the Fund only up to Canal Street, when the World Trade Center Health Program recognized the impact zone as far north as Houston Street and as far east as Brooklyn Heights.
“If the evidence is that clear that the dust went further than those two arbitrary lines, maybe legislation is called for, maybe policy procedures [should be] called for to make the area of coverage greater for all of the victims,” Grochow said. “That would be a positive result from all of this.”
The publication of the online portal doesn’t end the city’s obligations under the settlement, which sets aside $4 million for the Department of Investigations to spend the next two years producing an official report about what the city knew and when it knew it.
“As a 9/11 first responder and advocate who, along with the entire 9/11 community, has endured decades of denial and refusals by the city of New York when it comes to information about the toxic exposures we all faced, it is an honor to be part of the team that has forced the city to move its moral compass and begin to offer some transparency,” Matthew McCauley, a counsel to 9/11 Health Watch, said in a statement.
Although technically the cases are settled, 9/11 Health Watch retains oversight over the online portal, and the agreement allows the group to return to court to restart the case if it believes the city isn’t fulfilling the terms of the deal.
‘Standing with the 9/11 families’
Shortly before last year’s 9/11 anniversary, a federal judge gave families the green light to try to hold Saudi Arabia liable for the attacks.
The shadow of the litigation hovers over this year’s anniversary, as well.
On Friday, widow Terry Strada — a plaintiff in the litigation whose husband died in the attacks — spoke at the memorial and sparked applause after accusing the Saudi government of complicity in the attacks.
“For over 25 years, administration after administration including leaders who are in front of us today chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families,” she said.
The 9/11 families’ lawsuit was only made possible through Congress’s passage of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act in 2016, which opened the door to sue Saudi Arabia.
Last year, U.S. District Judge George Daniels found that evidence about the roles played by two men linked to the Saudi government — Omar al-Bayoumi and Fahad al-Thumairy — persuasive enough to let 9/11 families press claims that Saudi Arabia employed the men to help at least two of the hijackers.
An appeal of the denial of the motion to dismiss heads to the Second Circuit next month on Oct. 7.
A recent ProPublica investigation charts the latest developments in the lawsuit.
KSM at SCOTUS
The Supreme Court is considering a petition seeking to reinstate a controversial plea deals that would have allowed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two of his co-defendants to plead guilty in July 2024, which would have averted a trial and taken the death penalty off the table.
Some of the 9/11 families thought that outcome would provide closure, and prosecutors called it the “best path to finality and justice,” amid delays and ongoing questions about the admissibility of evidence obtained through torture. But then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin withdrew the plea agreements two days after they were entered. Military courts found that they were binding, but they were overruled by the D.C. Circuit.
According to SCOTUSBlog:
“The justices are scheduled to consider these two petitions for review at their “long conference” on Sept. 28. We could know as soon as early October if the court will take up the issue for argument.”
For more information of the status of this long-delayed case, read these articles in The Associated Press and Courthouse News.
Thanks, Adam: Great article. “The air is safe as far as we can tell of chemical and biological agents,” As far as we can tell?? How sweet the sound. I could see the smog and dust, just watching it on TV on the West Coast. The courts seem to take forever to get anything done. Could New York City take on the Saudis for a massive monetary claim and pay off these folks who are still waiting? Evidence obtained through torture?? Jeez.
ALOHA. From the COCONUT WIRELESS. ..................
HELP elect PETE for THE SPEAKER of THE HOUSE. ..............