UNENDING FIGHT FOR 9/11 ANSWERS
City tells lawyers it ‘does not have the records’ on air toxins
An attempt to learn more about the deadly toxins kicked into New York City’s atmosphere after the 9/11 terror attacks has so far been shut down by city government, with two key agencies claiming they have no information on the matter.
Freedom of Information Law requests to NYC Emergency Management and the Environmental Protection Department — lead agencies in the city’s investigation of Ground Zero air quality — asked for whatever data former Mayor Rudy Giuliani was aware of about toxic chemicals at Ground Zero in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
The two agencies closed out the requests last month without providing any information.
“This agency does not have the records requested,” Emergency Management and the Environmental Protection Department both said in a curt, three-sentence response to attorneys Andrew Carboy and Matthew McCauley’s FOIL request.
The request asked for “documents, reports, assessments” about the toxins, dust and fumes that came from the destroyed World Trade Center and other information about future health threats to 9/11 first responders and survivors.
Carboy and McCauley have submitted similar FOIL requests to other city agencies, which are still being reviewed, a city official with knowledge of the issue said.
According to the lawyers’ spurned requests, the other agencies asked to provide documents include the Design and Construction Department, the Health Department, the mayor’s office, the City Council and the Law Department.
Uncovering the paperwork has posed a challenge because many documents at the time weren’t digitized, requiring the agencies to dig into decades-old paper records, said the city official.
Carboy and McCauley issued the FOIL requests on behalf of 9/11 Health Watch and the families of first responders who died of 9/11 illnesses, including Firefighter Robert Fitzgibbon and NYPD Detective Luis Alvarez.
Retired NYPD detective and 9/11 responder Alvarez testified during a House Judiciary Committee in 2019. Frail, gaunt and racked with a 9/11 cancer, Alvarez testified to Congress demanding an extension of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. Alvarez lost his fight with cancer a month after he testified.
Carboy is appealing the FOIL denial. He says he is stunned that the city would claim it has no records about the terror attacks that are still killing scores of city residents.
“What’s harder to believe? The city’s pronouncements that the air in lower Manhattan was safe to breathe following the 9/11 attacks or that the two city agencies trusted to evaluate air quality and provide the results to the public now have no records of those tasks?” Carboy asked.
Benjamin Chevat, director of 9/11 Health Watch, found the city’s response “simply preposterous.”
Emergency Management “claims they have no records — zero, nada, zilch — to respond with,“Chevat said. “The [Emergency Management] director stood at Mayor Giuliani’s side through the days following 9/11, and they say there are no records?”
If the FOIL appeal is denied, the attorneys plan on taking other legal action.
An estimated 400,000 people were exposed to Ground Zero toxins on 9/11
and the days that followed, including 91,000 first responders, 57,000 residents who lived south of Canal St. and 15,000 students and administrators at lower Manhattan schools, according to city statistics.
Besides any and all reports, memos and studies shared with the Giuliani administration after 9/11, Carboy is also asking for anything connected with the infamous “Harding memo” which was referenced in a 2007 New York Times article, but never released publicly.
The October 2001 memo to then-Deputy Mayor Robert Harding warned that the city could face as many as 10,000 liability claims, “including toxic tort cases that might arise in the next few decades.”
A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report in 2003 harshly criticized Christine Todd Whitman, who headed the EPA in 2001, for telling people in New York just seven days after the terror attacks that the “air is safe to breathe” before she had scientific evidence to support the claim.
Whitman, a former GOP governor of New Jersey, apologized in 2016 for her role, but insisted that she never lied about the air quality and repeated that she was simply passing on information given to her by government scientists.
New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler and former Rep. Carolyn Maloney, both Manhattan Democrats, have long asked for these documents to be released, and sent a letter to Mayor Adams last February asking that the vaults to this information be opened.
“It is long past time for full disclosure of the city’s records,” they wrote in the letter. “While more than 20 years have passed, we still do not know the full impact of that day and the aftermath on the health of thousands of New Yorkers, and the full extent of what the city knew at the time.”
In their letter, the legislators said they understood Adams administration officials are “concerned” about the city’s liability in the matter.
“Releasing the records will likely help to save lives,” they wrote.
In July, Adams agreed to sit down and discuss their longstanding request.
But when the meeting took place, city officials said they wouldn’t release the documents without significant immunities and protections because the information could open them up to lawsuits and “embarrassment,” a source with knowledge of the talks said.
An email to Adams, NYC Emergency Management and the Environmental Protection Department regarding the FOIL denial was not immediately answered. A city spokeswoman said several agencies are continuing to review requests for these documents from attorneys and legislators.
Carboy said acquiring the information isn’t about litigation. More than 20 years later, it would be tough to prove who or what caused the victims’ injuries and illnesses — and besides, he said, the more than 50,000 survivors who have already received money from the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund have agreed not to sue the city.
Instead, Carboy said, the issue is about finding answers to unanswered questions.
“I am struck, two decades on, by the large number of new clients who question the circumstances by which they, and hundreds of thousands of others, were exposed to contaminants while, simultaneously, returning to work and their homes reassured by City Hall of the air’s safety,” Carboy said. “Why were those assurances made, given what we now know?
“We hope to obtain answers to the questions the public continues to have.”