NEW YORK – With the start of the release of hidden World Trade Center 9/11 documents held by New York City, we can begin to understand the critical questions of who knew what and when about the environmental health disaster released when the twin towers fell and the soaring plume of white dust rose, covering Downtown.

Mayor Mamdani and the city’s top lawyer, Corporation Counsel Steve Banks, were correct to stop the city’s resistance and finally publish the records, which should be complete within a year.

The killer was that plume, filled with pulverized concrete, 425,000 cubic yards crushed to an inhalable powder, a highly alkaline and caustic substance with a pH akin to lye. That, along with other dangers, like asbestos and benzene, attacked delicate body tissues, and produced illness and death and now perhaps three times as many people have perished from the 9/11 toxic fallout than the 2,700 who were immediately murdered on 9/11 at the WTC.

Maybe the exposure of many was unavoidable before the full extent of the hazards were known in the early weeks and months following 9/11, but when questions started being asked about “World Trade Center cough” and when the publicly held documents were being sought by this column and others, the records were disappeared and now we know why and where.

The truth came yesterday, which was three years to the day that tireless advocate Ben Chevat of 9/11 Health Watch and his lawyers, Andy Carboy and Matt McCauley, at our urging, filed a legally-enforceable Freedom of Information Law request for the files.

The FOIL was denied and denied again on administrative appeal and so they went to state court, filing two lawsuits. They were winning the cases, even as city lawyers tried hopeless dodges. The cases have now settled and the records will be coming out.

The first batch put on the new online portal, 68 boxes from the Department of Environmental Protection, are not that revealing and were already disclosed during the FOIL litigation. What we are waiting for is the rest of the archive.

These columns have been writing about this for two decades, starting in 2006 and only now have we learned that the documents were transferred from the city Law Department, which had collected documents from every other agency and made copies and returned the originals. That copied trove was then given to the World Trade Captive Insurance Company, which was chartered by Albany in 2004, funded by Congress with $1 billion and controlled by City Hall.

The Captive still has about $350 million left and had been holding all the WTC papers, which the Law Dept. has now reclaimed. But that means that all those FOIL denials for years were hollow, as it was ridiculous for the city to claim that they had no records because they gave them to another entity that they controlled. And the Captive is not subject to FOIL. For shame to all involved in hiding these records for decades under this ruse.

This game of three card monte with the WTC records played by the city for years must be fully exposed and explained by Commissioner Nadia Shihata and the Department of Investigation, which has been directed by the City Council to report on what happened. Everyone should thank Councilwoman Gale Brewer and Council Speaker Julie Menin for that and for budgeting $3 million for DOI’s task.

In the unlikely instance that someone comes forward to sue based on the WTC records, the city’s total liability was capped by Congress right after 9/11 at $350 million, but we doubt that there will be anything close to that maximum.

What there will be is the truth.

_____

Michael Aronson is Editorial Page Editor for the New York Daily News.

©2026 New York Daily News. Visit at nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.