The facts
On Tuesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration posted more than 170,000 pages of post-9/11 air-quality records at sept11documents.cityofnewyork.us. City officials say many sat in 68 boxes at the Department of Environmental Protection and were found last year. The drop settled a lawsuit by 9/11 Health Watch.
CNN reported an October 6, 2001 memo from Associate Health Commissioner Kelly McKinney warning asbestos levels at some sites were "not yet suitable for reoccupancy." That same day, the files say, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani told the public the air was safe. NBC New York quoted a memo from early in Michael Bloomberg's term, five months after the attacks: the city was "leaving itself open to a barrage of lawsuits. At the least, we should discontinue telling people to clean their apartments with wet mops and rags." CNN reported the Harding memo estimated about 35,000 potential plaintiffs.
CNN cited February 2002 remarks from Bloomberg: "every test that has been done says the air quality was in acceptable limits. I think some people are just never going to believe that." His spokesman declined comment this week. Giuliani's account posted that "The EPA said it was safe. They made a mistake. No one covered it up," and that he has 9/11 lung disease. Mamdani said people got sick because leaders "lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air." He would not name who.
Today the National September 11 Memorial added a seventh moment of silence for 9/11-related illness deaths. Bloomberg is chairman of that museum and is matching Never Forget donations up to $25 million. AFP, citing the federal program, put illness deaths above 9,400. FDNY union officials say 453 members have died of World Trade Center illnesses, past the 343 killed that morning. Giuliani shook Mamdani's hand after a week of saying the mayor's attendance "offends" him.
Our take
New York City told people to mop Ground Zero. A wet rag. Jet fuel, asbestos, concrete, whatever was left of the offices, wipe it up like a bar spill and get back to work. That is in the files. Five months later some lawyer finally wrote the obvious part, which was that this was going to look spectacularly stupid in front of a jury.
Bloomberg told the city the air was fine and that the people who did not believe it were the problem. Those people kept dying. The FDNY has now buried more men from the dust than it buried that morning, and the billionaire who called them unbelievers still chairs Never Forget. He is matching $25 million. He gets to sell remembrance of a poison he signed off on. That is a hell of a racket.
Giuliani has the lung disease and still spent a week pretending the current mayor was the emergency, then shook his hand on camera because America's Mayor cannot walk past a lens. He blamed the EPA, called it a mistake, and denied a cover-up while 68 boxes sat in an office for 25 years.
The seventh silence is the city mouthing sorry without saying who lied. The firefighters who ran in are not the target. Bloomberg is. He told coughing people they were full of shit. He kept the museum.
