What did NYC know about the 9/11 toxins at ground zero? After 20 years, the truth may soon come out

A 20-year battle to unearth what NYC knew about the dangers of the 9/11 toxins swirling around Ground Zero in the weeks after the terror attacks is reaching a major turning point. Eight weeks after being ordered to launch a detailed review, the city’s Department of Investigation is now preparing to receive “volumes of data” on the subject from city agencies, the Daily News has learned. Once the City Council mandated the DOI to hunt for documents on 9/11 toxins in mid-July, the agency sent out letters to every agency, asking them to identify and turn over any relevant documents they had. The response they received has been so overwhelming that the DOI may need to contract with an outside investigations agency to parse through all the data. Nearly all of the agencies contacted have responded to the DOI’s request to identify any documents they have concerning 9/11 toxins, DOI officials said. Some agencies will be providing information that will be specific to the request. Others will be providing “more general” information about the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, the DOI said. It was not immediately disclosed exactly which agencies have responded. Workers work to save any survivors from the rubble of the WTC on Sept. 13, 2001. (Craig Warga for New York Daily News) Once they come in, the real challenge begins, DOI Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber said. “We’re in the preliminary stages of determining the complement of relevant records, which we know will be voluminous and require rigorous assessment of what the City knew and when it knew it as well as interviewing witnesses and consulting with environmental experts,” Strauber said. “Once we have a better understanding of the scope of records, DOI can provide a more exact map of the necessary resources needed.” Strauber admitted that this “complex investigation will exceed DOI’s existing resources, requiring that we engage an outside investigative firm to assist.” “I am confident that with appropriate resources DOI will find the facts and lay them out in a public report,” she said. The council has tasked the DOI with providing a report in two years. DOI Commissioner Jocelyn E. Strauber. (Barry Williams for New Daily News) The quick and positive response marks a sea change in the two-decade long quest to get this information from the city. The Adams administration as well as its predecessors, have foguht the release if those documents, claiming they couldn’t find them and that the documents could lead to a barrage of lawsuits from survivors and first responders suffering from 9/11 illnesses. Multiple FOIL requests from attorneys representing survivors suffering a 9/11 illness turned up nothing. When attorneys went to court demanding the information, they were repeatedly told that the agencies like the city’s Department of Environmental Protection had nothing to give. Just last year, the city tried to squash a lawsuit demanding these documents, claiming it didn’t have them and that the search for the long-sought records is nothing more than a “fishing expedition.” “After a diligent search was performed of DEP’s records, no responsive records were found,” city attorneys claimed in court papers. The fact that the DOI investigation is turning up so many documents was “just remarkable,” said Andrew Carboy an attorney who represented 911 Health Watch, a responder and survivor advocacy group which filed the FOIL and then filed a lawsuit when the city refused to respond. 2001Massive amount of rubble still remains at Ground Zero more than a month after the destruction of the World Trade Center in a view from the Woolworth Building. (Mike Albans/New York Daily News) “It should not take unprecedented Department of Investigation action for the City to comply with the FOIL requests our clients made, two years ago,” Carboy told the News, adding that City Hall also defied earlier requests of New York’s Congressional delegation. “But for the City Council’s resolution and the DOI investigation, the city would either continue to deny the existence of the secret 9/11 archive or, equally outrageously, claim that the records of its response to the attacks were destroyed in the collapse of the World Trade Center,” he said. City Councilwoman Gale Brewer wrote the resolution that the full council unanimously passed on July 14, ordering the DOI to probe what information the city had on Ground Zero toxins after the 9/11 attacks and when they had it. It marks the first time a provision of the City Charter allows the Council to order the DOI to undertake an investigation with a bill. A lone American flag waves in the smoke on Liberty St., overlooking the debris of the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. (Michael Schwartz for New York Daily News) More than 140,000 first responders and survivors are enrolled in the U.S. Center for Disease Control’s WTC Health Program, which provides health care benefits for medical conditions related to exposure to the toxins that hung over Ground Zero. Out of that number, about 81,000 have a certified condition linked to the toxins that hung above Ground Zero.