The air, they said, was safe to breathe. It was not. New York City has released more than 170,000 pages of previously secret records showing that officials knew the toxic conditions around Ground Zero were dangerous almost immediately after the September 11, 2001, attacks — even as they repeatedly told the public otherwise, CNN reports.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani made the records available through a new public portal at nyc.gov/sept11docs, settling a multi-year legal battle with the advocacy group 9/11 Health Watch that had sued the city to force their release. The records span air quality reports, contamination data, and internal correspondence across government agencies, ABC7 New York reports.

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What the Documents Actually Show

The files include internal memos in which officials raised alarms about environmental testing in the months after the attacks, which regularly detected elevated levels of asbestos and other hard-to-detect, dangerous chemicals, CNN reports. At the same time, officials at every level publicly maintained that the area was safe.

A particularly damaging document is what became known as the "Harding Memo." Sent to then-Deputy Mayor Robert Harding, it cited a city Law Department estimate of roughly 35,000 potential plaintiffs — with about 10,000 expected to actually file claims — and outlined legislative strategies to limit the city's legal liability, CBS News New York reports.

The memo also worried that if cases reached court, judges and juries would favor plaintiffs. Officials explored seeking indemnification from the federal government and lobbying Congress to create a dedicated compensation fund, NYC Mayor's Office confirms.

The EPA Told Them It Was Safe Before Any Testing Was Done

One of the documents traces the deception directly to federal authorities as well. Then-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman publicly declared the air "safe to breathe" — but that statement was made before any government indoor air quality testing had been conducted, according to a memo Rep. Jerry Nadler sent to then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office outlining the EPA's failure to monitor the area, CNN reports.

Records also show that asbestos was still being detected near the World Trade Center site nearly a year after the towers collapsed. An environmental analysis of Stuyvesant High School — located roughly half a mile from Ground Zero — showed detectable asbestos levels more than a year after the disaster. Students were scheduled to return to class just four days after testing at the school began, The Daily Caller reports.

The Human Cost No One Can Ignore

The toll that followed is staggering. At least 140,000 people from all 50 states have enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program, and 49,000 have been diagnosed with certified WTC-related cancers, according to the 9/11 Memorial. More people have now died from 9/11-related illnesses than were killed on the day of the attacks itself, CNN reports.

"People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air," Mamdani said.

A Decades-Long Fight for the Truth

The 68 boxes of documents were only discovered during litigation — found inside a city Department of Environmental Protection office — after officials had previously claimed no such records existed. A New York Supreme Court justice found the city's denial of the original records request to be "arbitrary and capricious," 9/11 Health Watch states.

Four consecutive mayoral administrations withheld the files from the public, Congress, and the City Council, according to 9/11 Health Watch. The settlement that finally unlocked them includes ongoing oversight of the city's air quality records, with hundreds of thousands of additional pages still to be reviewed and released in the months ahead, amNewYork reports.

Mayor Mamdani's budget allocates $34 million to build and sustain the public portal. For survivors and first responders who spent years fighting just to see what was in those boxes, that portal is long overdue.