NEW YORK — On a cloudy morning at the site where two soaring towers once stood, the loved ones of New Yorkers killed on Sept. 11, 2001, gathered with a message for the president of the United States: release the unredacted files they believe could implicate Saudi Arabia in the worst foreign attack on American soil.
It was the 25th anniversary of the attacks, and the ceremony at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum had the solemn choreography that the occasion demands — the reading of names, the tolling of bells, the silence of a crowd that has now mourned for a quarter-century. But running beneath the ritual was a current of political grievance that the families have carried for just as long, and which this year they chose to deliver from the main stage.
Vice President JD Vance attended the ceremony alongside former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Bill Clinton, as well as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo were also among those present — a tableau of American leadership assembled, as is the custom, in the footprint of the buildings that no longer stand.
A Message From the Stage
The message was delivered by Terry Strada, whose husband, Tom, was killed in the attacks. Speaking from the memorial stage, Mrs. Strada accused successive administrations of protecting Saudi Arabia instead of supporting the families who lost husbands, wives, fathers and mothers on that clear Tuesday morning a quarter-century ago.
"Administration after administration, including leaders in front of us here today, chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families. They withheld evidence. They vetoed JASTA. They broke promises, both public and private. It has been one betrayal after another."
It was a remarkable public rebuke, delivered to the faces of the very men who had occupied the offices she accused of betrayal. And it was aimed, with particular precision, at one of them: Mr. Obama, who was seated in the crowd as Mrs. Strada spoke.
She called out the 44th president by name for vetoing the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA, in 2016 — a rare bipartisan override of a presidential veto that allowed 9/11 families to sue Saudi Arabia over its alleged role in the attacks. The veto, and the congressional override that followed, remains one of the most consequential foreign-policy collisions of the Obama years, and its resurrection on the memorial stage served as a reminder that the families have not forgotten.
'President Trump Can Still Change That'
But Mrs. Strada's remarks were not, in the end, about the past. They were an appeal to the present — and to a president who was not in the crowd but whose administration, the families believe, holds the keys to files that have remained sealed for a quarter-century.
"President Trump can still change that."
She urged the president to tell Saudi leaders "that if they want to be friends with the USA, they cannot continue to deny all of this, all of the pain, all of the destruction that we have all been suffering through."
"Please carry that message back," another speaker said, addressing Mr. Vance. "Stand with the families. Stand with the survivors." The remarks drew applause from a crowd that has spent 25 years waiting for answers that successive administrations have declined, or been unable, to provide.
The Files the Families Want
The families say a recent legal ruling, along with additional FBI and British intelligence material, gives Mr. Trump an opportunity to release more records and help resolve what they view as a 25-year-old betrayal — the sense that their own government has known more about the role of foreign actors in the attacks than it has been willing to disclose.
"We've really been on our own — the families — trying to obtain evidence," said one family member, capturing the exhaustion of a group that has fought through the courts, the Congress and the bureaucracy for documents they believe should have been theirs long ago.
The appeal carries a particular irony for Mr. Trump, whose relationship with the Saudi government has been warmer than that of any recent president. In 2022, while defending his decision to host a Saudi-backed LIV Golf tournament at his New Jersey club amid protests from 9/11 families, Mr. Trump said: "Nobody has gotten to the bottom of 9/11." The families, gathered at Ground Zero on Thursday, are now asking him to be the one who finally does.
A Quarter-Century of Waiting
For the families, the 25th anniversary was not only a day of remembrance but a marker of how long the wait for accountability has stretched — longer than the lives of many of those who were killed, longer than the careers of the presidents who have come and gone since, and now approaching the lifespan of the attacks themselves.
The ceremony ended as it always does, with the names of the dead read aloud against the sound of falling water in the reflecting pools that now occupy the footprints of the towers. But the words that lingered were not the names. They were the words of a widow, spoken to a former president who could hear them, asking a sitting president who was not there to do what none of his predecessors would.
Whether Mr. Trump answers that call remains, like so much about the attacks themselves, an open question — one that the families will carry into the next quarter-century if they must.
