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The case for declassifying 9/11 records

Government secrecy on intelligence related to the attacks impedes the justice process for some and allows conspiracy theories to fester.

MS Now By Lauren Harper, Sept. 10, 2026, 

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently ordered the release of more than 170,000 pages of city records about the air quality in Lower Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks. This release, the first in a series of planned disclosures, shows how opening decades-old records, including those that expose government wrongdoing, is in the public interest. Political will to expand such efforts elsewhere is crucial

Thousands of 9/11 survivors and victims’ families in Lower Manhattan have fought for more than two decades to hold foreign entities liable for the terrorist attacks — only to find that one of the biggest obstacles is their own government. While successive U.S. administrations have promised closure for victims, critical records remain classified 25 years after 9/11, delaying justice and accountability.

The executive order governing classification, EO 13526, mandates that most historical records must be automatically declassified at 25 years, unless they meet certain strict criteria.

In theory, this means the records of the defining national tragedy of this century should start becoming public on Dec. 31. In practice, the declassification system is so ineffective that millions of pages are all but certain to remain hidden in agency archives from Quantico to Langley for years, possibly even decades, whether or not they require continued protection.

This impedes justice on multiple fronts. 

In the Southern District of New York, for example, thousands of people have been fighting since 2002 to hold a variety of defendants — from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to members of Al Qaeda — responsible for the attack. They have been impeded in part by the Justice Department, which has aggressively invoked the state-secrets privilege to block the release of records discussing, among other things, whether Saudi officials aided the hijackers when they arrived in the United States in 2000. While a Biden-era executive order forced the partial declassification of some records relevant to this case, many interagency communications and witness interviews remain heavily redacted or fully classified.

At Guantánamo Bay, enduring secrecy has complicated the prosecution of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and several co-conspirators. The military commission has dragged on for nearly 25 years, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, in part because the government’s evidence was obtained from the CIA’s torture program. Although classification rules explicitly prohibit keeping records classified to conceal violations of law, including torture, the federal government has withheld records from the agency’s black-site prisons for years, ultimately prolonging proceedings. In doing so, the government prioritizes its need for secrecy over ensuring the commission’s tribunals proceed at a reasonable speed toward justice………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Although the summary and the closed-door interviews have not reached the 25-year mark, having been compiled by the 9/11 Commission in 2003 and 2004, releasing them would help promote public understanding of the attacks and government intelligence. It could also help dismantle agency pretexts for withholding the older, underlying intelligence………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.ms.now/opinion/9-11-victims-declassifying-records-intelligence-threats

September 15, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA