President Donald Trump faced renewed calls to declassify 9/11 files as bereaved families honored victims on the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
At Ground Zero in New York City, relatives of 9/11 victims gathered to read aloud the names of some 3,000 people who lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001—and urged Trump, 80, to release long-awaited files about the attacks.
A man who identified himself as the nephew of Lisa Marie Terry, 42, of Oakland Township, drew applause when he addressed the president.
“For 25 years, the deep state has hidden the truth about what happened that day 25 years ago,” he said. “President Trump, you’re our last hope. Release the unredacted files that implicate Saudi Arabia while what’s left of the victims’ families are still alive to see it.”
Terry Strada, the widow of a 9/11 victim, made a similar appeal.
“My husband, Tom Strada, you are missed more with each year that passes, but how can it be 25 years and still, we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder?” she said.
“For 25 years, administration after administration, including leaders in front of us here today, chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 family,” she continued. “It has been one betrayal after another. President Trump can still change that: Tell the Saudis to stop lying. Tell them 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.”
Strada also called on Vice President JD Vance, who was at the event in New York, to “carry that message back.”
Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a MAGA diehard, claimed in an X post on Friday morning that “there will be 9/11 files declassified today (in the next few hours).”
When reached for comment, the White House directed the Daily Beast to press releases by the CIA and the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel announcing the declassification of more 9/11 files.
“In an act of exceptional transparency, we honor the memory of those we lost on that tragic Tuesday by releasing 71 declassified products—the single largest release of CIA analysis related to 9/11 ever,” Director John Ratcliffe said in a statement.
The 9/11 federal investigation found no direct connections between the Saudi government and al-Qaeda terrorists who carried out the attack, most of whom were Saudi, including mastermind Osama Bin Laden. The Saudi government has repeatedly denied any involvement.
But many relatives of 9/11 victims remain unconvinced, and they have not given up hope that Trump will make good on an earlier promise to release more files related to the attacks.
In June 2024, Trump answered in the affirmative when Fox News asked him if he would declassify 9/11 files.
“The 9/11 community appreciates President Trump’s renewed commitment to full transparency around 9/11 and his acknowledgment once again that there has never been a full accounting for the worst terrorist attack in American history,” Strada, the national chair of 9/11 Families United, said at the time.
Though Trump has since released files related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, as well as purported UFO sightings, he has yet to act on the 9/11 files.
“We’ve seen him do it for the [President John F. Kennedy] files. Why not the 9/11 files?” Brett Eagleson, whose father Bruce died on 9/11, told ABC News. “Now is the moment, 25 years later, to finally bring resolution, and the man that sits in the Oval Office has a historic and a tremendous opportunity to do it.”
