9/11 families challenge Biden to release classified reports or avoid 20th anniversary ceremonies

Nearly two decades after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a group of survivors who lost loved ones and first responders afflicted with lingering illnesses are asking President Biden to avoid ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the attacks next month.

About 1,800 who lost loved ones as well as first responders and their family members signed a letter first reported by NBC News Friday morning. They cited their disappointment in Biden’s failure to make good on a campaign promise he made to seek the release of long-classified reports that examined any role Saudi Arabia may have played in the al-Qaida attacks.

“We understand President Biden’s desire to mark the solemn occasion of the 20th anniversary at Ground Zero,” the group wrote. “However, we cannot in good faith, and with veneration to those lost, sick, and injured, welcome the president to our hallowed grounds until he fulfills his commitment.”

Gordon Felt, an upstate New York man who lost his older brother Edward when United Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Somerset County, was not among those who signed the letter. But he said he understands the frustration that led his 89-year-old mother, Shirley, and Edward’s widow, Sandra, to sign it.

The classified reports, the result of years of sweeping investigations, are a raw wound that still pains survivors searching for the truth.

“It is something that many of us have been keeping our eyes on over the years, because we want the truth,” Gordon Felt said. “We want to know what happened that day. As for demands and what the president is going to do or not do, all I can hope is for (Biden) to do what is right.”

Felt was an integral voice for the families of Flight 93 in the 16-year effort to complete the Flight 93 National Memorial in Somerset County.

Although Biden and then President Trump made stops at the Flight 93 National Memorial on Sept. 11 last year, the White House has yet to announce the president’s schedule for the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Felt said he considers the various presidential visits to the final resting place of Flight 93 over the years an honor, a special tribute to the passengers and crew famously dubbed “the Heroes of Flight 93.”

“But one thing we’ve always tried to do is avoid making it political. September 11 is a day that brings us together,” Felt said.

Tentative plans at Shanksville call for a week of special events and speaker panels at the Flight 93 Memorial leading up to Sept. 11.

An estimated 300-500 family members — parents, siblings, children, aunts, uncles and cousins — of the 40 passengers and crew members who lost their lives struggling to regain control of Flight 93 are expected to attend services observing the 20th anniversary of 9/11 at the stunning 2,200-acre national memorial.

About 15 family members representing passengers and crew members of Flight 93 joined the hundreds of family members and first responders directly affected by the tragedies in New York and Washington, D.C., who signed Friday’s letter.

The group said they are frustrated at being used as “political bargain chips” for years, and they implored the Biden administration to come clean about Saudi Arabia’s role in 9/11.

“To be clear, the Biden administration still has a historic opportunity to fulfill his campaign promise and, more important, finally give our families and the American people the truth they deserve about 9/11. Twenty years later, there is simply no reason — unmerited claims of ‘national security’ or otherwise — to keep this information secret,” they wrote.