NYC: Sept. 11 records shouldn't be released
By The Associated Press
07.23.02
NEW YORK — Many records of the fire department's response to the World Trade Center attack should not be made public, the Bloomberg administration has asserted.
The New York Times reported today that city officials, responding to the newspaper's lawsuit for access to the records, cite victims' privacy and the federal prosecution of terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui as reasons to keep them secret.
The Times' lawsuit in state Supreme Court in Manhattan asks for the release of audiotapes of dispatchers' and firefighters' communications, and a department collection of firefighters' accounts of the attack.
The city says that an order from the Virginia court where Moussaoui is charged bars them from releasing the documents.
The administration also argues that releasing the records would invade the privacy of firefighters and the families of those killed on Sept. 11.
The Times has disputed those claims and has said the records would be of enormous historical value.