The 9/11 evidence we buried didnt protect us it weakened us
On July 31, 2024, Terry Strada sat in a courtroom in lower Manhattan and watched the faces of two terrorists who carried out the attacks that killed her husband and nearly 3,000 others.Tom Strada went to work on the morning of Sept.11, 2001, and never came home.
He died on the 104th floor of the North Tower.In the years since, his widow has done what the government would not: pursue the full truth of who facilitated the attacks that killed him.As national chair of 9/11 Families United, Terry has navigated classification battles, diplomatic stonewalls, and the particular cruelty of a system that mourns publicly and conceals privately.The evidence she saw had been seized within 10 days of the attacks and withheld for over two decades.“To think they had all this evidence and that I am only seeing it in full 23 years later was overwhelming.
In one video, Bayoumi is casing the US Capitol, filming entrances, exits, and security posts while calmly narrating the scene.Tears ran down my cheeks,” Terry told me.“We lived through the unimaginable, only to be forced to relive it every day since, fighting for justice and demanding the truth that should have been ours from the beginning.”In August 2025, a federal judge ruled the 9/11 families’ lawsuit against Saudi Arabia may proceed to trial.
It took 24 years.That delay is not incidental to this story.It is the story.For years, Sept.
11 was narrated as institutional failure: signals missed, dots not connected, a system overwhelmed.That framing was too forgiving.
The record shows something more troubling: repeated decisions not to follow where evidence led.When two future hijackers arrived in California in early 2000 speaking almost no English, Omar al-Bayoumi co-signed their lease, opened a bank account, deposited nearly $10,000, and introduced them to a support network that became their operational infrastructure.A declassified FBI report confirmed he was paid as a co-optee of the Saudi General Intelligence Presi...