Terry Strada's plea shows the US government betrays 9/11 families
By Maya Ellison · Reporting from Detroit ·
The spectacle of the 25th anniversary of 9/11 was supposed to be a curated moment of national unity, a sea of flags and solemn nods from the political elite.
# The Saudi Secret: 25 Years of Redacted Justice
Terry Strada refused the script at the 25th anniversary of 9/11. While the government staged a curated moment of national unity—a sea of flags and solemn nods from the political elite—the National Chair of 9/11 Families United turned the ceremony into a reckoning. Standing before Presidents Biden and George W. Bush and Vice President JD Vance, Strada did more than mourn her husband, Tom; she indicted the United States government for a quarter-century of calculated betrayal.
The New York Post and Axios reported that Strada’s testimony targeted a singular, recurring choice: for twenty-five years, every administration has shielded the Saudi government from the families of the nearly 3,000 people murdered in 2001. Strada stated the government buried evidence and the Obama administration vetoed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA). This is no geopolitical puzzle. It is a trade: the grief of thousands for the profit of a few, and the state has spent two decades ensuring the money stays in the bank.
The Strategic Lie is a Business Model
The state hides behind "national security" to justify this silence. Officials argue that the U.S.-Saudi alliance stabilizes global oil markets and secures counter-terrorism cooperation. They claim that alienating Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) would jeopardize intelligence sharing and the sale of billions of dollars in fighter jets and missile defense systems. The establishment’s ledger is simple: the flow of crude oil outweighs the closure of a few thousand families.
This is a protection racket. When the state invokes "national security" to cloak a monarchy that employed operatives to assist hijackers, it does not protect American citizens. It protects the wealth and power that shackles the U.S. executive branch to the House of Saud. This priority hardened during the diplomatic frictions of 2019, when the need for Saudi cash crushed any official commitment to human rights.
Donald Trump is the face of this trade. Strada urged him to force the Saudis to stop lying, but Trump is more than a political ally to MBS. His family maintains deep business ties in the Kingdom. Trump visited Saudi Arabia on his first foreign trip in two different terms and shielded the Crown Prince after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. He does not act as a neutral arbiter of justice; he operates as a shareholder in the silence.
Why the State Redacts
The demand for the unredacted 9/11 files is a war against a system that scrubs the record. The government wields the same machinery it employed after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In both instances, officials did not hide files to protect "sources and methods," but to protect the people who manage the state. The state uses the redaction pen—black ink deployed to ensure the truth never disrupts the power structure.
The state only yields the truth when the public cost of the secret becomes unbearable. The JFK assassination records released in 2016 proved this pattern. The 9/11 families are currently trapped in that same grind. They launched their fight with the Justice for 9/11 Families Act in 2002, but the state forced them into nearly two decades of lobbying and lawsuits before the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act passed in 2021.
Evidence already leaks through the cracks. A federal judge recently found enough evidence to infer that the Kingdom employed operatives to help the hijackers. A 2017 FBI memo explicitly stated that Omar al-Bayoumi, a key figure in the hijackers' orbit, was on the Saudi intelligence payroll. The facts exist; the government is simply waiting for the victims to die so it can stop pretending to care.
Can the "Deep State" Hunter Deliver?
The families are gambling their hopes on Trump’s habit of attacking the "deep state." The nephew of Lisa Marie Terry called the former president their "last hope," hoping he will treat the 9/11 files with the same volatility he brought to the JFK records. However, they may be mistaking his appetite for disruption for a desire for truth. Trump does not fight the bureaucracy to liberate the truth; he fights it to clear a path for his own interests.
The financial incentive to keep MBS happy crushes any impulse to provide closure to the families of Cantor Fitzgerald. Between the Trump family's private investments and the Kingdom's status as a primary purchaser of U.S. arms, the math demands silence. Vice President JD Vance may carry the message back to the Oval Office, but the state will write the answer in the language of a deal, not the language of justice.
The government continues to manage the 9/11 families like a PR liability. As long as the U.S. treats the Saudi monarchy as a bank account rather than a collaborator in mass murder, the files will stay blacked out. Justice remains locked because the people holding the keys are the ones who profited from the lock.