A 9/11 widow demanded Saudi accountability at Ground Zero, in front of three former U.S. presidents.
Terry Strada lost her husband Tom on September 11, 2001. He was one of 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees killed when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Twenty-five years later, she used her moment at the microphone to make clear she has not moved on.
After reading Tom’s name at Friday’s anniversary ceremony, Strada turned to the crowd and asked: “How can it be 25 years and still we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder?”
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She accused Saudi Arabia of fueling anti-American terrorism worldwide and alleged that Saudi-linked figures directly assisted the hijackers. Fifteen of the 19 men who carried out the attacks were Saudi nationals, according to both the FBI and the 9/11 Commission.
As originally reported, Strada then widened her criticism to include decades of American leadership. “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 families,” she said, drawing cheers from the crowd.
Former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden were all present at the ceremony. None of them visibly reacted to her remarks.
Strada did not stop there. She described a pattern of broken commitments by U.S. officials, calling it “one betrayal after another,” both in public and behind closed doors.
She then addressed Vice President JD Vance, who attended the ceremony representing the Trump administration. She asked him to carry a direct message back to Washington: tell Saudi Arabia to stop denying its role in the attacks, and that continued friendship with the United States cannot coexist with that denial.
“Vice President Vance, thank you for being here today,” she said, closing her remarks. “Please carry that message back. Stand with the families. Stand with survivors. Stand with Americans. As my husband Tom would have said, that is always the right thing to do.”
Strada serves as national chair of 9/11 Families United for Justice, an organization that has spent years pursuing legal action against Saudi Arabia over alleged assistance connected to the plot. The attacks killed 2,977 people across three sites, in New York City, at the Pentagon, and near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Her remarks at the 25th anniversary made plain that for many families, the question of accountability is still very much open, and that no amount of time or diplomatic courtesy has closed it.
