Letter to David – September 11, 2026
David Dear,
When the sun lit your face on the morning of September 11, you startled and threw the clock to the floor, upset it hadn’t alarmed you. You worried about missing the train, getting into the city in time to overnight your disability insurance policy before the important meeting at your office at One World Trade Center. You awakened the boys for school, ran into the shower, told me to lay out your clothes. I watched you hurry through your rituals— briefs, shirt buttons, pants, vanilla musk. “Slow down, catch the next train” I said, but you were reliable—under promise, over deliver, was your mantra. You and Davin barreled down the stairs, poured milk into Cheerios, brushed teeth. You lifted Dylan into the air, gave him a big hug—”have a good first day of school buddy!” You ran out the door with Davin, waved as his bus passed you by. It would be the last time we were us. Twenty-two minutes
But that morning wasn’t where the end began. There had been a violent nor’easter the night before. You were in the basement workshop repairing something until 11 PM. In bed, pulling me into your chest, with your arms tight around me you said, “I love you, I love you so much dear,” a dozen times, the repetition alarming
“What is it? I said, are you sick, is there something you haven’t told me?”
“I just want to hold you close to me, all night long, I want to look at you, I don’t want to let you go,” you whispered. Outside, the wind howled as we laid in the darkness, where only our breath moved.
I said, “Dear, please tell me what you’re sensing, I’m feeling scared.”
“I don’t know what it is, I love you so much. Just stay right here with me, I want to hold you all night,” you said before closing your eyes to the night.
After putting Dylan on the school bus for his first day of pre-K, Big Bird was singing Good Morning Mr. Sun when the screen cut to black smoke billowing from the tower where you worked. I hadn’t thought it was inescapable, unsolvable. They said it was a small plane. Ten minutes later, I watched a large jet plane slice through the other tower that I was thrown to my knees, screaming into the 32” looking glass— Run David, Run! Don’t be a hero!
You were always repairing things— the faulty wiring, the washing machine belt, minivan break pads On September 13th, Davin discovered his remote-control boat on your work bench, glued and running.
I went into the city to search for you and hung “Missing” posters with the duct tape from your workbench. I called everyone who you worked with and who rode the bus and train with you. For weeks, you continued to ring the doorbell at 6:00 PM, sending the boys racing toward your energy, like all the weekdays before. You rang the phone at noon for our lunch check-ins, unable to break the silence in the line. I waited through sleepless nights for you to emerge from the rubble, from a tunnel, from amnesia, for the comb and toothbrush to find you in a hospital. For eighteen months I tracked your movements because how does someone (with a white cane) travel twenty-five miles— by bus, train, subway, and ninety-seven floors after stopping at the post office and bakery— in eighty-six minutes?
I know how exhausting it is to never go home. That yearning when you’re on vacation to sleep in your own bed, returning to your own grind. This is how aging without you feels. It appears everyone I know is floating in their own ether while I’m in a fog, circling in an endless holding pattern, longing for a safe place to land. Since we left our bed twenty-five years ago, I’ve pushed through the horror of the growing absence, clinging to the verge of despair and hope in a quarter-century pursuit for justice.
You were murdered with 2,976 others when nineteen extreme Islamist-crazed terrorists flew four hijacked passenger jets into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania after a failed mission to strike the U.S. Capitol building. This egregious attack ignited a global war on terror. In 1999, when I wrote in our shared journal, “I feel that you are about to do big things,” I hadn’t expected that you would change the world with your leaving.
In September 2002, I claimed custody of a portion of your scapula and a rib. I began to fight for your worth, government accountability and the search for the truth— retaining a third Victim’s Compensation attorney, a Worker’s Compensation attorney, an estate attorney, and a major law firm in a multi-district litigation (MDL) taking action to expose terrorist financing schemes and cut off the money streams in the first major action against a Qaeda Bankrollers.
The MDL is taking on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Sudan – Thomas E. Burnett Sr., et. al v. al Baraka Inv. & Development Corp, et. al. in re. Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001. (MDL 1570) – Dubbed “9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism” in the fight for transparency and accountability re: financial and logistical support to the hijackers. These hearings take place at the Federal District Court of the Southern District of NY, just a few blocks from where your continual identified remains rest in a museum repository. I have attended two hearings in person and several by phone. The next hearing takes place October 7, 2026, when the judge hears the Kingdom’s case to overturn his September 2025 decision to deny their motion to dismiss. This decision opens a path for trial. The judge’s next ruling could lead to a trial scheduling order.
The proceedings against Sudan are rooted in evidence that they provided a home base for Usama bin Laden in the early days of al Qaeda and the building of training camps.
To date, there have been no trials for your murder—with the exception of the potential twentieth failed hijacker— Zacharias Moussaoui. He is the only person ever convicted in a U.S. civilian court for involvement in the attacks. He is a French citizen of Moroccan descent who was an al Qaeda operative arrested in Minnesota August 16, 2001, after raising suspicion at a flight school. The FBI suspected he might have been part of a hijacking plot, but Washington headquarters declined a warrant to seize his laptop— one of the most widely cited pre-9/11 intelligence (CIA) failures. He was indicted December 2001 and sentenced in May 2006 to life without parole at ADX Florence Supermax prison in Colorado.
Victim Family Members began lobbying in Congress for investigations by forming the 9/11 Commission in early 2002. I was not involved in direct lobbying because I was raising young children without proximity to extended family, however I engaged in petition signing and letter writing.
The Victim’s Compensation Fund (VCF) inflicted upon me a 2-1/2-year battle with the special master and the department of Justice. I went through three lawyers (firing two) proving your life was worth more than two years of your salary, which ultimately translated to my own and our sons’ worth.
Five of the al Qaeda terrorists who planned your murder were captured between January 2002 and March 2003. They were tortured at black sites to thwart future attacks then transferred and charged at the detention center Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (GTMO) in September 2006. Their cases are deadlocked in an endless military tribunal known as The United States v. KSM. et. al. It was Khalid Shaikh Mohammad’s brainchild to use passenger planes as missiles. They also provided logistical support to the hijackers carrying out the attacks. There have been two trial scheduling orders overturned by the government. A third was set in August to begin June 5, 2028. I struggle to have faith that it will occur. This case is under the jurisdiction of the United States Military Commission, the Department of Defense, the Federal District Court of Appeals-District of Columbia, and the interests of the Executive branch.
Though this is entirely a separate case from the MDL regarding the financial ties of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to at least two of the 9/11 hijackers, there is overlapping evidence sealed with the pre-trial agreements (PTA’s) currently being presented to the Supreme court for consideration of reinstating the agreements withdrawn by the previous Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin. It is suspected that this action was the casualty of 2024 election agendas.
I began attending hearings at GTMO in November 2023 and have attended a total of seven weeks of hearings in Guantanamo Bay with my latest attendance in March 2026 (one of only two weeks no cancelled so far this year.). I have attended the D.C court hearing regarding the PTA’s via ZOOM in February 2025. I have also attended ZOOM meetings with both Government prosecution and Defense teams in 2025-2026 and an in-person case update meeting, with government prosecutors in Virginia on July 22, 2026.
In December 2009, Victim Family Members and my MDL attorneys began creating a new path to justice by initiating Justice Against State-Sponsors of Terrorism (JASTA) law as a way for Victim families to file civil suit against State Sponsors of Terrorism and for removal of sovereign immunity of suspected financiers and supporters of al Qaeda and the hijackers. JASTA’s focus is on discovery of why and how the attacks occurred, transparency, and accountability. I participated in advocating for this legislation through letter writing, petition signing, and phone calls to my Vermont and New York legislators. It was finally passed as law in September 2016 in an override of veto by President Obama.
When JASTA became law it created the United States Victims of State-Sponsored Terrorism Fund (USVSSTF). The Fund is a federal compensation program to pay eligible U.S. victims of international terrorism linked to foreign state sponsors such as Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Includes judgements for individuals from the 1969 U.S.S. Pueblo seizure by North Korea to the October 7, 2023 Hamas Attacks in Israel. Although 9/11 families created JASTA, which led to creation of the Fund, we were barred from filing claims with the Department of Justice (DOJ) because of a civil suit waiver clause on the VCF we were coerced into signing at a time of great duress, missing out on the first two rounds. More lobbying resulted in the DOJ issuing judgements to 9/11 victim family members in 2018 and a 2020 judgement for catch-up payments of the first two denied rounds. Unfortunately, our judgements have not resulted in fair and consistent payments. Though the DOJ and the attorney general authorized the fund, there was no effort by Congress manage the Fund or to inform family members of its existence. Unless they had already retained specific attorneys tied to establishment of the Fund, many were unaware, entered the fund late, and continue to fight for fairness in the fund.
Over time, we realized that the language in JASTA law needed revision to ensure that it and the Fund operated as originally intended. I have joined Victim Family members in lobbying through an evolution of three bills: Ensuring Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act (EJVTA) – 2024, died in Fall 2024; American Victims of Terrorism Compensation Act (AVTCA) –February 2025, died in Fall 2025; H.R. 9795 – “Never Forget the Victims of Terrorism USVSST Fund Solvency Act, which is currently being pushed into the upcoming September 14th Senate hearing.
Dear, I was unable to continue my speech therapy practice. Over the years, I remarried, moved to Vermont, sold our home in New York, divorced, and lost our beautiful boy Davin to the sadness. Our life is complex. In the early years of raising the boys without you, I filled journals writing you letters as if you were simply away fighting other wars. I have joined various terrorism victim advocacy groups and writing communities and am writing a memoir and a book of poetry. I’ve discovered that putting grief into action through advocacy, writing, and sharing stories— creating a living legacy— is the justice. It is power which gives me a way to carry everything. Our love lives in the white space and keystrokes— it is our coming home.
I love you forever – Your Dear, Deborah
© 2026 Deborah Garcia, all rights reserved
