Long Island 9/11 widow rips Saudi Arabia, Washington at Ground Zero ceremony

Terry Strada used her turn at the microphone during Friday’s reading of the names at Ground Zero to deliver a heartfelt message to her late husband — and then a blistering one to Washington.

“And my husband, Tom Strada, you are missed more with each year that passes,” Strada said as the nation marked the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “But how can it be 25 years and still we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder.”

Strada, national chair of the advocacy group 9/11 Families United, has spent more than two decades pushing the U.S. government to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its alleged role in the attacks.

She and her husband were both Long Island natives — Tom was born in Mineola and grew up in Westbury — who met in 1983 while working together at the Meadowbrook Country Club. Tom Strada went on to graduate from Nassau Community College and spent his career in bonds at Cantor Fitzgerald, rising to senior vice president on the 104th floor of the North Tower.

Strada was 41 when he was killed. The couple had three children — ages 7, 4 and 4 days old — at the time and were living in New Jersey.

Standing feet from where the towers once stood, with Vice President JD Vance and four former presidents in attendance, Strada laid out what she called a quarter-century of broken promises.

“Yes, we finally made it into a court and have proved that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia fomented a rancid culture of anti-American terrorism around the globe and then sent its agents to support the radical Islamist hijackers so they could attack you and all of our loved ones,” she said. “But 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.

“They withheld evidence. They vetoed JASTA. They broke promises, public and private. It has been one betrayal after another,” she declared.

The lawsuit Strada referenced — filed by thousands of 9/11 families and survivors against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia — exists because Congress overrode a presidential veto. President Barack Obama vetoed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act in September 2016, warning it could expose U.S. officials to reciprocal lawsuits abroad.

Congress overturned him days later, 97-1 in the Senate and 348-77 in the House — the only veto override of his presidency, and the law that opened the door to the families’ case.

Newly surfaced FBI records, declassified last year, identify Omar al-Bayoumi — a Saudi national who had contact with two of the 19 hijackers in San Diego — as an agent of Saudi intelligence who reported to the kingdom’s ambassador in Washington.

Saudi Arabia has denied any government role in the attacks, and the 2004 9/11 Commission report found no evidence the Saudi government or senior officials knowingly funded al-Qaida.

The case remains pending in federal court in Manhattan.

She closed her remarks directly to the vice president, who sat with former Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush at Friday’s ceremony. President Donald Trump attended a separate 9/11 remembrance at the Pentagon.

“Vice President Vance, thank you for being here today,” Strada said. “Please carry that message back. Stand with the families. Stand with the survivors. Stand with Americans.”

Strada ended her statement with her husband.

“As my husband Tom would have said, that is always the right thing to do,” she said. “God bless all of us. God bless America.”

_{Top photo: Terry Strada, National chair of the group 9/11 Families United speaks during a memorial on the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Friday, Sept. 11, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)}