The haunting 9/11 call they want you to forget

"We're overlooking the Financial Center. Two of us, three broken windows." Those are the last words Kevin Cosgrove speaks in his five-minute call to emergency services on the morning of September 11, 2001. Less than a second later he cries out in terror as the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses. We have just heard a man die.

The call is difficult to listen to, but it's important that we do. Cosgrove clearly suspects he's facing death and mentions the terrible heat and the smoke and the struggle to breathe. But he remains calm and patient, repeating his name and location to dispatchers. He had faith that help would arrive up until the very end.

Twenty-two years later, Cosgrove's wife and three children are among the more than 2,000 9/11 family members still waiting for a different kind of help: the peace of mind that only justice, truth, and accountability can bring.

And yet not a single perpetrator behind the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil has gone to trial.

As Brett Eagleson, who was 15 when his father Bruce died in the attack, writes: "To this day, our government still fights us, the victims of the worst attack on American soil, and to this day there has been no administration that has chosen the 9/11 families over geopolitical interests."

Meanwhile, the January 6 trials proceed at a brisk pace, with some of the higher-profile defendants already sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

Today, politicians converge on New York City to observe the anniversary of the attack. They include Vice President Kamala Harris, who cynically likened the January 6 riot to 9/11, as well former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani and current Mayor Eric Adams, who have refused to release Ground Zero air quality information to the tens of thousands of New Yorkers sickened in the aftermath.

They will quickly go back to their lives, until the next perfunctory memorial. Meanwhile, the loved ones of Kevin Cosgrove and the other 2,995 victims remain on hold.