ORONO – Ellen Mariani speaks softly but from strength as she talks about her fight against the government and for what she calls the truth about the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Nobody is going to tell me to sit down, shut up and take a pill,” said the grandmother of 11, who lost her husband in one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center. Quiet acceptance is the fate of others who lost loved ones. They have been pressured, coerced or medicated to settle financial claims, she told nearly two dozen people attending her presentation at the University of Maine early Tuesday afternoon.

But not her.

Mariani, who grew up in Maine and now lives in New Hampshire, steadfastly has refused to settle and has filed a lawsuit against the federal government charging it with racketeering. She claims the government knew about the attacks, didn’t prevent them and sought to cover up the truth afterward. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are the top two defendants listed on the suit, although other governmental officials have been named or suggested.

Mariani and her husband of 13 years, Louis Neal Mariani, both were headed to her daughter’s wedding in California on Sept. 11, 2001, on separate flights. Her husband brought with him two boxes of toys for two of her grandchildren, the flower girl and the ring bearer.

Despite the loss, the wedding went on a few days later as Mariani said she sought solace and to keep a brave face on in the midst of her loss and the confusion.

“I had to put on a smile when I couldn’t bear it inside,” she told the small gathering at the Memorial Union at the University of Maine.

Since then, Mariani said she has sought answers, but instead has faced roadblocks, deception and red flags that have raised even more questions and concerns. So many holes have lead to some strong condemnations and conspiracy theories.

Her claims are far-reaching – from a former lawyer representing her who she said tried to get her power of attorney over any potential settlement, to President Bush, who she said knew of the danger in advance and she suggested had a connection to the family of Osama bin Laden.

She said U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft was warned about traveling on commercial airlines in 2001, yet the public wasn’t warned. A Bush relative had been head of a bank where a cashier’s check had been made out to one of the supposed hijackers, she said. The president’s brother Jeb Bush, governor of Florida, ordered that flight records and file information be removed from a Florida aviation school, she adds.

In an open letter to President Bush, Mariani states that in the Sept. 11 aftermath, she was stranded in Chicago because of flight restrictions, while a number of people were flown out of the country on a 747 plane with Arabic lettering on the fuselage.

Further casting shadows on the catastrophe, Mariani said information about the black boxes, including the one from her husband’s flight, have not been made public. Neither have the airport surveillance tapes of the passengers boarding the planes.