Foreign Government Involvement in 9/11 Shouldn’t Be Kept Secret from the People of the United States
Yesterday, in Washington, DC a group of people made a public display of the need to release the 28 pages of the 9/11 report that implicate people in the government and leadership of Saudi Arabia. The website 28Pages.org describes them:
“The 28 pages are an entire section within the official report of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 (not the 9/11 Commission Report). Conducted by the House and Senate intelligence committees, its 838-page report was published in December 2002. The redacted section, titled “Part 4: Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters,” begins on page 395 of the report.”
60 Minutes recently did an examination of the issue and when they asked John F. Lehman, 9/11 Commission member about them he said they included the names of specific people who the public would recognize, “Yes. The average intelligent watcher of 60 Minutes would recognize them instantly.” Lehman has also said in a sworn statement offered as an exhibit in 9/11 victims’ suit against Saudi Arabia. that the pages should be made public as “disclosure of those 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry report would greatly assist policymakers and the public in better understanding many of the threats we now confront.”
While disclosure would be in the public interest, former Congressman Tim Roemer told 60 Minutes they are difficult to gain access to, saying seeing the papers is “Very hard, even for somebody who has all the appropriate top secret and code clearances, these are tough documents to get your eyes on.”
A co-chair of the commission, former Senator Robert Graham, told the Real News in 2013 multi-part interview with Paul Jay, who broke open this story, that he was not surprised that Prince Bandar was aware of the attack and moved quickly to get 15 of the 19 Saudi conspirators on planes out of the US immediately. The exodus of more than a hundred Saudis included members of the bin Laden family. While Graham was not surprised about Bandar’s actions, he was surprised the president of the United States let them leave, telling the Real News:
“Here you have a mass murder, mainly U.S. citizens killed. Here you’ve got people who might have information about this mass murder that law enforcement would like to fully interrogate before they were out of our jurisdiction. And yet the president of the United States agreed, at the request of the Saudi ambassador, to allow a chartered plane to fly from Lexington, Kentucky, back to the Middle East with 144 persons who had not been prescreened, interviewed, or in any meaningful manner debriefed in terms of what they knew about this situation.”
Graham also told Paul Jay of the Real News that the 9/11 inquiry’s full report including a 28-page chapter describing the Saudi connection to 9/11 should be made public. Graham told Jay the 28 pages were completely redacted by U.S. intelligence agencies.
“I was stunned that the intelligence community would feel that it was a threat to national security for the American people to know who had made 9/11 financially possible. And I am sad to report that today, some 12 years after we submitted our report, that those 28 pages continue to be withheld from the public.”
Graham believes that if people understood the role the Saudis played in 9/11 — essentially as co-conspirators — it would change the relationship with Saudi Arabia. In a 2015 press conference Graham said “The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11 and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier.”
The 28 pages can be declassified. The most direct means is for the president to declassify them himself. There is, however, a little-known alternative method by which either the House or Senate can declassify the 28 pages—even over the president’s objection. Some in Congress are pushing to have the pages declassified through H.Res.14 which urges the President to declassify the report. In the Senate, Senate Bill 1471, introduced by Senator Rand Paul and cosponsored by Ron Wyden and Kirsten Gillibrand directs the president to release the pages, rather than urging him to. Also, in 2003, 46 senators signed a letter to President George W. Bush urging the release of the 28 pages.
If you want to join efforts to open the 28 pages, please call or write to Congress today.