Saudi connectionPressures grow to release docs which would clarify Saudi involvement in 9/11 attacks

About fourteen years after the 9/11 attacks, there remains a disagreement among former and current U.S. intelligence officials on whether Saudi Arabia or individuals connected to the Saudi Royal family helped finance the attacks or had knowledge of the attacks before  it occurred. In February, Zacarias Moussaoui, a convicted former member of al-Qaeda, claimed that he had high-level contact with officials of the Saudi government in the prelude to 9/11.

Lawmakers and relatives of those killed in the attacks now want twenty-eight pages of investigation by congressional intelligence committees into the 9/11 attacks declassified, on the grounds that those pages may clear up confusion about Saudi involvement. “If we stop funding of terrorism and hold those people accountable, wouldn’t it make a dent in the financing of terrorism today?” asked William Doyle, whose son, Joseph, was killed in the World Trade Center.

According to the New York Times, Doyle said that President Barack Obama personally assured him during a 2011 meeting with surviving family members that the twenty-eight pages would be declassified. “He said: ‘Bill, I know about the pages. I promise I am going to get them released,’” Doyle recounted.

“I think it is the right thing to do,” said Representative Stephen F. Lynch (D-Massachusetts), an author of a bipartisan resolution encouraging Obama to declassify the section. “Let’s put it out there.”

Former Florida Senator Bob Graham (D-Florida), who co-chaired Congress’s Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, has called for the release of the report’s Part 4, titled “Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain National Security Matters,” which focused on Saudi Arabia. President George W. Bush ordered it classified when the rest of the report was released in December 2002. “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,” Graham said earlier this year.

Philip D. Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, said the commission followed up on the Saudi allegations, but reached a different conclusion. “Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of Al Qaeda funding, but we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization,” the commission said in its July 2004 report. It did note, however, the “likelihood that charities with significant Saudi government sponsorship diverted funds to Al Qaeda.”

Zelikow adds that individuals involved in the preparation of the Part 4 of Congress’s Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks joined the staff of the 9/11 Commission and participated in the follow-up investigation of all the leads that had been developed earlier. In doing so, “they were aided by a larger team with more members, more powers and for the first time actually conducted interviews of relevant people both in this country and in Saudi Arabia.” “And what we found is reflected in the commission report,” he said.

Graham, who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee during its investigation into the 9/11 attacks, said the 9/11 Commission did not “pursue some of the leads that we had left them with.” Representative Walter B. Jones (R-North Carolina) is pushing for the release of Part 4. He has been approached by lawmakers inquiring how to view the twenty-eight pages, but declassification is not likely to receive strong support from congressional intelligence leaders.

The Times reports that Senator Richard M. Burr (R-North Carolina), who now heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, is skeptical of the value of releasing the pages, calling them more of a historical document in a fight against terrorism that has shifted substantially since 2002. “There may have been a level of participation by some Muslim country that is not commensurate with today,” he said.

For its part, the White House said it is responding to calls to consider releasing the material. “This administration, in response to a congressional request, last year asked the intelligence community to conduct a classification review of this material,” said Edward C. Price, a spokesman for the National Security Council. “We did so in keeping with the standard procedure for determining whether classified information can be publicly released without jeopardizing national security. That process is ongoing.”