9/11Obama administration to release secret 28 pages of 9/11 Commission report

The Obama administration will release at least part of a 28-page classified chapter from the 9/11 Commission report which implicates high-level Saudis, both inside and outside government, in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Former Senator Bob Graham (D-Florida), a co-chair of the commission, said he believed the Obama administration would make a decision on the issue by June.

The Daily Mail reports that the unreleased portion of the report, contains information from the joint congressional inquiry into “specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers while they were in the United States.”

Graham said an administration official told him that the U.S. intelligence community will make a decision within weeks on whether the entire 28-page classified chapter, or only a few pages from it.

“I hope that decision is to honor the American people and make it available,” Graham told NBC on Sunday. “The most important unanswered question of 9/11 is, did these 19 people conduct this very sophisticated plot alone, or were they supported?”

Former Representative Tim Roemer (D-Indiana), a member of both the 9/11 Commission and the joint congressional inquiry, has read the classified chapter three times. He said the twenty-eight pages are a “preliminary police report.”

“There were clues. There were allegations. There were witness reports. There was evidence about the hijackers, about people they met with — all kinds of different things that the 9/11 Commission was then tasked with reviewing and investigating,” he told the AP.

The Mail notes that fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudi citizens, but that the Saudi government has always denied supporting the attackers.

The Saudis now say that they would welcome declassification of the twenty-eight pages because it would “allow us to respond to any allegations in a clear and credible manner.”

The release of the document comes against the backdrop of growing tensions between the United States and Saudi Arabia. The Sunni kingdom argues that the United States has not been sufficiently energetic in confronting Iranian hegemonic ambitions in the region.

The Saudis have also protested pending legislation in Congress which would make it possible for the relatives of 9/11 victims to use U.S courts to sue Saudi officials, banks, and charities. Such legislation has so fa been blocked by a 1976 law which gives foreign nations immunity from such lawsuits.

The Senate bill would stipulate that the immunity enjoyed by foreign nations under the law would not apply when nations are found guilty of terrorist attacks which kill Americans on U.S. soil. 

Ben Rhodes, President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser, told journalists in Riyadh last week that President Barack Obama had asked National Intelligence Director James Clapper to review the classified chapter for possible declassification.

“When that’s done we’d expect that there will be some degree of declassification that provides more information,” Rhodes said.

The AP quotes Roemer to say that many questions still remain with regard to the precise role of Fahad al Thumairy, an official with Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, who helped two of the hijackers find housing and transportation after they arrived in Southern California. 

In May 2003 the United States denied al Thumairy entry into the United States after the Department of State said he might be involved in terrorist activity. Roemer said there were also questions about Omar al Bayoumi, a Saudi intelligence officials who helped the hijackers in both finding housing and registering for flight school.

“We did not discover….Saudi government involvement at the highest level of the 9/11 attacks,” Roemer said.

Roemer, who would later serve as U.S. ambassador to India, added, though: “We certainly did not exonerate the Saudis. … Saudi was a fertile ground for fundraising for Al-Qaeda. Some of these issues continue to be problems today. That’s why we need to continue to get to the bottom of this.”

In June 2015 a CIA inspector general report said there had been no reliable information confirming Saudi government “involvement with and financial support for terrorist prior to 9/11.”