Lawmakers in US Congress Want 9/11 Commission’s Report Declassified
The White House has once again come under pressure to declassify the 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission Report that have been speculated to have fingered the Saudi’s Royal Family conspiring with terrorists for the attack. This time, it is a group of bipartisan lawmakers on Capitol Hill who are said to be the new activists pushing the White House to make the documents public to clear all the rumors being peddled around.
The Commission’s Report on the attack has been classified since the original report was released during the presidency of George W. Bush. President Barack Obama has also declined to declassify the report; raising suspicious high that the involvement of the Saudi Royal Family might be true and declassifying the report sore relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia where the former’s economic and regional interest lies in the Middle East.
President Obama has told families of victims of the 9/11 attacks that he supports the declassification of the redacted pages. Early this month in a press briefing, White House spokesman-Josh Earnest said the US intelligence community is still reviewing the documents for any potential declassification.
“The administration, in response to a specific congressional request, last year asked the intelligence community to conduct a classification review of that material. And we did so in keeping with the standard procedure for determining whether or not it’s appropriate to release classified material”, he said.
From an objective point of view, it is unclear exactly what the contents of the documents are but several current and former lawmakers who have read some of the pages say they illustrate links between the Saudi government and some of the terrorists responsible for attacking the World Trade Center and the Pentagon back in 2001.
House Resolution 14 is the name of the bill urging President Obama to release the 28-page report and was said to have been introduced in January after an initial failed attempt to pass it in 2013. Some Lawmakers are constantly calling on President Obama to release what many people believe is the 9/11 Commission’s findings on the alleged links. Republican lawmaker, Walter Jones who played a lead role in the introduction of the bill in congress said he is concerned with issues of transparencies, hence his desire to see the bill passed.
“You cannot have trust in your government when your government hides information from you, particularly on something horrific like 9/11,” he said.
An authentic testimony given recently by an Al-Qaeda convicted member -Zacarias Moussaoui said the Saudi Royal Family including 3 princes made funds available directly to Al-Qaeda for the attack. In the public eye, this has breathed a new life into calls for the declassification of the report. What is the government hiding from us?
But not all lawmakers are convinced the 28 redacted pages are all that interesting. Skeptics like Republican lawmaker-Adam Schiff who sits on the House Intelligence Committee told The Hill that allegations against the Saudis are unsubstantiated, adding that notwithstanding on that he supports the declassification of the report.
“I have read the 28 pages and the issues raised in those pages were investigated by the 9/11 Commission and found to be unsubstantiated. I believe that at appropriate time in the near future they should be declassified with any redactions necessary to protect intelligence sources and methods as this would help demystify the issues raised”, he said.
Saudi Arabia had said since 2003 that it supports the release of the documents adding that “the idea that the Saudi government funded, organized or even knew about September 11th is malicious and blatantly false.”
“Saudi Arabia has nothing to hide. We can deal with questions in public, but we cannot respond to blank pages”, a statement from the Saudi government said back in 2003.
The New York Times reported that adding to the pressure on the White House is the fact that former Florida Senator- Bob Graham, who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee during the drafting of the 9/11 report, recently said the remaining 28 pages “point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier” of the 9/11 attacks.
In 2012, Graham had said that he was “convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11 attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia”.
His comment was given as a sworn statement as part of a lawsuit against the Saudi government, which was filed by families of 9/11 victims.
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