28 pages

National Security Whistleblowers Call for Release of 28 Pages

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NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake
NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake

With the 14th anniversary of the September 11 attacks approaching, three national security whistleblowers are adding their voices to the growing movement to declassify 28 pages from a 2002 congressional inquiry that document indications of foreign government support of the 9/11 hijackers.

Former senior NSA executive Thomas Drake and FBI veterans Mark Rossini and Coleen Rowley are all urging the release of the material that was classified by President George W. Bush amid controversy and criticism.

Meanwhile, an ongoing intelligence community review of the 28 pages for potential declassification, initiated by the White House last year under pressure from Congress, has already taken more than twice as long as the entire, far-reaching inquiry that produced them.

“After all these years, what is so secret about the 28 pages that so compels the government to still keep hidden from the public, and the families of those murdered on 9/11, the fuller truth of what happened?,” Drake asked in a message to 28Pages.org.

Drake alerted Congress to NSA failures in the months leading up to 9/11, and blew the whistle on mass surveillance programs that he, among many others, considers a sweeping violation of the United States Constitution.

Former Senate intelligence committee chairman Bob Graham—who presided over the congressional inquiry that wrote the 28 pages as part of an  report—has said the 28 pages implicate Saudi Arabia, and that, by shielding the kingdom from scrutiny of its funding of extremists, the classification of the pages paved the way for the rise of ISIS.

“It is way past time to reveal the missing 28 pages and provide a fuller accounting of entangling foreign alliances, active involvement, material support and funding behind the perpetrators of that fateful day in history,” said Drake.

In a recent interview on The Real News Network, Drake told host Paul Jay that, regarding the 28 pages and the connections to Saudi Arabia they are said to reveal, “This is really serious stuff. You’re talking, kind of, the heart of dark government, what I call the double government. This is the other government in action. You’ve set it up in a way that obviously you’re going to protect the Saudis. And yes, clearly the Saudis had a huge—most of the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia.”

Rossini: “It’s a disgrace that they haven’t been released”

Former FBI Agent Mark Rossini
FBI Veteran Mark Rossini

For Mark Rossini, who was an FBI agent assigned to the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit, the battle for the release of the 28 pages goes to the very nature of the American system of government.

“It’s a disgrace that they haven’t been released. We’re a government of the people for the people and by the people. The constitution starts with the word ‘we.’ It’s not ‘we the government’ and ‘you the people,’ its ‘we’ and in a sense that document is ours. And we have every right as American citizens to see that document,” Rossini tells 28Pages.org. (See our full stories here and here.)

While at the CIA unit, Rossini was witness to a pivotal incident that has yet to be fully and publicly examined.

Rossini’s fellow agent, Doug Miller, attempted to alert the FBI that known al Qaeda terrorist and future Flight 77 hijacker Khalid al-Midhar had obtained a multi-entry visa for travel to the United States. To the astonishment of Rossini and Miller, a CIA supervisor stopped the message from proceeding to FBI headquarters. When Rossini questioned the decision, the supervisor ordered him to stay quiet, saying, according to Rossini, “You are not to tell the FBI about it. When and if we want the FBI to know about it, we will.”

Reflecting on the fact that the ongoing declassification review of the 28 pages has already taken a year or more—the National Security Council refused to say on which day or even in which month the review began—an animated Rossini said, “There’s nothing to review…come on. Everybody knows what’s in there. To review it again for what? It’s only frickin’ 28 pages, I could read it in a half hour. No, it’s all bull****, it’s just another excuse to push it down the street and make it someone else’s problem, and not release it and not embarrass King Salman and guarantee the continuation of the black ooze coming out of the ground.”

Rowley Publicizes White House Petition

Coleen Rowley, one of three whistleblowers named “Persons of the Year” by Time magazine in 2002, recently helped promote awareness of the White House petition urging the president to release the 28 pages by sharing a link to the petition on Twitter.

Rowley, who was assigned to the FBI’s Minnesota office in 2001, wrote a memo documenting FBI failures in the weeks leading up to 9/11. In a letter to then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, Rowley wrote, “I feel that certain facts…have, up to now, been omitted, downplayed, glossed over and/or mischaracterized in an effort to avoid or minimize personal and/or institutional embarrassment on the part of the FBI and/or perhaps even for improper political reasons.”

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Congressmen Reiterate Call for Release of 9/11 Secrets

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Rep. Thomas Massie
Rep. Thomas Massie

When Congressman Thomas Massie first arrived in Washington, DC as a freshman from Kentucky, a long-tenured North Carolinian, Walter Jones, asked him an intriguing question.

“He said, ‘Did you realize there’s 28 pages of the 9/11 report that never been released, but as a congressman, you can go read them in a secret room?’,” Massie recalled on The Tyler Cralle Show (audio below).

His curiosity piqued, the MIT grad obtained permission to read the 28 pages and proceeded to a secure, soundproof facility in the basement of the Capitol where he read them under close observation and without the option of taking notes or bringing anyone from his staff.

Massie was surprised by what he found, telling host Tyler Cralle, “They’re the most consequential pages in the thousand-page report.” At a 2014 press conference, Massie said the experience was “shocking,” and that he had to “stop every couple pages and try to rearrange my understanding of history.”

Jones, who joined Massie in his discussion with Cralle, said, “There’s a lot of information (in the 28 pages) the American people and the 9/11 families have a right to see. The American people cannot trust a government that will not let them see information on one of the worst tragedies in America.”

Pages Said to Implicate Saudi Arabia

Former Senator Bob Graham, who co-chaired the 2002 joint congressional intelligence inquiry that produced the 28 pages, has said the 28 pages “point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier” of the attacks.

Rep. Walter Jones
Rep. Walter Jones

The pages—an entire chapter of the joint inquiry report—were classified by the Bush White House. “After reading those pages, I will tell you that I can I can understand (why)…because the Bush administration was very close to the Saudis, if you remember. The king actually visited Crawford, Texas,” said Jones.

Republicans Jones and Massie, along with Democrat Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts, are leading the House effort to release the 28 pages. The focus of their campaign is House Resolution 14, which urges the president to release them.

Noting the resolution has attracted a modest 18 cosponsors to date, Massie said, “Trust me, it’s a dangerous thing to cosponsor this because they want to keep this under the rug.” Nonetheless, he said it’s important “to release those 28 pages in the 9/11 report that will once and for all show the American people what caused 9/11 and who funded it.”

Life and Death Decisions Demand Full Information

Jones also told radio host Cralle about his decision-making process regarding the upcoming vote on the Iranian nuclear agreement.

His scrutiny of the topic has already included consultation with Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor to Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush (he supports it), and will include discussion with scientists and a thorough reading of the arrangement, which places additional safeguards on Iran’s nuclear program that go beyond the ones already imposed on the country as a signatory to the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Jones said his very deliberate approach to the vote reflects a painful lesson learned in 2002, when he voted to authorize military action against Iraq.

“I did not do what I should have done to read and find out whether Bush was telling us the truth about Saddam being responsible for 9/11 and having weapons of  mass destruction. Because I did not do my job then, I helped kill 4,000 Americans and I will go to my grave regretting that.”

Though he was talking about Iraq and Iran, his conviction that a full understanding of the facts should precede any critical national security decision seems equally applicable to his drive to release the 28 pages.

That same conviction motivates Massie: “If we’re going to be fighting more wars ostensibly because of terrorism and to keep us safe, shouldn’t we know what caused and what enabled 9/11? The American people are in the dark right now.”

The conversation about the 28 pages begins at the 21:00 mark in the broadcast.

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CNN’s Smerconish: “Mr President, please release the 28 pages”

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Smerconish CNN

Yesterday, CNN’s Michael Smerconish concluded his weekly show with a segment on those still-classified 28 pages that document indications of foreign government financial support of the 9/11 terrorists. He ended with a direct plea: “Mr. President, please release the 28 pages before we mark yet another 9/11 anniversary.”

On Friday, Obama hosted Saudi Arabia’s King Salman at the White House. Smerconish highlighted the fact that the president’s hospitality came one week before the 14th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks—attacks that, according to former Senator Bob Graham, were enabled at least in part by financial and other assistance furnished to the hijackers by the kingdom.

Smerconish also noted that the nation is marking another anniversary: It’s been a year or more since the U.S. intelligence community was tasked with reviewing the 28 pages for declassification. “In other words, the review has now taken more than 10 days for every single page with no resolution—and that’s inexcusable,” said Smerconish.

As 28Pages.org recently observed, this milestone also means the review has already taken twice as long as the entire joint congressional inquiry that produced the 28 pages as part of a report spanning more than 800 pages.

On his SiriusXM radio show on Friday, Smerconish talked to Senator Rand Paul, former senator Graham and 28Pages.org director Brian McGlinchey about the campaign to declassify the pages.

Graham said, “I think the evidence that at least some of the hijackers received financial and other support from the agents of Saudi Arabia is incontrovertible. My own suspicion is that when those materials are released, it’s going to be found that there was a network of support of the 19 hijackers, which allowed this group of men, most of whom didn’t speak English, most of whom had never been in the United States, and most of whom had very limited education, to carry out the complicated plot that they did on 9/11.”

Senator Rand Paul
Senator Rand Paul

Paul, who in June introduced Senate Bill 1471, which presses the president to declassify the material, said, “There are things in the 28 pages that everybody should be allowed to read and make their own decision on.” Speaking more broadly about the ongoing scourge of Middle East terrorism, Paul said, “Frankly, I think Saudi Arabia has been part of the problem with regard to ISIS, with indiscriminately putting arms into the Syrian civil war…so have the Qataris.”

Paul’s sentiments echo Graham’s previous assertion that the continued secrecy of the 28 pages—by shielding scrutiny of Saudi funding of Islamic extremism—enabled the rise of ISIS.

McGlinchey said, “One of the things that’s least known about this issue is how few of our elected representatives on Capitol Hill have themselves bothered to read the 28 pages. We estimate that it’s probably in the low dozens of the 535 or so senators and representatives who have actually bothered to take 30 minutes to read them.”

Asked by Smerconish where presidential candidates other than Paul stand on the issue, McGlinchey pointed out that presidential candidates Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz* have both admitted they haven’t read the 28 pages and that Jeb Bush—whose brother famously classified them—said he’s never heard of them.

McGlinchey also noted that Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and John Kerry were among 46 senators who signed a 2003 letter to George W. Bush urging him to declassify the 28 pages, and wondered what actions they took on the issue upon ascending to positions in the Obama White House. Smerconish resolved to ask them if presented with the opportunity.

*Update: On April 15, 2016, Ted Cruz said, “I have reviewed these pages and believe that they should be released.”

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ODNI Declassification Review of 28 Pages Enters Second Year

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ODNIA declassification review of 28 pages describing financial links between the 9/11 hijackers and one or more foreign governments has already taken far longer than the entire joint congressional intelligence inquiry that produced those pages—and a National Security Council spokesperson declined to say whether the end is in sight.

Last September 10, following an in-depth Jake Tapper report on the 28 pages controversy, the National Security Council issued this response: “Earlier this summer the White House requested that (Office of the Director of National Intelligence) review the 28 pages from the joint inquiry for declassification. ODNI is currently coordinating the required interagency review and it is ongoing.”

28Pages.org asked National Security Council spokesman Ned Price for more clarity on the timing of the request, but Price said he couldn’t comment on what day or even in which month the White House tasked ODNI with the review.

Considering the summer of 2014 hadn’t ended at the time of the NSC statement, the highly imprecise phrasing—and the subsequent refusal to clarify it—leaves the possibility that the request to ODNI occurred very shortly before the statement was issued.

Price also declined to indicate when the American people might expect the conclusion of the ODNI review—or to say what administrative or procedural milestones in the review process have been accomplished thus far. “I can’t comment on the specifics of the process or deliberations on this issue,” said Price.

Glacial Pace

To fully appreciate just how slowly ODNI is proceeding in its review of 28 pages, it isn’t enough to realize the review has already taken much longer then the full joint inquiry that produced those pages. It requires an understanding of just how large an undertaking that inquiry was.

Former senator Bob Graham co-chaired the 2002 inquiry. In his book, Intelligence Matters, he described the breadth and depth of the staff’s work. In about six months, the staff:

  • Reviewed nearly a half million pages of documents from intelligence agencies and other sources
  • Conducted roughly 300 interviews
  • Participated in briefings and panel discussions involving about 600 people from the intelligence community, other government departments, state and local entities, foreign government representatives and other individuals
  • Held 13 closed-door sessions and nine public hearings
  • Dueled with intelligence agencies and the White House over many aspects of the inquiry’s undertaking, including requests for information and the format of the final report
  • Wrote, edited and revised an 838-page report on the inquiry’s findings
Former Senator Bob Graham
Former Senator Bob Graham

ODNI’s review of just 28 pages has already taken a year…and counting. All of this time to weigh the declassification of material that—according to views adamantly expressed by members of both parties who’ve read it—shouldn’t have been classified in the first place.

“(Republican) Senator (Richard) Shelby and I, after rereading those…pages, independently concluded that 95 percent of that material was safe for public consumption, and that these pages were being kept secret for reasons other than national security,” wrote Graham, a Democrat, in Intelligence Matters.

Complicating the declassification picture is the fact that the 28 pages are also being scrutinized under a process called Mandatory Declassification Review, which was initiated last year by a request from attorney Tom Julin on behalf of investigative reporters Dan Christensen, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan.

The MDR process is managed by the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP).  The NSC’s Price told us “(The ODNI) request is separate from the ISCAP request.”

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ACTION ALERT: Sign White House Petition for Release of 28 Pages

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Editor’s Note: This petition is no longer active and did not reach the 100,000 required signatures. 

A new front has just opened in the campaign to declassify 28 pages on foreign government funding of the 9/11 hijackers: A White House petition, timed to correspond with increased media coverage of the issue around the upcoming anniversary of the attacks.

It’s been a year since the White House directed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to review the 28 pages for possible declassification. That means the review of just 28 pages of material has already taken longer than the broad-ranging and unprecedented joint congressional inquiry that produced the 28 pages in the first place. Enough is enough.

911 wtc aerialPlease sign the petition right away. You don’t have to create an account, just enter your name and email address. That takes less than a minute, and we’ll all be another step closer to reading 28 pages that forced Congressman Thomas Massie to stop every couple pages and rearrange his “understanding of history.” You’ll also help 9/11 family members and survivors in their drive for courtroom justice against the financiers of 9/11.

We need 100,000 signatures in 30 days—and yours is one of them. When we hit that mark, the White House will be compelled to break its silence on the 28 pages and issue a response. More important, the petition will bring increased media attention, greater pressure on Congress to pass H.Res.14 and S.1471, and more pressure on the president to do the right thing.

Please share this post or the link to the petition with as many people as you can–in as many ways as you can. Share it on Facebook and Twitter, email your friends, post it on message boards and link to it in comments on 9/11-related news stories. Use your imagination, but please do it now—we have 30 days to collect 100,000 signatures.

Donate SmallPlease chip in to help us advertise the petition. Your gift to 28Pages.org can be used to buy wider exposure on social media. For example, a $28 donation may help us present the petition to 21,000 more people on Facebook; $280 could present it to as many as 150,000 people. The forces that oppose the release of the 28 pages are silent but powerful. To prevail, the 28 pages movement needs your help in building awareness.

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