28 pages

What to Do When Politicians Duck Your 28-Pages Questions

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Elected officials who read the classified 28-page finding on foreign government support of the 9/11 hijackers almost always become supporters of their release. That’s why we challenge and equip citizens to contact their representatives and senators and ask two simple, yes-or-no questions:

  • Have you read the 28 pages?
  • If not, have you asked permission from your intelligence committee to do so?

MEME CASEY 228-pages activists typically find the answer they receive isn’t really an answer at all. For example, Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey recently replied to a constituent with a lengthy but canned reply clearly sent to anybody who even mentions 9/11. The senator spewed 407 words, but none of them were “yes” or “no.”

Florida Senator Bill Nelson, on the other hand, cut right to the non-bottom-line: He tersely thanked the writer for contacting him and said he’d keep her “views in mind if this issue is considered before the Senate.” Nelson’s reply also said the redacted pages were in the 9/11 Commission Report–they’re not. Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey’s non-answer to yet another citizen featured the very same error.

You’re a Customer—Act Like One

When you get your own non-answer, don’t get discouraged. Instead, adopt the mindset of a customer who is receiving terrible service.

Imagine you asked a simple yes-or-no question of your bank, cable company or cell phone provider and received a reply that deliberately and completely ignored the substance of your query—and maybe threw in some factual errors to boot. What would you do? We’re guessing you’d do one of these things, in whatever order you felt like:

Ask the question again. One of those Pennsylvania constituents replied to Senator Toomey by saying, “You did not answer the simple yes or no questions I asked in my previous email.” He restated the questions and closed by saying “I look forward to your answers.”

Try another channel. If you started with a request through the official’s website, try a phone call. If you called first, try a letter. Show up at a town hall or election event and put them on the spot. Whatever your change-up, make sure they know this is your second (or third, or fourth, or…) inquiry and that the previous reply wasn’t satisfactory.

Ask to speak to a supervisor. Call the politician’s office. When the front-line staffer answers, politely but firmly say you need to talk to the legislative assistant who handles intelligence and national security matters because you’ve received poor service from the office on an issue relating to those areas. When you speak to that legislative assistant, tell them you’ve asked a simple yes-or-no question of fact and that, as a constituent, you deserve a yes-or-no answer.

Tell other people about your experience. Public criticism is to politicians what garlic is to vampires. Send a letter to the editor of your local newspaper telling them about your experience and asking aloud why a public servant would dodge such a simple question. Call in to a local talk radio show and do the same—you may intrigue the newspaper or radio station enough that they ask the politician the question too.

MEME NELSONExpose their evasiveness on social media. Call them out using their Twitter handle or post a comment on their Facebook page. Post a copy of your question and their non-answer. Use a meme generator to add visual flair and encourage people to pass it on.

Don’t give up. It doesn’t take a lot of energy to keep following up, so make it a hobby. Keep a sense of humor about it and let each round of pathetic unresponsiveness compound your determination get a straight answer.

Before long, the time and energy staffers have to spend in creatively dodging your inquiry will inevitably have them asking the same question you are: “Why doesn’t our boss just read the 28 pages already?!”

Help end Congress’s mass dereliction of duty. Contact your representative and senators today. We’ll show you how.

Activism Made Easy: 28Pages.org Print-and-Send Letters in Action

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When it comes to pressuring Congress and the president to declassify the 28-page finding on foreign government support of the 9/11 terrorists, letters carry even more weight than a phone call—and we’ve already done most of the work for you.

With our Ready-to-Print Letters, you can rattle four federal cages in 15 minutes flat. Twitter user @wwyork recently did just that and made our day by tweeting us a photo of his handiwork—and his testimonial about just how simple it was.

REDACTED w911Use our Ready-to-Print Letters to ramp up the pressure on Congress and the president today.

The Boston Globe on Rep. Stephen Lynch’s 28 Pages Leadership

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Massachusetts Representative Stephen Lynch’s leadership in the drive to declassify the 28-page finding on foreign government aid to the 9/11 hijackers is the focus of a story in today’s Boston Globe. As the 28 pages movement strives to keep the issue prominent, the story provides welcome exposure in a major newspaper—even if it runs under the headline of “Stephen Lynch an Unlikely Hero of Conspiracy Theorists.”

BOSTON GLOBEGlobe reporter Bryan Bender’s story underscores the urgency of declassifying the 28 pages 13 years after the attacks:

(Lynch) believes the information has direct bearing on the new war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and other militant Sunni Muslim groups that are believed to be drawing some of their funding from the same Arab states that America considers key allies.

The revelations are central to understanding “the web of intrigue here and the treacherous nature of the parties we are dealing with — the terrorists and their supporters,” Lynch said in an interview. “I am trying to get a sense of who our friends are.”

While not noted in the story, it’s that relevance of the redacted material to life-and-death decisions being made in the Middle East today that makes indications of a shockingly low level of 28-pages readership on Capitol Hill a true scandal in the making.

Rep. Stephen Lynch
Rep. Stephen Lynch

Bender takes a glass-is-half-empty approach to characterizing Congressional support for House Resolution 428—which urges the president to declassify the 28 pages—saying “only 17 members have cosponsored the resolution proposed last December by Lynch and Representative Walter B. Jones of North Carolina.” By failing to note that seven of those cosponsors have piled on in just the past few weeks, Bender leaves readers without an appreciation of the resolution’s growing momentum. (A Capitol Hill source tells 28Pages.org that a Texas congressman has committed to signing on as the 18th cosponsor when the House recess ends in November.)

The story’s “conspiracy theorists” headline flows from this passage of the story:

In the meantime, the quest is making for some strange bedfellows. Lynch has become a hero of sorts to conspiracy theorists who assert US government complicity in the worst terrorist attacks in American history.

Some of them, according to Lynch, show up at his town hall meetings to ask about the secret pages and interrupt the events to discuss their multiple theories about what really happened on 9/11, including that Israel was to blame for the terrorist attacks.

One of these groups is the political action committee headed by longtime activist Lyndon LaRouche.

LaRouche, the 92-year-old New Hampshire native whose anti-establishment movement has roots in the leftist activism of the 1960s, held a webcast last week about the issue (and for good measure called for the removal of the British monarchy and the impeachment of President Obama as the only way to save the world from imminent destruction).

But the hawkish Lynch, who chairs a congressional task force on terrorist financing and is a member of the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, is no conspiracy theorist. And he is quick to distance himself from such groups, whose members he says suffer from “some sort of glitch.”

The “strange bedfellow” notion and images of town hall interruptions likely helps to explain the fact that, other than Lynch, Jones and Thomas Massie, HRes 428 cosponsors have universally kept a very low profile when signing on to the resolution, avoiding public statements or press releases that elaborate on and draw attention to their support of 9/11 transparency.

Read the entire story here.

New Filing in 9/11 Lawsuit Against Saudis

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Philadelphia InquirerThe Philadelphia Inquirer’s Chris Mondics, who helped bring to light the promises President Obama made to 9/11 family members to declassify the 28-page finding on foreign government involvement in the 9/11 attacks, has a new story today that focuses on the latest filing by Philly law firm Cozen O’Connor, which is suing the government of Saudi Arabia on behalf of victims, survivors, families and insurers.

As Mondics reports:

The heart of the new filing, essentially an amended complaint reflecting Saudi Arabia’s reinstatement, is the argument that the Saudi royal family, in a bid to retain power, ceded ever greater authority to radical clerics in the early 1980s.

That strategy followed an armed revolt by religious fanatics who briefly took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam. The attack made clear that the royal family was on thin ice. To compensate, the family gave fundamentalists broad access to government ministries, Islamist charities, and diplomatic missions, enabling them to spread a virulent form of Islam.

Philadelphia Inquirer's Chris Mondics
Philadelphia Inquirer’s Chris Mondics

Cozen’s lawsuit is gaining strength, thanks to new investigation details gleaned via the discovery process and Freedom of Information Act requests. The growing mass of evidence increasingly points to a conclusion that interactions between Saudi government employee Omar al-Bayoumi and 9/11 terrorists were not mere happenstance:

Bayoumi claimed after the World Trade Center attacks that his meeting the hijackers was coincidental. But it is one of a chain of events that appear too improbable to be random.

The key facts unfold on the morning of Feb. 1, 2000, when Bayoumi says he traveled from his home in San Diego to the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles to meet with an official of the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs named Fahad al-Thumairy.

A few hours later, Bayoumi claims to have met Hazmi and Mihdhar by chance at a nearby Middle Eastern restaurant. Three days later, Bayoumi offered to resettle Hazmi and Mihdhar in San Diego, where he helped them find an apartment and open a bank account.

That same day, Bayoumi made four phone calls to Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda recruiter and operative, whose radical preaching had served as inspiration for Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, according to an FBI memorandum acquired by the Cozen firm.

Lead Cozen litigator Sean Carter told Mondics, “Just as a matter of coincidence, you would have less of a chance running into that many people with links to terrorism in Afghanistan on Sept. 10, 2001.” Read the entire story here.

REDACTED w911Have your representative and senators read the 28-page finding on foreign government support of the 9/11 hijackers—or are they part of a mass dereliction of duty on Capitol Hill?

Pelosi: Once a Vocal Critic of 28-Pages Secrecy, Now Silent

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House Resolution 428, which urges the president to declassify a 28-page finding on foreign government support of the 9/11 hijackers, continues to gain momentum. As the list of H.Res.428 cosponsors grows longer and longer, however, one representative is increasingly conspicuous in her absence: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

PELOSIPelosi was not only the ranking House member of the joint Senate/House intelligence committee inquiry that produced those 28 pages, she was also a vocal critic of the Bush administration’s decision to classify them.

Listen to Nancy Pelosi at the July 24, 2003 press conference that accompanied the publishing of the joint inquiry’s report:

“The joint inquiry took nine months to do its work. It took nearly that long, or over six months, to negotiate an unclassified version of the report with the administration. This was about six months too long. Much more of the report could have been declassified without any impact on national security. This is especially true with respect to references to sources of foreign support for hijackers. 

Time and time again this administration keeps information classified rather than making it public. Classification certainly must protect sources and methods, but it should not be used to protect reputations. This is at odds with the enormity of the tragedy we suffered on September 11 and the necessity of doing everything we can to make it less likely that we would experience events like those again.”

Her rationale for wanting the 28 pages declassified rings every bit as true today as it did when she offered it 11 years ago. Indeed, one could imagine those same words being attributed to Walter Jones, Stephen Lynch and Thomas Massie, who are leading the resurgent movement to release the 28 pages. And yet, Pelosi has not only fallen silent on the issue, she hasn’t even mustered what little energy is needed to add her name to those of many other Democrats who have signed on as H.Res.428 cosponsors.

Why would Pelosi afford President Obama—who reportedly twice promised 9/11 family members that he would release the 28 pages—any more deference on the unwarranted classification of this material than his predecessor?

Ask Congresswoman Pelosi to cosponsor H.Res.428 via Twitter (@NancyPelosi) or Facebook

Video of Pelosi at the 2003 Joint Inquiry Press Conference