28 pages

60 Minutes to Report on 28 Pages Said to Link 9/11, Saudi Arabia

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60-minutesThe drive to declassify 28 pages from a congressional intelligence inquiry that detail specific indications of foreign government support of the 9/11 hijackers is about to be put under a powerful spotlight, as 60 Minutes will air a segment on the topic this Sunday, April 10 at 7 pm ET/PT.

According to the CBS News preview of the story, Steve Kroft interviewed former senator Bob Graham, former congressman and CIA director Porter Goss, former 9/11 Commission members Bob Kerrey and John Lehman, lawyers representing 9/11 family members suing Saudi Arabia and former congressman Tim Roemer, who served on both the inquiry that produced the 28 pages and the 9/11 Commission that followed that inquiry.

Report to Air on Eve of Obama Visit to Saudi Arabia

The high-profile 60 Minutes segment—which is positioned for high viewership as it follows coverage of the Masters Tournament—comes at a particularly sensitive time for the White House, as the president will visit Saudi Arabia on April 21. 9/11 family members say that, in 2009 and 2011, Obama assured them he would declassify the 28 pages, yet that promise has gone unfulfilled.

Former Senator Bob Graham
Former Senator Bob Graham

Graham, who co-chaired the inquiry that wrote the 28 pages, has said, “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.” He has also said that, by shielding Saudi Arabia from scrutiny of its sponsorship of Sunni extremism, the continued classification has encouraged their continued sponsorship and paved the way for the rise of ISIS.

Congressman Thomas Massie described the experience of reading the pages as “shocking” and said, “I had to stop every couple pages and…try to rearrange my understanding of history. It challenges you to rethink everything.”

Congressmen Walter Jones, Stephen Lynch and Massie are leading an effort in the U.S. House of Representatives to declassify the 28 pages: Their House Resolution 14, which urges the president to declassify the material, has 41 cosponsors. A similar measure, Senate Bill 1471, was introduced by Senators Rand Paul and Ron Wyden and cosponsored by Kirsten Gillibrand.

Review of 28 Pages Nears Its Third Year

In response to heightened media attention to the 28 pages in September 2014, the White House said the president, earlier that summer, tasked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper with conducting an intelligence community review of the 28 pages for potential declassification.

Inexplicably, and with essentially no follow-up by national media to date, that review of just 28 pages has already taken far longer than the entire, unprecedented congressional inquiry that produced them. As we reported here last summer, in just six months the 2002 inquiry:

  • 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

A separate evaluation, under a process called Mandatory Declassification Review, was initiated in 2014 by an attorney representing investigative journalists Dan Christensen, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan. Like the review requested by the president, it is still pending as the Obama administration nears its final months.

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Activist 9/11 Widows: Obama Shielding Saudis from Justice

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Kristen Breitweiser
Kristen Breitweiser

Five activist 9/11 widows have called new attention to the classification of 28 pages from a congressional intelligence inquiry that are said to implicate Saudi Arabia in financing the attacks that killed their husbands.

In a pointed piece for Huffington Post that was written by Kristen Breitweiser and co-signed by Patty Casazza, Monica Gabrielle, Mindy Kleinberg and Lorie Van Auken, the widows accuse the Obama administration of subordinating 9/11 justice to the U.S. government’s maintenance of its cozy relationship with the Saudi royals. The five women all served on the Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 Commission.

Throughout a more than 14-year quest for 9/11 transparency, Breitweiser says, “my government has fought me tooth and nail.” She points to the 28 pages as a prime example of that obstructionism:

“There are 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry of Congress (an investigation into the U.S. government intelligence failures prior to 9/11) that have remained classified and hidden away from the American public by both the Bush and Obama Administrations. These 28 pages allegedly prove that the Saudis had a controlling hand in funding the 9/11 attacks that killed 3,000 innocent people.

Now, it’s more than fair to say that if these 28 pages blamed the Iraqis or the Iranians for financing the 9/11 attacks, they would have been released years ago. Unfortunately, since the 28 pages allegedly implicate the Saudis, they’re likely to remain secret and kept away from the American public forever.

Knowing that evidence of your husband’s murder is being specifically withheld from you by the president — with the sole intent to protect the terrorists and their financial backers — is not something any American should ever have to tolerate.”

Breitweiser, whose husband, Ron, worked on the 94th floor of the World Trade Center’s Tower 2, describes other examples of the U.S. government’s efforts to shield Saudi Arabia from scrutiny of its alleged hand in the 9/11 attacks.

The Department of Justice, for example, counseled the Supreme Court to deny taking a case presented by 9/11 family members arguing that the kingdom shouldn’t enjoy immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The pattern extends into the legislative branch: the proposed Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), which would smooth the path for claims against state sponsors of terror, was stymied by “a whisper campaign with no fingerprints.”

“And, those whispers sounded something like this: if JASTA passes, the Saudis will bankrupt our economy by withdrawing $800 billion worth of T-bonds, and even worse, if JASTA passes, the Saudis will stop protecting and sharing intelligence information with the U.S. and leave us vulnerable to an ISIS attack.

It would seem that the same group of people who fought against the release of the 28 pages, and our case being heard by the Supreme Court, are at it once again, this time opposing JASTA and labeling it a diplomatic disaster.”

Breitweiser catalogs many reasons for the government’s protection of Saudi Arabia, including weapons deals, reliance on Saudi funding of Syrian insurgents, the kingdom’s provision of drone bases and aggressive Saudi payments to lobbying firms with ties to the current and previous White House administrations.

Obama will visit Saudi Arabia on April 21. Writes Breitweiser: “I only wish I could adequately relay the disgust I have in my heart when I anticipate having to see my president smiling, laughing, and joking with his ‘special Saudi friends’ — the very same people who I believe underwrote the murder of my husband and nearly 3,000 others.”

Read the entire piece here, then help these 9/11 family members by taking action on this issue today.

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Congressman’s Letter to Obama: Release 28 Secret Pages on 9/11 Funding

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Rep. Mike Coffman
Rep. Mike Coffman

Colorado Congressman Mike Coffman, who last month cosponsored a House resolution calling for the declassification of 28 pages on foreign government links to the 9/11 hijackers, has followed up on that move with a letter to President Obama urging him to release the 28-page chapter from the report of a joint congressional intelligence inquiry.

“Having read all 28 pages of the still-classified chapter of the report, I strongly recommend the federal government declassify the report in its entirety and make it available to the American people. There is no reason to keep this information from the public,” wrote Coffman.

In a separate statement, Coffman said, “I don’t know how President Obama can claim that he is running a federal government that prides itself in transparency when, at the same time, he denies the American people the opportunity to better understand the circumstances behind the 9/11 attack on our soil.” A Republican and a veteran of both Iraq wars, Coffman serves on the House Armed Services Committee.

President Obama reportedly assured 9/11 family members—in 2009 and again in 2011—that he would declassify the 28 pages. Meanwhile, an ongoing intelligence community review of the 28 pages for potential declassification has already taken far longer than the entire, wide-ranging congressional inquiry that produced the 28 pages as part of an 838-page report.

Coffman: Pages Cover Links to “a Foreign Government”

Coffman’s letter to the president describes the 28 pages as detailing “the results of an investigation into whether or not a foreign government was complicit in the al Qaeda directed terrorist attacks on the United States.” Former Senator Bob Graham, who co-chaired the inquiry that produced the 28 pages, has said the 28 pages implicate Saudi Arabia as “the principal financier” of the 9/11 attacks.

Though not decisive, Coffman’s description of the pages as investigating links to a singular “foreign government” may counter recurring speculation that the pages raise suspicions about a country or countries other than Saudi Arabia.

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Trump: “Secret Papers” May Link 9/11 to Saudi Arabia

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911 WTC aerial2Defending his attention-grabbing assertions that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was an enormous mistake facilitated by the George W. Bush administration’s misleading of the American people, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump this week indirectly referred to 28 classified pages said to link the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the 9/11 attacks.

“It wasn’t the Iraqis that knocked down the World Trade Center. We went after Iraq, we decimated the country, Iran’s taking over…but it wasn’t the Iraqis, you will find out who really knocked down the World Trade Center, because they have papers in there that are very secret, you may find it’s the Saudis, okay? But you will find out,” Trump said at a Wednesday campaign event in Bluffton, South Carolina.

Trump’s implied promise to declassify 28 pages from a 2002 joint congressional intelligence inquiry into 9/11 sets him apart from the remaining Republican and Democratic presidential aspirants, filling a gap created when Rand Paul suspended his campaign. Last summer, Paul introduced Senate Bill 1471, which, if passed, would direct the president to release the 28 pages, and he pledged to release them himself if elected to the White House. Green Party candidate Jill Stein has also called for their release. (Then-Senator Hillary Clinton co-signed a 2003 letter to President Bush demanding the release of the 28 pages, but has been silent on the topic since.)

Vague Reference Dampens Impact

Trump’s comments brought renewed attention to the 28 pages. However, the impact would have certainly been greater had he specifically referred to “28 pages” rather than cryptically referencing “secret papers”—which he did time and again on the campaign trail, in an interview with Fox News and during CNN’s Thursday night town hall.

Given the dearth of mainstream media coverage of Trump’s Saudi Arabia reference, it’s clear his vague allusion to “secret papers” left journalists baffled. For example, though Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher was among the first to report it, his brief piece struck a snarky tone, made no reference to the 28 pages, and concluded with a dismissive statement that “no evidence has ever been presented that the government of Saudi Arabia was behind the attacks of 9/11.” Following his lead, most of those sharing the Mediaite story on social media ridiculed the notion that there are “secret papers” implicating the Saudis.

However, Graham, who co-chaired the intelligence inquiry that produced the 28 pages, said “they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier of 9/11.” Two of the 9/11 hijackers received financial, lodging and other assistance from a Saudi citizen who lived in San Diego and who is widely thought to have been an operative for the kingdom. There are also serious questions—and a FOIA lawsuit—swirling around a wealthy Saudi family that had ties to Mohammed Atta and which fled Sarasota two weeks before 9/11.

Jeb on the 28 Pages: From Shrugs to Sarcasm

When asked about the 28 pages last summer, Jeb Bush said he’d never heard of them. This month, asked if he would like to see the 28 pages his brother classified, Bush sarcastically replied, “Yeah, I’d like to see ’em. You got ’em?”

Among the many who would like to “see ’em”: 9/11 family members and survivors whose lawsuit against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been imperiled by what former Senator Bob Graham calls a “pervasive pattern of covering up the role of Saudi Arabia in 9/11, by all of the agencies of the federal government, which have access to information that might illuminate Saudi Arabia’s role in 9/11.”

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New Year, 7 New Cosponsors of 28 Pages Resolution

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Rep. Hakeem Jeffries
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries

Fresh on the heels of a December surge in congressional support for the declassification of 28 secret pages on foreign government links to the 9/11 hijackers, the new year has already seen seven more House members add their names to a resolution urging the president to release the pages to the public.

This week, Mick Mulvaney (R, SC-5), Hakeem Jeffries (D, NY-8), Alan Lowenthal (D, CA-47), David Trott (R, MI-11), Jerry McNerney (D, CA-9), Dina Titus (D, NV-1) and Charlie Rangel (D, NY-13) joined House Resolution 14, which urges the president to release the pages to the public. Fifteen members have joined since December 9, bringing the total to 35.

Rangel was a cosponsor of the identically-worded H.Res.428 in the previous congress; there are three more H.Res.428 cosponsors who haven’t yet signed on to H.Res.14: Keith Ellison (D, MN-5), Gene Green (D, TX-29) and Louise Slaughter (D, NY-25).

Rep. Dave Trott
Rep. Dave Trott

The spike in support for declassifying the 28-page chapter from a 2003 joint congressional intelligence inquiry into 9/11 comes against the backdrop of recent high-profile terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, and heightened scrutiny of Saudi Arabia’s alleged role in funding extremism.

“If the 28 pages were to be made public, I have no question that the entire relationship with Saudi Arabia would change overnight,” a government official familiar with the pages told investigative journalists Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, as related in their book, The Eleventh Day.

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