“Congresswoman, have you read the 28 pages?”
For nearly a year, Congressmen Walter Jones (R-NC), Stephen Lynch (D-MA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) have repeatedly urged House colleagues to read a classified, 28-page finding on foreign government support of the 9/11 hijackers.
Lynch recently told The Boston Globe that the information within that finding is essential to understanding “the web of intrigue…and the treacherous nature of the parties we are dealing with—the terrorists and their supporters.” Preventing the next 9/11 starts with understanding who enabled the actual 9/11.
In our work to help achieve the declassification of this material—a goal that counts both the chairman and vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission among its supporters—28Pages.org has grown increasingly convinced that a scandalously large number of House representatives have spurned the repeated and intriguing pleas of Jones, Lynch and Massie, choosing to remain in a state of willful ignorance where vital national security intelligence is concerned.
Arizona’s Ann Kirkpatrick may be one of those incumbents inexplicably disinterested in reading a passage that Jones described as “shocking” and Massie said caused him to “stop every couple of pages…and try to rearrange my understanding of history.”
To promote transparency and help create a full accounting of 28-pages readership on Capitol Hill, 28Pages.org has begun asking every incumbent representative and senator two simple questions:
- Have you read the 28 pages?
- If not, have you requested permission from your intelligence committee to do so?
Since the answers to those questions give voters valuable insight into the national security diligence of incumbents, we’re making it our first priority to query the ones who are involved in the most competitive elections. One of those embattled incumbents, Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ), has completely ignored two requests to answer these simple yes-or-no questions.
If she had read the 28 pages, one imagines she’d be quick to claim credit for doing so, particularly since her opponent, Republican Andy Tobin, has used national security as a principal avenue of attack. Her silence, however, may suggest she’s among the many incumbents who’ve spent countless hours raising money but haven’t spent 30 minutes to ensure their life-and-death voting decisions are grounded in essential intelligence.
With Kirkpatrick fighting for survival in what was recently marked as the second-most expensive race in the nation, voters in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District must now interpret her silence about her attentiveness to national security and foreign policy. With the approval rating of the 113th Congress scuttling along near all-time lows, she shouldn’t assume they’ll give her the benefit of the doubt.
Congresswoman Kirkpatrick, whenever you’re ready to answer those two questions, you know where to find us.
True to the nonpartisan nature of 28Pages.org, in the coming days we’ll balance this scrutiny of Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick by focusing on a Republican incumbent who’s been similarly silent.
28Pages.org 