The Saudi Connection to 9/11 Attacks

WASHINGTON—Not long after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, questions about a connection between the hijackers and the Saudi government have been raised from the media and investigators. After all, 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. Some have suggested a cover-up by the Bush Administration. Classified pages from a 2002 congressional intelligence report may provide the evidence.

On Dec. 2, two congressmen introduced the bipartisan House Resolution H. Res. 428 that asks President Obama to declassify 28 pages in the “Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 2001,”—an 858 page report to Congress concerning the  Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The House and Senate respective intelligence committees worked on a Joint Inquiry congressional report that was released Dec. 2002. 

Reps. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) and Walter Jones (R-N.C.) recently had an opportunity to review the 28 pages, and now believe it would be in the public interest to declassify them. 

The report was about to begin on page 395 (416 in the original pagination) a new section on “sources of foreign support for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers while they were in the United States,” when the reader encounters for the next 28 pages only brackets with strikeout lines.

In a press release, Congressman Lynch—Democratic Chairman of the bipartisan Task Force on Terrorism and Proliferation Financing—states, “These pages contain information that is vital to a full understanding of the events and circumstances surrounding this tragedy. The families of the victims and the American people … deserve a full accounting, and that has not happened yet.”

President George W. Bush was the sole decider that these 28 pages would not be made public for what he said were national security reasons. 

According to Lynch, the information will not compromise national security.

The Joint Inquiry report should not be confused with “The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States,” also known as the 9-11 Commission, which was wider in scope and released later, in July 2004.

9/11 Victims ‘Deserve Answers’

Congressman Lynch has said in interviews that the reason he and Rep. Jones want to declassify the section is for the sake of transparency. The resolution states “The families of the victims and the people of the United States deserve answers about the events and circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001.”

“We owe it to them to give 100 percent thorough information,” he said to Mike Nikitas, on NECN television interview on Dec. 16.

Lynch said that this portion of the investigation regarding foreign support for some of the hijackers was not just rewritten, shortened, or sanitized, but was deleted.

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