His state was home to many people killed when planes hit the World Trade Center in neighboring NY.
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United States intelligence officials have finished reviewing 28 classified pages of the official report on the September 11 attacks on the USA and they show no evidence of Saudi complicity, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Friday.
Congress on Friday disclosed the last chapter of a 2002 congressional report that has been kept under wraps for more than 13 years, stored in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol.
Congress on Friday released the “28 pages”, a previously classified document that examined possible connections between the Saudi government and the September 11 hijackers.
Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, the chairmen of the September 11 commission, said on Friday that they supported the government’s view that the Saudi government as an institution was not linked to the plot, but still considered one of the Saudi nationals mentioned in the congressional report, Fahad Al Thumairy, “a person of interest”.
The chapter remained classified for such a long time because many officials feared its release would harm diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Kingdom.
The Obama administration sent a declassified version of the 28 pages, with many lines and sentences blacked out to protect intelligence sources and methods, to Congress on Friday morning.
This information is contained in 28 pages that have remained classified for more than 10 years.
“I know that the release of these pages will not end debate over the issue, but it will quiet rumors over their contents – as is often the case, the reality is less damaging than the uncertainty”, Schiff said.
Abdullah al-Saud, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., said: “We hope the release of these pages will clear up, once and for all, any lingering questions or suspicions about Saudi Arabia’s actions, intentions, or long-term friendship with the United States”.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were Saudi nationals.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in a statement that the documents “provide more than enough evidence to raise serious concerns”.
“Numerous” FBI files also fingered two Saudi government employees who assisted the 9/11 hijackers as “Saudi intelligence officers”, the newly declassified documents reveal.
An independent panel completed the 9/11 Commission Report in 2002. “That company reportedly had ties to Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda”. Bassnan “told an Federal Bureau of Investigation asset that he did more for the hijackers than al-Bayoumi did”, the report states.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the materials should put to rest longtime speculation that the Saudi government had a role in the attacks. Mr. The relationship between the Saudi government and Osama bin Laden turned sour almost a decade earlier, Jones said, when Saudi Arabia turned to the USA armed forces to oust Iraqi troops from Kuwait in 1991.
The documents also show that Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah had the telephone number for a corporation that managed the “affairs of the Colorado residence of the Saudi Ambassador Bandar” in his personal phone book. Earnest was also confident that the document would only confirm previous administration statements, and no one would find any new evidence.
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The pages, listed under the heading “Part Four – Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters”, include plenty of suspicion toward Saudi officials by US investigators – but offer nothing in the way of firm proof establishing any link between Riyadh and the 9/11 plot.
